Curtain up for new playwrights

The Arts: Last year saw only 29 new Irish plays performed by professional companies, a sign of how difficult it is to bring new work to the stage. However, a number of programmes aim to encourage and develop new playwrights, writes Sara Keating

‘If I was in my 20s trying to start writing, I’d be looking at myself, going ‘Enda Walsh, Conor McPherson, Mark O’Rowe, Marina Carr: they’re old, they’re establishment,’ ” the playwright Enda Walsh commented last year. “I mean we’ve all been around for a long time. We have careers. We’re producing work all the time.”

Yet while the reality is that writers such as Walsh, O’Rowe and Carr have become canonical, they are still seen to represent a new generation of Irish writers; their singular visions of contemporary Ireland – whether that’s an urban nightmare world, a devilish drink-sodden den of iniquity, or a bleak and sterile rural existence – define the transformation of Irish life during the accelerated economic growth of the early new millennium. However, Walsh’s playful admonition masks an unkind truth: there have been few playwrights of significance to emerge in the wake of that pivotal generation.

If the Celtic Tiger saw Ireland change rapidly, it was a time where the Irish theatrical landscape was transformed too. Over a period of 10 years, Arts Council funding increased, and the number of professional theatre companies and regional venues grew. However, with more and more productions throughout the country every year, the dearth of new Irish writing became apparent. Last year, for example, out of a total of 181 professional productions across Ireland and Northern Ireland, only 29 were new Irish plays (excluding children’s plays and adaptations).

Only one of these was produced by the Abbey Theatre. It was the same with Druid, Corcadorca and Fishamble: The New Play Company, which could only finance a single new production last year (the company also runs playwrighting courses with literary director Gavin Kostick; fishamble.com). Venues such as Axis Ballymun, the Civic Theatre in Tallaght and the Everyman in Cork matched that meagre output with one new Irish play apiece. The Gate Theatre, meanwhile, has not produced a new Irish play since their production of Brian Friel's play The Home Placein 2005; the forthcoming Conor McPherson version of The Birdsis highly anticipated, but it's an adaptation rather than an original play.

At first glance it may seem that it is small independent companies such as Gúna Nua or Tinderbox which is filling the gap with their contribution to the canon of new Irish plays, but the majority of new writing in Ireland over the past few years has actually been staged by start-up companies operating on the fringes of the Irish theatre scene. With no funding to invest in dramaturgical assistance or staging values, the chances of getting critical attention or mainstream audiences is minimal. Producing new work in this context can often be more discouraging than not having work produced at all.

In fact, it is the Dublin Fringe Festival, which kicks off again early next month, that has offered the most consistent and safest space for producing new writing over the past 10 years. Under the umbrella of the festival, new plays will be reviewed (in The Irish Timesat least), which gives them a platform for developing media attention and a larger audience.

The Fringe Festival also works with Fishamble Theatre Company to present an award for best new play, while a series of rehearsed readings, curated by Thomas Conway, literary manager of Druid Theatre Company, presents a further opportunity to showcase work. But this only runs over two weeks of the year.

Over the past five years, however, a series of original initiatives have been launched by some of Ireland’s most distinguished theatre companies, as well as smaller theatres, aiming to attract and develop new voices for the stage. Irish theatre cannot survive on a staple of revivals. Nor can Irish theatre audiences, who will always crave new writing that speaks to the concerns of their time.

ABBEY THEATRE: NEW PLAYWRIGHTS PROGRAMME

As Ireland’s national theatre, there has always been an onus on the Abbey to support new writing. For the most part this has taken the shape of responding to each of the hundreds of unsolicited scripts that the Abbey receives every year. However, the literary department is currently piloting a new development initiative, the New Playwrights Programme, which has taken six writers under its wing for a year-long relationship, enabling the writers to hone, polish and experiment with their writing skills.

Jody O’Neill, who is one of the six writers involved this year, says one of the most exciting things is that it “stimulates dialogue between playwrights, when many of us are used to working in isolation”. Participants take part in a series of workshops with Irish and international theatre-makers and writers, attend rehearsals and confer with Irish and international theatre professionals including, so far, Tim Crouch and Graham Whybrow.

The programme is not results driven and is aimed at developing the writer as opposed to a play. The literary department sees it as a long-term investment in Ireland’s literary and theatrical culture, which it hopes will benefit the wider Irish theatre culture as well as the Abbey in years to come.

DRUID THEATRE: DRUID DEBUTS

Like the Abbey, Druid receives a huge number of unsolicited scripts every year, each of which is read by a readers’ panel and receives a response from literary manager Thomas Conway. Promising scripts are sent on to Garry Hynes, but the literary department’s process is less about finding scripts for production than about spotting new writers with potential – as Conway explains, “In the four years that I have been working here not a single play has been produced from the pile.”

