Sir, – Fintan O’Toole (“If Ireland has changed so much, why hasn’t theatre kept pace?” Weekend Review, June 30th) refers to “The Big Four” in terms of the hierarchy in theatre funding and deplores its apparent stasis.
In real terms, it only makes sense to speak of the Big One; as he points out, the Abbey receives over 50 per cent of the annual Arts Council spend on theatre. After that the structure divides into two building-based production companies, with a marked disparity between the Abbey and the Gate, and then a group of established independent companies, with Druid at the top of the table, Rough Magic in second place and then Pan Pan, Fishamble, and so on. This shrinking group receives various forms of annual funding, which allow for a small administration base, as opposed to project funding, which only covers production costs. The only company in the State that has any kind of guarantee of Arts Council funding is the Abbey.
To categorise Rough Magic, or even Druid, along with the Abbey is spurious.
Our funding is currently less than a twelfth that of the Abbey, behind not just Druid and the Gate but the Dublin Theatre Festival; when you take the cost of the Seeds development programme out of our budget, we fall behind even further.
Fintan O’Toole urges adaptability, but does not seem aware of the element of Rough Magic’s activity which does exactly that. The Seeds programme began in 2001 to develop new writers, but it expanded quickly to become the only professional development programme in the country for directors, producers, designers and production managers. Over the past decade it has fostered some of the most exciting young theatre-makers in the country, and many participants have gone on to further employment with the company. These include Tom Creed and Cian O’Brien, who have recently taken up the directorships of the Cork Midsummer Festival and Project Arts Centre. In addition, we offer production support to emerging companies such as Anu, which produced their early work out of our office and with our active support. Besides this, we are characterised by the diversity, even restlessness, of our programme and our recent work has covered collaboration with performance artist Olwen Fouéré, as well as explorations in form such as Phaedra and Peer Gynt. Last year two-thirds of our programme was directed by people who were current or ex-Seeds participants. Hardly a static organisation.
As to continuity of leadership; it would not have been possible for the Corn Exchange, which to its credit is still very much in production after a severe cut, surviving without the continued stewardship of Annie Ryan, who has directed the company since 1995. The same can be said of Jim Culleton at Fishamble (since 1988) or Gavin Quinn and Aedin Cosgrove of Pan Pan (1991).
Running an independent company requires a serious level of emotional stamina, tenacity or pure bloody-mindedness. That some of these companies survive is a testament to endurance and personal commitment. And yes, a lot of them are women; indeed the independent sector, in which women seem naturally to thrive, has consistently produced the most ground-breaking theatre.
The real problem is not that any of us are over-funded or insulated, but that the Arts Council is dealing with a shrinking pool of resources. It is keen, rightly, to ensure that new work and new artists are given some kind of lifeline. This, along with the commitment to a single national theatre, means that whatever their longevity, the independent companies are being squeezed. In that sense the picture is no different to that of the 1980s or 1990s. What is remarkable is that a few of us are still standing. – Yours, etc,