Skipping outside the comfort zone

Strong sponsors, international recognition, a collaboration with the city's Polish community and enthusiastic audiences have helped the Belfast Festival at Queen's thrive, despite the recession. JANE COYLElooks back at this year's event

AS THE BELFAST Festival at Queen’s settles into middle age, it is arguably in better physical and financial shape than at any other stage of its 47-year life.

Now officially known as the Ulster Bank Belfast Festival at Queen’s, it is the bank’s major three-year sponsorship, plus ongoing support from Queen’s University Belfast, the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, Belfast City Council, the Northern Ireland Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure and others, which have put it onto a much more secure and confident footing, handing director Graeme Farrow the opportunity to plan his programme further in advance, when higher quality product is more attainable.

He maintains the evidence of that improved situation is there for all to see.

“My aim is to bring performances to Belfast which are out of the ordinary and which inspire, influence, inform and entertain,” he says.

Two high-profile events kicked off what Farrow maintains was the strongest first weekend to date. The Opening Concert welcomed conducting maestro Valery Gergiev and the Mariinsky Orchestra of St Petersburg, who put heart and soul into their playing of Shostakovich’s Leningrad Symphony. The following evening saw a double 70th birthday bash for Seamus Heaney and Michael Longley, with music by the Ulster Orchestra.

The London-based physical theatre company DV8 brought to the Grand Opera House the stunning performance piece To Be Straight With You, which they had previously presented in Dublin. At its core is a collection of verbatim testimonies of homophobic experiences from across the world. Of particular interest to Belfast audiences was the recording of Iris Robinson MP’s conversation with BBC radio presenter Stephen Nolan, during which she referred to homosexuality as “an abomination”. Under the chairmanship of BBC presenter William Crawley, a diverse panel was assembled for a post-show discussion of the issues raised: psychiatrist Mamoun Mobayed, president of the Muslim Family Association; Claire Hackett of the West Belfast Aural History Project, which is collecting material from within the city’s gay community; DV8 artistic director Lloyd Newson; gay rights activist Peter Tatchell; and Dr Michael Davidson, founder of the Christian ex-gay ministry CORE.

After an attempt to secure it for last year's festival, Mark O'Rowe's tumultuous Terminusfinally made it North. Its coruscating verse text and superbly crafted performances ­ by Andrea Irvine, Kate Brennan and Karl Shiels ­ had a mesmerising effect on some, while others found the evening unrelentingly bleak, cold and despairing.

Abbey Theatre artistic director Fiach MacConghnail said the production had received a tremendous response from young people in Cork and Melbourne, where it had played immediately before its Belfast run. But he was not surprised at the diversity of opinions, reckoning that he had scarcely heard two people agree about it yet.

The Abbey also hosted a reading of a new play by Belfast playwright Gary Mitchell, which focuses on changes in policing in the years since the RUC became the PSNI.

“We thought it was important that a play by Gary should have its first reading in the North, particularly with Conall Morrison, who is from Armagh, directing it,” said MacConghnail.

His remark must come as music to the ears of Mitchell, who, after all his success with hard-hitting plays about the loyalist community in which he grew up, finds it far from easy for his voice to be heard on home territory.

"It's frustrating that after all these years, it's still so difficult to get a commission in Northern Ireland. I'm not just talking about plays. It's the same with film and television. It's as though they somehow want me to become someone else." Local companies staked a strong claim on this year's programme. Prime Cut presented the Irish premiere of Vassily Sigarov's Black Milk, a keenly anticipated but rather disappointing play about the struggle for the new Russia. Kabosh chose the Belfast Synagogue as the venue for the world premiere of Gavin Kostick's This Is What We Sang, a family saga based in the city's dwindling Jewish community. Cahoots NI reworked The Musician, Conor Mitchell's horror-opera about the child who grew up to be the Pied Piper, recast with international opera singers. And the effervescent Ponydance gave a shot in the arm with a new dance show, Bodies, Buns and Boyfriends.

The festival's most poignant event was arguably Joan McCready's one-woman show, A Time To Speak, based on dancer Helen Lewis's remarkable Holocaust memoir.

Director Sam McCready did the introductions and answered the question on everyone’s lips: “Helen is now in her mid-90s and in frail health, but very much alive and aware of this production. She’s still a survivor”.

But for all its artistic and box office triumphs, Farrow admits it is still far from easy to sell the festival at home as a world class international arts event,­ especially in these times. He has had to push open other doors ­ such as keying into Polska! Year, the UK-wide celebration of Polish culture, ­ an apt move, given Belfast now has a flourishing Polish community.

“We got a large amount of money from Poland this year because the Ministry considered this festival to be the third most significant multi-arts festival on these islands,” he explains.

“International recognition is there, we don’t have to work too hard to persuade artists to come to us. Some of the events ­ like the Mariinsky programme — were pretty uncompromising, but if we don’t do them, who else will?” He agrees that Northern Ireland audiences tend to be conservative but believes they will become less so if events such as the festival are free to take risks and deliver challenging, high quality programming: “I believe large numbers of people, who step outside of their comfort zone, will find they really are quite partial to Shostakovich or to physical theatre and will demand more from us and from others.

"The audiences for Macbethand DV8 were emphatically not those seen at theatres in Northern Ireland throughout the year. The problem I have with art provision in Belfast currently is that there is too much output and not enough ambitious, large-scale, quality work being produced, which can deliver greater publicity and attract a non-traditional audience. Who wants to see two-handers in small studios or small festivals every week? It just becomes like Eastenders, but without the viewing figures.

“Nevertheless, the fact that people have come out in numbers to support fine international work like this gives us great confidence and reflects very well on a confident, maturing city. “

"Some of the events were uncompromising, but if we don't do them who will?"

MOST MEMORABLE EVENTS

Polish company Teatr Biuro Podrozy's visceral adaptation of Macbeth, set in a torchlit urban landscape.

The Mariinsky’s heart-wrenching playing of the Leningrad Symphony.

Tinariwen, the Touareg guitar-poets of the southern Sahara, whose ecstatically received encores were as long as their entire set.

MOST SURPRISING MOMENT

During DV8’s post-show discussion, Peter Tatchell kept his powder pretty dry until he began to cast aspersions upon the Pope’s private life and identify what he saw as homoerotic references in the Koran. At this point, chairman William Crawley called a halt to the debate, jokingly telling him his taxi was running and he should probably leave by the back door.

THIS IS WHAT THEY LIKED

"Cahoots NI's The Musicianwas a great chance to introduce young people to opera. This Is What We Sangtook me for the first time inside the Belfast Synagogue to hear the secrets of a Jewish family told through monologues and songs." – Dolores Vischer, journalist & PR consultant

"The Abbey's Terminuswas the most exciting and exhilarating evening I've spent in a theatre for a long time. Teatr Biuro Podrozy's Macbethwas a real spectacle of fire and music – spine-tinglingly atmospheric." – Kim Lenaghan, presenter of BBC Radio Ulster's Arts Extra

"I loved the polish, precision and perfection of DV8 and the fact that an unfunded company such as Ponydance has real potential to shake up the local theatre and dance scene." – Aine McVerry, Deputy Director of Marketing Development of The MAC (Metropolitan Arts Centre)