When I did my first show at the Peacock people asked me if I found it difficult making the leap to "legit" theatre. The question baffled me. For years Rough Magic, like many other independent companies, had been producing its work in the Project Arts Centre, a drafty, leaky, grubby, uncomfortable, ill-equipped, under-funded barn of a building in the down at heel, ramshackle bohemia of Temple Bar. Frequently it flooded, invariably it was subject to the invasion of the elements.
When the tin roof wasn't letting in the rain it was serving as a vast kettle drum for a downpour to drown out the dialogue on stage. It wasn't unusual for shows to be plunged into darkness as the power failed. The turnover of programming meant that you began putting up the set on Sunday morning and by Wednesday night you were watching the critics take their seats. Having grown accustomed to these conditions it came as something of a shock to go into a theatre where there was a provision of technical equipment which worked, clean dressing rooms, adequate crewing and above all, time to get the show ready. Suddenly, life became much easier.
It is my contention that if you make good theatre happen in a place like the Project you can do it anywhere. Partly because of the challenges thrown up by the building, Project provided a training ground that truly stretched the creative imagination, sometimes to breaking point. In many ways you had to be more inventive, more focused and more professional than in the protected environs of the Abbey or the Gate. A designer who can make an audience believe it's on a desert island or in a gleaming 1930s cocktail bar in a space like the Project has real talent. A lighting designer who can create atmospheric magic under those cramped conditions will hardly be intimidated by a venue with height, depth and a fully operational rig.
The Project was home to Rough Magic between 1984 and 1995. That decade saw a remarkable explosion of creative energy in independent theatre in Dublin, of which we were a part. The Passion Machine, Wet Paint, Smock Alley, Donal O'Kelly, Pigsback, Operating Theatre, CoisCeim, Gerry Stembridge, John Scott, Co-Motion and a succession of hugely talented Dublin Youth Theatre ensembles were just some of the people who used the Project as their forum, as did companies from outside Dublin such as Charabanc, Tinderbox, Theatre Unlimited and Meridian. More recently Bedrock, Loose Canon, Barrabas, Calypso and the Corn Exchange have used either the Project or its temporary incarnation, the Mint.
Add to this the visual artists and musicians who are a huge part of the Project's operation. The variety of work offered by this eclectic programme was, and is, unique in Dublin.
For Rough Magic, the Project provided the means to continue something we had begun as students in Players Theatre in TCD. It was a flexible, non-precious environment with a close, dynamic relationship with its audience, and it was possible - in fact it was imperative - to regard the primitive nature of the stage as a blank canvas on which any mark could be made. In this respect, for all its faults, Project was the best theatre in the city.
I remember some outstanding work there. Personal favourites include Buddleia (Passion Machine), The Lament for Arthur Cleary (Wet Paint), The Gay Detective (Gerry Stembridge) and among our own shows, Digging for Fire, Danti-Dan and Pentecost.
These are mostly new plays, and the Project was particularly important as a seed-bed for new writing, but it is interesting that some of its most successful shows have been non-contemporary - Pigsback's Don Juan, Smock Alley's Love for Love, Rough Magic's Lady Windermere's Fan. The Project offers access to plays from another era by allowing for a different type of production, which emphasises psychology and ensemble rather than declamatory technique. We found the plays benefited from being presented in the round or in the thrust stage format, which is how they were first played, but in the intense, almost cinematic acting style that can only work in a studio theatre.
When I look at the new space in East Essex Street, I am impressed, excited and impatient to be in there. I am also aware of the debt that the new theatre, and its prosperous neighbourhood, owes to the leaky little barn and the people who put on those amazing shows against the odds. Part of the reason Temple Bar wasn't flattened in the 1980s and turned into an imitation of Leeds was that people could point to its thriving artistic community. The Project was the undisputed centre of that activity for over two decades and its resurrection will help restore the ratio of creativity to commerce so necessary to a city which prides itself on its cultural identity.
Lynne Parker's production of the RSC in Shakespeare's The Comedy of Errors is running in Stratford-upon-Avon
