Theatre companies sharing resources to put shows together in a 'hub' set-up could be a revolutionary concept, or a vicious circle. Limerick is leading the way to see how it might work, writes PETER CRAWLEY
AS A MECHANISM, the hub is beautifully simple and endlessly complex. There it is, at the calm centre of a wheel’s vigorous activity, with radiating spokes distributing tension so evenly that it’s hard to determine where any burden lies. For a radical new model of making theatre, there are, technically speaking, better terms to capture the dynamic. But “production gyroscope” doesn’t have quite the same ring.
It hasn’t always been easy to determine what, or who, is at the centre of the whirling activity and discussions that surround production hubs in Irish theatre. But whether it was at a recent, hurried Theatre Forum meeting (topic: new models of production) or in the Belltable in Limerick, where a production hub pilot project is preparing to show the first fruits of its labour, the effect of the hub is everywhere. In recent months, “the production hub” has become the main topic of conversation among Irish theatre-makers. Broadly speaking, they view it as either an inspiring new method of generating a lot of work from concentrated resources, or a threat to the existence of the prevailing company structure which may result in an unstable loop of artistically incoherent events. In short, the hub could create a revolutionary concept or a vicious circle.
Hubs, however, aren't particularly new. The Project Arts Centre in Dublin, for example, has long functioned as a de factohub by extending its administrative and technical resources to a number of associated artists who are then freed up to make work without the daily concerns and running costs of maintaining a company.
But, in the current economic climate, the notion of hubs has acquired a fresh urgency, and its implementation could have enormous consequences for how theatre is made, sustained and viewed. It stems from the Arts Council, from where the head of theatre, David Parnell, has been leading the conversation. With the State funding agency now contending with severe Government cutbacks, many suspect that hubs are being vigorously encouraged while production companies – along the recognisable model of Druid, Rough Magic, Fishamble, Corn Exchange et al – are no longer being prioritised. This is hardly a stated policy, but while the Arts Council has ceased to extend Once-Off Project awards to theatre production companies, it is supporting a prototype hub in Limerick under that funding scheme as a pilot project and is currently developing a comprehensive new arts strategy, due for publication in 2010.
“I believe the level of funding for the arts should be at least maintained,” Parnell told me in January, “but we have to be realistic about the possibility it’s not going to happen. This is a good opportunity to at least re-imagine the model by which we make theatre.”
When, in April, the Arts Council’s budget for 2009 was reduced as part of the Government’s ironically named “Supplementary Budget”, chairwoman Pat Moylan announced: “Despite the challenge of reducing financial resources, the Arts Council will strive to maintain, as far as possible, a viable arts sector.” It is hard to imagine how that would be possible, unless there is a production model that allows you to do more with less.
ON A BEAUTIFULLYbright day in Limerick last month Joanne Beirne, the artistic director of the Belltable, may not have been the only theatre professional worried about money, but she was almost certainly the only one to ask: "If there's a surplus, where does that money go?"
In the current economic climate, this seemed an unlikely concern. Besides, having applied for a relatively modest €100,000 from the Arts Council (through the Once-Off scheme) to initiate a production hub, and then receiving just €86,000, you could be forgiven for thinking that Beirne was already neck-deep in the current economic climate.
A refreshingly frank operator, but sensitive to the concerns and politics of everyone involved, Beirne was simply outlining the complexity of the hub system. When funding fell short of the Belltable's application, Beirne absorbed the role of production manager for each of the four productions selected from application to participate within the hub. Two of these productions are presented in association with individual companies: Mike Finn's Bottom Dog is staging his adaptation of Middleton's The Revenger's Tragedy, while Amalgamotion is working with Ciarda Tobin under Bairbre Ni Chaoimh's direction to create The Fisherman's Son. The other shows are staged by unaffiliated artists, with a contemporary Chaucer adaptation by Mary Coll being directed by Joan Sheehy, and director Duncan Molloy collaborating with Daragh Bradshaw on a George Bernard Shaw adaptation, Don Juan in Hell. Staged in a programme guided by the elements, earth, air, fire and water, each show has a different scale, budget and other requirements – so should the overall project turn a profit, who deserves the spoils?
Once we had visited the Belltable’s small, unfussy off-site venue on Cecil Street (the main theatre is currently being refurbished), Beirne laid out the process.
“It is an initiative that responds to the requirements of those involved,” she said. “It is a Once-Off award, it is a pilot project and it is an exploration. It’s very exciting, but it’s also quite daunting. It could fall flat on its face and it could fail gloriously.”
