ArtScape/Deirdre Falvey: Fair dues. We may not know a lot about how the Minister for the Arts, John O'Donoghue, feels about the future direction of arts policy, but his comments at the committee stage of the Arts Bill earlier this week showed that he is willing to listen and to address problems with the Bill.
O'Donoghue, who appears to have taken on board the concerns of those opposed to Section 21 of the Arts Bill, said he was not in favour of ring-fencing the traditional arts. He indicated that he would like to see the proposal for three new standing committees - the "innovation" and local authorities committees as well as the traditional arts proposal - changed. He said that the local authorities and innovation proposals hadn't been sought by the relevant sectors, and that it was hard to look at innovation outside the context of any particular art form.
The committee stage continues on Tuesday, but many people will be pleased to note that change is in the air.
Endorsement for IFB
It is difficult to know whether the Irish Film Board is coming or going these days, writes Gerry Smyth. As reported in this newspaper, the abolition of the board was proposed by the Independent Estimates Review Body appointed by the Government to identify cost-saving exercises in advance of the Budget.
The Minister for the Arts, John O'Donoghue, not only ignored this recommendation but in a speech this week to launch the board's review for 2002 he gave a ringing endorsement of the board's work, stating that he had tremendous confidence in the Irish Film Board and its staff, and their commitment to the indigenous Irish film industry. These words of support and congratulation, however, hardly compensate for the 12 per cent reduction in the IFB's budget in the recent arts funding cutbacks.
Speaking of "positioning the Irish Film Board as main driver of our efforts to build a viable local film industry in Ireland", the Minister said he was looking forward to its 10th anniversary next year. No sign there of a Sword of Damocles hanging over the heads of Ossie Kilkenny, Rob Stoneman and co.
Support for the medium from the Minister this week also came in the form of once-off funding allocations to Cork Film Centre (€14,917.50), Filmbase in Dublin (€12,020.70), and Galway Film Centre (€10,013.85).
This money, which came from the Department's unspent end-of-year capital, is to help the three regional centres to purchase digital filming equipment.This seasonal largess also extended to the Abbey Theatre Archive which received a special grant of €22,075.35 from the Minister. This funding will allow the theatre to mount public displays of some of its archival memorabilia which includes original scripts, theatre programmes, posters, drawings and plans.
And although the Minister said he believed this would "greatly enhance preparations of the historical aspects of the forthcoming celebration of the Abbey Theatre's centenary in 2004", there is still no sign of any drawings or plans to indicate the future of the National Theatre itself.
Irish film goes to Broadway
A low-budget Irish production is the latest movie to be adapted in musical form for the New York theatre, writes Michael Dwyer. A Man of No Importance, which is playing a three-month run at the Lincoln Centre, is based on the 1994 Little Bird film written by Barry Devlin. Set in 1964, it featured Albert Finney as Alfie Byrne, a middle-aged, secretly gay Dublin bus conductor who stages a controversial amateur production of Wilde's Salomé.
The stage adaptation is by Terrence McNally, the prolific playwright who has won four Tony awards and whose previous reworkings of movies for the stage have included Kiss of the Spiderwoman, Ragtime and an exuberant treatment of The Full Monty - far superior to the original film - along with an opera based on Dead Man Walking. McNally came across A Man of No Importance in a New York video store and was so taken by it that he adapted it as a musical. Roger Rees, who has recurring roles in Frasier and The West Wing, plays the lead in the Lincoln Centre production, which opened to mixed reviews.
In the New York Times, Ben Brantley noted that, despite its immensely gifted creative team, the show feels "as repressed and tentative as its self-effacing hero".
No joke for Gilded Balloon
Those who've been to Edinburgh for the Fringe festival will be sorry to see that the Gilded Balloon is one of the buildings badly damaged in last weekend's fire in the city's old town.
The Gilded Balloon has been the venue for many Irish comedy acts over the years (this year, Kevin Gildea, Tara Flynn, Andrew Maxwell, Michael Mee and David O'Doherty - currently in Saddled at Project - performed there) as well as Channel 4's So You Think You're Funny? heats and finals.
It's not known whether the building will have to be demolished. Among other things, the fire destroyed 17 years' worth of memorabilia and files, and it is hoped comedians and fans can help to replace some lost items.
Abbey show the 'essential ticket'
After its successes at Queens Theatre in London's West End, the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), and Washington D.C.'s Kennedy Center, the Abbey production of Medea opened on Tuesday at the Brooks Atkinson Theatre on Broadway. This was the first Broadway performance in more than a decade of an Abbey Theatre production since its Tony Award-winning Dancing at Lughnasa in the early 1990s.
The Euripides play, first performed in Dublin in 2000, stars Fiona Shaw and is directed by Deborah Warner. The production won London Evening Standard Awards for Warner and Shaw as well as an Irish Times/ ESB Theatre Award for Shaw. New York Times reviewer Ben Brantley described Medea as "the most essential ticket of the season" at this year's Next Wave Festival at BAM. The run is limited to 12 weeks as it is followed by an already sold-out run in Paris.
And furthermore . . .
The exhibition for Rubicon's ARTplus charity auction opened this week at the Stephen's Green gallery's ground floor space, and continues until December 20th. The €200 tickets buy their owners an artwork, selected on a lottery basis (on the 18th), from one of the 280 artists who have donated, including Nick Miller, Donald Teskey, Richard Gorman, Louis Le Brocquy, Michael Kane, Brian Keenan, Paul Durcan, Neil Jordan, Mick O'Dea, Anne Madden, Michael Cullen, Seamus Heaney, Barrie Cooke, Basil Blackshaw, Hughie O'Donoghue, Nigel Rolfe, Abigail O'Brien, Guggi, Eithne Jordan, and more.
The auction is a fundraiser for Nazareth House in Cape Town, which cares for children whose parents have HIV/AIDS. To buy tickets, contact Cate at 01-6708055 asap . . . Fishamble and Theatre Newfoundland Labrador are presenting a work-in-progress in the Cube at Project tomorrow night. Contact, by Gavin Kostick and Newfoundlander Jeff Pitcher, explores distance, roots and contact, and was devised via e-mail over six months, across two continents, eight time zones and one ocean. The event is free but ticketed (tel: 01-8819613 or 1850-260027) . . . REM, who last performed in Ireland in 1999, have been confirmed to play Dublin's Marley Park on July 16th as part of their 2003 world tour. The €52.50 tickets for the 15,000-capacity MCD gig go on sale on Wednesday, December 18th.