Back in showbiz: St Patrick’s Festival marches Ireland back to normal

The marching bands are back for Dublin’s St Patrick’s parade this year. Is this a sign of a real return to normality? Exactly two years ago the then taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, in Washington for St Patrick’s Day made That Speech shunting us into Covid-19 lockdown. Along with everything else, live performance abruptly shut down. Little did we know then it would be another two years before we emerged from serial lockdowns and restrictions.

It’s less than a fortnight since restrictions lifted. Curfews, capacity limits, compulsory masks have gone. Live entertainment is back, but after being told for so long to stay home and keep away from each other, are people ready to return in their droves?

So far the indicators are positive. After two years’ absence, albeit with a strong virtual presence last year, St Patrick’s Festival is back on the streets. International marching bands – a parade stalwart– are back for a start. Aside from ceremonial bands, the Dublin parade will feature 13 marching bands (just one fewer than the last parade, in 2019)on Thursday, March 17th, from Scotland, Germany, Ireland, and eight from the US. St Patrick’s Festival director Anna McGowan says, “We’re thrilled, it’s a leap of faith”.

The announcement on January 21st (in the midst of Omicron restrictions) confirming the festival and parades was “the clincher”; bands could plan travel and pageant companies and community groups could get making and rehearsing, though with a much shorter lead time than usual.

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Build it and they will come. But it’s difficult to gauge public turnout in advance, in particular for a festival that is mostly free and outdoors, and where weather is always a factor. A good indicator is that grandstand tickets for the parade have sold out. They had considered fewer grandstands this year, McGowan says, but stuck with the usual 16 along the route, each with capacity for 150-190 people. “There’s definitely interest to see the parade.”

The big change this year for the five-day shindig (March 16th-20th) is moving the festival village out of Merrion Square to instead create a day-to-night urban “festival quarter” at the National Museum Collins Barracks. Across two squares at the museum there’s a 3,000 capacity outdoor main stage, two spiegeltents (Mór and Beag), an Irish food and craft village, a comedy tent, story yurt, as well as performance and relaxation areas. An extra €1 million from the Department of Arts went towards a beefed-up cultural line-up, with most performances free and others costing €10-€20.

Cork singer-songwriter Lyra kicks off the festival on Wednesday night on the main stage (free, unticketed); Damien Dempsey’s spiegeltent gig (with guests Thumper) on Friday sold out (€10, with half the proceeds going to Coolmine Therapeutic Community) so it has moved to the larger capacity main stage.

Aside from the festival quarter in the museum, there’s a wellness event, Breathe, in the Law Society grounds, funfairs at Custom House Quay and a return of Brewer’s Feasts (tasting menu plus performances, €90) at the Guinness Storehouse.

It sounds back to normal, but the virtual continues in parallel, with last year’s festival TV station at stpatricksfestival.ie bringing live events and recorded programmes to global audiences.

Coming full circle two years on, it combines to make a global statement that Ireland is open again.

That international virtual impact will also be seen in the return of the Seoda online festival (March 13th-17th), conceived last year by Culture Ireland, and with an impressive free line-up, including Fishamble, Druid, Irish National Opera, Saint Sister, Mick Flannery and Susan O’Neill on Culture Ireland’s YouTube channel.

Other factors McGowan mentions are less positive, including cost increases (impacting, for example, the building of floats), and a shortage of logistics and production staff. Several others in live entertainment mention this too: experienced crew departed the sector over the pandemic, so there may be challenges ahead, particularly this summer with postponed and newly-scheduled events overlapping, alongside outdoor events and festivals.

The public has generally held on to tickets for postponed gigs, so audience demand is likely to still be there for new shows, but the logistics of producing and delivering them may be more of a challenge, say some in the industry: “From talking to those who’ll be working on gigs, there’s an awful lot of demands on crew and security coming down the line.”

Live performance may be back, but it’s not quite as we knew it, just yet. Donal Shiels, independent producer with Verdant Productions, observes: “Many gigs and shows were postponed and rescheduled over the past two years, so there’s a big backlog, and some venues are booked out already.” He instances the Olympia in Dublin, where he says slots are scarce before 2024 for shows with proven audience demand.

In theatre, while producing houses such as the Abbey and Gate have shows, and there are high profile productions at, for example, the Gaiety and the Bord Gáis Energy Theatre, looking at the line-up in venues and theatres around Ireland, it’s clear there’s little independent theatre about.

