Parker prize for drug-fuelled odyssey

ArtScape: Gary Duggan has won the Stewart Parker Trust/BBC Award for his first play, Monged, which was produced by Fishamble last year. Duggan's first professionally produced play, about three twentysomethings on a drug-fuelled odyssey around Dublin, nabbed the New Playwright bursary in the awards that honour the late Belfast playwright, Stewart Parker.

His short stories, Manhattan Whispers, were dramatised at the 2001 Dublin Fringe Festival and he is now expanding them into his first novel, as well as working on Trans-Europe Express, a new play commissioned by Fishamble.

Monged will be performed (in Romanian) at the Sibiu International Theatre Festival in Romania early next month, and Fishamble will also bring its production to the Liverpool Ireland Festival in October.

Monged was part of the Fishamble Firsts series of first plays, which also included The Gist of It, by Rodney Lee, produced in February and which just this month had a reading in New York, directed by Fishamble's Jim Culleton.

Following Fishamble's "developmental presentation" this week of Forgotten, by Pat Kinevane, the company - in co-production with Temple Bar Cultural Trust - will in July produce Whereabouts, a season of very short, site-specific new plays in Temple Bar.

The other winners in the Stewart Parker Trust Awards, announced quietly this month in Belfast, were actor/writer/ director Garrett Keogh, who won the Northern Ireland Radio Drama Award for Dog Show: Shep, produced by Peer Pressure Productions. He is now writing Dog Show: Fido, the second in the series.

The BBC Northern Ireland Irish Language Drama Award was won by Darach Ó Scolaí for Coinneáil Orainn, which also won the Walter Macken Award in 2004 and was co-produced with Darach Mac Con Iomaire the following year in the Taibhdhearc in Galway.

Winning tradition

In awarding its top prize to a 26-year-old Frenchman, the Axa Dublin International Piano Competition has returned to its beginnings, writes Michael Dervan. The organisers will surely be hoping that the career of Romain Descharmes repeats the success of Philippe Cassard, who was also 26 when he won the first competition back in 1988.

There were numerous changes to this year's event. Providing competitors with a choice of three pianos - offering a Yamaha in addition to a Steinway and a Kawai - meant that during the first and second rounds the stage at the RDS was too small to accommodate the movement of all three instruments. The decision to place them on the main floor of the hall itself wrought obvious improvements in the warmth, colour and immediacy of the sound. The lighting at the RDS was improved, too, and the obnoxious buzz which marred a number of earlier competitions was eliminated.

The arrival of Yamaha does not seem to have gone down well with the other piano manufacturers. Steinway chose not to send an instrument from London for the competition, and there was no longer a Kawai grand piano on offer as part of the first prize. Yamaha, on the other hand, must be delighted. Two of the finalists played its instrument, including the winner.

The RTÉ television production imposed uncalled for and counter-productive visual effects on the finals. Background decorations disguised the stage, and the stage floor was covered with shiny black material. The acoustic changes which resulted were a decided disimprovement, drying up the sound and creating boomy effects in the bass register. Surely there must be somebody in the RTÉ music division able to tell the TV crew that the wall-panelling and stage floor are a crucial part of the acoustic design of any concert hall.

The large number of players from Asia or of Asian extraction was widely remarked on, especially during the early rounds. Yet, unlike the Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow and the Chopin Competition in Warsaw, Dublin has yet to choose an Asian winner. Last year's Chopin Competition was the first for more than 30 years to award its top prize to a Pole, 20-year-old Rafal Blechacz. But the other finalists were all Asian, two from South Korea, two from Japan and one from Hong Kong.

The next big event on the piano contest calendar is the Leeds competition in September, where the prize money of £14,000 (€20,500) and a list of 76 engagements for the winner are considerably more attractive than Dublin's €12,000 and 36 engagements. Two Irish pianists are trying their luck there, Fionnuala Moynihan (who failed to make it into this year's Dublin competition) and David McGrory.

A number of other players just heard in Dublin will feature, including third-prize winner Roberto Plano and semi-finalists Marco Fatichenti, Tatiana Kolesova and Eduard Kunz, as well as Sunghoon Kim, Ang Li, Esther Park, Elizabeth Joy Roe and Young-Ah Tak.

Seven further players who took part in earlier Dublin competitions are also going to Leeds: Soojin Ahn, Geoffrey Couteau, Yusuke Kikuchi, Andrey Ponochevny, Sergei Salov, Siheng Song, and Mariangela Vacatello.

Up close and musical

We've become so accustomed to all our music festivals being controlled by commercial promoters that a Sligo festival next weekend, courtesy of a collaboration between local government, Fáilte Ireland and Destination North West, is already turning heads west of the Shannon, writes Siobhán Long.

The brainchild of Dervish musician Shane Mitchell and Rory O'Connor, a driving force behind Sligo's Model Arts and Niland Gallery, the festival will attempt to replicate the success of the many international festivals that are largely volunteer-run. Taking as their role models international festivals such as the Cambridge Folk Festival and Denmark's Tonder festival, Sligo Live will feature a wide spectrum of musicians but will lean towards traditional and folk music.

Sinéad O'Connor will headline the festival over the June bank holiday (June 2nd-5th). It will also feature Dervish, Declan O'Rourke, The Proclaimers, Kate Rusby, Martin Hayes and Dennis Cahill, Solas, plus a much-anticipated reunion of Midnight Well.

Now that an idea which has been generating momentum for more than three years is finally reaching fruition, Shane Mitchell feels confident that his dream of creating "a professionally run, not-for-profit festival, mostly driven by volunteers" was worth pursuing. With a strong local board comprising local representatives and some professional expertise, Sligo Live is attempting to put ownership of the music back into the hands of local music-lovers of all ages.

"Our main aim is to provide quality music and to promote interaction between people as volunteers and as members of the audience," Mitchell says. "We plan to keep our concerts intimate, giving them an 'up close' feel, so that this will be a uniquely Irish festival, promoting the session as the core of Irish music." Details on www.sligolive.ie.

Yvonne O'Reilly correction

Yvonne O'Reilly was last week mistakenly referred to as the former administrator of the Association of Professional Dancers of Ireland. She was never administrator of that organisation but was managing director from April 2005 to March 2006.

Closing on nomination

It's interesting to see the fruitful collaboration between Bank of Ireland Arts Centre and Mostly Modern featuring in the shortlist for this year's Allianz Business2Arts Awards, seeing as the relationship is presumably about to end with the closure of the 11-year-old arts centre by the Bank of Ireland this summer. There are no plans to replace it with any similar-sized performance or display space in the city centre.

A wide range of arts and commercial operations figure in the shortlist for the Allianz Business2Arts Awards, indicating the variety of relationships that have been built up. Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue will present the awards on Wednesday in Dublin's Mansion House, along with a Judges' Special Recognition Award and the Dublin Airport Authority Arts Award (worth €4,000). Siobhan Broughan, the Business2Arts chief executive, said it was "encouraging to see the nominated companies getting their staff and the wider community more involved in their arts sponsorships, not least in the shortlisted companies for this year's new category: Best Collaboration Enhancing Creativity".