Pavilion resigns itself to finding a new director

FRONT ROW: The artistic director of Dún Laoghaire's Pavilion Theatre, Karen Hebden, has resigned following disagreement with the theatre's board. The show she co-wrote and directed, Quest 2 - The Good People Try Harder, a Yeatsian fairy tale, is still running at the venue, but the English director is understood to have left the country.

The first artistic director of the new theatre, she held the post for a year. Hebden has taken legal action against the theatre because of the circumstances of her departure.

As an interim measure, Phelim Donlon, a board member and former drama officer of the Arts Council, is acting as director of the theatre. He says Hebden "has her own particular reasons for deciding to leave", adding: "The board is very disappointed that she made that decision."

He praised Hebden's achievement in attracting audiences to the venue for a wide range of work, and said she had led the theatre and staff in the "Herculean task" of running a new venue. He and the board had hoped a mutually acceptable settlement could have been reached on her departure, but this had not happened.

Hebden had programmed the theatre up to the end of April. Among the upcoming shows are a visit from the UK masked company Trestle, the Diversions Dance Company from Wales, the Paris Conservatory Dance Company and the UK's Red Shift, with a version of Nicholas Nickleby.

There are also shows by Irish companies such as Prime Cut, Galloglass, Brown Penny, Common Currency, the Crypt Theatre Company (Some Voices by Joe Penhall) and Opera Theatre Company (Smetana's The Kiss), a new play by Deirdre Kinahan for Tall Tales/Civic Theatre, Tallaght, called Knocknashee, and the McArdle brothers' Kavanagh show, Out Of That Childhood Country.

Donlon anticipates it will take at least three months to find a successor and is putting programming in place for later in the year.

The third part of Score, Jocelyn Clarke's collaboration with the American director Anne Bogart, will go up at the Wexner Center, in Colombus, Ohio, in March. It will then travel to the prestigious Humana Festival of New American Plays in Louisville, Kentucky.

Score is based on Leonard Bernstein's writings about music. The other two parts of the trilogy are also based on the writings of artists about art: Bob, which premiered at the Dublin Fringe Festival in 1999, was taken from the words of the director Robert Wilson, and Room, which has played extensively in the US but hasn't yet toured to Ireland, is taken from the words of Virginia Woolf.

The three will go up together at the Montreal Theatre Festival in 2003. "The idea is," says Clarke, who is commissioning manager at the Abbey Theatre, "you'd come to a city and there'd be three people talking about art." The show is a solo performance by Tom Nellis.

Francis Humphrys, director of the West Cork Chamber Music Festival, is clearly of the opinion that you can't have enough of a good thing, writes Michael Dervan. Before next June's festival gets off the ground, he's running a three-day Schubert series, beginning on Easter Sunday.

He has chosen three Irish musicians, Finghin Collins, John O'Conor and Hugh Tinney, to play the nine piano sonatas Schubert completed between 1817 and his death, in 1828. The honours are shared equally (down to each player getting one of the three late sonatas) but rather than giving separate recitals on successive nights, all three performers will play in each evening's programme.

The festival itself, which runs from Saturday, June 29th until Sunday, July 7th, is the usual cornucopian mix, ranging from baroque music on period instruments (including Rameau's complete Pièces De Clavecin En Concerts, with Wilbert Hazelzet, flute; Maya Homburger, violin; Sarah Cunningham, bass viol; and Malcolm Proud, harpsichord) to new works by Zhou Long and Kevin Volans.

The music of the stylistically multifaceted Czech composer Ervin Schulhoff, who died in a German concentration camp in 1942, makes an appearance (his string sextet nestles between Hindemith and Brahms). Pavel Nersessian, winner of the Dublin International Piano Competition in 1991, makes his festival debut in a solo recital of Scriabin and Prokofiev, also teaming up with other festival visitors in a number of mostly Russian chamber works.

The stylish players of the Paris-Bastille Wind Ensemble make a return visit, as does the Dutch soprano Charlotte Riedijk, whose performance of Messiaen's Harawi was one of last year's highlights; this year she sings Schubert, Schumann, Berg, Shostakovich and Hindemith.

The roster of string quartets includes the Shanghai and Artis as well as the annual residents of the RTÉ Vanbrugh Quartet.

In true west Cork style, all three will feature in the opening concert, the Shanghai in a work by Bright Sheng, the Artis in the Fourth Quartet by Alexander Zemlinsky (friend and teacher of Schoenberg) and the RTÉ Vanbrugh in Beethoven.

You can get full details of the festival's programme for 2002 from the Internet, at www.westcorkmusic.ie, and make bookings on 027-52788.

The closing date for the school video competition in Limerick's Fresh Film Festival is March 15th. The competition is open to individuals or groups of young people between the ages of 12 and 18. The tapes, containing one film only, should not last more than 25 minutes.

The festival, which runs from April 24th to 26th, will include feature-film screenings, workshops and the all-important showings of young peoples' films. A selection of the submitted films will be screened on the Friday night of the festival. Information from Belltable arts centre on 061-319555

This year's Frankie Kennedy Winter School in Dunlewey, Co Donegal, which ended yesterday, was abuzz with anticipation of the new album from the traditional group Altan.

Their manager, Tom Sherlock, reveals that the Virgin recording is called The Blue Idol and contains, among other things, duets sung by Mairéad Ní Mhaonaigh with Dolly Parton and Paul Brady and guest appearances from Liam Ó Floinn, Dónal Lunny and the flute player Harry Bradley.

Before Frankie Kennedy's death, the flute was central to the band's sound, but they have been careful about introducing it again out of sensitivity to his memory.

The album, which will be released in the spring, was recorded at the new studio run by the band's fiddler, Ciarán Tourish, and the sound engineer, Alasdair MacMillan, at Clonmannon House in Ashford, Co Wicklow.

The two have leased the period house, which is set in extensive grounds. So enticing is it as a creative space that Ronan Keating was using it until Christmas.

The Arts Council has announced its funding decisions earlier than ever. Yesterday it published the names of artists who have benefited from a new commissions scheme. Among the 40 are the visual artist Dorothy Cross, who received two awards totalling €19,525/£15,377; the writer Cónal Creedon, who received €5,714/£4,500, the poet Nuala Ní Dhomhnaill and the composer Michael McGlynn, who jointly received €9,904/£7,800; the composer Gerald Barry, who received €9,660/£7,608; the writer Roddy Doyle, who received €3,324/£2,618; and the writer and film-maker Gerard Stembridge, who received €4,500/£3,544.

Those who received funding under the new projects scheme are the visual artist Clare Langan (€20,000/£15,751); Tall Tales Theatre Company (€19,700/£15,515); the actor and director Mikel Murfi (€5,900/£4,647); Kilkenny's Cartoon Saloon (€20,000/€15,751); two theatre companies from Louth, Calipo (€13,000/£10,238) and Droichead Youth Theatre (€8,000/£6,301); the Coombe Women's Hospital (€7,000/£5,513) and Axis, Ballymun's arts and community resource centre (€20,000/£15,751).

The council has confirmed multi-annual funding of €15.7 million (£12.4 million) to 61 companies and offered one-year grants totalling €22.5 million (£17.7 million) to more than 400 others. The offers were made before Christmas; details of grants will be published at the end of the month. Any remaining decisions on funding proposals will be made in February.