Perpetual invalid that will not bring down curtain

"IRISH THEATRE is a perpetual invalid but it never dies," observed Joe Dowling yesterday at the MacGill summer school.

Mr Dowling, the artistic director of the Guthrie Theatre in Minneapolis, was referring to the constant predictions that distractions such as television and the internet would kill off potential theatre audiences.

His speech was about the links between Brian Friel and famous theatre director Tyrone Guthrie, and how both of them had impacted on his own career.

Mr Dowling told the audience about the importance of Friel's six-month stay in Minneapolis in 1960, when Tyrone Guthrie was creating the new Guthrie Theatre there. It was a pivotal period in his life: a time when Friel had decided to write full time and give up his job as a teacher. He spent the six months observing everything happening in the theatre under Guthrie's direction.

"Upon his return home, he finished Philadelphia, Here I Come!with a confidence and a sense of the potential theatricality that would not have been possible without that crucial time in Minneapolis," Mr Dowling said. "When, many years later, I directed a production of the play during my first year at the Guthrie, Brian wrote a note to me . . . It said: 'Philadelphia would never have been written had I not been an apprentice there under the great Tyrone Guthrie. Indeed, it was the first thing I wrote in a state of near-giddiness when I came back to Ireland still on a Guthrie high."

Playwright Conor McPherson, who was to speak with director Garry Hynes last night, could not attend. Hynes told the audience that the first play she directed was Friel's The Loves of Cass Maguire.

"I joined the drama soc in Galway in 1971 and ended up saying I'd direct something the following year. I went to the library and looked at various plays and the one that really sprang out at me was The Loves of Cass Maguire. I know it's not a favourite play of Brian's, but for me, it was the start of my career as a director."