Budget 2009 & the arts: the verdict

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As Deirdre Falvey reports in the Irish Times, the overall budget for arts and culture in Ireland is set to decrease from €204 million this year to €185 million. In particular the Arts Council’s budget sees a reduction from €85 million to €76 million. Culture Ireland’s budget will remain static at €4.7 million.

The reductions are far from unexpected… and indeed despite protestations from the sector it would have been deeply unwise not to reduce arts & cultural funding when every other public sector will be feeling the pinch. While it’s clear that cutbacks in arts funding will be necessary, it’s difficult to yet predict how priorities will be adjusted to meet these new financial realities. With the Arts Council still in flux, I doubt a clearer picture will emerge for some time.

In more surprising news:

The National Library of Ireland, the National Archives and the Manuscripts Commission are to be amalgamated, as are the National Gallery of Ireland, the Irish Museum of Modern Art and the Crawford Gallery.

The department indicated this would involve amalgamating the boards, directorate, governance, HR, infrastructure and management.

This follows the reduction across the board of the number of state agencies. How this will play out in reality is anyone’s guess; to my mind this is the most worrying development for the arts from Budget 2009.

*Update*: For a more extensive breakdown of budget figures & commentary, see Theatre Forum.

Swappin’ saliva in the name of art

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As part of the Ulster Bank Dublin Theatre Festival, The Performance Corporation organised a flash mob theatre event in the ILAC Shopping Centre in Dublin last Saturday– over 100 actors took part– and a few by-standers! (check out the couple at 1:50)

Click on the video to see what happened…

IMMA’s Mexican Modernist exhibition cancelled

Vendedoras de alcatraces by Diego Rivera

Vendedoras de alcatraces by Diego Rivera

I was terribly disappointed to learn that the big show of IMMA’s autumn season has been cancelled. From their press release:

The Irish Museum of Modern Art announced today (Tuesday 7 October) that, due to circumstances beyond its control, the exhibition Works from the Natasha and Jacques Gelman Collection of Modern Mexican Art, which was scheduled to open to the public on 26 November 2008, has been cancelled.

The cancellation of the exhibition, which was to have included works by such famous Mexican Modernists as Frida Kahlo and Diego Rivera, is the result of legal proceedings in Mexico involving the Vergel Foundation, which manages the Gelman Collection.

Commenting on the situation, IMMA Director Enrique Juncosa said: “Everyone at IMMA greatly regrets this recent turn of events. We are very conscious of the fact that a great many people were eagerly looking forward to seeing these magnificent works, and we have worked tirelessly over the past few weeks to try to ensure that the exhibition could go ahead. I should like to express our sincere thanks to the Mexican Ambassador, H E Cecilia Jaber, who has assisted us in every possible way in our dealing with the Mexican authorities. However, despite this, and the co-operation of the Vergel Foundation and the Instituto Nacional de Bellas Artes (National Institute of Fine Arts) in Mexico, it has proved impossible to proceed with the exhibition.”

Disaster! This was going to be a major opportunity to see works rarely exhibited in Ireland, and we had been eagerly anticipating taking our students to see these works. How unfortunate for the museum and for the great number of visitors the show would have drawn…

Drama in Dublin

Acrobatic insects, nuns on dodgems, and chaos at the box office?

Yep, must be the Dublin Theatre Festival.

Currently in full swing, this year’s festival has had no shortage of drama off and on stage– from the cancellation of the preview performance of Black Watch (due to concerns about seating safety- ultimately unfounded), to a last minute re-seating scramble at the first night of Metamorphosis that delayed the performance for an hour or so. Nevertheless I think the programme at this year’s festival is one of the strongest in years, and every performance I’ve attended so far has been packed out…

It’s been interesting to read the reviews of the shows so far–  Fintan O’Toole dug Gatz but not Metamorphosis, Seona Mac Reamoinn found Dodgems ‘deliciously fun’ but still in need of ‘tinkering’, and Sara Keating called Between The Devil and the Deep Blue Sea ‘near perfection’.

On my scorecard, Dodgems was a clear winner, if at times heavy-handed with the social themes; England was great in the first half but floundered in the second; and Metamorphosis was uneven but had a very impressive performance from its lead actor. I’ve heard good things too about The Year of Magical Thinking and Hedda Gabler— and I’m looking forward myself to Cat on a Hot Tin Roof and Cripple of Inishmaan.

Any other thoughts out there on this year’s crop?

On a related note, in Saturday’s Irish Times Chris Morash reviewed the newly published edited volume Interactions: Dublin Theatre Festival 1957-2007, a look back at the development of the festival over the past five decades, and by extension, the growth of theatre in Ireland:

Based (in part), on a conference organised by the Irish Theatre Diaspora Project at last year’s theatre festival, the first part of the book brings together 14 essays by various theatre scholars on aspects of the festival, ranging from its foundations in the 1950s, to recent Russian and Australian productions.

The second part of the book lays the foundations for future research, by combining short (often entertainingly anecdotal) essays by former festival directors (Lewis Clohessy, David Grant, Tony O’Dalaigh, and Fergus Linehan) with a complete listing of all festival productions since 1957.

Sounds like a much needed dose of context and critique on Irish theatre– the book is published by Carysfort Press and is edited by Nicholas Grene and Patrick Lonergan.

Happy Poetry Day

Today is All-Ireland Poetry Day! Events are happening all round the country to celebrate the 30th anniversary of Poetry Ireland.

In Dublin there will be a poetry reading at 6.30 pm tonight at the Unitarian Church, 112 St Stephen’s Green West, by John F. Deane, Rutger Kopland and Fiona Sampson. Full details of events nationwide can be found on Poetry Ireland’s website…

In honour of the day, a favourite poem recently discovered:

Wisława Szymborska: ‘Slapstick’ (1993)

If there are angels,
I doubt they read
our novels
concerning thwarted hopes.

I’m afraid, alas,
they never touch the poems
that bear our grudges against the world.

The rantings and railings
of our plays
must drive them, I suspect,
to distraction.

Off-duty, between angelic –
i.e. inhuman – occupations,
they watch instead
our slapstick
from the age of silent film.

To our dirge wailers,
garment renders,
and teeth gnashers,
they prefer, I suppose,
that poor devil
who grabs the drowning man by his toupee
or, starving, devours his own shoelaces
with gusto.

From the waist up, starch and aspirations;
below, a startled mouse
runs down his trousers.
I’m sure
that’s what they call real entertainment.

A crazy chase in circles
ends up pursuing the pursuer.
The light at the end of the tunnel
turns out to be a tiger’s eye.
A hundred disasters
mean a hundred cosmic somersaults
turned over a hundred abysses.

If there are angels,
they must, I hope,
find this convincing,
this merriment dangling from terror,
not even crying Save me Save me
since all of this takes place in silence.

I can even imagine
that they clap their wings
and tears run from their eyes
from laughter, if nothing else.