WE THEATRE types always wonder: what will the house be like tonight?" mused Ben Barnes at the launch this week of his memoir of his turbulent years as artistic director of the Abbey. He needn't have worried, there was a more than respectable turnout at the Chester Beatty Library for Carysfort Press's latest theatre publication, Plays and Controversies, writes Deirdre Falvey
'A good smattering of theatre, literary and Arts Council types turned up, including many familiar faces Barnes said he had not seen since he left the Abbey in 2005. (Among them were Mark Lambert, Anne Clarke, Tom Murphy, Aongus Ó hAonghusa, Eugene Downes, Mary Cloake, Willie White, Richard Cook, Una Carmody, Vincent Woods - though no sign that I saw of anyone from the Abbey.) He asked Declan McGonigle to speak at the publication, as they are both "members of a club of arts executives with colourful and complex histories".
People were rapidly scanning the book to see who was mentioned in Barnes's version of that colourful and complex history - based on his contemporaneous diary of events surrounding the Abbey's aborted moved to a docklands site and the financial and structural crisis at the National Theatre. He commented that after five and a half years at the helm of the Abbey, and 20 years' association with it, "it no longer plays a part in my life". He said the events were a catalyst for a move back to his native Wexford, where he has, with his girls, "made a new life out of all that old anguish".
Barnes had considered calling the book Abbey Days, with its Beckettian echoes, and for its somewhat apt image of beginning, like Winnie, buried up to the waist, and ending buried up to the neck, "or, in my case, just buried". Perceived old enemies were not forgotten ("the ill-informed media noise and the clash of useless swords"). His reasons for publishing included setting out his version, an attempt "to record and understand" what had happened "against the simplified reporting of the mass media".
Dunne and daughter delight
"Portraits give us an incredible connection, an eye into history and its stories. But if portraits give us such an eye into history, what sort of an eye will they be providing into today's society?" asks Gemma Tipton in her introduction to the catalogue for the Davy Portraits Awards show in Belfast.
The first prize of £10,000 (€12,000) in the first Davy Portrait Awards went to Dublin-based artist Joe Dunne. His egg and oil tempera painting on canvas of his daughter Cara (15) is an intimate work and aims to capture his youngest child's "quiet and reflective temperament".
Belfast-born Martin Wedge won second prize for his startling oil on canvas, Figure C3.10, of an anonymous subject in a medical reference book, which Wedge describes as "a universal face that is strangely recognisable to many". Third prize went to Dublin's Gary Coyle for a charcoal on paper portrait of his father. The three top prizes offer contrasting styles of portraiture, and indeed the 24 shortlisted paintings on view at the Naughton Gallery at Queen's in Belfast (until January 31st) span an enormous range. Others that caught the eye included Kieran Crowley's Sunday Morning (of a man picking his nose); Daniel Mark Duffy's dignified nude of Nell McCafferty;
Eoghan McGrath's Betty, a photo-realistic close-up of an older woman; and Dermot Seymour's Fat Eyed, of a rather hard chaw.
The new Davy award, an Irish version of the well-established international BP Portrait Award, was open to artists across Ireland. The judges were RHA president Stephen McKenna, RUA president Rita Duffy and art critic Gemma Tipton. The exhibition moves to Dublin's Farmleigh Gallery in March. www.davyportraitawards.com.
Toyota leaves the orchestra
Sponsorships come and go, but Toyota Ireland's relationship with the National Youth Orchestra of Ireland seemed never-ending, dating back to the foundation of the orchestra in 1970, writes Michael Dervan. All good things come to an end, and Toyota has written to the guests it normally invites to the orchestra's New Year concerts to let them know of the decision to bow out. It might look like a matter of slow sales in the motor trade, or a shift in attitude following the death last June of Tim Mahony, chairman of the Killeen group, whose companies include Toyota Ireland. The orchestra relationship was always close to Mahony's heart - what began on a one-year basis was to run for nearly three decades.
In truth, the situation is rather more complicated. A strategic review carried out for the orchestra by Tony Ó Dálaigh last October had suggested that the orchestra's board "should meet Toyota Ireland to negotiate a substantial increase for exclusive sponsorship or agreement that other subsidiary sponsorship may be sought from other Companies and/or a Corporate Friends Scheme". Toyota's sponsorship, which Ó Dálaigh described as "legendary", was then valued at €85,000, €15,000 more than the Arts Council's support of €70,000. Ó Dálaigh also noted that the grant from the Department of Education and Science (€127,000) had been static since 2002, and that due to the replacement of the orchestra's voluntary manager with a paid manager, Arts Council support for the orchestra's artistic activity in 2007 was "about €30,000 as against €60,000 in 2006". Toyota, it seems, stumbled between the alternatives of raising its support significantly or sharing the sponsorship with other parties.
The orchestra's manager, Zoë Keers, remains upbeat. "We honestly wouldn't hold anything against Toyota," she said, "given that they've been with us so long." And she pointed out that support hasn't disappeared entirely - there's going to be a €10,000 bursary in the name of the Mahony family.
"We're going to be 40 in 2010. We can't let the orchestra die before it's 40," she said, "We simply can't let that happen."
The timing, however, is not good. Next year is one of the most difficult for the Arts Council to consider stepping up to the mark and putting its support for the orchestra on a more realistic footing. The orchestra will have to hope that the extraordinary public campaign - including collecting signatures for a petition on the internet - that kicked into action when the merging of its junior and senior orchestras was mooted will reactivate, this time with the ongoing financial security of the orchestra as its focus.
The Junior Orchestra will be in action at the Helix's Mahony Hall on New Year's Day, with the Symphony Orchestra playing in Limerick and Dublin on January 3rd and 4th.
The Bullmarches on. Fabulous Beast made its German debut in the Berlin Festival Theatre on Thursday with the Irish dance-theatre company's performance of Michael Keegan-Dolan's play, loosely based on the Táin, at the Haus der Berliner Festspiele as part of the festival's spielzeit'europa programme. The first Irish work in the programme, it has select companions, including the Forsythe Company and the Monks of the Shaolin Temple. The 2005 Dublin Theatre Festival/Barbican co-production got international attention after winning the UK Critics' Circle Dance Award and an Olivier nomination. Cast member Colin Dunne was also nominated by the UK Critics' Circle for best male modern artist.