Counting the pennies so the show can go on

Arts funding has been cut heavily in Northern Ireland, but despite the gloom, many actors and writers are proving that where there's passion, there's a way, writes JANE COYLE

IT’S A cold climate for the arts in the North these days. The already cash-strapped arts community in Northern Ireland is facing severe cuts in public funding, and the Arts Council of Northern Ireland has flagged up job losses and economic austerity across the sector. Is it time then to cut one’s coat according to the available cloth?

Actors/directors Martin McSharry and Paul Kennedy are responsible for the Lunchtime Theatre programme at the Black Box in Belfast’s Cathedral Quarter, and are part of a growing number of theatre practitioners, who are finding more novel ways to survive the cuts.

“Lunchtime Theatre aims to provide a platform for material that wouldn’t necessarily attract funding, to create a showcase for new work and inexperienced practitioners, to give established professionals the chance to try out new roles and operate an open- door policy so that industry professionals can view emerging talent,” says Kennedy.

McSharry and Kennedy each run their own independent company, Rawlife and Jigsaw respectively. Rawlife was started in 2001 by McSharry and co-artistic director Lyn Harris. It has never received core funding from the Arts Council of Northern Ireland, though, in the past three years, individual productions have gained support through Lottery Project Funding.

In Spring, it will premiere The Christening, a new play by Belfast writer Pearse Elliott, better known for his film and television screenplays.

“In today’s market, the choice of entertainment is more prolific than ever,” says McSharry. “Given the power of the music and movie industries’ publicity machines, who can blame a modern audience for looking past theatre? We must become more creative in our search for funding. Government money simply is not there, so we have to look to other avenues like sponsorship and larger box-office receipts.

“We are moving into an era where we have to dispense with the commercial complacency of which Arts Council subsidy has sometimes made us guilty, and be hungry enough to achieve a symbiosis between artistic integrity and self sufficiency.”

Kennedy set up Jigsaw in 2006 with former University of Ulster drama lecturer Terence Zeeman. Without funding or finance, the company launched into a series of small-scale lunchtime performances in the then newly established Black Box, and secured corporate support for its biggest production to date, a touring production of As You Like It, which premiered in Belfast’s Grand Opera House.

"I was a fan of what Paul had done previously in the Black Box," says McSharry. "We talked about forming a kind of collective, a facility for the entire sector. Alan McKee tried out his one-man comedy show Creationism for Dummies here and LSA [the Limerick School of Acting] came up to present the Northern Irish première of Seven Versions of a Song, for no profit.

“But we have been slightly disappointed by the level of attendance and participation. Some members of our industry are very supportive. Others are not. If the arts community doesn’t get behind itself in these difficult times and help develop new initiatives, how can we expect ordinary people in the street to agree to their taxes being used to keep the arts going?”

Newry actress Dearbhail Carr is another example of an artist taking matters into her own hands. After completing an advanced performance year at the Gaiety in Dublin last year, she organised a showcase for a group of fellow graduates. She was subsequently signed by an agent and attended a few auditions, but the roles she longed for were not materialising. Carr returned to a play she had studied at university, the real-life story of an abused young woman, who killed her baby and subsequently herself.

Produced on a shoestring, Put together on a shoestring, her production of Jordan by Anna Reynolds and Moira Buffini has just completed a tour north and south, attracting emotional audience responses and good notices.

“Women’s Aid were running a campaign against domestic violence and were delighted to be involved, even though they couldn’t offer any money,” explains Carr. “My former lecturer Carole-Anne Upton organised some funding through the University of Ulster and offered to direct. Everything else I did myself – the tour, insurance, publicity, press releases.”

But this spirit of going it alone has been put into practice many times over the years by actor/director Peter Quigley, who has worked on both the inside and outside tracks of the theatre world. In 2004, he was approached by three under- employed jobbing actors – among them Kennedy and Stephen Kelly – to set up C21 Theatre Company. Without core funding, project support continues to be an uphill battle, yet it is still going strong. Quigley believes that theatre should respond to the demands of society, and hence, C21 has just produced its fourth Christmas pantomime in Ballymena, for a modest profit. He maintains that it is “mainly middle-class, conservative theatre that is heavily funded in Northern Ireland. There is a bureaucratic box-ticking exercise involved when applying.

“Sometimes, when you passionately want an event to happen, you have to put your own money where your mouth is, so to speak. I have done this on several occasions, with no regrets. I did so most recently in the creation of a Belfast Fringe Festival in November. The idea attracted like-minded people and some financial support from private individuals, Castlereagh Borough Council and Fringe Benefits Theatre Company.

“I wanted to prove that it could be done in spite of current funding difficulties. New and untried ideas are often confronted with a barrier of negativity here, which artists just have to overcome.”