Making a splash on Irish stages

Youthful theatre companies are pushing the boundaries, much of it driven by a changed artistic landscape, writes CHRISTINE MADDEN

WHAT’S IT like to be a member of the younger generation in a world that changes more quickly than your attention span? Young people reared on YouTube, texting, video gaming, e-mails, Facebook and Twitter use these outlets to vent their tangled emotions to an increasing and intrigued audience. But many are also experimenting with theatre as a vehicle for expression and social bonding.

Bright young groups such as THEATREclub and The Company have splashed onto the performing arts scene with work that addresses their immediate concerns in fresh ways that don’t rely solely on text and playwriting for their punch. And the immediate, real-time, real-space experience of theatre gives them and their message an instant kick.

“I certainly think what we’re looking at is a changed theatre landscape,” says Willie White, artistic director of Project Arts Centre. “We have a generation that has a certain kind of confidence and has a growing ability to make work that isn’t just quoting classical theatre but has its own voice.”

With the support of White and Project’s Catalyst programme, theatre-maker Grace Dyas, together with colleagues Shane Byrne and Doireann Coady, formed THEATREclub straight out of Dublin Youth Theatre. Their company has since put on several pieces and have a growing fan base. Although Dyas is quick to point out, “there was always a young theatre scene”, she acknowledges, “we’ve been very lucky in the context that we’ve emerged in”.

That context isn't so favourable in other ways. The Ireland in which they're coming of age has left its Celtic Tiger years behind. And this generation of theatre-makers is "very angry that they can't make the decisions that maybe I or people maybe five or six years older than me would have had the opportunity to make", explains Cian O'Brien, assistant producer with Rough Magic and freelance producer for many young companies. On the website for their recent production, THEATREclub Stole Your Clock Radio What The F*ck You Gonna Do About It?, THEATREclub proclaim: "Just when we got to an age where we could start making something of ourselves, the whole country crashed down around us."

Plays with fresh energy that speak to an audience about where they are in their lives also attract people who generally cross the road to avoid the theatre.

“Young people between secondary school age and their mid-20s, they don’t know what the theatre can be,” argues Dyas. “They think that it’s about rich people talking to each other on the stage. They think they won’t understand it. And on a subconscious level that they would never vocalise – but I have a real instinct that it’s there – they think they’re not allowed to go.”

Currently very visible, this kind of work has nevertheless been flashing onto the scene again and again over recent years, not least due to the interest of people and organisations such as William Galinsky, director of the Cork Midsummer Festival, Róise Goan, director of the Dublin Fringe Festival, Loughlin Deegan, director of the Dublin Theatre Festival, and Willie White at Project.

The thriving Cork Midsummer Festival (CMF), for example, which finishes this weekend, puts fresh, audacious work at the centre of its vision.

"I think boring an audience is criminal," announces Galinsky. "I could quite happily never sit through another Hamletin my life. We have to make a theatre culture that reflects the here and now in the same way that good film does, or the same way that rock music does. That's why rock music is popular: it's about now and relates to people who listen to it."

One of the headline pieces of this year's CMF is a new co-operative work by the festival and Belgian director Pol Heyvaert. Associated with productions such White Star and Aalst (which have both appeared in Dublin Theatre Festival), he has been working with young Corkonians to create a new show, FML — F*ck My Life, which puts these people on the stage, playing themselves and expressing their views on life and their lives, as well as the leaving of life through suicide.

Heyvaert enjoys working with young people because they “don’t have this safety thing that you think about everything three or four times before you dare do or say something. And I think they look in an open and arrogant way to the adult world, that’s also a very good thing.”

One of the performers, 20-year-old Charlene O’Sullivan, favoured films when she was younger, but explains, “as I’ve got older, I’ve found that I prefer theatre, because it’s much more real. It’s right there, and you can really experience it. And it’s like, every performance is unique, unlike a movie, which is the same no matter how many times you watch it. There’s something more personal about it.”

Another actor in FML, 17-year-old Jamie Lyons O'Herlihy, has found being in the show "really cool". The sense of community it fosters has been central. "It's so different because it's been going on since last year, so everyone that we've met, we've stuck really close to each other," he says. "And we're all just like a big family, and it's really cool." He pauses. "Does that sound cheesy?"

THE SENSE OF BELONGING is an aspect noted by actor Deirdre Roycroft, who several years ago launched Project Brand New, another element of Project’s Catalyst programme, with colleagues Jody O’Neill, Louise Lowe and Róise Goan (who has since stepped down to run the Fringe). “There is a community of young, dynamic, vibrant theatre-makers in Dublin,” she says, “and their theatre is characterised by a complete disregard for many of the more established structures of how to make a play. And luckily, because the overall theatre ecosystem is so small here, that they all got to know each other quite quickly.”

Roycroft was also one of the happy recipients of a recent project funding grant from the Arts Council. The grant decisions, announced in May, commanded attention because of the many younger, emerging artists that were included in it. Alongside established professionals such as directors Selina Cartmell, Conall Morrison and Bairbre Ní Chaoimh, many young and trail-blazing practitioners – such as Broken Talkers, Hammergrin, José Miguel Jiménez, Making Strange, Jody O’Neill, Playgroup, Randolf SD, Priscilla Robinson, THEATREclub and Thisispopbaby – all received a nod from the council in the form of financial support.

The Arts Council, in its recent document “Supporting the Production and Presentation of Theatre – A New Approach” announced several new initiatives, one of which was “the need to ring-fence project funding as a means to assisting with the development of new kinds of work for audiences” and offer “younger and emerging artists the opportunity to create work”, according to a council spokesperson. However, the council denies that “younger theatre was a particular priority in this round of funding decisions”, pointing to the more established artists that were also included.

These decisions, however, disappointed some veteran theatre-makers whose grant applications were unsuccessful, such as Jason Byrne, whose work as artistic director of Loose Canon has also consistently pushed traditional boundaries. “It looks like some middle-career artists are getting cut off at a time when we have a lot more overheads than we used to,” he says. Having operated largely on a project-by-project basis throughout his work with Loose Canon, Byrne plans “to go ahead with some pretty basic research and try to work with a few people with the leftover of last year’s grant. And then apply for something again next year.”

While acknowledging the casualties with regret, the companies thrown this lifeline of council funding and their supporters nevertheless welcomed the decisions.

“There is a problem with that kind of middle level,” Goan acknowledges, but continues, “I’m glad to see young artists are being funded. And I can’t wait to see what they achieve this year. There is definitely something really exciting happening at the moment with younger theatre artists who are really hungry to make work.”

The recognition of these artists, White says, “made visible something that has been existing for some time. The way that the Arts Council has organised its funding schemes this year has been a boon to those people who had the talent and ideas but had been yet to access funding: in fairness, some for the first time, some for the first time in a while. They did a great job of turning it around quickly as well. I was very pleased with many of their decisions.”

So can we hope to see more and more envelope-pushing young theatre in the immediate future? “I bloody hope so,” says Galinsky.