ARTSCAPE:'THANKS FOR choosing this vocation, and sticking with it. There are easier careers." The President Mary McAleese was speaking this week at the announcement of this year's Stewart Parker Trust New Playwright Bursary, in the Abbey in Dublin. Newry playwright Abbie Spallen won the bursary, a reflection of the strength and success of her play Pumpgirl. Her second full length play, it premiered at Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre in 2006, transferred to London, then Manhattan and its Irish premiere by the Lyric Theatre at the Old Museum Arts Centre last year won it an Irish TimesTheatre Award nomination for best new play.
This week Spallen thanked the Lyric, Mike Diskin (its former director) and Andrew Flynn for “fighting so hard for this play, and for their input and respect when dealing with the text”. She spoke warmly about the Stewart Parker Trust, saying one of the best weeks of her life as a writer was at the trust’s workshop in Tyrone’s Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig with Graham Whybrow of the Royal Court. “And the money is great” – as well as a huge range of writer supports, there’s a financial award.
Spallen's first play, Abeyance,was a produced as a Druid Debut; her short play, Shaving The Pickle, premiered in 59E59 Theatre in New York, and she won the Tony Doyle Award for screenwriting from the BBC for her screenplay, Seven Drunken Knights. This year Fishamble Theatre Co premieres her new play Strandlinein Dublin, and Pumpgirl, the feature film which Spallen adapted for NI Screen/BBC Northern Ireland, was seen for the first time at the Belfast Film Festival this month.
The awards event turned out to be a big cheer for young Irish female playwrights, as Elaine Murphy, who wrote Little Gem, was also a winner, with the BBC Northern Ireland Radio Drama Award. The first play by the Dublin actor and writer (she's been in Prosperity, Becoming Jane, and Pure Mule; her next play, In Dublin,set in a lap-dancing club, will be produced by Bedrock this year), Little Gem, which Paul Meade of Gúna Nua "took a chance on" she said, won the Fishamble Best New Play Award at last year's Fringe and was nominated for an Irish Timestheatre award. And it was not a young writer but director of An Comhlachas Náisiúnta Drámaíochta (National Drama Association), Seán Ó Morónaigh, who won this year's BBC Northern Ireland Irish Language Drama Award, for his lifetime contribution to drama in the Irish language, working with and nurturing emerging Irish language talent from all over Ireland.
This week was the 20th anniversary of the Stewart Parker Trust, which started a year after the Belfast playwright’s death, and John Fairleigh and Lynne Parker of the Trust managed to swing a visit by President McAleese, 10 years after she marked its first decade anniversary. McAleese spoke movingly and authoritatively (and at 19 to the dozen) about Parker and his refusal to choose one side or the other in a society of seething hatreds but to choose instead the “deliberate misreading of history”; she talked, too, about the role of playwrights in society, and the lonely, difficult job of writers, and the vindication that she hoped awards like this mean.
“The gift of the theatre is to help stop us in our tracks in our life in a memorable way.” She thanked the trust for “investing in our playwrights” and helping to keep Irish theatre up there: “what you do has great integrity to it”. The trust, the BBC, the Abbey are “keepers of something sacred and special”, she said, valuing that investment in us and in that “joy in life”.
No boos at Bealtaine launch
Those Bealtaine people are very polite altogether. There was a lovely vibe at the programme launch of the festival. This celebration of creativity in older people has a great reach, with tonnes of events all over the country for the month of May. Among the five speakers was the former junior minister Máire Hoctor, with special responsibility for older people. The last time a minister faced a crowd of grey power they were booed off stage, but this week, even when she had the neck to waffle on about the Government’s record on older people, there wasn’t a boo or hiss to be heard. The place was coming down with camera crews, at least in part because the fate of junior ministers was in the balance that day; as part of the circus she later lost out.
Age and Opportunity chairman John Hynes, National Library director Aongus Ó hAonghusa, artist (and Bealtaine "ambassador") Robert Ballagh and festival director Dominic Campbell also spoke about the month-long event, which this year has a theme taken from Miroslav Holub's poem The Door, "Go and open the door".
The innovative festival, now in its 14th year, has been inspiring similar initiatives abroad, with the Netherlands and Wales in particular planning to follow suit. Bealtaine's line-up includes National Grandparents' Day in School in Irish schools, a chance to rediscover forgotten musical talents with Blow the Dust Off Your Trumpet with the NCH, screenings of the film Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Dayall over the country in an Irish Film Institute tour, learn how to research your family tree or turn your memories into memoir at the National Library, go behind the scenes in the conservation department at the Chester Beatty Library, step back in time at Waterford Medieval Fair of St Peter and Vincula at the Waterford Museum of Treasures, an Irish language workshop at the Pearse Museum, or sing to the rising sun in a dawn chorus on a beautiful Donegal beach.
Information is available from Age Opportunity on 01-8057709, local public libraries and county council arts offices, or Bealtaine at Age Opportunity, Marino Institute of Education, Griffith Avenue, Dublin 9 or bealtaine.com.
- Christopher Frayling, former chairman of the Arts Council of England, The Irish Timesjournalist Fintan O'Toole and former journalist and political adviser Mary Kerrigan are among the speakers at this year's Burren Law School over the May Bank Holiday weekend in Newtown Castle, Ballyvaughan, Co Clare. The theme this year is arts and the law, from a contemporary and Brehon Law perspective. "Ireland is attempting to move itself to a smart economy," says school director Sean Braiden. "The arts and the stimulation it provides is very much the engine of research and development, and we will be debating this intersection of the arts, copyright and intellectual property rights."
Other speakers include: Prof Donnchadh Ó Corráin of UCC; the Binchy memorial lecture is by High Court judge and Abbey Theatre chairman Justice Bryan McMahon; Sen Ivana Bacik chairs a debate on creativity and the arts with Garry Hynes, Michael Dervan and Micheál Ó Suilleabháin; there is a debate on copyright and intellectual property rights with artist Robert Ballagh, solicitor James Hickey, and Mary Kerrigan; and actor Alan Stanford, Irish Timesmanaging editor Gerry Smyth and Frayling debate the institutional framework and support for the arts. www.burrenlawschool.org, 065-7077200.
