ARTSCAPE DEIRDRE FALVEYIT'S NOT ALL sport, sport, sport at the Olympics. Martin Cullen, who's been in Beijing this week, managed to take three hours out to visit the "Egg" - the colloquial name for the national theatre in the city - and sit in on a rehearsal by pianist Lang Lang.
He was reported to enjoy the visit last Monday, listening to and meeting Lang Lang, who talked warmly about his performance in Dublin early this year.
Given the plans for a new Abbey Theatre and the redevelopment of the National Concert Hall at the Earlsfort Terrace site, the visit to the "Egg", organised by the Chinese government and the Irish Embassy in Beijing, might have offered food for thought.
The theatre's landmark glass dome (hence the nickname) in the centre of the city opened last year. It was designed by French architect Paul Andreu, and seats almost 5,500 people in three halls, covering a construction area of just over 200,000sq m: an opera house (2,398 seats) for opera, ballet and contemporary dance, a concert hall (2,013 seats) for main orchestral performances and an auditorium (1,044 seats) for theatre and Chinese opera. There are also exhibition spaces, a library, souvenir shop and cafe.
Lang Lang was rehearsing Sibelius and Tchaikovsky for a concert on Tuesday; the minister also watched a rehearsal of the Helsinki Philharmonic Orchestra under the baton of John Storgårds.
The minister said it was "a magnificent structure and in my view has a wonderful combination of architectural acoustics and theatrical aesthetics. Its three functional houses have been designed to the highest possible specifications."
Facts on funding
While clients of the Arts Council who are Regularly Funded Organisations (RFOs) already know their grants for 2009, many others - venues, publishers, theatre and dance companies - won't receive word on their funding until later in the year and must be wondering how much is left in the kitty, writes Gerry Smyth.
The folks in Theatre Forum (TF) have been crunching some numbers, and while the exact amount of money still available for distribution is hard to ascertain - not least because there is no certainty about the council's own funding from the Department of Arts - TF's scrutiny of arts expenditure over the past few years throws interesting facts and figures into the light.
Even if Merrion Square manages to match this year's €82,102,000, the council already has major commitments costing over €37 million, between what has been set down for the RFOs and Abbey Theatre. On top of that, payment of the Cnuas to Aosdána members is likely to require over €2 million in 2009 in view of the announcement back in May that the annual stipend would be raised from €12,500 to €20,000 over the next three years.
The Theatre Forum's analysis of the council's disbursement of funds from 2002 up to the present yields a number of striking features. Firstly, how very few organisations have lost funding altogether - though like Storytellers Theatre Company this year, that was also the fate of Island Theatre Company in Limerick last year.
Particularly noticeable is the impact of the cutbacks in 2003 and how almost all of them took some time to recover. Generally, across the board there have been steady and consistent improvements in the finances of most arts bodies, as well as publishers, over the years, in tandem with the council's own increases from the exchequer.
A few have made really significant gains, according to the Theatre Forum analysis: in literature, for example, Carysfort Press was in receipt of €18,000 in 2002 (then €16,500 in 2003 after the cutbacks) - this year and next its grant is a more substantial €100,000. Irish Theatre Institute went from €83,000 in 2002 to €285,384 in the current year. The fortunes of the dance vary: two groups in particular have done well - Fabulous Beast rose from €82,500 in 2002 to €299,860 this year and next, and Rex Levitates made an almost three-fold jump from €65,000 in 2003 to €186,120 in 2008, with the same for next year.
Within traditional arts in particular (and not surprisingly in the wake of the Traditional Arts Report), the funding of some organisations has jumped by more than 100 per cent in the six-year period: the Irish Traditional Music Archive got €300,000 in 2002 and now receives €680,740 and Píobairí Uileann Teoranta went from €118,000 in 2002 to €397,242 this year and next, recovering from an almost 30 per cent cut in 2003. The much expanded - and welcome - network of arts venues also makes a considerable dent in the council's finances.
Celebration of Cork
Johnny Hanrahan of Meridian Theatre Company and Tony McLean-Fay of the Granary have come together in Cork to inaugurate the Blood and Bandage annual festival of new theatre in, from or about Cork, writes Mary Leland. For those unable to recognise the coded title, "blood and bandage" is the terrace cry of Cork's GAA supporters about the red and white team kit.
McLean-Fay says the event grew out of a "happy coincidence" of new plays. It opens its three-week run of performances and workshops on September 8th. The run begins with Beaten, which has been re-constituted in its original form by Ailís Ní Ríain, following its production by Liverpool's New Works Theatre as Tilt. Then comes Thailand: What's Love Got to Do with It? by Brian Desmond and Máirtín de Cógáin of the Be Your Own Banana company, which premiered at Fast Eddie's nightclub during 2007's Cork Midsummer Festival. Finally, there's Kevin Barry's own adaptation of his short story collection There are Little Kingdoms, on which he has been working with Meridian.
"Johnny and I have a good working relationship," says McLean-Fay, "and it was he who came up with the idea of a collection of new plays written by people living here or from here. This would be something that could go on tour, but those venues which expressed an interest wouldn't take all three together, so we decided to keep it here as a celebration of new work. We feel that there's a need for it in the city and in the county."
Financed largely through the Granary's budget and Meridian's Arts Council funding, the festival offers the three plays 10-day runs at the Granary studio and main auditorium. It also invites participants of workshops to develop new scripts, ideas and methods, from storytelling to dance, over four three-day sessions. That kind of intensive programming is rare in Cork and the hope is it will result in a continuing New Works portfolio to provide material for subsequent festivals. www.meridiantheatre.com
Irish on the double
David O'Doherty, up for tonight's If.Comedy in Edinburgh (see W6), is not the only Irish comic shortlisted: Aindrias De Staic is nominated for the Malcolm Hardee comedy award, for "comic originality of thought or performance" at the Fringe. De Staic's musical theatre/comedy show at Sweet Grassmarket in Edinburgh, The Year That I Got Younger, is loosely based on his Australian visa experience, in which the travelling fiddler loses his violin and finds sobriety. Other nominees are Edward Aczel, Peter Buckley Hill, The Fringe Box Office (for introducing surreal humour into the ticketing process), and Otto Kuhnle. The winner is being announced in the early hours of this morning. See
www.aindrias.com and www.malcolmhardee.co.uk/award