Programme for change?

There are many in Belfast these days who feel, fairly or not, this year's festival is a rather lacklustre affair, with an air of weary predictability that is hardly in keeping with the general opening up of the city, as experienced by its own population and in its image to outsiders.

There is the usual scatter of world theatre shows: The Small Theatre of Vilnius (which, despite the title, is a company of 36) with two colourful Irish premieres; the Italian Teatro del Carretto with another two; and from Britain, Howard Barker's Scenes from an Execution, and Northern Stage's Clockwork Orange - running a week ahead of the festival, which itself has been brought slightly forward to incorporate the big Hallowe'en fireworks/Millennium Drum Carnival/Laganside bash.

There is the annual convulsion of the Ulster Orchestra, doubling its numbers for the Northern Ireland premiere of Messiaen's Turangalila Symphony, in a traditionally strong classical programme that includes coffee/sherry morning recitals in the Elmwood Hall.

Guinness has maintained its high profile sponsorship of the jazz and comedy programmes, while the usual pre-release screenings at Queen's Film Theatre (QFT) sit alongside literary readings, including this year Neal Stephenson, whose novel Snow Crash is a cyberpunk classic.

But there are many who say there simply aren't the big names of the last couple of years - the Robert Wilsons, Merce Cunninghams and Philip Glasses. Others complain that the programme is merely a puckering of the mainstream arts calendar around the festival weeks.

The Opera House is independently receiving the San Francisco Ballet, although thanks to festival time the Ulster Orchestra rows in here. Meanwhile Welsh National Opera arrives, subsidised by the Arts Council, to compensate for the demise of Opera Northern Ireland, whose usual season was in September.

It all seems to contrast with the new initiatives and buzz which coincided with Sean Doran's terms in 1997 and 1998 as programme director, operating "jointly and severally" with longtime festival director, Robert Agnew. The festival seemed to open up: the international names, the public art projects, the hikes in sponsorship and the coincidental arrival of the lottery "new work" money. There was also Doran's new approach of listening keenly to local groups; looking at co-production arrangements with the Dublin Theatre Festival and the Wexford Festival Opera; and even the Royal Mail-sponsored Pay-What-You-Can scheme, which happily continues this year.

Astonishingly, in 1997 the festival doubled its turnover to £1.2 million, thanks almost entirely to new funding and sponsorship, and yet the full-time staffing level, with salaries provided by Queen's, remained at "three and-a-half", according to Agnew: himself, long-time assistant director Rosie Turner, Sean Doran and a secretary shared with QFT.

The new direction carried a loss in its first year. In 1998, with funding remaining relatively static, the festival was also allowed to carry the deficit over. It even managed to chew into it during 1998.

"Our extra funding was not instantaneously matched in 1997 by an increase in box office - which was not the fault of the programme, more our mechanisms for marketing it," Robert Agnew says. "But in 1998, we had to temper and adjust our aspirations and in the end, we met those targets. But I have to say I was amazed by the huge ambient audience who turned out for Koyaanisquatski - a film we showed in QFT a decade ago . . ."

But last year, Doran was lured to Perth where he now directs that city's arts festival, and he resigned his Belfast position - which was actually a part-time post - with some reluctance, in May 1998. Bafflingly, he has not been replaced. According to Agnew, the buck stops with the management board at Queen's, and while the appointment of a new director has been "agreed in principle", the post has not been advertised.

Which returns us to many old complaints from many Belfast theatre professionals who argue that the local product hasn't exactly been celebrated in the past, although Agnew would argue that the festival's remit is really to bring in international work and give it priority with regard to the few, decent, available venues in the city.

As a result, there is not much prominent local work this year, and all of it is produced independently - the Lyric's Waiting for Godot (directed by Gabor Tompa), Kabosh's R and J, and Roma Tomelty's Centrestage at the Europa - while premier independent companies such as Prime Cut and Tinderbox (who last year co-produced Stewart Parker's Northern Star at the Rosemary Street Presbyterian Hall), are holding out until next spring to launch new productions.

