On the final night of the 39th Belfast Festival at Queen's, a near-capacity audience assembled in the main auditorium of the Waterfront Hall to partake of a time-honoured Irish tradition - an evening of poetry and music in the Great Hall. They came to revel in the words of Seamus Heaney and the music of Liam O'Flynn, the poet and the piper. Later in the evening, the two were joined by the cello of Neil Martin, the guitar of Arty McGlynn and the voice of David Hammond, an ensemble of friends, who together transformed this clinical, formal space into a forum for craic and comradeship.
After the range of spectacular international work, which has garnered varying degrees of praise, wonder and bewilderment throughout this rather unusual festival, it was down to the familiar, mellow wisdom of Heaney and the emotion-filled laments of the incomparable O'Flynn, to work the magic and send everyone out into the cold night, their arms metaphorically linked in a spirit of feel-good optimism.
On the same evening, on the west side of the city, another powerful community experience was taking place. Amid cheers of celebration and in the glare of television cameras, the residents of the high-rise Divis Flats witnessed the switching on of their light tapestry, entitled Drawing the Blinds. Inspired by the artist, Gerard Dillon, who used to draw images on his window blinds, then turn on the lights behind them for the amusement of local children, this initiative involved another Belfast artist, Rita Duffy, working in that community for a number of weeks. Not every resident of the flats may have taken an active part in the final piece, but there has been tremendous support from the people of this previously-overlooked corner of Belfast, whose place on the Queen's festival programme is most welcome.
This spirit of coming together and looking ahead to what Heaney referred to as " . . . the possibilities for new order and life . . ." is one of the most positive aspects of the 2001 festival, vividly illustrated by these two sharply contrasting events. It is mirrored, too, in the warm support that has been forthcoming from the majority of participants for the inclusive attitude and hard-working efforts of the new director, Stella Hall, whose first programme has been judged to have reached out beyond the traditional festival constituency and forged new, potentially fruitful partnerships at home and abroad.
One of this writer's fondest memories is of Kabosh's hypnotic and vaguely unsettling Sleep Show, a gem of a performance, cunningly - perhaps too cunningly - tucked away in the dusty depths of the still-unfinished Odyssey Pavilion. Director Karl Wallace's notion was to create a secret space, where all kinds of creative treasures could be unearthed by the curious spectator. But he had reckoned without both the Northern Ireland public's apprehension of new, experimental work and the fact that the pavilion is, as yet, pulling in little through-traffic.
"We were, naturally, delighted that the show was critically acclaimed," he says, "but we were disappointed by the lack of passing trade in the Odyssey Pavilion. The show did not attract the volume of walk-in business that we had hoped for. We were also a little disillusioned that the Belfast public is so unwilling to take risks on new work. We thought we had issued a sufficiently tantalising invitation, in saying, 'Come on, dive in! It's all there and you'll enjoy it'. We were surprised that, even at festival time, people were not inclined to experiment more.
"But we were very happy with our involvement with the festival. The team in Festival House is incredibly motivated and headed by a director with an impeccable background. Thanks to them, we have been visited by a number of international promoters and invited to the Greenwich Theatre Festival in London and to tour in Hungary."
But Wallace believes an appetite for the kind of European-inspired, physical theatre which he is developing with Kabosh will not materialise until media interest in the arts takes a new, positive turn. "I'm not just talking about festival coverage, but about a sea change all year round towards the arts, among newspaper editors and reporters and television and radio producers. A few column inches or a couple of minutes every now and then is not enough. I understand that the political stories will always take precedence, but the arts produce a much-needed antidote, and it is vital that they are seen as an integral part of a healthy cultural life."
Where Kabosh had notable success was in attracting an encouraging number of young customers to its performances - to the considerable satisfaction of the festival organisers, who this year set out to woo the hitherto by-passed and indifferent younger generation with a rock-comedy, fringe-club-inspired element to the programme.
How refreshing it was to hear resounding cheers of appreciation for the no-holds-barred innovation of Oskaras Korsunovas's A Midsummer Night's Dream from the large number of young people in the first-night audience. Not one jot did it matter to them that the language was Lithuanian, that Shakespeare's hallowed lines appeared as English surtitles, that there was no set, nor were there extravagant costumes, that the actors carried blank wooden boards throughout and that the play ended abruptly, several vital scenes before the official full stop. Perhaps the best summing up came from one young drama student who, in the after-show discussion, leaned forward and asked Korsunovas, "Is all theatre in Lithuania this good?"
