The judges give their verdict on a year in theatre to Belinda McKeon
The judges of this year's Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards have finally come up with their shortlist - but it has taken "a lot of heat", says Tony O'Dálaigh. On the table at which he sits with his fellow judges, Dolores Lyne and Phelim Donlon, lie countless sheets of paper bearing the names of plays, production companies and individual actors, directors and designers, many of them underlined, crossed out or surrounded with what look like scribbled questions. Red pens have clearly been in liberal use.
At O'Dálaigh's comment, Lyne and Donlon smile wryly - but at least they're still smiling, and despite the arguments that seem to have dominated their last meeting, there's a good atmosphere around the table. Partly, this is because the judges have almost reached the end of a long journey - over the past 12 months, they've seen every single Irish production to be staged on this island, a task that has required no small amount of schedule-juggling.
But something else is informing the positive mood. All agree that the process of judging this year's crop has been a pleasant surprise. "It's been a really strong year," says O'Dálaigh, and the others immediately nod assent. "By comparison to last year, certainly. Now, whether that had anything to do with the improvement in the funding situation and the fact that 2003 was a spare year for many productions, less touring, less productions . . ." Donlon, who was also a judge last year, thinks this change is "definitely" reflected in the shortlist. "Even in the very crude measure of the number of shows I saw in 2004, as against the number of shows we saw, as a jury, in 2003. I'd say we saw 120 in 2003, but I saw over 150 in 2004."
Between them, the judges reckon they saw more than 170 productions, all of them Irish, in the past year, including every home-grown production in the Dublin Fringe Festival. Involved in that feat has been a lot of running and racing - Lyne recalls charging up to a garda on the night of the St Patrick's Festival Skyfest event and announcing that she had to get to the Project to see a play, and so had to get across the Ha'penny Bridge, which was closed for the occasion. "He said, okay, go for it," she laughs, "and I just legged it across, like the last one out of Saigon . . ."
O'Dálaigh and Donlon both profess admiration of Lyne; as she was based in Galway, she bore the brunt of the travelling commitment that the judging process involves, and "wore up the road coming to Dublin", sometimes several times a week.
O'Dálaigh sees this as a telling reflection on the state of the art in regional terms. "In essence, 70 per cent of our productions were in Dublin," he says. "And I mean, we did see everything that was anything down the country. But, despite the fact that there are a lot more companies out there than there were, and a lot more venues, there is still an imbalance."
Lyne points out another worrying trend, which shows no signs of abating despite increased funding - there's more venues than venue-based production companies. "The venue is just a facility to put work on, but not actually a resource. And it's not seen as one by people." To this end, greater Government support is still wanting, the judges agree.
But it is encouraging that so many of this year's shortlisted productions, performances and accomplishments in direction and design hail from outside the capital. Though the judges would like to see a much greater proportion of companies touring into Dublin from regional venues - apart from the plays in Druid's Synge cycle and the Galway Arts Festival production of Trad, such touring barely took place in 2004 - they are in no doubt as to the quality of the work that was staged around the country over the past 12 months.
"Something we found was that the number of new plays was hugely up," says O'Dálaigh. "And they were very good," says Lyne. In fact, it was the Best New Play category that proved the most contentious - from a final list of 10, the judges had the unenviable task of choosing four contenders. This involved reading the scripts again and again over Christmas - the award is for writing, after all, rather than for the overall production. "And they all deserved to win," says Lyne.
Certainly, the problem highlighted by last year's judges - that a worrying amount of new writing was reaching the stage in an underprepared state - seems to have been much less of an issue in 2004. "Certainly, we did find that a significant amount of the work last year had been brought too early to an audience, that it still needed work," says Donlon. "But this year, we could have picked eight out of the 10 nominations and be quite comfortable with them all, in a way. And I don't think we could say that last year. But maybe these things are cyclical." Lyne, a judge for the first time, believes many of the plays that didn't make it into this year's final four would have had no trouble getting on to the shortlists of previous years; the others agree.
Other trends the judges noticed included a rise in co-productions, a spread of good work from a large number of companies, productions of a much larger scale - a sign, Donlon feels, of greater confidence on the part of production companies - and a significant growth in the quality of sound design and the use of musical collaboration in productions. What remains worrying, however, is the poor quality of acoustics in so many Irish venues. "The question of acoustics is a critical one, certainly," says Donlon.
Donlon was also disappointed by the low audience numbers at so many productions. "It's anecdotal, I suppose," he says. "but to look around me during the year at really splendid work, and see quite small audiences - I wouldn't want to be calling it a crisis, but I do think that really good work is not getting the support." There is, he feels, "a kind of fatalism" in the attitude of venues to this ongoing problem. "And you really feel that the companies deserve better," says O'Dálaigh. "It's very rough on them."