'Our new director will be someone who will combine outstanding leadership and artistic vision with strong business acumen and entrepreneurial flair. She or he will assume overall responsibility for the theatre and work with us to bring the most innovative and challenging programmes of work to the Abbey stage, while also continuing our current process of change and revitalisation."
So, the official recruitment for the new director of the National Theatre has started. Chairwoman Eithne Healy's comments about the job (above) signal an interesting move towards someone with a combination of artistic and entrepreneurial skills. Tongues will be wagging already, speculating about who the spec might have been written for. And is there a significance to the use of the term "director" rather than "artistic director", which is Ben Barnes's title?
The Abbey's statement this week says the director will succeed Barnes, who completes his term at the end of 2005, and that "during the transitional period the director designate will work with the board, current executive and stakeholders of the Abbey to develop the theatre's future artistic and business programmes, and in line with these, to identify correct structures for the theatre in the coming years". PricewaterhouseCoopers is handling the recruitment, which will be advertised internationally. The director "will assume overall responsibility for the theatre as a whole, and will play a decisive role in the renewal and strengthening of the organisation. He or she will create innovative programmes, build audiences, explore the theatre's national remit and develop the Abbey brand name". This will require "outstanding leadership and artistic vision combined with entrepreneurial flair and a collaborative style".
The first line of the advertisement announces: "The Abbey Theatre is about to enter its second century." Indeed.
More bang than bucks
The Arts Council is gearing up its pitch for Budget funding. Over the coming days it will host a series of briefings for clients, outlining the details of its bid and explaining how applications for funds will be considered after the level of Government funding is known. The meetings are in Dublin (Tuesday), Portlaoise (Wednesday), Cork (Friday) and Donegal town (Monday, November 15th).
This year the relatively new council, headed by chairwoman Olive Braiden and new director Mary Cloake, is continuing its strategy from last year of looking for a modest increase (to €68 million). This effort to be realistic in its aspirations worked last year, when a partial reprieve from the Government's needless butchery of the previous year was won.
All the same, €68 million is a pitifully small amount of money in the scheme of things - whether by international comparison or in relation to general Government funds, and especially considering the wanton waste in other areas. At least the arts can argue that the money is well-spent, and that the State generally gets a lot of bang for its buck.
Cloake spelled it out last weekend at the opening of Tulca, this month's visual arts festival in Galway. This year the Arts Council has had roughly €100 million worth of applications, she said, and may have €50 million available in grant aid. There are 1,500 applications in, and only 500 of these will be successful - so there are 1,000 good ideas floating around out there without the financial backing to bring them to fruition. So, Cloake said, if you think this is just not good enough in a society that makes such mileage from the arts and cultural exports, have a word, lobby for Government arts funding, make your voice heard.
Golden opera-tunity
It's an opportunity many young artists, in any discipline, would kill for. Opera Theatre Company and artistic director Annilese Miskimmon are taking under their wing five young Irish singers - from the North and the Republic - in the new Young Associate Artist programme, as a sort of professional "bridge" between formal musical and singing training and the world of a professional singer.
The programme will involve 18 months of tailored vocal coaching and other training, mentoring, the chance of Opera Theatre Company roles and, not least, the opportunity to network internationally.
The first programme of its kind in Ireland, it is supported by the Arts Council of Northern Ireland (though this organisation is looking for Arts Council and corporate support too).
Virginia Kerr, the new chairwoman of Opera Theatre Company - a coup to have a singer of her calibre as chair - hosted an evening this week to announce the scheme, and show off a smart aria, sung by Charlie Page, from Vera of Las Vegas, the new opera the company is rehearsing. With a witty libretto from poet Paul Muldoon, the plot involves IRA operatives, lap-dancers, stewardesses and showgirls. Sounds like a riot.
Watch out for the fun poster, with its picture of a pair of red stilettos, for Vera of Las Vegas, which is on tour from November 20th, visiting Sligo, Bray, Limerick, Cork, Galway and Dublin.
The fourth biennial Corcadorca Playwright Award for 2004 has been won by Philippe Deslias, who was presented with his €2,000 prize and commemorative sculpture in Cork, writes Mary Leland.
From Saintonge in France, Deslias, who formerly worked with the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, has moved to Westport, in Co Mayo, with his family. He works there with the Mayo Education Centre Schools Project. Although he describes himself as "a complete unknown" and his play, Geronimo, as a little play and an inexpensive one, he at least has the encouragement of Edward Albee, to whom he sent the script and from whom he received a precise and supportive critique.
Geronimo emerged from 200 entries to the Corcadorca competition and, while waiting for the developmental workshop which the company plans for the piece next spring, Deslias is working on a new play for John Breen's Yew Tree Theatre Company, entitled The Life and Death of Billy Budapest. The three previous Corcadorca Playwright Award winners were Neil O'Sullivan, Ger Bourke and Colm Maher.
Relatives and friends of the late photographer, Fergus Bourke, will celebrate his "month's mind" with an afternoon event in Galway's Town Hall Theatre next Saturday, November 13th, from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m. Frankie Gavin and Friends (including Bourke's brother, Brian) will provide the music, and a new 40-minute documentary, Fergus Bourke in his Own Worlds, directed by Art O'Briain, which had just completed shooting before Bourke's death, will be premiered. The organisers invite all of Bourke's friends from around the country.
Interesting to note the Gate's plans for the theatre after Conor McPherson's Shining City ends on November 20th. First up is a new Bernard Farrell play for the season (rather than the lovely, but tried and trusted Christmas Carol, phew). Many Happy Returns, a comedy about Christmas visits and family secrets, opens on November 30th. Then, in the new year, the theatre premieres The Home Place, by Brian Friel, directed by Adrian Noble.
"As a nation, we have a need for voices that will tell us what we don't want to hear, for voices that will speak up fearlessly against inequality and injustice wherever it is to be found." This is what the Minister of Arts, John O'Donoghue, said this week when opening Mannix Flynn's latest "extallation", Victim Impact Statement, at the Sugar Club in Dublin. The minister lauded Flynn's work dealing with his (and others') mistreatment by the State, saying it had contributed to taking ownership of the past and learning from it. And did you know that Flynn is a blow- in to Killorglin for the past four years? One reason, perhaps, why the minister said he feels an "affinity for Mannix and both his work and his attitude to life".
Six Irish arts managers and programmers will participate in the biennial CINARS Platform in Montreal, an international exchange forum for the performing arts, from November 16th to 20th. Siobhán Bourke and Jane Daly, of Theatre Shop; Kilkenny Arts Festival director Claudia Woolgar; Pavilion Theatre director Polly O'Loughlin; Marcus Barker, of Dublin Theatre Festival; and Dermot McLaughlin, of Temple Bar Properties, will attend the event, which this year focuses on eastern Europe. Theatre Shop will discuss the idea of an Irish focus at the 2006 Platform and French Canadian participation in Theatre Shop's networking event in October 2005.