In the past, the festival only seemed to serve a relatively well-heeled minority, from the outlying middle-class dormitory suburbs and the south-central spine of the city, and there was often a sense that the festival had little or no impact on the rest of the city. This problem was partly addressed in recent years by the sterling work of community groups, such as the New Lodge's Dock Ward and Ballybeen community theatre projects.

Their success has led to this year's big cross-community Community Arts Forum project, Wedding Play - about a mixed-marriage across a particular sectarian fault-line in the near-east inner city - which has totally sold out.

But a sad lack this year is the buzzy Fringe which started last year, working from the festival office under Caoimhe McAvinchey on a small budget which Sean Doran raised from the state-sponsored Northern Ireland Events company, as well as the Laganside Authority and others.

It hosted 120 events, with a scope as broad as its parent festival: theatre, dance, visual arts and comedy; playing in venues as diverse as OMAC, pubs, hairdressers, toilets, and even the grey, concrete caverns of the Lagan Weir, where the Scottish Grid Iron company's The Bloody Chamber was the smash hit.

If a vigorous fringe may seem an indicator of the health of a mainstream festival, it seems very odd that an executive decision was made within Festival House to discontinue it. Why, when it was the festival's own baby?

"Well, it was a slightly out-of-wedlock baby," Robert Agnew responds. "We recognised that that there was a burgeoning amount of indigenous, young, self-generating work, and the Fringe was intended to absorb a lot of this material." When pressed, he would only go as far as saying that the festival's support was discontinued due to "conflicts of funding and sponsorship".

Happily, another new initiative survived into its second year - the Young at Art children's festival, a "partnership" between director Anna Cutler's office, the Old Museum Arts Centre and the Outreach organisation VSB Wheelworks. They are running two weeks ahead of the Belfast Festival, just overlapping with the Hallowe'en spectacular. But next year, they will split away entirely and run their own expanded festival in May.

While the Belfast Festival at Queen's is enormously important to the city as a whole, a major conundrum is that it remains a department of the university, an institution regarded as highly conservative in a city in which "perception is everything". Cynics outside the festival have even scoffed that Doran's additions to the festival constituted "too much change, too soon".

Within Queen's, the festival is overseen by a board of management which is also responsible for Queen's Film Theatre (QFT) and a series of arts lectures. It includes representatives from "outside interests" such as the Arts Council and City Council, as well as the Students' Union and Prof David Johnston, who has taken over the brand new, and heavily subscribed, drama department.

"The festival always has been a department of Queen's," says Agnew, "which has been very advantageous, in terms of cash flow and support." However, he admits that "perhaps the time has come to distance ourselves a little more to enhance our credibility. Certainly, our role is currently being reassessed, and Queen's may wish to retain that link. After all they have benefitted from positive PR over the years."

Curiously, the festival will soon operate in the context of the new Lanyon II initiative - named after the architect Sir Charles Lanyon who designed the main Victorian red-brick Queen's building. Announced recently by the new vice-chancellor, George Bain, it is a proposed £30-50 million development of the area from the existing Student's Union building back to Fitzwilliam Street, and a detailed masterplan is expected to be agreed in early 2000.

At the core of it is the enhancement and centralisation of student services, but there is also much talk of "a range of cultural facilities, in the context of a new cultural area and student precinct". "It's a mammoth development, and one aspect, hopefully will entail the relocation of QFT, which at present must be the least obtrusive film theatre in the world," says Agnew.

It is hard to know how this will impact on the festival, other than opening up another venue, again within the university district. Yet many in the arts sector wonder when the festival will open up again to the city as a whole, with even such simple gestures as street banners. Most importantly, people call again and again for a new programming director who can specifically, and independently, devote his or her time to developing the festival.

The Belfast Festival at Queen's begins on Friday and runs until November 14th. Box office: 028-90665577.