It was a week of comings and goings in the arts. After months without the counsel of an adviser, the Minister for Arts, Sport and Tourism, John O'Donoghue, has appointed Fiach Mac Conghail as his arts policy consultant, a spokesperson for the Department has confirmed.
Mac Conghail (38) is former artistic director of the Project Arts Centre, was Ireland's cultural director for Expo 2000, and is programme manager of the Collège des Irlandais, the Irish cultural centre shortly to open in Paris.
As arts policy consultant, Mac Conghail will have considerable influence on the future direction of arts policy in Ireland. "My job is to make sure that the arts sector has the ear of the Minister," says Mac Conghail. "My role will be to advise the Minister on arts policy and to maintain an arts presence in the Department."
Mac Conghail, who signed his temporary contract last Monday, will function as a part-time adviser to John O'Donoghue, working a two-day week in the post. With the new Arts Bill at committee stage, influencing the shape of the final Bill to be put before the Dáil will be one of Mac Conghail's primary responsibilities.
Doubtless, Mac Conghail's comments in this newspaper last June did nothing to hinder his choice for the post: "John O'Donoghue is approachable," he said, "And I have no concerns about his expertise. He's from south Kerry, remember, which is steeped in culture."
If it has been a week of new appointments at the Department of Arts, Sport and Tourism, it has been a week of departures at Temple Bar Properties. The general manager of Temple Bar Properties, Tambra Dillon, has announced her resignation this week, citing personal reasons for her decision to return to New York, where she previously worked at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.
Dillon, who has been with Temple Bar Properties for two years, oversaw the transfer of the company from the Department of the Environment and Local Government to Dublin City Council. She was involved in the continued community and cultural development of the Temple Bar area.
"It was a really rewarding job and I loved it. I'll miss the people at Temple Bar Properties," she told The Irish Times.
Dillon, who says that she expects to go back to working in the arts in New York, will be staying at Temple Bar Properties for a few months to oversee the hand-over to a new general manager, to be appointed in the coming months.
Irish actors' union Equity is celebrating its 50th anniversary this year and is marking the occasion with a weekend conference themed around "The Status of Performing Artists and their Role in the Life of the Nation", to be held in the new cultural centre at Liberty Hall, Dublin, on October 5th and 6th next. The anniversary offers an opportunity to celebrate the contribution that performing artists have made to Irish life and gives a chance to evaluate the status of the performing artist.
The conference, however, will have an international scope, looking at the role of the performing artist in other societies. Opera director Peter Sellars will be looking at the role of the performer in contemporary society - and will also be interviewed publicly by Irish Times journalist Fintan O'Toole at Liberty Hall, on October 5th, at 2 p.m. South African theatre activist Mabutho Sithole will be looking at the role of the actor as political agitator; novelist John McGahern will be concerned with the relationship between the writer and the performer; and there will be contributions from Scottish theatre director Giles Havergal, French theatre director Christian Schiaretti, and controversial French filmmaker Catherine Breillat as well.
In addition to the conference, a number of workshops will be held over the October 5th weekend at various locations around Dublin, as part of the celebrations. Voice, mime, comedy, TV and film acting are just some of the themes for the workshops, which will be given by experts including writer/director Peter Sheridan and head of voice training at the Royal Shakespeare Company, Andrew Wade. For further information on the conference and workshops, or for booking, telephone 01-6790489, or e-mail equity50th@eircom.net.
A new artistic director has been appointed at the Focus Theatre in Dublin. Joe Devlin, current artistic director of Rattlebag Theatre Company, takes over the job once filled by Focus-founder and previous artistic director Deirdre O'Connell, who passed away in June 2001.
Devlin, who takes over at the Focus immediately, has extensive experience, not only as a director but also as an acting teacher. He trained in Bucharest, at the Abbey Theatre, and with Michail Mokeiev of the Moscow Art Theatre, with whom he studied the Stanislavski system - the favoured system at the Focus's Stanislavski Studio. Devlin teaches at The Gaiety School of Acting, and has in the past worked as visiting performance teacher at the Samuel Beckett Centre, at Trinity College.
The Focus, which has for decades been a highly influential centre for theatre in Dublin, has had such well-known names as Gabriel Byrne, Tom Hickey, Tim McDonald, Olwen Fouéré, Johnny Murphy and director Mary Elizabeth Burke Kennedy pass thorough its doors. Forthcoming work includes two productions for the ESB Dublin Fringe Festival: Ibsen's John Gabriel Borkman (from October 3rd) and Michael Harding's Talking Through His Hat (from September 23rd).