Tony O Dalaigh rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. "It's like going to confession," he says evasively, as I try to lure him into telling me more than is proper at this delicate stage of the deliberations. He, Harold Fish of the British Council, and Sheila Pratschke, director of the Film Institute of Ireland, are awash with programmes and scribbled lists, in the last stages of choosing the shortlist for The Irish Times/ESB Irish Theatre Awards. The three judges are making their decisions after seeing 123 shows. Fish and Pratschke are wary of the term "decision": "The process is not about deciding in an intellectual, cognitive way. We discuss and discuss," says Fish. "It is a process from which consensus emerges," adds Pratschke. The trio had their first meeting last May, bringing shortlists of between seven and 13 to the table. There was another in September and this meeting is the last. This was the only fair procedure, given that it would be harder to recall shows seen much earlier in the year if all the selection was left until now, O Dalaigh points out.
Harold Fish had the disadvantage of not speaking Irish: "I love going to things where I don't know what's going on. It's wonderful listening to the rhythms and recognising the occasional word like agus! Luckily, I was able to get a synopsis before the show. I did miss some of the subtleties, yet theatre is very often not just language. Cheek by Jowl's production of Measure for Measure, in English, played to full houses in Buenos Aires, after all."
O Dalaigh notes that the many new theatre companies around the country have benefitted enormously from the range of new venues - including the Civic Theatre in Tallaght, and the new theatres in Portlaoise and Mullingar, which opened this year. "We saw some very fresh things in some fantastic, newly developed venues," adds Pratschke. "It was delightful to see so much creativity from outside Dublin," says Fish. "These new spaces mean shows can be so much more mobile." Pratschke notes: "It's like a reverse of that trendy word `outreach', whereby Dublin has a lot to gain." To illustrate the point, O Dalaigh recalls seeing shows from Cork, Galway and Letterkenny at the Civic Theatre on three consecutive weeks.
Although this year there was no Leenane trilogy or Beckett Festival, there was the Friel Festival to contend with. "It wasn't a concentrated season in one theatre," Pratschke observes. "It was spread over many venues." There is a pause as we try to calculate the figures: "There were nine Friel plays. Six were in-house, three were touring," O Dalaigh says. "Six different theatre companies," Pratschke adds. "It was a wonderful occasion for me, as an outsider, to catch up on Friel," Fish says. Pratschke is particularly enthusiastic about the children's theatre she saw. But is it fair to compare children's theatre with the grown-up variety? "It is fair to make the comparison, in terms of skills and imagination," she protests. "And scripts, and directing," O Dalaigh adds. The venues in which shows were seen were very different too: "We saw plays in schools and rugby clubs, places where performances may differ, but why not?" Pratschke says.
"Theatre can happen in cafes and tents. Theatre doesn't always have to happen in a theatre," Fish says. O Dalaigh was "pleasantly surprised" to find that "the best plays this year come from a new crop of writers".
O Dalaigh believes last year's spoof awards, rather like the Fringe Festival in Edinburgh, were yet another sign that the genuine article has made an impact on Irish theatrical life: "You see now, in theatre programmes when you read someone's CV, they always mention if they have received an award. And the winner of last year's best actress award, Flora Montgomery, has just landed a big role in Roddy Doyle's new film, When Brendan met Trudy."
In the past three years, Tony O Dalaigh has seen 160 shows a year. Sixty of these were because of his role as director of the Dublin Theatre Festival - from which he has recently retired. The rest have been for his three-year stint as judge on the Theatre Awards panel: "It has been an amazing experience," he says. He is now stepping down, however, and although he denies he might turn his hand to writing a play, he thinks "a slim volume of theatrical anecdotes" may be in the offing.
The winners of The Irish Times/ ESB Irish Theatre Awards will be announced and presented with their awards at a ceremony in Dublin on Sunday, February 13th