National theatre wants your manuscripts

ARTSCAPE: ASPIRING WRITERS mostly assume, with some justification, that any manuscripts they send to publishers or agents or theatres join a giant slushpile in the corner.

Not so at the Abbey, they say, where they positively welcome unsolicited manuscripts. Young, hip, innovative writers may not generally send scripts to the Abbey, but the national theatre is actually asking for them for its New Playwrights Programme, which it hopes will contribute to improving the quality and vibrancy of the Irish theatre scene and new plays in Ireland.

While it isn't the only theatre developing new writers (Fishamble, Druid and Rough Magic are particularly strong at writer development), obviously the Abbey's brief – and budget – gives it a big responsibility. The programme is one of a series of strong writing initiatives at the Abbey, where they seem to be coming down with premieres of new plays right now (Marina Carr's Marblejust finished, Sam Shepard's Ages of the Moonstill running, Tom MacIntyre's Only an Appleopening at the Peacock on April 28th). The announcement last week of the Abbey's 2009 Writer-in-Association was low-key (was this because it's in association with Anglo Irish Bank?); this year's bursary goes to playwright and actor Phillip McMahon, who has written two full-length plays, Danny and Chantelle (still here), which he acted in and which won the Spirit of the Fringe Award 2006, and All Over Town.

Born in London in 1979, he moved to Dublin with his family when he was nine and was a young member of Dublin Youth Theatre and the National Youth Theatre. He's acted with Barnstorm, Project Arts Centre, Pan Pan Theatre Company and the Abbey and in Love is the Drugand Prosperityon TV; he's a founder of thisispopbaby theatre company, where he worked on Panti: In These Shoes?and All Dolled Upand which presented his 20-minute play Investment Potential,in association with the Abbey, at last year's Dublin Fringe. He's also written a short film, Round Here, and is developing a TV project with Element Films.

The Abbey’s 11-month New Playwrights Programme is now up and running, with six emerging playwrights – Aidan Harney, Lisa Keogh, Shona McCarthy, Jody O’Neill, Neil Sharpson and Lisa Tierney Keogh – doing a series of workshops and talks with international and Abbey writers, directors, actors and designers, as well as workshops with Abbey staff on voice-work, language, composition and play structure; for example, they had a workshop with Graham Whybrow (former Royal Court literary manager) this month, and next weekend another with British playwright/actor Tim Crouch.

They get experience of the breadth of collaborative work that goes into staging a play, and dramaturgical support if they want to develop a script. Three of those lucky young playwrights came to the literary department’s attention through the Abbey’s unsolicited manuscript process, and new playwrights programme manager Christine Madden hopes to up the quantity as well as the quality of the manuscripts the theatre receives. The application process is ongoing, she says, and the Abbey is sourcing candidates for this programme through the unsolicited manuscripts sent to the literary department; all scripts are read, and they try to respond personally to everyone within four months,

And, as part of what literary director Aideen Howard sees as “our job to help establish and encourage the new writers of the future”, from June 15 “The Fairer Sex” sees readings of six 20-minute plays commissioned from female writers (Rosemary Jenkinson, Claire Kilroy, Deirdre Kinahan, Lisa McGee, Elaine Murphy and Ursula Rani Sarma). The purpose is to allow writers to concentrate on developing the script rather than staging it, and particularly to address “an issue that we’ve been acutely aware of for a long while,” says Howard, “both the lack of female writers and female representation in Irish theatre.”

Double up for Belfast

The 25-year-old Belfast pianist Michael McHale has won this year's Terence Judd/Hallé Award in Manchester, writes Michael Dervan. Previous winners include Nikolai Lugansky and Stephen Hough, who gives three concerts with the Irish Chamber Orchestra later this month. RTÉ has announced the appointment of Christine Lee, also from Belfast, as the new general manager of the RTÉ National Symphony Orchestra. She comes to RTÉ from the English Sinfonia, and has also worked with the Ulster Orchestra and festivals in Belfast, Bath and Edinburgh. One immediate responsibility she won't have is dealing with an RTÉ Living Music Festival. This year's festival, originally scheduled for October, has been cancelled, a decision which RTÉ says "has been taken with regret but was unavoidable given the financial challenges facing the organisation". However, the station says it "will continue to explore means by which new music and its audiences can be served with the resources available, whether through presentation, promotion, commissioning, recording or broadcasting."

Tricky times can lead to imaginative approaches. The Dublin Dance Festival (May 8-23) announced its programme well in advance (last month, in fact). Last year’s festival saw a high proportion of last-minute booking (probably an Irish phenomenon generally), so this time, in the hope of encouraging earlier booking by those looking forward to the sort of top international and Irish contemporary dance not presented here that often, they introduced an Early Bird booking scheme and managed to sell over €2,000 worth of tickets in the first couple of weeks of March. Tickets to festival shows at the Abbey (Sidi Larbi Cherkaoui’s Apocrifux and Ronald K Brown’s One Shot) are €20, a reduction of a third on the full price of €30, if you book online before the end of this month. Other ticket prices include €22 reduced to €17 or €16 down to €12. Booking at 01-6728815 opens April 1 and the box office at Temple Bar Cultural Information Centre opens May 1. And, three cheers, there are no booking fees and no extra credit card charges.

Dance festival director Laurie Uprichard must be planning to invite the incoming US ambassador Dan Rooney to One Shot, one of the highlights of the festival. The show has a strong Pittsburgh connection (Rooney owns the Pittsburgh Steelers), being inspired by the great African American photographer Charles "Teenie" Harris, nicknamed "One Shot" because that was all he needed to capture each photograph. Choreographer Ronald K Brown's Evidence, A Dance Company has blended African, modern, ballet, and social dance styles to tell the stories of the African diaspora. Wonder if Rooney might even be interested in doing Brown's masterclass during the festival! wwwdublindancefestival.ie