Playwrights on the verge of a millennium

Most of us tried to write off D'Aluminium - and many of us had private wobbles on the side. Fishamble Theatre Company is responding to the almost insurmountable challenge of saying something meaningful about the event and has commissioned six playwrights - Dermot Bolger, Deirdre Hines, Jennifer Johnston, Nicholas Kelly, Gavin Kostick and Gina Moxley to write plays about life on this side of the watershed.

Kostick says "fragmentation and loneliness" are the main linking themes he sees in the plays. Good, old-fashioned alienation, then? Yes, but with a Millennial twist: "The Millennium forced a crisis in a lot of people's lives. I heard that the divorce rate in England went up. People wanted a fresh start, and it was all dedicated to the individual." Kostick himself is fascinated by the individualising of entertainment: "Kids used to play football in the streets. Now they're at home in front of a PlayStation."

He sees this year as being "the inbetween year. Neither one century nor the other. The Millennium is a process thing; it didn't happen at midnight or whatever. People are struggling through."

He adds: "I think the 20th century will swim backwards pretty quickly.

By 2003 the Beatles will seem a long time ago, in the middle of the last century." The plays will run in three triple-bill combinations at the Tallaght Civic Theatre from February 7th to March 4th.

WITH three nominations for Irish Times/ESB Theatre Awards to its credit - for Ian McIlhinney as best director, Conleth Hill as best actor and for best production - and with its producing house, Belfast's Lyric, nominated as best company, Marie Jones's Stones in his Pockets is sailing towards the West End with confidence. The theatre hasn't been identified yet, but Pat Moylan and E&B Productions wil definitely be opening the play in London this spring. It has already played to acclaim at London's Tricycle and at the Edinburgh Festival. It will tour to Toronto at the end of the year, and there is, says Pat Moylan, "huge interest" in bringing it to New York, either on or off Broadway.

Jones's Night in November played successfully off Broadway. But her Women on the verge of HRT, a hymn to middle-aged women in love with Daniel O'Donnell, has been the big earner. It has been touring the UK for the past two years, and now its sequel, Women on the Verge Get a Life is set to follow suit. Taking the same two characters, it tells the story of their holiday in the Gambia, and a love affair between one of them, aged 50, and a 28-year-old African. This play has already had a rep outing, and opens in Newcastle-on-Tyne next month. It comes to the Grand Opera House, Belfast in March, and then possibly to Dublin, but the contracts are not yet finalised.

THE latest issue of Irish Theatre Magazine, edited by Karen Fricker, is available now, and is full of good reading, including an excerpt from Mark O'Rowe's new play, Made in China, Alex Johnston's diary of a trip to Quebec to see Melonfarmer performed in French, Michael Billington's verdict on last year's two Juno's, directed by John Crowley at the Donmar Warehouse, London and by Garry Hynes at the Gaiety, Dublin, and extensive critical coverage of last year's Dublin Theatre Festival (too safe, they say).

Nuggets we sifted from it include the beguiling story of Andrew Lloyd Webber's proposed new musical based on the true story of a promising soccer team playing among the barricades in 1960s Belfast. The Really Useful Theatre Group is set to start workshops to develop the show in London next month, with director Robert Carsen and choreographer Meryl Tankard.

To contact the magazine phone 014963002. Email: karen.fricker@ucd.ie or itm@oceanfree.net

`The thing that's missing from Irish poetry about beds is sex," explains poet Vona Groarke. "We have very little tradition of erotic poetry in English by Irish poets - Nuala Ni Dhomhnaill says it's there in Irish. Is this because it's been edited out? Is it because English was given to us as a language of administration? Sex is not there, and the reasons why it's not there are kind of interesting."

Despite this disappointment, Groake has taken the motif of "Staying in Bed" in Irish poetry as the theme of her lecture at the Yeats Winter School at the Sligo Park Hotel, which runs from January 28th to 30th. Her lecture is on the Saturday morning - "at 11 o'clock, so bed is probably where everyone would like to be," she admits. The event is hosted by Dr Anne Fogarty of UCD, and features her lectures: "Heart Mysteries - Politics and Mythology in the Writing of Yeats" and "Where I Got That Truth: Visions of Apocalypse in the Poetry of Yeats". Dinner and an outing, music and poetry are also promised.

Geraldine on 071-602921/Yeats Society on 071-42693

The Public Libraries and Arts Committee was established on foot of the Arts Council's Arts Plan 1995-97 to investigate ways in which arts practice could be furthered through the library system. The committee's report, Arts and the Magic of the Word was published at the end of last year.

Responses to the report are still coming in, but the committee itself acted as a catalyst. One of the initiatives which has it stimulated is the annual An Chomhairle Leabharlanna/Irish Times/International Education Services essay competition. This year the topic is: "Is the Computer the Libraries' Best Friend"/ "An e an riomhaire an cara is fearr ag an leabharlann?" Entries are invited in the under-14 and under-18 categories. Winners will receive a trophy from The Irish Times and a book prize from International Education Services. First prize-winning essays will be published in The Irish Times.

The adjudicators this year will be Robert Dunbar (chair), a member of Children's Books Ireland, the writer Siobhan Parkinson and the librarian, Fran Hegarty. The entries should be no more than 1,000 words long and should be original work. They can be hand-written or typed, in Irish or English and should be forwarded to your local public library or to: The Director, An Chomhairle Leabharlanna, 53-54 Upper Mount Street, Dublin 2, (01-6761167/016766721/email: libcoun@iol.ie). Print your name, address and date of birth on your entry and mark your envelope "Essay Competition".

Novelist Jennifer Johnston turned 70 last week, but she hasn't let it put her off - she reads and talks about her work tonight in the Jonathan Swift Theatre, TCD, at 7.30 p.m. Other writers in the series include Liz Lochhead, Edna O'Brien, Roddy Doyle and Les Murray (01-6082301) . . . Christ Church Baroque's first concert in its series of Bach cantatas, motets and organ works takes place on Sunday at 5 p.m. in the cathedral (014539197) . . . Today is the deadline for applications for a writer's residency on the east coast of Australia, which boasts the surf beaches of Byron Bay and the Blue Mountains - the resi- dency is for four weeks between April 20th and May 20th. Drop in your ap- plication, marked Suspended Sentence 2000, to the Irish Writers' Centre, 19 Parnell Square, Dublin 2 . . .