ARTSCAPE:'A CULTURE IS not an abstract thing. It is a living, evolving process. The aim is to push beyond standard-setting and asserting human rights to make those standards a living reality for people everywhere. The aim of human rights, if I may borrow a term from engineering, is to move beyond the design and drawing-board phase, to move beyond thinking and talking about the foundation stones – to laying those foundation stones, inch by inch, together."
The recent words of former UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Mary Robinson, struck a chord with Galway Arts Festival artistic director Paul Fahy, writes Lorna Siggins. Speaking at the launch of this year's Baboró international children's arts festival, Fahy paid tribute to its stewards for their steadfast belief that "children, as citizens of Ireland, have cultural entitlements equal to that of any adult".
"As a child myself growing up in the 1960s and 1970s we were starved, without realising it, for a cultural fix," Fahy recalled. "For me, the magic of the possibility of theatre and performance came with the arrival of our first black and white television, as the theme tune of Wanderly Wagonsignalled the arrival of Godmother, O'Brien and Judge the Dog, who filled my imagination with wonder and joy."
Fahy referred to Denmark’s reputation for providing “exceptional and innovative work for young audiences” and for ensuring access to the arts was and is a fundamental right throughout its educational system.
“This is something Baboró has advocated very strongly since its foundation” some 13 years ago, he said, crediting its director Lali Morris and general manager Teenagh Cunningham with taking it to a new and international level.
This year’s festival involves performers from home and abroad, including Dutch dance pioneers Introdans for Youth, La Baracca from Italy, Jamie Adkins’s Circus INcognitus from Canada, Cahoots NI, ShakaBang with Dermot Carmody and Morgan C Jones, and Macnas. A keynote conference, Natural Born Artists, on the benefits of arts and creativity for children, draws on writer Philip Pullman’s theory that children needs the arts “as much as they need fresh air”, if they are not to “perish on the inside”. Baboró runs in Galway from October 12th to 18th: the conference is on October 16th and 17th. See baboro.ie.
Another children's festival, the younger Flip Flop in Dún Laoghaire this week announced the line-up for its international children's theatre festival. It includes Cups and Crowns' A Hedge Called Hog, concerning a grown-up searching for her lost imagination, which is for the tinies; Cahoots NI's The Musician, a new opera about the child who became the Pied Piper, for age seven-plus; Tall Stories, who make famous stories accessible for the very young, present Something Else; and Circo Ridiculoso promises balloon-taming. There are other attractions, including staged readings of three fantasies created and workshopped by the Pavilion's youth theatre group, including Nicola Rylands, Sadhbh Daly and Max Goldman, all locals aged 12, who were enjoying this week's launch. Flip Flop, Oct 18th to 24th at the Pavilion, Dún Laoghaire and Mill Theatre, Dundrum. paviliontheatre.ie
Acting Irish in New York
We're in the middle of Ireland's autumn theatre season – with the Dublin fringe winding up, the theatre festival about to kick off, never mind all the other work on stage elsewhere – but a substantial and impressive festival of Irish theatre is also running – in New York. The 1st Irish Theatre Festival is in full swing (until October 4th), featuring new writing by Irish playwrights, and American premieres of well-known Irish productions. The second of this annual festival founded by George Heslin (New York-based, but formerly with the Gate in Dublin) features the work of 21 Irish playwrights in 12 NY venues, and more than 375 writers, actors, designers and stage managers from the US and Ireland. "Spinning the Times" set a challenge to Geraldine Aron, Lucy Caldwell, Rosalind Haslett, Rosemary Jenkinson and Belinda McKeon to create short plays inspired by reports from the New York news media, staged at at 59E59 theatres. At the same venue, the NY premiere of Fishamble's The Pride of Parnell Streetby Sebastian Barry got strong reviews, with the New York Postsaying "the performances . . . couldn't be better", and Ben Brantley in the New York Timesdescribing it as "lovingly acted" and "a pleasure to watch and listen to".
Writer Billy Roche performed solo in a Wexford Arts Centre production based on two stories from his collection Tales from Rainwater Pondat the Irish Repertory Theatre. The NYT wrote, "the strength of Mr Roche's writing is in his poetic use of detail to evoke the joy of a bygone time and the disillusion that inevitably follows", while "Mr Roche . . . holds his audience with a soft-voiced, conversational narration that never indulges in sentiment or even emotion."
And Luck, Megan Riordan's account of growing up under the tutelage of a professional Las Vegas gambler, has its US premiere next week. See 1stIrish.org.
Also in New York, Abbey Theatre director Fiach MacConghail was guest of honour at a US-Ireland Alliance at Y92 Tribeca; he was finalising plans for January's American premiere of Sam Shepard's Ages of the Moonat the Atlantic Theater, and next autumn's coast-to-coast US tour of Mark O'Rowe's Terminus. MacConghail spoke of the ties between Irish and American playwrights and the Abbey's connection to the US, dating back to WB Yeats's visit in the early 20th century, Sean O'Casey's impact on Eugene O'Neill, and Samuel Beckett's influence on David Mamet and Sam Shepard. US-Ireland Alliance president Trina Vargo noted "theatre, music, and writing are what make Ireland attractive to tourists and, in places like the US, Ireland's creative industries are what set Ireland apart." MacConghail said "We need theatre and the promotion of culture more than ever. Our writers and poets have yet to fail us."
And catch up more Irish culture with a NY twist when the second series of Imeall on TG4 (Wednesday, September 23rd at 11.05pm) features writer and poet Seamas Ó Neachtain in Brooklyn, Sean Mahon, the leading actor in the Broadway hit The 39 Stepsand Irish-born artist Katie Holten who is working in a Bronx community on a public art piece.
