ArtScape: A creative partnership between Cork educational theatre company Graffiti, City Hall and architect Paul Hudson of Hudson Associates led to this week's formal opening by Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue of Graffiti's new headquarters, writes Mary Leland.
These are the rearranged spaces of the chapel in the former Assumption Convent in Blackpool, whose declining sisterhood has moved out to purpose-designed units in the area so that the continuing social usefulness of the nuns and their colleagues can flourish.
Now, as Graffiti's submission to the Allianz Business2Arts Awards says, the company is taking over a building that has been a focal point of the neighbourhood for more than 100 years. Fitting a modern auditorium, rehearsal studio, offices and meeting rooms into a traditional religious environment was an architectural and theatrical challenge which Graffiti's artistic director, Emelie FitzGibbon, believes Paul Hudson has taken up with great success.
"Producing a lot from a little" is how she sees the finished product, which was aided by an Arts Council grant of €100,000. Hudson's services were provided on a pro bono basis in a scheme which involved Graffiti and City Hall in an imaginative swap, with the theatre company's previous premises in Shandon's deteriorating Weighmasters House being taken over for development by City Hall in return for Graffiti getting the Assumption Convent.
Everybody wins: the city has a suitable use for a landmark building in a district undergoing huge structural change, the theatre company has its terrific new premises, and the local community, according to Hudson, has another "benign and creative presence" in Graffiti, which will now be a close neighbour of the Foyer residential project for young people in the main convent house.
Among the benefits for Hudson's company was the chance not only to work in a historic building but also to make a contribution to the role played by the arts in improving quality of life. The commission, he says, was "not so much sponsorship as gratification".
NCH anniversary season
The National Concert Hall's 25th anniversary season, announced this week, promises to be one of the busiest the hall has promoted, writes Michael Dervan. The 2006/07 season will include eight concerts in the international orchestra series, and 11 in the celebrity series.
The La Scala Philharmonic Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly (October 11th), and the Dresden Staatskapelle under Daniel Harding (January 13th, 2007) both make their Irish debuts, and the London Symphony Orchestra will make a belated first appearance at the NCH under Myung-Whun Chung (May 22nd, 2007).
There are return visits by the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra under Andrew Davis (with Irish pianist Barry Douglas as soloist, on August 27th and 28th), the Czech Philharmonic under Jiri Belohlavek (November 15th), the St Petersburg Philharmonic under Yuri Temirkanov (January 28th, 2007), and the London Philharmonic under Kurt Masur (April 26th, 2007).
Hungarian pianist András Schiff features in three recitals at the end of September, and fellow pianist Murray Perahia, will make his NCH debut on January 23rd, 2007.
Star Siberian violinist Maxim Vengerov plays the complete Mozart violin concertos over two nights with the UBS Verbier Festival Orchestra (May 5th and 6th, 2007), and soprano Angela Gheorghiu appears in an opera gala with the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra (October 14th). The RTÉ NSO also features in a 25th Anniversary Gala Concert (September 10th), when Gerhard Markson will conduct Beethoven's Choral Symphony in a programme that includes a specially- commissioned Fanfare by John Buckley.
Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue, who launched the season, drew attention to the redevelopment of the NCH on its existing site, which is to include a new 2,000-seat auditorium and flexible 500-seat hall, as well as the existing auditorium. "The provision of a signature concert hall on a par with the leading concert halls in capital cities across Europe," he said, "will enable the National Concert Hall to meet current and expanding market demand for musical entertainment and cultural events."
Homage to Machado
In Madrid, Ian Gibson, the Dartry-born, TCD-educated writer, has just added another magisterial biography to his major works on Federico García Lorca and Salvador Dalí, writes Bernard Adams. In January of this year he finished his 750-page account - like almost all his other books, written in Spanish - of the life of Antonio Machado, one of Spain's finest 20th-century poets.
Astonishingly, the book is out already in Spain, titled Ligero de Equipage (Travelling Light), with a marvellous picture of the dignified and gentlemanly poet on its cover. It has been handsomely produced by publisher Aguilar in three months, a feat which British and Irish publishers might consider impossible.
Gibson used to live among the orange and lemon groves near Granada, but he began to feel isolated from the Madrid literary scene. So his flat in the capital will now be his base as embarks on a hectic publicity tour for the book.
The Machado book tells a strange, mostly sad story. Antonio was a shy, poverty-stricken schoolteacher who was always a political liberal. At the beginning of the 20th century his austere, almost Wordsworthian, poems attracted attention. He was unlucky in love: his young wife, Leonor, died of consumption soon after they were married, and in his later years he had another, impossible, love.
He worked hard for the Spanish republic which briefly blossomed in the 1930s. When the war came in 1936, his good friend, García Lorca, was executed, and Machado's tribute to him is one of his finest poems. The war also killed Machado. Disillusioned and with his health failing, he fled to Barcelona and then just managed to get across the frontier into France, where he died in the lovely Mediterranean town of Collioure in February 1939.
The life was hard, but the poems have a simple, stoic beauty. Like all great poets, he interrogated time relentlessly, constantly referring to "el tic-tac del reloj" ("the tick-tock of the clock"). In his introduction to his book, Gibson writes: "I began to read Antonio Machado almost 50 years ago when I started to study Spanish in Dublin. He has been with me ever since. This book is my homage to him."
A musical and dance show with music and lyrics by Micheál Ó Súilleabháin and choreography by CoisCéim's David Bolger will get its world premiere in the US this month. The "new and magical fable", devised by Ó Súilleabháin and Page Allen, called Madison's Descent, will be staged by CoisCéim Dance Theatre at Montclair State University, New Jersey, from May 12th.
Production design is by Michael Curry, who won a Tony Award for the Broadway production of The Lion King in 1998.
Ever on the ball with novel ideas to back up their activism, the latest campaign by Amnesty, Oxfam and the International Action Network on Small Arms (Iansa) aims to collect a million faces in support of a treaty to control the arms trade. Amnesty, Oxfam and Iansa have to date collected 910,000 faces on the Control Arms website (www.controlarms. org) and the push is now on to top one million in time for the UN Conference on Small Arms next month.
Amnesty Ireland and Oxfam want at least 20,000 Irish faces to be projected on to the UN buildings in New York as part of the campaign. To keep the ball rolling, anyone who collects a minimum of four faces will be entered into a free draw to win a state-of-the-art video iPod.
Next Thursday, May 11th, Amnesty is organising a cafe night with some of Ireland's leading cartoonists. Jim Cogan and others will be doing caricatures to be uploaded on to www.controlarms.org. The cafe night starts at 7pm in the Freedom Cafe, 48 Fleet Street, Dublin 2, or you can log on to www.controlarms.org and upload your own photograph directly.
Irish Times dance critic Michael Seaver has been appointed scholar-in-residence at Bates Dance Festival in Lewiston, Maine, in the US, succeeding former Washington Post critic Suzanne Carbonneau, who held the post for more than 20 years. As well as teaching a three-week course in dance aesthetics, he will mediate pre- and post-performance interviews with the performers, who this year include Robert Moses' Kin, Marc Bamuthi Joseph and Vincent Sekwati Mantsoe. Seaver will also give writing workshops for eight US dance critics at this summer's American Dance Festival.