Minneapolis basks in the glow of an Indian summer. With the temperature in the 70s, it's still possible to swim in the open air; hundreds of people run, walk and cycle around the myriad lakes on which the city is built and the sidewalk cafes are full of loafers in shorts and T-shirts. But this is also a thriving centre of the arts. The local paper, the Minneapolis Star Tribune, lists 23 plays running in the city and St Paul, its twin across the Mississippi, has three more opening this week. Add in seven dance events, recitals and concerts by a worldclass orchestra and a huge range of galleries and one quickly realises that this is no Hicksville.
Standing at the apex of all this activity is the Guthrie Theatre, founded by Tyrone Guthrie in 1963 and widely regarded as the pre-eminent American theatre outside New York. Its artistic director, Dubliner Joe Dowling, has been in charge there for exactly two years the day before I interview him. At what point did he and his wife, the broadcaster Siobhan Cleary, decide to sell their house in Dublin and move, family, bag and baggage over here?
"I was doing A Touch Of The Poet in Boston he says, and at the same time I was setting up Juno And The Paycock and The Faith Healer to go from Dublin to Chicago; I was cold and miserable and in a horrible apartment and I just said to myself: `I can't do this any more'."
As his career in the US had taken off, he found himself working more and more over there and, in one year, had flown the Atlantic 20 times.
"Great for the air miles," he says wryly, "but not so good for the nerves. I really had come to the end of the tether. As well as that Siobhan was very busy in RTE, my daughter Susanna was just about to go the college and my son Ronan was at school. I thought, I'll just go back and stay in Dublin and focus on the Gaiety School of Acting and do the odd production and accept that this is the way it is."
At this point, fate, as it's inclined to do, intervened. Word reached him in Washington, where he was doing yet another production, that Garland Wright, the Guthrie's then artistic director, had resigned. Dowling had never worked at the Guthrie and thought nothing more of it but, within the next six months, he had been head-hunted and met the Guthrie's board president, Irving Weiser. The two hit it off and, in no time at all, he was offered the job.
Anyone who knows Joe Dowling knows that he is never completely happy unless he is running the whole ship and this was a golden opportunity to do so, but it still wasn't an easy decision to take up the offer. "But we decided, either we do this now or it will never happen and we'd probably never forgive ourselves if we don't do it. It's not to denigrate Dublin, or to say it's not good working there, but you know there's just so much you can do there." Having in his time been the Abbey's youngest - and some would maintain most successful - artistic director, worked as an independent director and producer and run the Gaiety Theatre, he felt he had done as much as he could in Ireland.
In the two years since he took over Dowling has dramatically turned round the fortunes of the Guthrie, which had fallen into low water since its high point in the 1960s and 1970s. In his first season ticket sales were up by 23 per cent, overall attendances by 12 per cent and - vitally in US theatre, where there is little state subsidy by European standards - fund-raising rose from $3.54 million to $3.67 million.
So how does the job differ from, say, running the Abbey? "Vastly," he says. "One, I was very young when I did the Abbey job, in retrospect too young. To do it in my early 30s was 10 years too soon, I poured an unnecessary tension into it. Of course, I took up that job in 1978 and 20 years is a hell of a long time ago. I think both the Abbey job has changed and I have changed since then. It was the view of the Abbey board then that the artistic directorship was an extension of the board, and my view was that it was separate. Therein lay the difficulties.
"Here there is no question that the artistic director runs the theatre, it is stated in the contract. I appoint the managing director, who's got a very important function. The board does not interfere at all, the only appointment they make is artistic director. They regard their function as being guardians of the theatre, not having day-to-day involvement. They're all businessmen and leaders of the community and their other function is, essentially, to raise money. It's a different world to the Abbey. I approach board meetings now with pleasure. I look forward to sharing what we're doing with the board. So, in a sense, the job is much more complex and in another it's more simple.
"Also, the artistic director of the Abbey - and this has changed somewhat too - was never a major public figure in Dublin. Here I am. I can't go anywhere that I'm not recognised. If I walk into the theatre people almost mob me. They keep coming over and making a point of saying how much they are enjoying the show. And they're much more supportive in general. When, about nine years ago, this theatre decided it had to make some changes the community was asked for money and they gave $25 million and, because the market is so good, it has increased to $40 million, that's the endowment."
