Writing by committee pays for RTE

ArtScape:  An unusual experiment in creating new drama has proved a winner in the award stakes for RTÉ Radio.

Veronica Coburn's Twenty Seven has just received the prestigious World Gold Medal at the 2006 New York Festivals Awards. There were more than 500 international radio drama entries, so scooping the top prize is a boost for all the collaborators. The unusual production, a sort of radio drama by committee, had its origins in RTÉ Radio Drama's open auditions for actors last December. The vast majority of the actors were women in their 20s, for whom there's a dearth of writing. So the drama department commissioned writer and director Veronica Coburn to listen to the audition tapes, pick five actors, "hibernate" for a week in the RTÉ Sports and Social Club and devise a radio drama.

A week later, with producer Kevin Reynolds and sound engineer Richard McCullough in tow, cast and crew met in studio nine of the RTÉ Radio Centre and Twenty Seven was directed, recorded and produced. The play moves back and forth over time as five 27-year-old women - at a stage where they feel locked into particular roles in life - look back at a period in college when they formed a girl band, exploring the nature of fame and the passage of time, hope and idealism.

"There's a bit of The Big Chill about it," says Reynolds. "It was written specifically for the medium, so if lifts off the page and the radio. There are things you can do in radio that you can't do in any other medium. This story was perfect for radio." The reasons it won the award, he believes, are that it gets its message across but is light and funny and moves quickly, with lots of great singing. "We were really well-served by the five actors, Veronica and the whole team . . . The actors come from a variety of backgrounds and brought that to the script."

There are plans to explore this way of working again. And Twenty Seven will be re-broadcast, probably before Christmas.

Opera in the money

The Arts Council has made three awards, totalling €230,000, under its Opera Production Award scheme, writes Michael Dervan. The council describes the scheme as "a new once-off proposal-based award aimed at assisting the creation of exciting and imaginative opera".

The largest award, of €160,000, has gone to Brian Irvine, John McIlduff, Michael Hunt and Cathy McKimm for Dumb World, a cross-Border co-production by the Downpatrick-based Opera Fringe and Wexford Festival Opera. Dumb World "aims to make film and multimedia an integral part of the opera production experience".

Garter Lane Arts Centre and the Waterford Institute of Technology have been awarded €50,000 for a new production of Marion Ingoldsby's Lily's Labyrinth, a children's opera about a bookworm and a child who cannot read. The new production will be performed during Waterford New Music Week in February 2007.

Paul Keogan, Conor Linehan and Maura O'Keeffe have been awarded €20,000 "as seed funding toward the development of Quicksilver the Opera", a work which takes a satirical but fond look back at the Ireland of the 1970s.

Sentiment in the world of Irish opera is currently upbeat. The Arts Council has deliberated on the report delivered by its opera working group last year, and extra funding is expected to flow into the sector as a result. The options considered by the working group would have led to total sectoral funding of either €4.6 million or €8 million in 2007, though nobody, it has to be said, is holding their breath in expectation of those particular targets being met.

Son of Ulster returns

The Ulster Orchestra, which is beginning its 40th anniversary season, has chosen its principal conductor for 2007-8 - and a popular choice it is, writes Jane Coyle. Kenneth Montgomery, currently its principal guest conductor, will take up the post in a year's time, at the start of the next season.

A long-time resident of Amsterdam, Belfast-born Montgomery has maintained his musical and personal connections with the North. He was musical and artistic director of Opera Northern Ireland, the closure of which he still laments, calling it "a terrible tragedy, a scandal".

Speaking from Amsterdam, where he was on the jury of the International Vocal Competition, he said he was delighted at the prospect of forging a closer link with the community he still calls home.

"This appointment feels very right," he said. "This is one of my favourite orchestras. We speak the same language, we don't need to explain things. The musicians are very close artistic colleagues and we instinctively seem to know where one another is coming from.

"The orchestra is an interesting size, closer to that of a 19th-century symphony orchestra. It is of a scale that composers like Tchaikovsky, Schumann and Dvorak wrote for."

That observation is a strong indication of Montgomery's declared intention to revisit the standard repertoire, while incorporating ideas he has experimented with in his years of conducting major orchestras across the world. He will be introducing some new work, but acknowledges that when it comes to classical music, Northern audiences know what they like and like what they know.

Montgomery will next conduct the Ulster Orchestra at the Belfast Waterfront Hall on Friday, November 24th in a programme which includes Haydn's Nelson Mass and Tchaikovsky's Symphony No 6, Pathétique.

Seeds planted at Granary

After the extensive international participation in the live performance art programme at the UCC-connected Granary Theatre during Cork's year as European Capital of Culture, director Tony McCleane-Fay is determined now to adjust the balance in favour of undergraduate and postgraduate talent, writes Mary Leland. McCleane-Fay is focusing on his New Directions project, the result of a public invitation for original work or for work in a proposed new production.

"We were looking for innovation, commitment and a 'hunger' to produce, and from submissions received by January of this year we selected a number of people for our New Directors Festival, which we hope will be an annual event at the Granary," says McCleane-Fay.

The festival began this month with Fireface, by Marius Von Mayenburg, directed by Naomi O'Kelly, and Waiting Room, written and directed by Kevin Hickey.

Hickey is something of a find for the Granary in that no fewer than seven of his plays will be included in the month-long event, which will also feature Tom Murphy's The Morning After Optimism, directed by Sarah Jane Power. Later in the season the Granary will present songwriter Ronan Leonard's play, Nine Things I Want to Tell You, and the Asylum Theatre Company production of Meat, by Neil O'Sullivan.

The New Directions festival offers what McCleane-Fay believes is the new face of Irish theatre. Details from the Granary at 021-4904275, info@granary.ie, or see www.granary.ie.

The stage set for Equivalents, a performance produced in Dublin in 2001 by the Temenos Project, has been selected as an American entry to the Prague Quadrennial 2007, the world's most prestigious set design conference.

Equivalents was devised by Irish, American and Japanese artists, and was inspired by the art of American painter Georgia O'Keeffe. The set, designed by Kris Stone, an American who works frequently in Ireland, won a US-wide competition to become an entry to the Quadrennial. Stone's most recent set design graces the Samuel Beckett Theatre stage for Corn Exchange's Theatre Festival production, Everyday, which has been extended until October 28th.

Donal Shiels, chief executive of St Patrick's Festival Ireland, is to take up his new post next week as Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue's new arts adviser. The theatre, opera, and dance producer and promoter, who has worked with a range of Irish companies, as well as internationally, will remain boss at St Patrick's Festival, as the departmental role is a part-time one. While Shiels is leaving the Theatre Forum board due to the clash of interests, the festival is funded by the tourism element of the Ministry and so doesn't present a problem.

Shiels has worked with the department before, managing the China/ Ireland Cultural Exchange in 2003-2004. He takes over the advisory role after the departure of Tony Sheehan to Triskel.