Space to experiment

WHAT'S red, yellow and black, measures 25 by 20 metres, stands 9 metres high and has been the subject of controversy ever since it was first proposed? It could be a warehouse, a supermarket or a sports centre but is in fact a theatre. Sort of.

The Black Box, on Galway's Dyke road, is now nearing completion of phase one. So far it has cost £475,000, money provided by the Department of Arts, Culture and the Gaeltacht, Galway Corporation, and the Municipal Theatre Trust, a local fundraising body. Phase two, the construction of offices and workshops, is still dependent on funding provisions. It has no seats and looks nothing like a conventional theatre but for an arts space in this neck of the woods it does have the novelty value of proper working toilets, heating, air conditioning and parking.

Some of Galway's arts community describe the design as a fudge - it is smaller than originally planned, has windows in three walls and only about a third of it inside is actually painted black. Some even regret handing over the construction of a project they describe as "inspirational and visionary" to a utilitarian body such as the city corporation: others see it as potentially the most experimental arts space in the country. For Michael Diskin, general manager of the Municipal Theatre, the key to the whole thing is "maximum flexibility".

"You can quibble about whether it's big enough," he says, "but it probably is big enough and more importantly it's ours, the arts community's. People got twisted and turned on this idea of colour, but the black is not the important thing, the box is the important thing.

"To define the building in terms of seating capacity, you can see, is irrelevant once you get into it. The fire officer has approved 545 seats but it will very rarely be used in that format - we have no seats!

"People say `What's the point in having a theatre without seats?' First off, all stop thinking in terms of theatre, think in terms of space."

He describes it as a low density, low cost space and envisages a maximum of eight weeks performance a year. "The purpose here," he explains, "is to allow people space, time wise. If you look for rehearsal space on the Town Hall stage it's costing you because you re blocking someone else. That isn't going to be the vibe here. It's like `here's a space, let's create, be aesthetic, whatever'. Because it's such an unusual space it will be about creating original product and you can't put the same time constraints on that. It's the eight weeks performance that I'm least focused on."

THE first tenants of the Black Box will be Macnas who will present The Rime of the Ancient Mariner during the Galway Arts Festival in July in a promenade format (the audience will be able to move both around the performers and the set) but Diskin is anxious that the space be open to anyone who wants to use it: "You don't want to be defined by 545 seats, you want to be defined by its experimental nature. And if there's only 60-70 people there, because it's low cost, it doesn't matter. I'm open to offers. I want to get people interested. They should come down and start thinking about it."