Opening the Palace gates

Straddling the gulf between amateur and professional theatre production companies is an uncomfortable stance for the Artistic Director of an Arts Council-funded theatre, yet this is the position taken up by Geoff Gould at the Everyman Palace. He has no option. "The money I get for professional companies can't be spent on what's available, so I have to go looking for 20 to 25 weeks of other material. Where do I get that, and how do I pay for it?"

In his very recent former life, Gould was Assistant Manager of a branch of Trustee Savings Bank in Cork. Married, but without dependents, he felt that the vacancy at the Palace after the departure of Monica Spenser was an opportunity he could not pass up, given that he has been working with amateur theatre - especially Pilgrim Players of Mallow - for a long time. Here was an opportunity to make a difference: the brief was to make the Palace work in terms of continuous quality product for Cork audiences. His background in banking makes his use of terms such as "product" natural, and this is not the only apparently seamless idiom distinguishing his new role in life. When I quail at the FAS overtones of his outreach programme, he is quick to remind me not to get hung up on terminology. He's talking about focus, about bringing people in rather than sending something out, about making the Palace the site of opportunity for local companies to come together in joint professional productions. Through these they would support one another, learn from one another, and, supported by Everyman's guarantee against loss, lay the foundations of an indigenous production unit for Cork.

Gould is quick to admit that this is more or less what happened in the city 25 years ago when Everyman itself was founded; the strange thing is that the professional theatre which has developed in Cork since then has had nothing to do with Everyman at all, except, perhaps, as an initial influence or introductory platform. And even that could not be claimed, for example, for Corca Dorca, which has gone its own way with a vengeance from its inception. If Everyman at the Fr Mathew Hall was one originator of much of the city's remaining theatrical experience, another thrust came from UCC's Granary theatre, especially under Stephen Gale; the astonishing thing is that the tension between these institutions has had such a meagre result in terms of production.

Geoff Gould's latest piece of news is that a play commissioned from Meridian, one of the city's two professional production companies, has had to be postponed due to the unavailability of the actors required. I know actors are scarce, but surely, I murmur, there might be a few more around the country? No. Casting, it seems, is always dependent on availability, and professional actors are always aware that there might be better opportunities in television or film waiting around the corner from what might be a six-week rehearsal schedule in Cork. Contracts can be delayed, signatures deferred.

"And who can blame the actors?" asks Gould. "If there's a chance of what could be a career-enhancing role somewhere else - usually Dublin or London - who can blame them for holding off a commitment until they know that they won't be missing a better opportunity? That's the way it has always been, and it will always be that way." The slightly contentious tone of our meeting is explained by my acerbic impatience with the apparent failure of Everyman to deliver the theatrical goods in Cork, and by Gould's polite, and justifiable, insistence on his newness to this job. He's anxious not to antagonise anyone, although I can't see what there is to lose any more.

He's very conscious of the importance of the real goodwill of the Arts Council which (with £75,000 revenue and ££35,000 income grants last year) is Everyman's financial mainspring now; he prefaces many of his answers with a cautionary deflection of criticism, real or implied. He's walking on eggs, he says: then, with a flash of the impresario which Everyman really needs he adds: "But I don't mind breaking a few now and again . . ."

The sound of eggshells cracking is hardly the most resonant dramatic effect, yet this must be the noise of Gould's approach to reviving local theatre. That revival is crucial if the Palace is to have any significant future. Otherwise there is not enough play-making in Ireland to sustain either the building or the business (12 full-time employees, a monthly expenditure of £24,000 and a rental rate of £5,000 a week). This may be hard to believe, but it is a fact.

Gould's calendar has intimidating gaps in its schedule of events. He cannot spend his budget for visiting Irish companies. There is a firm commitment from Opera Theatre Company with Cosi Fan Tutti on February 21st; from Barabbas with The Whiteheaded Boy from February 23rd; both Dubblejoint and Yew Tree will visit in April; the Abbey is a pencil mark somewhere in the year. "The productions are there. Part of the problem is that they're just not moving out of Dublin. Touring is a big gamble and some companies don't always want to do it. The Arts Council does help motivate them, but that doesn't seem to be enough."

And the planning can go so wrong: last year there were four Martin McDonagh productions in Cork in the space of about as many weeks - "but neither Everyman nor the Opera House would be without them - they're great seat-fillers!"

Cork is a lazy city in many ways - most recently shamed by a visiting soloist with the National Symphony Orchestra who was so astonished at the small audience in the City Hall that he wrote indignantly to the newspapers about it. It's still a "word-of-mouth" city, a fact which has led to bizarre papered first-night audiences and the more recent growth of gala openings (particularly at the Opera House) at which the elegant patrons bring trays of stout and beer into the auditorium during the performance. Gould is anxious to make the point that the Palace is not so desperate for productions that it will take anything that's offered. He has standards to uphold. This is his attitude also in his approach to local companies. "To get the quality we're looking for, we have to have Equity people and that provides the professional base. I'm sick to death of people telling me that Cork has nothing: it has incredible writers, good directors, actors, set and lighting designers, stage technicians - they're all here. It's just that they're fragmented. And they don't have any money." He believes his job is to change all that. His financial remit allows him to commission, but only from Meridian or Corca Dorca. He wants to be able to underwrite productions, to take the financial risk out of the local enterprise, to make production a matter of investment, a refundable outlay. All of a sudden he's talking like a banker, young, keen, sure of his facts. A guarantee isn't a matter of firing money at a company, but of insisting on certain achievable results. The paymaster has to be satisfied too.

"I don't have all the answers. But I'm talking about opportunities here. Yes, I'm also talking about what I call the pro-am business, but theatre in Ireland is still a young industry, you know, and everyone in it was amateur at some point. Everyman's role is to facilitate, to support, to develop, to enhance and promote, to bring up the quality of theatre in the city. In doing so, we will enhance the quality of life in the city."