ARTSCAPE:THE SIGHT of John Calder of London's Godot Company acting as his own town crier for sales of the €2 programmes at Endgame at the Everyman Palace in Cork earlier this week seemed an omen of the theatre's reaction to the 14 per cent cut in its Arts Council funding for 2009, writes Mary Leland.
The loss of €40,000 led to a decision to impose a three-day week on the staff of 13 at the theatre. However, following negotiations with Pat Talbot, the theatre’s director and chief executive, staff will now have the choice of taking a pay cut or working reduced hours. The new arrangement will take effect from March 2nd, and Talbot says he is hoping, through further discussions, to improve the situation.
The programme schedule is to continue, especially as there are strong signs that the theatre’s introduction of €15 first-night offers and the popular student ticket rate of €7 are creating larger, enthusiastic audiences. However, it seemed imperative to remove a planned Dogstar Company touring production of The Tailor of Inverness from the Everyman programme this spring. “That is a superb piece of work but when we reviewed everything and realised there would be a budget deficit in funding the tour, we felt that there was no way we could produce that while also looking at affecting our staff’s hours,” says Talbot.
No such changes are contemplated at the Opera House, which has added a €1 “restoration levy” to its ticket prices – it will close for its second planned refurbishment in April.
Few companies have suffered as severely as Opera 2005, whose grant was abolished.
Meridian Theatre’s Johnny Hanrahan, who is also chairman of Theatre Forum, says that the Cork arts community has taken “a severe hammering”.
Everyone expected some kind of cut, he says, adding that Meridian’s loss of €48,000 has caused the postponement of Tic, a new play by Elizabeth Moynihan, and has affected the company’s plans for an international touring schedule.
“When working in an environment where everyone’s impoverished, all plans become provisional, and that’s the real difficulty,” says Hanrahan.
Over at Corcadorca, “standstill” funding has led to the decision to curtail activity this year to a Dutch version of Medea as part of the Cork Midsummer Festival and to an investment, rather than a second production, in the development of the programme for 2010.
Robert Pinsky, a former US poet laureate and one of the few members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters to have been a guest on The Simpsons, is among the line-up for this year’s DLR Poetry Now – International Poetry Festival next month. Pinsky, who teaches in Boston University, will talk about the role of poetry in our “cynical age”.
This is the 14th year of the festival, which takes place in Dún Laoghaire from March 26th to 29th and brings together poets from Ireland, England, Lithuania, Slovenia, India, Scotland and America.
Other international names on the programme include Tomas Venclova, Ellen Hinsey, Tomaz Salamun, Sujata Bhatt and Frank Bidart, a former Pulitzer Prize nominee and student and friend of Robert Lowell.
Among the Irish poets participating this year are Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin, Colette Bryce and the winner of last year’s Irish Times Poetry Now award, Harry Clifton. The winner of this year’s award will be announced during the festival.
Pinsky will deliver the keynote address in the Pavilion Theatre on Thursday, March 26th at 8.30pm and the DLR festival curator Belinda McKeon will give an opening talk earlier in the day at 1pm in the same venue.
Other events include workshops and a reading for young poetry lovers in which Carol Ann Duffy will take part.
One special event will be a reading and birthday tribute to Nobel Laureate Seamus Heaney on the afternoon of Saturday, March 28th in the Pavilion, when most of the participating writers will come together. For details, tel: 01-2312929 or see paviliontheatre.ie and poetrynow.ie.
A little bit of dramatic history will be marked in An Taibhdhearc theatre in Galway on March 4th, when English subtitles will be provided for an Irish-language version of Henrik Ibsen’s Enemy of the People, writes Lorna Siggins.
Entitled Namhaid don Phobal, the production by An Taibhdhearc and Moonfish Theatre is billed as an “explosive, modern interpretation of the original ‘whistle-blower’ story”, which “holds a mirror to Celtic Tiger Ireland’s willingness to sacrifice the environment for the economy, and to the recent water crisis in Galway”.
The use of subtitles on a screen “heralds a new era in Irish-language theatre”, according to An Taibhdhearc and Moonfish, the latter company having come up with the idea. The production during Seachtain na Gaeilge aims to have a wider appeal, they say.
The cast includes Brendan Conroy and Donncha Crowley (both recently seen in the film Kings, which was screened by TG4 over Christmas), and Bríd Ní Neachtain. Also participating are Padraic Ó Tuairisc and Peadar Ó Treasaigh, Dara Devaney (who rapped with Des Bishop on the RTÉ documentary In the Name of the Fada), Séamus Ó hAodha and Ionia Ní Chróinín.
The last Irish-language version of Ibsen’s classic was performed in 1948. The play will run from March 4th to 8th at the Black Box, Galway and on March 11th and 12th at Axis in Ballymun, Dublin.
Booking through the Town Hall Theatre box office in Galway (www.tht.ie or 091-569777) and Axis in Dublin (www.axis-ballymun.ie or 01-8832100).
The Irish Museums Association is hosting a conference in Derry from February 27th to March 1st to discuss “how a fresh view of heritage and history can encourage museums to depart from tradition and embrace new ways of thinking, working and developing ideas”.
Presentations will be given by Prof Nigel Rolfe (Royal College of Arts), American museologist Elaine Heumann Gurian, and Irish Times columnist Fintan O’Toole.
Other speakers include Prof Liam Bannon (University of Limerick); Dr Linda Ballard (Ulster Folk Transport Museum); Dr Paula Murphy (University College Dublin); Suzanne Bardgett (Imperial War Museum); Dr Margaret O’Callaghan (Queen’s University Belfast); and Prof Mary Daly (UCD).
For details, visit www.irishmuseums.org, e-mail ima@ngi.ie or tel: 01-6633579.