To an outsider, certainly, the Guthrie feels like a community theatre of a kind we just don't have in Ireland. It runs a seemingly non-stop series of workshops and lectures for young and old connected with its productions, but also tours, open days and associated talks which have brought in heavyweights such as Arthur Miller, Seamus Heaney and this week the celebrated neurologist Oliver Saks who spoke wittily on the relationship between medicine and the arts. It's partly to do with being part of a community wealthy beyond any in Ireland, but also with the way Joe Dowling has gone out into the highways and byways to promote his cause.
"I feel like I'm running for office all the time," he says. "What they call the rubber chicken circuit, though of course it's the smorgasbord circuit here, because it's Swedish. Essentially I go to lunches, dinners and cocktail parties about three times a week and talk about why the theatre is important, and refer to controversies like the attempt by the Republicans to kill the National Endowment for the Arts. That would mean the end of subsidy for the arts in America which, though it's not essential for us, would ensure the end of a lot of theatres in this country. We've always been supported mainly by local foundations, corporations and individuals."
Does this mean that his theatre is more audience-led than its European equivalent then?
"Though our subsidy comes in the way I've described, it's the same principle essentially as in Irish theatre, which is subsidised by the state. I mean, you get a lot of money, but here it's broken down very carefully. We have a $12 million budget, of which 65 per cent comes from the box office, so it's absolutely essential we do 70 per cent business. There's no leeway at all, as there isn't in Dublin any more too. The Abbey has to do that percentage too and, in my view, I see no reason why it shouldn't. I don't go with the view that says that the Abbey should have a different approach and need only do 50 per cent, which is what I think they want. Seventy to 75 per cent should be their bottom line, because then you keep in touch with where people are.
"When I came here the Guthrie was definitely in decline. Its subscribers, who are prepared to pay in advance for, in our case, six plays, had dropped from a high of 25,000 in the mid-1980s to 14,000. The theatre had lost touch with people. In the past three or four years they had put on productions which were more concerned with being noted in the American theatre among their peers and colleagues, as opposed to actually responding to audience needs. You know, we'd all like to bring new art and explore things and sometimes that's very valuable, but in a theatre that needs to fill 70 per cent of its seats it was very dangerous.
"Now we've got the subscribers back up to 22,000. People keep asking `how did you do it?'. First, as the starting point, I chose plays which I thought people would want to see, plays like A Midsummer Night's Dream, Philadelphia Here I Come and She Stoops To Conquer - all of them plays I liked, had a history with and knew I could bring off. Second, I disbanded the company. They were on season-to-season contracts, but given a guarantee by my predecessor that they'd be employed season after season. I said, that guarantee no longer applies. What I will guarantee is that, at least once in the next two seasons, you will be offered a major role and therefore have the opportunity to show that you're worth keeping on. That opened the door to bring in people like Donal Donnelly, Rosaleen Linehan and David Marguiles, actors who had had distinguished careers in other places, to do a show or two and become part of the company. Their effect on the work of the others has been remarkable and I do keep using many of the former company because they're doing good work and they're local, though I'm not prepared to give them guarantees."
AS if all this wasn't enough, Dowling has other plans. His contract allows him to do work elsewhere, as well as keeping up his directorship of the Gaiety School of Acting in Dublin. Last year he directed a highly successful production of Boucicault's London Assurance at the Roundabout in New York. He has open invitations to work at both the Abbey and the Gate and hopes to take up one of them in 1999. In Minneapolis he plans to rejuvenate the Guthrie's second space theatre which is a few miles away from the main auditorium and, possibly, to move it closer to the 1,400-seat Guthrie which, with its thrust stage, he admits is unsuitable for many plays. He would also like to see Guthrie productions touring, at first regionally and then possibly on the international festival circuit, if he can find the right play.
With his wife starting a new career in US television, his son happily settled in school in Minneapolis (his daughter is at university in Ireland), a beautiful house in a quiet leafy suburb and all the other appurtenances of success, the Dowlings are happily living the American Dream. Only the Minneapolis winter, when the temperature can fall to minus 60 seems to faze Joe. So will they stay?
"Until the year 2000," he says. "I was only going to stay until next year, but then they asked me to stay on and made me an offer I couldn't refuse. We'll see after 2000. I think both Siobhan and I feel we'll end up back in Ireland. We don't have any sense of having left really. We both feel we're linked, in and rooted there. When you're in your early 20s you can cut your ties and go, but we're too old really. We couldn't."