In large part, the hub model suits the Belltable’s immediate and pressing need. Since Island, the long-standing Limerick theatre company, fell apart following the withdrawal of Arts Council funding at the beginning of 2008, professional theatre in the city and region has been in short supply. Touring theatre has all but diminished into a trickle of one-person shows or international franchises about motherhood and menopause. Something must fill the gap.
"There wasn't a specific individual," Beirne said, when asked who had driven the hub agenda, "more a collective aspiration." But David Parnell had floated the idea at the arts centre's Unfringedfestival early in 2008, Beirne recalled. "The idea of the model was first articulated by David in the context of developing professional theatre."
As a pilot project, however, the Limerick Theatre Hub will receive great scrutiny from the Arts Council and from the theatre sector at large. Michael Finneran, of Mary Immaculate College in Limerick, is evaluating and critically assessing the project.
“The margin of error is very small,” Beirne said. “The initiative will be subsidised by work. People will receive a fee. But I envisage – and they anticipate as well – that people will be putting in hours well beyond what they’re paid for. I have asked that everyone writes down what their time has been on an individual production, so that in the end, when the evaluation process comes together, we can identify what the real cost of it would be.”
THE IDEA THATa project might "fail gloriously" is not uncommon in the arts, where ambition and innovation have no guarantee of monetary reward. But when a certain antipathy has encrusted around the hubs agenda ("There's only one idea on the table," said a Theatre Forum speaker, "and it's the Arts Council's"), there is also a chance that the Limerick Theatre Hub could succeed miserably. At the Theatre Forum meeting a consensus quickly formed that while hubs might complement existing theatre companies nicely, they should not replace or curb them.
These days, however, theatre companies are folding, not incorporating. Island, Storytellers, Galloglass and Calypso have all disappeared since 2008. No new company has received revenue funding from the Arts Council since Performance Corporation was brought on to the funding ladder in 2006 – the council's only new theatre company client this decade. It seems unlikely that the council should seek complementary programmes in straitened times. If the Belltable demonstrates that more productions can be generated with a comparatively lower level of investment into a central hub, the company model that has characterised Irish theatre for a generation may appear redundant. Things fall apart because the centre can hold.
“With the hub I have eight weeks of local work which will engage with local audiences, I hope,” says Joanne Beirne, referring to the dearth of touring productions. “What I’d pay in guarantees or splits would be a lot greater than the investment that’s being made on the Belltable’s behalf. I don’t think the company structure is necessarily a bad thing. is maybe more suitable to established individuals, or emerging artists, where it’s more important to get the work made rather than to establish a continuity of vision. You don’t necessarily need a company structure to support that. But I don’t think it has to eliminate the company model. I can’t see the end of the company model. For us, in a situation where Island has gone, there has to be an alternative model.”
Currently, most theatres and companies are considering their alternatives. Beyond the hub, there are residencies, whereby a company receives a base, administrative support and funding from a venue for which they make work.Tall Tales, for example, is now the resident theatre company of Solstice Arts Centre in Co Meath, an arrangement that saw the company move location and even alter its artistic policy to suit its host.
“It’s a question of taking our artistic policy and making it work in the context of being resident in an arts centre,” artistic director Deirdre Kinahan told me. “There’s no point in performing in the dark.”
Tall Tales, once committed exclusively to new women’s writing, recently toured an Alan Bennett play to nursing homes and other venues. Other companies have started huddling together for shelter with kindred spirits. Corn Exchange has brought Randolph SD and thisispopbaby into its offices, while Rough Magic has opened its doors to B*Spoke and Making Strange.
Surveying the small, ad-hoc theatre space that would soon accommodate an ambitious programme, Joanne Beirne sounded upbeat. “Something had to be done,” she said, “and this was worth trying.” Indeed, the season holds much more promise than simply illustrating what a hub can enable.
But Beirne reminded me that Island theatre company itself had been born from a hub-like arrangement with the Belltable, “its spiritual home”, and hoped that this hub’s participants might now be on a firmer footing to approach the Arts Council for funding in the future. “So in a bizarre way,” she said, “this sort of development is coming back home.”
It’s an elegant logic, which reconciles a new model of making theatre with an old one, where hubs do not eclipse theatre companies but enable them. Time will tell, but the hub conversation appears to have come full circle.
Excess Baggage,
by Mary Coll, opens the Limerick Theatre Hub on June 17, running until June 27 at the Belltable Arts Centre’s off-site venue on 36 Cecil Street.
The Fisherman’s Son
runs from July 8 to 18;
Don Juan in Hell
runs from Oct 14 to 24;
The Revenger’s Tragedy
runs from Nov 11 to 21
