Renowned for her energy and can-do approach, former Andrews Lane Theatre director Pat Moylan is not daunted by taking over as chairwoman of the Arts Council at a time of recession and spending cuts. In fact, she prefers it that way, she tells FIONA McCANN
WHEN THE curtain fell on Andrews Lane Theatre nine months ago, it might have seemed like an opportunity for its charismatic owner to kick back. Pat Moylan had presided over the Dublin institution for 18 years, but cannily sold the city-centre space for a cool €9.25 million just before the property crash. The plan at the time was to concentrate on Lane Productions, the theatre production company she runs with partner Breda Cashe, and which boasts among its successes productions of I, Keano, Tom Crean: Antarctic Explorerand Alone It Stands. The next Lane production is the stage version of The Shawshank Redemption, a world premiere, opening at the Gaiety in May.
Less than three months after the theatre’s closure, however, the chair of the Arts Council became vacant with the end of Olive Braiden’s five-year term. For four months, no replacement was appointed and a barely quorate council was tasked with deciding where the axe should fall when it found its funding reduced by €8.9 million for the year ahead. As news of the slash in arts funding emerged, the Minister for Arts, Martin Cullen, named Moylan as the woman to take on what many by then saw as a poisoned chalice. So why did she accept it?
“Part of the reason I went for it was that I knew we were coming into difficult times,” explains Moylan as she sips tea in the Arts Council’s bright Merrion Square offices. “But I’m starting in difficult times, I’m not starting in good times and going into difficult times, which I think would have been a harder task.”
By the time Moylan took the helm officially on January 1st this year, theatre funding had already been cut by 8.37 per cent, dance by 11 per cent and literature by 9.5 per cent. As Ireland’s arts community reeled, there were intimations that worse could be in store for next year.
“I know there are going to be huge challenges out there in terms of the arts sector, and how the arts are going to survive,” Moylan acknowledges, but she is resolutely upbeat about the task ahead. “What I’m hoping to do is to be able to help them survive.”
Moylan, glamorous and statuesque, is well used to working with a limited cash flow. “I come from a background of running Andrews Lane on very little funding, and running a production company with no funding,” she points out. “I had to look after my customers. I had to make sure that they came in or I would have been out of a job. Now I want to put some of those skills into helping other organisations that need extra income because of a reduced level of funding, and help them build their audiences.”
This will be done through a tripartite consultancy, with the Arts Council teaming up with Temple Bar Cultural Trust and RTÉ to work with venues and companies, and assist in marketing and promotion.
“It’s a practical thing,” says Moylan, whose commercial successes in theatre made her an appealing choice for chairwoman at this time. “There are now 58 venues that are funded by the Arts Council. All of those venues are state-of-the-art, and they’re all looking for A, product, and B, audiences.”
If this sounds like a mathematical equation, it’s not the only time Moylan’s gift with numbers is apparent over the course of an interview in which she peppers her speech deftly with figures, citing audience and festival attendances, and exactly how much cold hard cash this translates into, with impressive recall. Not all that surprising, perhaps, considering that before her 18 years at Andrews Lane and a stint producing Irish Stage Screen magazine, she worked in advertising sales.
YET SURELY ARTSwill be a hard sell to a cash-strapped Government in a pessimistic economic climate? "We're not going to be immune to the economic situation, but we're not going to be a soft touch either," Moylan vows, pointing to the economic benefits of cultural tourism and the need to foster our artistic reputation at home and abroad in order to reap such rewards. "We need to support . . . the people that are making a big name for us abroad to bring people back into this country."
With plans to co-operate with Fáilte Ireland to encourage cultural tourism, Moylan also argues that supporting artistic creativity can have an impact on industry as well. “There are creative industries that need a creativity that we don’t often put under the umbrella of the arts,” she says, adding that this is a vital component of a smart economy.
Whether such abstract arguments will have the desired effect of ensuring the Government’s financial support or not, Moylan is determined to pursue other avenues for the required cash injection. “How are going to get more money? In this day and age, it’s not through the Government, so let’s see if there are other ways in which we can get it.”
She cites a proposal put forward by the Arts Council’s head of theatre, David Parnell, that production hubs be formed wherein companies collaborate on projects to cut down on individual overheads. Though the council is ready to assist in such endeavours, Moylan puts responsibility for their survival firmly in the hands of the companies themselves.
“I think unless they do something to help themselves, they can’t continue,” she says. Her emphasis is on finding audiences, but she is also determined to make those audiences pay. “People don’t pay enough at the box office.” She says that Irish theatre-goers pay less than they would for the pricier equivalents in London and New York.
Although raising prices would seem to guarantee the opposite effect on audience numbers from the one Moylan is aiming for, she is convinced that nothing, not even penny-pinching, will keep the Irish from the arts.
“The arts can flourish, and they’ve always done very well in recession,” she says. “We shouldn’t think we’re just all going to stay at home now, because the Irish are never like that. They will always find an opportunity to go out.” For Moylan, our current economic woes also present a creative opportunity for artists. “This is a financial revolution . . . and I think we need the arts to mirror that.”
If artists and companies come up with valuable responses, Moylan pledges to get the word out. “One of the things we have to do as an agency is promote the arts, and this is part of my plan,” she says firmly, taking the focus off funding. “It’s not just saying: ‘You’re going to get two pence less than you got last year.’ It can’t be that kind of situation any more. It’s how you’re going to cope with what you have, and how we are going to cope with dividing this cake, regardless of how big it is.”
IT'S NOT ONLYproduction companies and venues that are affected by budget cuts, however. There is already work underway to cut costs in the Arts Council operation itself, which employs 49 people in its Merrion Square premises.
“When the grant was cut and reduced, the costs here had to be reduced in accordance, proportionately,” Moylan says. “That’s happening without touching staff to date, but whether that can continue or not, I don’t know.”
What Moylan is clear about is the need to “demystify” the Arts Council for those looking in from the outside. “I felt when I was an ordinary Joe Soap trying to do my job, that there were these 12 apostles in a room that you couldn’t go near, and yet your future depended on them,” she says. “A lot of artists are depending on the decisions made in this room, so they deserve to be able to talk about that.”
Such transparency will not only benefit those looking for funding, but will also make visible the difficult task facing the council members, whose hard work Moylan is eager to highlight. With “great staff” and a Minister she describes as “genuinely interested in the arts”, she is ready to start filling in the gaps in her artistic knowledge, to which she freely admits.
“I’m going to get myself in a situation where I can educate myself about the art forms I don’t know as much about as the theatre, so I’ll be up to scratch,” she says.
The learning curve may be steep, but Moylan sees it as an essential exercise in information gathering. “I can’t make any decisions without information,” she says. “I don’t want to jump into making any big decisions until such time as I really have my feet under the table.”
How long does she think it will take? “It’ll be June or July before I start making inroads into that, so it’s going to take me the first year or two . . .”
Yet it’s clear that Moylan, known for her energy and can-do approach, will be getting stuck in rather sooner than that. She turns a trailing sentence immediately into a reiteration of the need to increase audiences, a clear tenet of her administration. But for now, time is up and she is off to another engagement.
“That’s as much as I know after six weeks,” she laughs, and, pointing to the flashing Dictaphone, adds a fitting dramatic flourish. “You have it there – my heart and soul.”