On the other hand, many young children, brought to the Whitla Hall by their parents for the award-winning Australian-Indonesian presentation, The Theft of Sita, would have endured a mystifying hour and a half. Drawn by images of traditional oriental shadow puppetry and the international profile of its production team, spectators were immersed in a visually spectacular multi-media performance, encompassing Balinese gamelan music, contemporary jazz, ancient puppetry skills, high-tech computerised images and film footage, all of which led them on a sometimes baffling roller-coaster journey into the dark heart of contemporary Indonesia.
A delightful counterpoint to this complex theatrical experience was the simple joy generated by the twinkling light pictures in the neighbouring Queen's University gallery. We had been led to believe that the picturesque frontage of the Lanyon Building would be festooned with the kind of tiny coloured lights with which the Hindu Festival of Diwali is celebrated all over India. But it was, apparently, the Northern Ireland weather which let us down. These cheery little plastic-encased bulbs, with their primitive wiring systems, are unhappy in cold, damp weather. So passers-by were restricted to a small but jolly panel over the Lanyon entrance, with the real spectacle confined, unsignposted, to the nicely refurbished first-floor gallery.
In spite of the unforgivably freezing conditions inside the enormous Paint Hall at the Harland and Wolff shipyard, the large-scale Japanese performance, Ryusei - Shooting Stars, clocked up the largest number of votes for the event of the festival. Incredible, mind-blowing and indescribable were some of the superlatives heaped upon it, although one inveterate theatre-goer declared herself to have been so cold beneath her shared blanket that she mentally missed out on the last 20 minutes.
Another old chestnut of the Belfast Festival, but one that still hasn't gone away, is the business of dressing the city. It has been generally acknowledged over the years that a stranger, getting off a train or a bus in the city centre during the last week of October and the first week of November, would have no indication that a major international arts festival is happening right under his or her nose. This year, the City Hall itself became a festival venue, with a huge, air-filled paper installation rising up out of the centre of its glorious domed foyer - and no outward sign of any such excitement happening within.
Why, we continue to whine, does it have to be this way? Why is Belfast so coy about its festival? We are, after all, at the start of an expensive, high-profile campaign - called, ironically, Imagine Belfast - to secure the title of European City of Culture 2008. As press officer Graeme Farrow indicates, the organisers are acutely aware of a lack of festival presence on the streets. "We would love to be able to dress this city and put up banners and bunting and posters, but we can't do it without the backing of the powers-that-be. We are certainly not short of ideas, but we need official support to put our plans into practice. In terms of a visible presence, we have done all we said we would do this year - we have lit up our buildings, we have had lasers and lights beaming up into the sky. And we are happy to report that we have had pledges from Belfast City Council that next year they will get behind us and give the festival real presence throughout the city."
Like his fellow participants, Tinderbox general manager Eamon Quinn feels that this has been a good festival for the company, which has relished being in the city centre venue it has created in the imposing former Northern Bank Building. He agrees with Karl Wallace's assertion that " . . . the city council has an obligation to become more proactively involved in the promotion of the festival" and maintains " . . . now, more than ever, with the City of Culture bid under way, there is a need for people and organisations, the media and public bodies, to be working together.
"We are living in turbulent times, which are generating interesting news stories. We are aware that national news budgets have been hugely affected by the events of September 11th but, in media terms, very little national press goes a very long way. We would urge the Tourist Board not to miss the opportunity and to put in some serious money and effort in bringing journalists to Belfast, particularly at festival time, when we have a raft of excellent local and international work to show off."
So, as the director and her team put the 39th Belfast Festival to bed and start looking ahead to the landmark 40th event in 2002, the fervent hope is that this long, rather one-sided love affair will soon turn into a marriage, and that Belfast will come to love its festival as much as it is longing to be loved. Monumental effort is not required. As Heaney says in his poem, 'Electric Light', " . . . a touch of the little pip would work the magic".
