Michael Diskin:MICHAEL DISKIN, who has died after a long illness at the age of 49, was a gifted and visionary theatre manager and arts administrator who helped to stamp Galway's footprint as an international cultural capital.
The “big man at the back of the house” , as he once described himself, had a keen instinct for creative talent, combined with a focused managerial style and an enviable ability to balance budgets. He would have been pleased to see so many “bums on seats” at his funeral service earlier this week, his close friend Claude Madec observed in his tribute at the Mass.
He was born in Salthill, Galway as the middle of three boys and attended St Patrick’s National School and St Joseph’s “The Bish”secondary school. His father Tommy, originally from Hollymount, Co Mayo, was manager of Thomas McDonogh’s hardware store, and his mother, Bridie, originally from Prospect Hill, worked in Galway Corporation before leaving under the marriage bar.
Diskin studied history and political science at what was then University College, Galway, where President Michael D Higgins was one of his lecturers. During his time in college, he was involved in Dramsoc and with student publications. On graduation, he enrolled to take a PhD in the politics of Ulster unionism at Glasgow’s Strathclyde University. It was there that he met his French wife, Evelyne, and he also formed firm friendships in the North while commuting from Scotland to Belfast to undertake his research during the Troubles. When he finished his doctorate a month early, he handed back the final four weeks’ stipend to college management – a measure of his integrity, close friends have noted.
His first job was as a tax consultant with Craig Gardner, and he was then hired as political adviser to the Japanese embassy in Dublin.
Meanwhile, the Galway Arts Festival was gaining international recognition, and an Arts Council grant allowed it to advertise for its first paid administrator. Diskin applied and was hired to work with festival founders Ollie Jennings and Paraic Breathnach – his job being to sell the 10,000 tickets for the Fisheries Field tent before French circus Archaos arrived.
It was always a given, in his view, that international artists should include the west coast city on their map. Hence writers such as Linton Kwezi Johnson and Allen Ginsberg responded to his invitations to read at the Cúirt International Festival of Literature, which he managed when he became director of the Galway Arts Centre.
In the mid-1990s, he was appointed by Galway City Council to manage the Galway Town Hall Theatre, one of a network of regional venues which was being developed by then minister for arts and culture and the gaeltacht Michael D Higgins. Under his direction, the programme for the Town Hall Theatre and its open/experimental performance space at The Black Box reflected a mix of international, national and experimental – affording many an emerging artist a start, hosting the Royal Shakespeare Company and the Tchaikosvky Perm State Ballet of Russia, and becoming the hub for the Galway Film Fleadh while also recognising the role of amateur drama.
He worked with actors and directors such as Rod Goodall, Diarmuid de Faoite and Andrew Flynn of the Galway Youth Theatre on the Town Hall Theatre’s own productions – most recently Brian Friel’s Faith Healer which toured last year.
He gave unqualified support to arts through the Irish language – bringing sean-nós singers to Lorient in France, linking Irish and Welsh dancers, Scottish and Connemara singers, and recruiting Breandán O hEaghra to organise the first Féile 2000 arts festival.
In spite of an outwardly taciturn style and imposing stature, he was generous with advice, and supportive of groups like the Blue Teapot Theatre Company which provides training for actors with intellectual and learning disabilities.
“Mike didn’t suffer fools gladly . . . but in my case, he made an exception,” performer Little John Nee said at the funeral service to laughter, describing how invaluable Diskin’s support was for “three small men in a small van looking for small bed and breakfasts”, and remembering a shared coffee in Starbucks while reading a review of Nee’s act in the Style section of the Washington Post.
In late 2005-early 2006, he supported an initiative known as Project 06 to provide an alternative arts festival in Galway at a time when there was a sense that the established highly successful event was not meeting the needs of local artists and audiences. He came under some pressure from his employers for his stance.
The following year, he took leave of absence to work with the Lyric Theatre in Belfast. He returned to the Town Hall Theatre in 2010.
After his diagnosis with cancer he spoke openly about his illness and threw himself into his work. He still retained a sharp sense of humour for which he is remembered by many – and which was evident when he launched a Cuirt literary festival programme several years ago.
Diskin recalled how, as a then zealous young literary festival curator, he phoned Seamus Heaney for a favour. Would the poet have a number for a fellow Nobel laureate, Derek Walcott? Heaney obliged with a contact in Trinidad.
Diskin’s next call was long-distance, on a short-distance budget.
“Are you the woman who knows Derek Walcott?” he asked breathlessly. There was short pause before a memorable response: “Why, every woman here knows Mr Walcott . . . ”
He is survived by his wife Evelyne, daughter Chloe, brothers Séamus and Dermot.
Michael Diskin: born, September 23rd, 1962; died March 31st, 2012.