“Look at what’s on right now,” says Shiels. “There’s lots of comedy and tribute acts, and some solo shows, but not much touring theatre, because it takes so much longer to plan and make, and there hasn’t been sufficient lead-in or confidence to make plans. Bands can react quicker. In autumn 2021 few people were confident enough to plan for producing in spring 2022.”

Fergal McGrath, director at Town Hall Theatre in Galway and the city’s Black Box, sees it too. “Our theatre programme is much thinner than usual, and that’ll take time to scale up. It’ll be autumn and next year before we get back to normal theatre production.” The various shutdowns, curfews and reopenings were at very short notice and “a lot of projects were put on hold, and shunted forward. The theatre confirmed now is for shows in five or six months.”

Town Hall typically programmes up to 18 months ahead. “In February, our programme collapsed because of January’s uncertainty. We’re full-on for March, and the rest of the year”, including many postponed gigs.

“Some shows, like BellX1 this Saturday, were to be in spring 2020. It was rescheduled three times. Any gaps in our schedule quickly filled. It’s been an horrendous eight weeks because of the speed of the return to ‘normality’, with programming until December compressed into a very short period.”

Confidence

Then there’s the restoration of audience confidence. “It will take time,” says Pete Lunn of the ESRI’s behavioural research unit, having noted a behavioural lag throughout the pandemic, between when people are allowed to do something and when they start doing it – because of both caution and the time it takes to organise.

Shiels says: “Many people are not used to going out again yet. We were told to stay at home for so long. Ukraine, and fears about inflation don’t help. There’s a nervousness.” He and other independent producers and promoters would like to see a campaign to build confidence: “Nothing beats confident moves and confident steps. A campaign to say ‘We’re back. Ireland is open, go to a show’. It builds momentum.”

McGrath in Galway describes it as “an escalating optimism. And the further we move away from the shadow of Covid, the more solid things are becoming. We’ve had a rollercoaster two years. It’s had a shocking effect on our artists, our workers, and also on our audiences. In recent weeks, we now can feel the increasing optimism. There’s still an element of caution, particularly among the over-55s. And, for example, even though face masks are no longer required, some in the audience continue to wear them, at least short term. It depends on the event’s age profile: for over-50s maybe 25-30 per cent might wear masks, but if you have comedy or music and under-30s audiences, they’re quite happy now without masks”.

Still, the over-50s are booking tickets, he says. “Audiences of all age profiles are returning. The first audiences back were younger. We’d a string of sell-out music and comedy. We suspect older audiences were a bit more risk averse, but they too are now starting to come back in numbers. A Sean Keáne concert a fortnight ago was nearly back to normal pre-Covid levels of business. It wasn’t sold out, but it wasn’t far off.”

While “audiences are increasingly relaxed,” he says, “we’re risk averse. We deal with risk all the time.” Subtle Covid mitigation measures have been retained, such as paper towels rather than hand-dryers, and circulating air from outside in the auditorium, which is more expensive than air conditioning as it has to be heated.

Small and medium music venues, too, are “coming out the other side” finding they have to evolve once more, says Stephen Butler, manager of Set Theatre at Langtons, Kilkenny. He’s speaking for Live Venue Collective, representing 28 venues and bookers, including Cyprus Avenue and White Horse in Cork, Cleere’s in Kilkenny, Black Gate in Galway, Dolan’s in Limerick and Whelan’s, Grand Social, Sin É and Sugar Club in Dublin, which formed amid the confusion created by Covid.

“Ticket sales will be down for some shows due to apprehension from certain demographics, while other events will sell out. We expect a lot of no-shows to continue, and are as pleasantly surprised when everyone turns up, as we are equally disappointed when people don’t.” He says Government support has been “absolutely vital” and they’re “pleasantly surprised” to see the most recent Live Performance Support Scheme “morphing into more of a restart grant, and for that we commend Minister for Arts Catherine Martin and the department. The future is uncertain, but we’re a positively optimistic bunch, and if anyone can manage what’s to come, it’s us.”

McGrath of Town Hall Theatre reports lots of positive feedback after events saying “ ‘thank you so much, we’re glad to be back, we’re so happy to meet people’. Obviously not everyone is back but it’s improving by the week... we’re not there yet. We’re just working so hard to make it happen, get the people in and mind them.”