ArtScape: It's been a moving week. There has been much speculation about who will get the job as director of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig when the incumbent, Sheila Pratschke, takes over from Helen Carey as director of the Irish College in Paris in January. This week, the decision was finally made that former National Library of Ireland director Pat Donlon will move to Annaghmakerrig, in Co Monaghan, at the start of next year.
Donlon is a former curator of the Chester Beatty Library and a member of the Royal Irish Academy. Since leaving the National Library in 1997, she has held research fellowships at Queen's University Belfast, Cambridge University, Boston College and the Dublin Institute of Technology. As a freelance consultant her clients have included the Irish College in Paris. Donlon has published work on Irish illustrators, Irish children's literature and the history of the book in Ireland, and has chaired judging panels for the Irish Times Literary Award, the Press Photographer of the Year Award and the Dublin Airport Authority Irish Children's Book of the Year Award.
Outgoing director Pratschke was delighted that "someone with Pat's experience and understanding of Annaghmakerrig has been appointed. Pat catalogued the entire Tyrone Guthrie Library when the centre was first opened in 1981 and has recently been back with us updating all of that work, so her association goes back many years".
The retreat for writers, artists, musicians and dancers, among the lakes and drumlins of Co Monaghan, celebrates its 25th birthday this year and Donlon is excited to be moving to this "wonderful, unique place, which is both an oasis and a hive of activity". She says she's a bit daunted by the legacy left by Pratschke and previous director Bernard Loughlin, but hopes to build on their foundations, striving to retain the centre's ethos of support for creativity.
"I also want to use the experience I have to try to expand in some ways," she says. One idea is in embryonic form, but already has a name - Artlog - and an aim, to create a digital archive of creativity, which Donlon thinks would be useful given that a side-effect of new technology is the loss of records and original material.
In the meantime, Donlon and her husband, Phelim Donlon (former Arts Council drama and opera officer), are packing up for their "rural adventure".
Also moving on is Fergal McGrath, who has made a mark in Irish arts management and in Galway specifically, first as Galway Arts Festival manager from 1992 to 2002 and then, for the past four years, as Druid managing director. McGrath is to leave Druid in January "to seek and pursue a new management challenge".
"I initially signed up for three years back in 2002 when Druid's key objective was to build and develop the organisation," he says. "After a very fruitful four years, I feel the time is now right for me to move on."
McGrath informed artistic director Garry Hynes and the board of his decision in July, and though he's leaving in January, he will still manage the refurbishment of Druid's home, the tiny theatre in Chapel Lane. The refurbishment (due to start in September 2007, with a €1 million budget) is modest enough and, says McGrath "it won't be bigger or glamorous, but will be more user- and actor-friendly".
So where's he off to? He has, he says, "lots of ideas. I am keeping my options open. I have no plan, but I'm not panicked". He's good at not giving much away, but says not to take it for granted that he'll stay within the industry (and indeed, he started his career with Fyffes). While he was at Galway Arts Festival, its turnover quadrupled, and his Druid tenure has seen turnover and activity triple within four years, so McGrath may be hoping for a bit of a break before the next stage of his life begins.
Druid chairman Seamus O'Grady paid tribute to McGrath's professionalism and energy, saying that "through his knowledge, experience, dedication and commitment, he has played a key role in the expansion and consolidation of the organisation". Hynes said she had enjoyed working with McGrath, who "played a major part in creating the organisational structures and environment in which the Druid artistic team could produce high-quality theatre for audiences at home and abroad . . . It's been a great time for us all and we wish Fergal the very best in his future career".
There's also news this week that former Abbey artistic director Ben Barnes, who has been living in Co Wexford in recent times, while directing theatre in North America, is to take over as director of Waterford's Theatre Royal next month. This has come as a surprise to those who thought he was Canada-bound, and is a bit of a coup for the Theatre Royal.
Meanwhile, Dublin Theatre Festival (DTF) director Don Shipley is heading off to Canada's Stratford Festival after this year's DTF, and there is speculation about who's going to go for his job. The post of artistic director/chief executive has been advertised (closing date September 29th) and the bar has been set high, judging by the exciting and varied line-up for this year's festival, which opens on Thursday.
Travels of the Cork core
Tom Creed's company, Playgroup, travels to Glasgow next week for the opening of Lynda Radley's one-woman show, The Art of Swimming, at The Arches on Tuesday, prior to an Irish tour, writes Mary Leland. An associate director at Rough Magic since last March, Creed is also planning a touring presentation of The Train Show, one of the most successful items at this year's Cork Midsummer Festival.
Meanwhile, Pat Talbot, of Cork's Everyman Palace Theatre, is in New York for the opening of Neil LaBute's Wrecks, commissioned by the Everyman Palace and given its world premiere in Cork last year.
Talbot and Creed worked together on the Everyman Palace's studio programme, launched in 2004 with the purpose of discovering and supporting new artists and new audiences for theatre in Ireland. That programme was abandoned when a separate funding application to bring work to performance level was rejected by the Arts Council on the grounds, according to Talbot, that "the council couldn't afford it". Now, however, Talbot says that a grant of €8,000 from Cork City Council will enable the theatre to bring at least one of the new pieces developed by the programme to the stage, probably in November.
In the meantime, Creed and his Everyman Studio colleagues, Tom Conway (now literary manager at Druid) and Oonagh Kearney (now studying film production in London), have all moved on, although Creed's main role at Rough Magic is to co-ordinate the company's Seeds initiative for young and emerging theatre artists, in some ways a reprise of his Everyman role.
Co Mayo-based Serbian artist Vukasin Nedeljkovic, Michael Fortune of Co Wexford, Gwen Stevenson of Co Tyrone, and Siobhan Tattan, based in London, are the winners of this year's Claremorris Open Exhibition, writes Lorna Siggins.
The winners were selected from a shortlist of 31 by British artist and art curator Jeremy Millar. They were announced at last weekend's exhibition opening, where the guest speaker was Magill editor Eamon Delaney, son of Claremorris sculptor Eddie Delaney.
The four winners share a prize fund of €8,000 and their work (and that of 27 others) is on display at various locations in Claremorris for the next fortnight. Fringe events include a talk on Thursday on the life and times of the late Irish Times journalist and author, John Healy, by Dr Mark O'Brien.
The second Ranelagh Arts Festival, organised by the area's residents, will be opened on Tuesday in McSorley's pub by snooker player Ken Doherty. Its diverse programme includes a Beat Club night next Saturday with 1960s Irish rock stars, the Cinemobile mobile cinema showing movies and an evening (Thursday, Ranelagh Multidenominational School) celebrating Ranelagh-born New Yorker columnist and fiction writer Maeve Brennan, with her biographer Angela Bourke introducing contributions from Ranelagh-based writers Bill Barich, Evelyn Conlon, Aidan Matthews and James Ryan, as well as actress Olwen Fouere. The festival runs Sept 27-Oct 1 www.ranelagharts.org
The third outing of Dromineer Literary Festival also runs next weekend (Sept 29-Oct 1) and includes Colm Hogan's exhibition, Private World: John McGahern; a reading by Anne Haverty; and a lakeside picnic followed by storytelling and music from raconteur Niall de Burca (and a piper) on board The Spirit of Killaloe on Sunday afternoon. http://festival.dromineer.net
