IT WAS a taste of things to come. Many of the city's thespians and critics gathered in Dublin Castle's Coach House on Wednesday evening when the programme for the 40th Dublin Theatre Festival was announced. Seeing as the Coach House will also be the venue of the Festival Club, it seems likely that the scene will be repeated over and over and. . .
The chair of the festival, Eithne Healy congratulated the team in her speech and wondered whether this was the time and the place to nominate the festival's director, Tony O Dalaigh, for the Presidency. Tony and Fergus Linehan, the assistant director of the festival, were both back from recent trips to the Edinburgh Festival, where they were checking out shows for next year. Martin Drury of The Ark, which is staging the children's season of the festival, and Ali Curran, director of the Fringe Festival, both came along, although Ali will be launching the Fringe programme at a separate party in The POD next week. Alan Stanford, who will be directing John Kavanagh and Brenda Fricker in Joseph O'Connor's The Weeping Of Angels, arrived and chatted with The Gate's Marie Rooney. Marie had a relaxing summer but is now getting ready to travel with five Gate productions to the Melbourne Festival in Australia; she thinks it will be the first time the theatre has gone to Oz since Micheal MacLiamm oir toured there with his own show over 30 years ago. Martin Munroe, who is over in Ireland for two months to help Rough Magic's Siobhan Bourke with the Theatre Shop seminar in the festival, came along for the launch, while another face from the festival was playwright Alex Johnston, whose play Melonfarmer will be seen at the Peacock.
Patrick Sutton of the Gaiety School of Acting; Fiach Mac Conghail of the Project Arts Centre; Colm Walsh of Velure productions who will run the Festival club along with the club's DJ, Dermot McCabe, and playwright Hugh Leonard also came along for the first of many theatrical bunfights in Dublin Castle.