Abbey Theatre pins hopes on new director
Angelique Chrisafis
Thursday, February 3, 2005
The Guardian
Dublin's troubled Abbey Theatre is facing the biggest shake-up in its history after the producer Fiach Mac Conghail was appointed its new director this week.
The Abbey - the powerhouse that produced playwrights from Sean O'Casey to Brian Friel - was one of the great arts disaster stories of last year. The centenary celebrations of its founding by WB Yeats were marred by constant strife. Sales for its unadventurous anniversary programme were disappointing. The theatre faced a deficit of almost €2.5m (£1.7m), layoffs that cut a third of its staff and a decaying building that was a health hazard. Two writers held a vote of no confidence in the artistic director, Ben Barnes, who vowed to stay on until his contract expired this year.
Mac Conghail, 40, is an independent theatre and film producer who has been arts adviser to the government throughout the recent Abbey crisis. He was beaten to the director's job by Barnes last time round. Now, though, he says he has a "clear approach" and is undaunted by the scale of the Abbey's problems.
He plans to begin with an overhaul of the Abbey's byzantine superstructure of a board and advisory council, which has been likened to an unruly group of backseat drivers. The antiquated management structure has not changed since Yeats's time,and is seen as the root of the modern theatre's problems. The Arts Council recently promised an extra €2m in funding, but only if work practices changed and a new company was formed to run the venue.
Mac Conghail says his "vision" revolves around new writing and new ways of making theatre, including physical and non-verbal work. Running Dublin's Project Arts centre in the 1990s taught him to respect an audience, he says, that "liked the shock of the new". He also promises to reach audiences beyond the traditional Irish middle class by investing in new writing and diverse programming in the style of the National Theatre in London, and by touring in Ireland.
He says he wants the Abbey to re-engage politically. "Irish society is no longer a homogenous, one-coloured, one-cultured nation. It is the fastest-changing society in the world. We have to look at different ways of making theatre, as a lot of theatres in Britain have done."