A fresh generation of adaptable, surprisingly theatre-literate playwrights has made its voice heard in recent years. Now, three new collections of contemporary Irish drama are ensuring that their work lives on , writes Alan O'Riordan.
NEW WRITING for Irish theatre is always talked about in terms of risk. Getting an audience usually requires rather more ingenuity than simply staging a bit of Chekhov or the latest from one of a handful of writers who are good box office. But whatever about putting bums on seats, finding an audience for works on the page as opposed to the stage is even more difficult. Nonetheless, three notable anniversaries in the Irish theatre world have recently been marked with anthologies of new writing.
Firstly, the country's only dedicated new-writing company, Fishamble, marks 20 years with its latest collection of first plays. Then the first decade in the life of Gúna Nua, the company that became unofficial laureate of the Celtic Tiger era, is coming to a close just as the good times do, and its collection, Tales From A Watercooler, affords a timely backward glance. And finally, Bewley's Cafe Theatre, ahead of its tenth birthday, has brought together a selection from its diverse range of small-but-beautiful plays in Freshly Brewed.
While the books are published in time for the Christmas market (and Fishamble's chunky, well- produced New Island edition, in particular, would make a fine gift for a budding playwright), the shared aim of each collection is to ensure a long life of production for the plays between their respective covers.
As Fishamble director Jim Culleton explains: "We've had lots of interest from companies overseas looking for copies, and that really helps the life of the plays, and helps bring these writers to wider audiences."
Fishamble's previous collection was in 2002, so this one brings together the five full-length debut plays the company has staged since, together with a number of shorter works. Rapidly rising stars such as Stella Feehily figure alongside Sean McLoughlin's assured Irish Times Theatre Award- winning Noah and the Tower Flowerand Gary Duggan's punchy Monged.
There are, of course, shared characteristics in these first plays. Almost universally, they feature young people attempting to figure out shifting relationships with parents and peers. This autobiographical freshness is what attracts Culleton.
"There is nothing more exciting than working with new plays. There is something very personal and fresh about them . . . something honest and open," he says.
WHILE THE SHARED themes of Fishamble's works are to do with generational preoccupations, a look back at Gúna Nua's work sees much grappling with the zeitgeist. What became a sustained engagement with "the problems of prosperity" began with David Parnell's Four Storeys. As Paul Meade, who went on the co-author many of the collection's works with Parnell and Gerry Dukes, recalls, "it contained a lot of the seeds for the plays that came after: Taste, Trousers, Scenes . . . It has four characters trying to decide their place in the world. There are struggles with workloads and relationships . . . That pressure is there through all the plays."
The rapid gestation (at least potentially) of a play, together with theatre's fundamentally local nature, make it the art form best placed to hold a mirror to society.
"It's a place for reflection in a lot of ways," says Meade. "Looking back . . . the last 10 years was a crazy time. People didn't really reflect on what was happening, where we were going, in a deep way. The plays were a call to say, 'stop, let's think about where we are going', to look at the other side.
"There was a lot of talk of winners and achievement, but a lot of our characters were losers. They had lost their jobs, broken up relationships. They had problems to confront, but the background was always the booming economy."
Culleton and Meade are positive about the appetite the Irish audience has for work relevant to contemporary life. They both cite reactions of the "I don't normally like plays, but . . ." variety.
"That's very exciting," says Meade, "to think that people you don't bump into at the Abbey are at your show. I hope they get something out of it . . . It's a conversation about how we live our lives."
As Fishamble's Gavin Kostick writes in the preface to Fishamble Firsts, new writing is best-placed to say something about where we are now, to help audiences re-imagine or reinterpret their own lives. In a world of globalised entertainment, this immediacy is very much theatre's unique selling point.
But, despite this, the writer in Irish theatre has slipped from his historically undisputed pole position. While a rebalancing was both needed and inevitable, towards incorporating a more visually literate, director-led style, there has been a tendency on the bigger stages to put on versions of old places skewered to chime with the times. Often, the results have been square pegs in round holes.
"I think that's a valid use of theatre," says Meade "but you're always going to have the message of the playwright at the core of any play. I'm a huge Shakespeare fan, we've done him with Gúna Nua, and Wilde too, but I think if you really want to talk of contemporary society, the foremost thing is to have that conversation through new writing."
A happier irony is that while the professional esteem for the playwright might have diminished slightly, the lovely land Joyce knew, that "always sent her writers and artists to banishment", is treating them rather better these days, as Culleton points out.
"When you go outside Ireland you realise how well-regarded writers are here," he says. "The supports are there for new writers. There are routes for them to find an audience, because writing in general is respected as part of our culture."
On the page, what is perhaps most notable in both the Gúna Nua and Fishamble work is just how, well, play-like these plays are. While it is often said that emerging writers are essentially a TV generation writing for a TV generation, there is great sophistication here, whether it be in Rosalind Haslett's Still, originally staged with great use of space in Temple Bar's Meeting House Square, or in the Beckettian echoes of Monged,with its rapid-fire exchanges, or in the Shakespearean template of Gúna Nua's Taste. Our new generation of playwrights are more theatre-literate than perhaps they are given credit for.
But where these plays depart from the mainstream heritage of theatre is in their scope. Writers are realistic, and thus write plays that have a good chance of being staged. Today, that means thinking small. Hence, the many two- and three-handers, and the preponderance of 90-minute works with no interval.
"People realise that it's harder to get a play staged if there is a big cast," says Culleton. "We manage two new productions a year, it's really hard to consider anything with a cast of more than six or seven. I think it is a really big difficulty and a challenge for theatre - that writers just won't think in a big scale for the form, they might move to the novel or film for that kind of work."
IT WOULD BE sad to think that budgetary constraints in our writers' early careers would lead to a lack of practice and ambition for full-length ensemble theatre. That said, anyone who doubts that small-scale theatre cannot be a great crucible for talent need only pick up Freshly Brewed. The sheer scope of work that Bewley's Café Theatre has managed to stage over a decade is remarkable, from staged conversations and brief encounters to historical dramas, fantasies and bravura one-man shows, such as Donal O'Kelly's Jimmy Joyced!.
"Our little intimate space is a great platform to start," says David Horan, the artistic director of Bewley's. "The best way to support new writers is to stage their work. We do that, and we give it great actors. For instance, The Tower, in its second run had Tom Hickey and Bosco Hogan, such fantastic actors to support a new playwright."
Horan points to the short story, a field overpopulated with Irish maestros.
"The one-act play demands the same criteria," he says. "You have to create a world, and 40 minutes later the audience must have seen a whole life. It's no easier writing a one-act play than a full-length one."
If that is the case, then there is no shortage of opportunity for Irish playwrights to hone their skills.
• Fishamble Firstsis published by New Island, €24.95 and is in bookshops ; Freshly Brewedis published by Stinging Fly, €19.99, and is available at Bewleys Cafe; Scenes from a Watercooleris published by Liberties Press, €21.34, and is available directly from Gúna Nua at www.gunanua.com