Responding to the submitted script is merely the beginning of a conversation that allows the literary department to learn more about the writer – whether, "like an actor, they can take a note and redraft their work", or what other ideas they might have for future plays. Although Martin McDonagh's Leenane Trilogycame to the company as an unsolicited script, such routes to production for a new writer are rare. What Druid offers to new writers is the Druid Debut season: a staged reading with professional actors and a professional director at Druid's theatre space.

“It’s a key instrument for us and for the writer, who will have gone through several drafts,” Conway says. “It gives Druid a clear idea of how a play performs with an audience and whether it merits production, while for the writer it is often the first experience of having a play put before the public. But what’s most important is what happens afterwards, what they learn from that experience, and what they take from it to bring their work on a step further.”

ROUGH MAGIC: SEEDS

Rough Magic Theatre Company was one of the first companies to realise the gap in the Irish theatre infrastructure for the development of new writing. In fact, its SEEDS programme, which has become instrumental in training young directors, producers and designers, was launched in 2001 with the aim of seeking out, encouraging, enabling, developing and staging new Irish writing.

The programme was designed to include workshops, readings and dramaturgical work and would result in the writing of a full-length play. In the first cycle, more than 100 scripts were submitted for consideration, confirming the demand for such a progressive development programme for playwrights. The scheme has been ongoing ever since, and the current crop of seedlings will showcase their work in November, with productions of new plays by Maria Elner and Ciarán Fitzpatrick, who were mentored by Tom Murphy and David Harrower respectively.

As Rough Magic’s artistic director Lynne Parker says, the mentorship “provides a context and a sense of fellowship, offering insight into the life of the working writer and his or her creative journey”.

This professional advice is complemented by international opportunities at London's National Theatre Studio and Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre, whose reputations for new writing is unparalleled. Rough Magic has just launched a fifth cycle of the SEEDS scheme, and is currently inviting writers, among others, to join them in forging the future of Irish theatre. Rough Magic's fourth SEEDS Showcase will run from November 1st to 14th at Project Arts Centre

THE NEW THEATRE: NEW WRITING AT THE NEW THEATRE

The New Theatre in Temple Bar has recently launched a new writing season, which premieres the work of two emerging Irish writers, Jane McCarthy and Arnold Fanning. As Anthony Fox, co-founder of the New Theatre, explains, new writing was at the heart of the original motive behind the foundation of the theatre in 1997, "to reflect all the stories that weren't being told on the stage. Two of our first productions were Joyridersby Christina Reid and The Rasherhouse, by Alan Roberts, which was about heroin addiction in Irish prisons." But as Fox explains, the theatre got distracted from their mission by the presentation of classic theatre: "It's classics that pay the rent." Last year, however, the New Theatre decided that it was time to kick-start a new writing initiative again, to find out what "new stories Ireland has these days".

"We put the word out through the Playwrights and Screenwriters Guild and the response was amazing. We just asked for a synopsis and based on that met with writers. That developed towards a free full reading, and we have done 10 so far, but it's ongoing. We hold [a reading] on the first Saturday of every month, and the fact that we are always full shows there is an appetite for new writing. Based on the audience's response, we are now able to have two full productions of new plays, and we hope to host at least four seasons of new writing each year. Ireland's history in terms of writing still tends to be associated with classic texts. We are hoping that we can help new voices break through." Shafted by Arnold Fanning andEpilogue by Jane McCarthy run at The New Theatre from today until August 29th

PROJECT ARTS CENTRE: PROJECT BRAND NEW

Project Brand New was initiated by Louise Lowe, Róise Goan, Jody O'Neill (who's also in the Abbey's new writing programme) and Dee Roycroft to facilitate the development of new work by a diverse range of practitioners in performing arts. While they do not have a special curated strand for new writing, Project Brand New has been instrumental in allowing writers to experiment with modes of presentation. This might mean trying out ideas for a piece of new musical theatre in the case of Shawn Sturnick; seeing how video design might work within the context of a live performance piece in the case of Simon Doyle; evaluating audience response in an interactive piece of theatre in the case of Megan Riordan, whose play Luck, which this month at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, sponsored by Culture Ireland, was workshopped at Project Brand New.

“While we don’t have an official policy in terms of programming new writing, we are sent a lot of new scripts,” O’Neill explains. “A script might be very competent, but if there is no further evidence in the application of why the work needs to be tried out in Project Brand New and how it might be realised – if the idea is simply to showcase rather than rigorously investigate its possibilities – then we’re very unlikely to programme it. There are other platforms where that can happen.”

Supported by the Project Arts Centre, which, as O'Neill puts it, "was looking for a platform for new work", Project Brand New allows writers to test ideas "before there is a financial investment in it. It's not a showcase, but it does allow people in the industry to see new artists and hear new voices. And for the writer it allows them to see what ideas are working and where they might be going wrong." Project Brand New: The Next Stage runs from October 9th-11th as part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival