Front row

He once set up a chair on Speaker's Corner in London and kept the speakers snappy by wielding his alarm clock. He once lay for hours nearly submerged in a bath of slime described by the Times as "dark and lumpy" as part of a work called Arbeit Macht Frei. Now he is coming to Dublin but it is we, the citizens, who will do the work. On May 12th, 13th and 14th between 1 p.m. and 4 p.m. you are invited to Arthouse in Temple Bar if you have ever "wanted to speak your mind about anything".

Well, not just anything. On May 12th, you are invited to speak about politics; on May 13th, about death and on May 14th - a Sunday - you are invited to speak about sex. The resulting Babel will be what the artist Stuart Brisley describes as a "supermarket" of voices. There will be no censorship, he says, but he adds: "I think it's possible to be selective and hear what you want to hear." He agrees that this has both negative and positive implications.

Brisley, an Englishman described by Arthouse as "one of the post-war's most senior of artists", made his Speaker's Corner experiment in the late 1960s. One can't help fearing he may be relying too much on what he speaks of as "Irish people's propensity to use language in creative and imaginative ways". How many Irish pub bores has he actually met? Invitations have been sent out to over 3,000 people, but there are at least 3,000 Irish pub bores.

Arthouse is stressing inclusiveness: "Community groups . . . travellers' organisations . . . refugee associations . . . Age and Opportunity . . . the elderly . . . an awful lot of politicians . . ." The press release refers to "artists, gardeners, rocket scientists". Pub bores don't even get a mention. The only way to find out what happens is to turn up on the above dates; admission is free.

The bluster that surrounded the announcement of the new Irish Academy of Performing Arts (IAPA) in DCU seems to have died down, but considerable disquiet remains about how the plans are proceeding. Unhappiest of all the performing arts sectors is the dance community, which feels that the first serious attempt to resource dance training is failing to answer its needs.

The Planning and Steering Group for the new facility and the Minister of Education were invited to meet the dance community in mid-April but both declined the invitation.

The meeting went ahead anyway and a clear position was adopted by those who attended - dance teachers, dancers and choreographers. The Association of Professional Dancers' newsletter, Prodance News, writes that the meeting expressed grave concern over the efficacy and validity of the model proposed in the Renshaw report (commissioned by Minister de Valera) and the lack of an integrated approach to a dance policy. Most anger was expressed at the fact that the IAPA had advanced so far without public dialogue and that there was no consultation with the dance community at an appropriate time, or at an appropriate level.

Another open meeting has been planned for Tuesday, May 30th and a focus group will be formed to air these concerns in a more organised way. While the dance sector is the most vocal and decisive of the performing arts sectors in its objections to Renshaw, those involved in music training are anxious too. Many are hoping for major changes in all aspects of the IAPA before it proceeds, if indeed it does.

The Association of Professional Dancers can be contacted on 01- 8730288/ prodance@iol.ie

Sinead Cusack is riveting New York audiences with her portrayal of Mai O'Hara in Sebastian Barry's Our Lady of Sligo. Described as a companion piece to The Steward of Christendom, it sees the playwright once again excavating his family history to come up with portraits which comment on the formation of this State.

Mai is in her early 50s, and dying slowly and magnificently before her story has a chance to begin: "Ms Cusack's Mai makes it clear that not all natural stars wind up on stages or screens. Trapped in what they see as lesser lives, they are destroyed by their own fire, but they still burn bright," writes Ben Brantley in the New York Times.

He describes Cusack's performance: "This great Irish actress floods the stage with a magnetic force of will." There are criticisms: that the other characters are, by contrast, incidental, that the catalogue of alcoholic misdeeds is so long that one audience member was heard to murmur: "I didn't need to go to my AA Meeting today." However, Cusack's performance, apparently, conquers all.

The show is a Royal National Theatre production, directed by Max Stafford-Clark, and went up in London in 1998. A tour of the show in Ireland seems inevitable; the Gate, which brought in The Steward of Christendom, has no plans to host it, however - and no other venue is as yet prepared to share any news with us.

Edited by Victoria White

frontrow@irish-times.ie