Sir — Regarding Fintan O’Toole’s article on the direction of Irish theatre over the last 25 years (Weekend Review, June 30th), and Lynne Parker’s response (July 5th), Ms Parker is correct to say that it is inaccurate to categorise the Abbey, the Gate, Druid and Rough Magic jointly as the “Big Four”. The Abbey, as a member of the Council of National Cultural Institutions and given its status as the national theatre, is by its nature different from the others; and the Gate, by dint of its 480-seat venue out of which it produces its work, is different again from the other two. She is also correct to say the survival of independent theatre companies is almost always down to the energy, artistic drive and commitment of one person. In fact, most independent theatre companies outside of buildings exist as a means for a single artist to deliver their vision to audiences.
Unlike other art forms such as visual arts and literature, theatre is by its nature a collaborative art form, which requires the skills and talents of many people to be realised. At its most basic, it is a director helping an actor to interpret a written text in performance. However, when set and lighting, costume, sound, and increasingly video and film projection are added to the mix, it becomes a complicated and involved process.
Given this, the most effective means for an artist, most usually a theatre director, to get projects off the ground is to have a company structure around themselves. This normally involves a company manager or executive producer, whose role it is to secure funding and to put the various elements required for the production in place. This is an intricate process which requires a particular skill set, and it is useful therefore to have the trappings of an office – phone and internet access, printers, photocopiers, etc – to execute what is often a complicated and time-consuming endeavour.
On this basis, the notion of the “theatre company” has become embedded into the psyche of the Irish theatre sector as the most effective means to create and present work. Allied to this has been the Arts Council’s historical insistence that these companies be accountable to the public purse by setting themselves up as legal entities with boards of directors. The unintended consequence of this is that, the more successful a theatre production company becomes, the more likely it is to need administration and resources just to manage the preservation of the company itself, and so an increasing proportion of the company’s time is dedicated to preparing quarterly management accounts, director’s reports and strategic plans for boards, rather than on actually making theatre.
In recent years, the Arts Council has recognised that this proliferation of theatre-companies-as-legal-entities is not actually a sustainable model, since it stands to reason that an infinite growth in the number of companies requires an infinite growth in resources.
The Arts Council has therefore begun to look at supporting theatre-makers in a different way, by offering alternative funding programmes to enable them to create work. These programmes have included an increase in the proportion of spend on theatre projects, as well as three new schemes within theatre to incentivise development, resource sharing and residencies. While many artists themselves will still say, and the Arts Council acknowledges this, that they would prefer to be employed full time by their own company, the simple economic reality is that this is not possible in every case, and consequently the Arts Council needs to find ways to ensure that as many artists as possible get a chance to make work, thereby ensuring a variety of work is made available to audiences.
What the Arts Council has been attempting to do over the past few years has been to strike a balance between those existing companies with a significant track record for delivering high-quality work to audiences and the independent individual artists not in receipt of recurring funding. The Arts Council accepts there is not necessarily one “right answer” to this conundrum, but it must continue to strive to fund and develop the work it views as the most strategically important. – Yours, etc,