Hard Times on Wexford Street

image source

Theatre Fail

The Irish Times reports today that a number of smaller theatre companies are going to the wall after the Arts Council withdrew their subsidies. I will particularly miss Calypso, a group whose work tried to use drama as a way of engaging with and promoting issues. The two productions of theirs I saw (Gavin Kostick's The Asylum Ball and Anthony Neilson's The Wonderful World of Dissocia) were both wonderfully inventive pieces of work. Issues-based drama suggests a certain turgid preachiness, but these works had a lightness and stylistic charm that meant that they could be enjoyed for their theatricality irrespective of the message they were meant to be communicating. I do not know if the same was true of Calypso's other productions, but I will miss seeing plays like the above two performed on the Dublin stage.

The world of the theatre must be facing a double squeeze right now. The downturn must mean that fewer people are willing to spend what can often be quite large sums of money on theatre tickets. Arts subsidies, meanwhile, are always an easy thing to cut when the state faces a collapse in its tax revenue. The Arts Council here have apparently decided to respond to cuts by disproportionately hurting the smaller companies (in some cases, as with Calypso, completely withdrawing their subsidies), with the rationale being that it is better in the long-run to keep Big Theatre going.

Media Fail

I read in the Irish Times today that the Dublin Event Guide is folding… sorry, it is discontinuing its print edition and will henceforth exist solely online. This is an ominous development. The Dublin Event Guide was a useful listings magazine, covering events in Dublin. I cannot make any claims for it being totally brilliant or anything, but it was a handy way of keeping an eye on what was going on in this city. The last time I looked, their website was not up to much; maybe they have plans to upgrade it, but I would be surprised if they have the money for it. In any case, listings are one thing where print media scores highly over electronic – it is far easier to browse through a listings magazine than to look at a listings website. I found with the Event Guide that the advertisements placed by the venues would catch my eye as much as the actual listings, something that is not really going to happen with some stupid website (and one I will in all likelihood never look at).

So there is nothing for it, I will have to start buying the Irish Times on Fridays, in order to read The Ticket, their attempt at a listings magazine.

Undead Music?

So is it all over for the Living Music festival? The RTE Performing Groups website has an entry for the festival, but is still trumpeting last year's Arvo Pärt themed event: RTE Performing Groups: Living Music Festival. That took place on the 15th to the 17th February in 2008. Is there a secret festival being organised for two weeks time? I think not.

Should you be interested in reading my discussions of previous festivals in this series, check out the following:

Living Music 2008 (with pandas)

Living Music 2007

Living Music 2006