THE Irish Times and the ESB announced yesterday they are to cosponsor awards for Irish theatre. The shortlist for the 1997 Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards will be announced at the beginning of next year, and the awards will be presented at a ceremony in the spring of 1998.
In addition, The Irish Times and the ESB have established a £5,000 theatre bursary, the details of which will be published soon on the arts page of this newspaper.
The inauguration of the awards was announced at a lunch at the Royal Hospital, Kilmainham in Dublin, and attracted more than 160 people. Most of those who came were from the world of Irish theatre, and included many of the country's best known actors, directors, producers and playwrights.
The judges for the awards are Mr Tony O Dalaigh, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival, Mr Jerome Hynes, chief executive of the Wexford Opera Festival, and Ms Doireann Ni Bhriain, who was the Irish Commissioner of lash year's L'Imaginaire Irlandais festival of Irish culture in France.
The awards will be made under 11 categories (see panel). The judges will be directed towards potential candidates for the awards by the Irish Times's theatre reviewers.
Mr Louis O'Neill, group managing director and deputy chief executive of The Irish Times, yesterday welcomed this co operation between The Irish Times and the ESB. He paid tribute to the Irish theatre sector for its strength, and to the three judges who he said, faced the challenge of pleasing some, while disappointing many.
Mr Joe Moran, chief executive of the ESB, drew the audience's attention to the ESB's broad portfolio of arts sponsorship, which includes many recent initiatives. These include the sponsorship of Music Network, which tours music in many genres all over the country; Opera Theatre Company's Magic Flute project, which will tour an adapted version of the Mozart opera to more than 8 000 people, and the Smashing Times theatre group, which aims to make the theatre world more accessible to women.
The common thread in this sponsorship programme was, he said, that all the initiatives promoted "the active involvement of communities throughout the country" and aimed "to develop future participation in the particular activity, whether on stage or in the audience".
"This deep involvement with communities throughout Ireland follows directly from the fact that everybody working and living in Ireland is affected by the ESB's activities, be they in the generation, transmission and distribution of electricity or - dare I say it - the bill," he said. "Providing such a nationwide service requires the support and understanding of the communities we serve. This can only be developed by nurturing the close association which we in the ESB have with our customers throughout the country."
Mr Moran stressed the importance of the arts and culture in a healthy society: "No country or society can have economic development as its sole objective," he said. He added: "If business is to make a full contribution to society - the society from which it gets its business - it must reflect a set of values which goes beyond the financial."
Ireland's performance in the economic sphere was being compared to that of the "economic tigers" of the Far East, he said. However, the country's performance in the arts sphere "greatly outdistanced" its performance in commerce and was "quite staggering".
The editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady, expressed his delight at the forming of a partnership between the ESB and The Irish Times, as well as the theatre community of the country, to inaugurate The Irish Times/ ESB Irish Theatre Awards.
"Every time it seems the reputation of the Irish arts cannot rise any further, new triumphs at home and abroad propel it to new heights," he said. "In this happy process the Irish theatre is playing a unique role, matching and now surpassing the high water mark of bygone days. The Abbey's two in a row success at the Edinburgh Festival, the Gate's acclaimed export of the entire works of Samuel Beckett to New York, and Druid's latest success in London are but three instances of the phenomenon.
"For more than two centuries, Ireland has given the world's stage many of its best respected theatrical practitioners. Why we are so successful in disproportionate relation to our size must remain a mystery. But it should be cause for unabashed celebration.
"It is precisely in order to assist and to sustain such celebration that The Irish Times, in partnership with the ESB, has initiated these awards. As a people, we have perhaps been too reticent in acknowledging our own achievements in the cultural field. It is something of a paradox that a director who may have a Tony on his mantelpiece will have no corresponding award from his Irish peers. Awards are not the only end of theatre, but they are the most tangible expression of professional and public respect, and we are happy and privileged to fill this gap in the Irish cultural landscape.
"Just as our coverage of theatre in the arts pages of The Irish Times seeks to report the entire spectrum of professional dramatic practice, so we intend that these awards will recognise excellence wherever it may be found on the professional stage.
"We trust this scheme of prizes will bring recognition and due honour to a cultural sector which is at once a stimulus, a challenge: and a source of great pleasure to this nation and to a wider world."