ArtScape: As the Kilkenny Arts Festival starts this weekend, Barnstorm is planning an open forum as part of the festival. Plays on Words: What's So Special About Irish Theatre? will discuss creating theatre in a changing Ireland, in particular the writer's role in the process.
The Q&A panel includes Billy Roche, Jim Culleton of Fishamble Theatre Company, Martin Drury from the Abbey, Pat Kiernan of Corcadorca Theatre Company and Jo Mangan of Performance Corporation (whose production, on Kilkenny streets, of Dr Ledbetter's Experiment by Tom Swift opens today). Submit questions in advance to barnstorm@eircom.net. The forum takes place in the Parade Tower of Kilkenny Castle next Friday, August 13th, at 4 p.m. Admission is free and all are welcome. For further information, click on www.barnstorm.ie.
Claudia Woolgar, artistic director of Kilkenny's festival, is one of the new board members of Theatre Forum, the representative organisation for the performing arts, which is working on a pre-budget lobby campaign for the autumn and on the publication of a major report concerning the economic impact of the performing arts. Other new Theatre Forum board members are David Bolger, artistic director of Cois Céim Dance Company (whose Chamber Made also opens in Kilkenny today) and Lynne Parker, artistic director of Rough Magic Theatre Company.
Parker is also directing the Traverse production, Shimmer, a new play by Linda McLean, for the Edinburgh Fringe. McLean wrote the Scottish version of Olga that Rough Magic produced last year. Rough Magic's own production of Gerald Murphy's Take Me Away, developed during the SEEDS programme for mentoring emerging playwrights and seen at the Project earlier this year, is also at Traverse for the Fringe.
Meanwhile, also on the Fringe, the follow-up to last year's Twelve Angry Men, a stage production of One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, seems to have been cursed with a string of bad luck. The play, which has the same Irish cast connections - Owen O'Neill and Ian Coppinger feature - lost its director Guy Masterson when he pulled out due to "reasons of a personal nature", saying the show pushed him over the edge, the Daily Telegraph reported this week. He was replaced by Terry Johnson and Tamara Harvey. Then Christian Slater, playing the lead character of R.P. McMurphy, made famous on film by Jack Nicholson, came down with chicken pox, caught from stand-up comic Felix Dexter. The play is booked to transfer to the West End and also stars Mackenzie Crook (from The Office). But even if a preview was cancelled, the show must go on, and it's due to open today.
More change at the Abbey
If you have a copy of the Abbey centenary programme, you'll need to take the red pen to it for the second time in less than two months, writes Belinda McKeon. Hot on the heels of the postponement of two shows comes the news that the theatre has had to bring forward by a week its entire Abbey in Ireland series, the 17 plays scheduled to run, either in full production or as readings, during the Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF).
According to an inside source, when artistic director Ben Barnes returned to Dublin last month from Toronto, where he had been directing a production of Translations, he flew "right into the eye of a storm", with the discovery that the dates of the Abbey in Ireland series failed to match up with this year's DTF dates; while the festival runs from September 27th to October 9th, the Abbey had planned to open its festival programme on October 4th, leaving staff, says the source, "desperately trying to reschedule". And realigning the schedules of 15 directors, as well as set and lighting designers - not to mention the dozens of actors lined up for the original fortnight - can have been no mean task. It's certainly the kind of logistical headache the Abbey could have done without this summer, especially since the income garnered by John McColgan's fundraising committee is believed to have fallen well below target.
But all fingers point in the direction of the Abbey itself. The problem is believed to have arisen from a failure to confirm with DTF that the dates of this year's festival would fall - as was the case last year - in the first two weeks of October. This, despite the fact that DTF had announced its 2005 dates at the end of last year's festival. "It's such a simple mistake, it's hard to work out why it happened," says another source affected by the change. "Was it nobody's job to be the one to check up on it?"
It seems, in any case, to be nobody's job in the Abbey to give straight-up comment on the situation and on the reasons behind the change; efforts to contact either Barnes or the managing director, Brian Jackson, through the press office over a whole week proved fruitless. Maybe it's that a week isn't a long time in the Abbey; or it could be a classic case of head-in-sand syndrome.
Last month saw Barnes complaining to Richard Ouzounian of the Toronto Star about the "spin" put by the Irish media on his impending departure, and of how it was linked with what he called "a lot of tension over the financial difficulties we've had". There, as in this column, Barnes was afforded the opportunity to deny such a link. But with communications, both internal and external, seeming to be in such a dire state, is it any wonder the state of play in the Abbey is not perceived as it would wish?
East Cork baroque
It can't often be that the hospitality suite of the Beamish and Crawford brewery in Cork resounds to the strains of baroque composition, writes Mary Leland, but this is where Sarah Cunningham on the Viola da Gamba and Ian Sexton on the harpsichord launched the second East Cork Early Music Festival. With almost half the budget coming from Cork County Council the organisers, led by Jane Hayter-Hames, have gathered the available resources of a territory often neglected in terms of tourism. The week of concerts begins on September 15th at Cloyne's historic cathedral, and venues include the Mall House in Youghal, St John the Baptist Church in Midleton and the Sirius Arts Centre in Cobh.
This year's programmes and performers are notable: the Palladian Ensemble in Cloyne on September 15th with Pamela Thorby on the recorder playing Couperin, Rebel and Tartini; Maya Homburger and Malcolm Proud play seven of Biber's Mystery Sonatas in Midleton on September 16th; the Irish Baroque Orchestra Chamber Players play Bach, Vivaldi, Telemann and Zelenka on September 17th in Youghal; Camerata Kilkenny is in Cloyne on September 18th and there is sean-nós from Brid Ní Mhaoilchiaráin with Siobhán Armstrong playing harp in Cobh on September 19th.
Introduced by Douglas Gunn of the famous ensemble with musician and broadcaster Evelyn Grant as guest speaker, the launch party also offered the hint that, supported by the Cork Capital of Culture 2005 organisation, the festival will move two of its concerts to the city next year when Monteverdi's Vespers will be performed with guest soloists and brass, and a programme of Bach cantatas will feature Emma Kirkby. For further information, tel: 021 4636761 or e-mail: info@eastcorkearlymusic.ie
Young baton at the NSO
Gavin Maloney (21) has been appointed assistant conductor of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra for a period of three years, writes Michael Dervan. Unusually for an Irish musician so young, Maloney has in fact conducted the NSO before. At the age of 18 he was one of the participants in the Dublin Master Classes International Orchestral Conducting Course selected to appear in an end-of-course concert at the National Concert Hall. That course was given under NSO principal conductor Gerhard Markson, under whom Maloney has worked under at the International Summer Academy of the Salzburg Mozarteum, as well as in Britain with George Hurst and Rodolfo Saglimbeni. Maloney studied at the Royal Irish Academy of Music and the Royal Northern College of Music (RNCM) in Manchester, where he directed the RNCM Clarinet Ensemble and conducted the RNCM Repertoire Orchestra. His responsibilities with the NSO will involve covering the repertoire of the orchestra's staff conductors, and he will also be given a range of concert work.
The Arts Council says it "would like to" receive all applications for revenue funding in 2005 between Monday, August 9th and Friday, September 10th. The earlier deadline is to allow more time for decisions. An application form must be used and the Council is encouraging online applications (they won't accept fax or e-mail). It says the customised forms for different kinds of organisations and for new applicants have been improved and are easier to use. For further information, tel: 01-6180275, 01-6180254 or 01-6180260; e-mail: rgu@artscouncil.ie; website http://www.artscouncil.ie