WE are publishing this picture out of concern for public health. You might he innocently parking your car in Minneapolis. You might look up and see the Irish director, Joe Dowling, staring down at you from a bill board. You might reverse your car into the wall or jump forward into someone else's bumper.

So be warned. Joe Dowling, well known director and once Artistic Director of the Abbey Theatre, is now adorning billboards in Minneapolis because he has turned the Guthrie Theatre - called after the famous Irish director, Tyrone Gurthrie - into a huge success. Box office is now 84 per cent; there has been a 23 per cent increase in subscribers; this year's season has attracted 33,000 to 34,000 more punters than last year's; the present production, the Dowling directed Midsummer Night's Dream is doing over 100 per cent business, is breaking all the theatre's records for Shakespeare, and will have sold 50,000 tickets before it closes. The Guthrie Theatre, running more than 30 years, is the largest straight theatre in the US, with 1,300 seats. Only eight per cent of its funding comes from government, with 55 per cent coming from box office. Why couldn't he pull this off at the Abbey? I'm sure he could write a book on that.