Budget constraints and criticism won't stop an ambitious pyrotechnics display - and a huge serpent - from taking over the River Lee for a pectacular opening to Cork 2005, writes Belinda McKeon
When Cork 2005 commissioned Spraoi - the Waterford-based production company renowned for its spectacular annual festivals and outdoor events - to create the centrepiece for this weekend's launch of the European City of Culture designation, Spraoi's artistic director, Dermot Quinn, looked to the river.
In the Lee he sought the germ of the idea that should come to magnificent realisation this evening in front of some 50,000 people. The vision was of the river as a life-form, as an embodiment of Cork culture, he explains.
"It was about the life that people bring to the place. We wanted to do an element around the river, tying in a parade or a pageant element to it, tying in as many Cork people as possible." But that, he sighs, was early days, and the idea was dropped. Dropped for budgetary reasons? The old sob story of the arts in Ireland, where ambition and actuality rarely seem to agree? "No," Quinn says with a smile, "dropped for something more spectacular."
But tonight's opening celebrations are all about pushing the boat out for Cork 2005, with the Spraoi piece, Awakening (a co-production with the National Lottery), set to be the largest outdoor event of its kind seen in Ireland.
At 5 p.m., Quinn and the other 100 people involved in the Spraoi production will be lighting up the Lee with what promises to be an extraordinary fusion of physical theatre, light and sound design and pyrotechnics.
By that time, the city will be winding down from a day in which its streets have become a stream of carnivals, with fire-eaters and samba-drummers jostling for space with dragons, giants and clowns. Among the companies taking part are Bedlam Oz from Australia, Bill Ferguson from the US, Peach from France and Saor Patrol from Scotland, while English company Creature Features will send four performers in strikingly realistic mountain gorilla guise wandering through the crowds.
They're unlikely, however, to make it into the civic reception this afternoon at City Hall, at which the President and other dignitaries will toast the year ahead and watch a production specially devised for the event by writer Ray Scannell, which will be performed by 106 children from Cork's Children Chorus. John Kennedy, director of Cork 2005, says he didn't want the civic reception to be simply about "great and good speeches". Not that there's anything wrong with speeches, he hastens to add.
"I just thought it was an opportunity to do something else. So this is a 20-minute piece where a group of children are looking for a perfect city, and the result is that they are actually in the perfect city. And there will be a moment at the end of it where the President will unveil the city as a result of that." Then, says Kennedy, it's back to wine and canapés.
Not for Dermot Quinn, however, who'll be keeping a close eye on the skies over the Lee. Early January is hardly the ideal time to stage a mammoth outdoor event in this country, and even less so when that event is taking place not near, but on a river.
In fact, says Quinn, in Ireland there's no ideal time: one of Spraoi's first shows after its inception in 1993 was to take place on a summer's day that dawned clear and warm - only for force-four gales to whip into town two hours before the show was due to start.
"Even rain doesn't bother us," says Quinn. "The real concern is high winds. At that point, it becomes a real risk for health and safety. You can't guarantee where fireworks will go in winds over a certain percentage. And it's a little bit to do with Ireland, and the culture we've come to - the whole claim culture - and the fact that there is no real history of this sort of work in Ireland: it's only within the last 10 years that it's kind of making an impact, and even at that it's a struggling impact. This work doesn't fit into the normal health and safety guideline boxes, because there is no guideline for this type of work. So what happens is that we have to run with guidelines set up for other areas that would be more stringent. And that's difficult."
Looking at the artists' impressions of Awakening, which Quinn has brought along to convey a sense of the production, it's easy to see why high winds would be an unwanted entity in Cork this evening. The scale is overwhelming, with a series of enormous structures set along the river's course designed to look like a massive serpent.
Its tail alone is the height of a two-storey house, and its body arches and dives under water and over the successive bridges, while its huge head seems to rise up defiantly towards the lights of the city's horizon. Though comprised of nine pod-like structures and realised by 36 performers, lighting designer Tom Kenny (who lit this year's MTV awards), sound designer Mark Graham and a host of technicians and engineers, this creature bears the look of something that has awakened all by itself. "We're trying to bring it to life over 600 metres of water," says Quinn. "It's a cliche, but the best way to describe it is probably the Lough Ness vibe. It's all smoke and mirrors, but it will look like it's physically, literally, spanning the whole width of the bridge and coming down to meet the water." At the end of the 15-minute spectacle, the "smoke and mirrors" of the serpent will segue into the firework display that will round off tonight's celebrations.
Spraoi's serpent may be a cousin of Nessie, but its direct origins lie closer to home, in a fragment of legend Quinn came across while researching his idea for the show on the Internet. "I came across a one-line reference to a story about the creation of the River Lee," he says. "The idea was that when Saint Finbarr came to Gougane Barra, where the Lee rises, he found a serpent in residence and couldn't set up a community, religious or otherwise, so he banished the serpent and threw it. And when it landed, the impact of its body - because it was a big serpent, as they are in all great legends - created the lake that was left as Lough Ine. I found another version of the legend where, when the serpent slithered away, its tail created the Lee."
It's not a well known legend; in fact, when Quinn himself went back to the online site where he first found it, he discovered - in a twist that itself bears traces of legend - that the reference was no longer there. Undeterred, Quinn took up the idea and developed it into a visual concept; collaboration with other artists brought the details into being. But it's the people who will be standing on the banks of the Lee tonight who are really responsible for its creation, he says.
"The production isn't really about St Finbarr and the serpent so much as using the serpent as a visual representation and an analogy of the Cork people, and how they make and build things.
"Early in the process when Cork was looking for the Capital of Culture designation, Tom McCarthy (assistant director of Cork 2005) talked about Cork people being makers and builders, and Cork people have a way . . . with words, of capturing it.
Alongside the serpent, individual performers will shape the production, dressed in costumes intended to evoke the trades and the activities that shape a city - office workers, industrial workers, carers, craftspeople. "As the show evolves," says Quinn, "what happens essentially is that they create a legend, that at some point in the show, the crowd will step back and realise that it has . . . a life of its own. It's about the new idea of a legend, as opposed to just telling an old tale in a new way."
A show of this scale doesn't come cheap, and Quinn is diplomatic when faced with questions of budget; he'll say only that a company from Europe would laugh at the amount Spraoi has to work with. "By our own standards, it would be a good budget, but it will be very tight," he says. "And it has been a case of robbing Peter to pay Paul during the whole process. But anyone working in the arts will know that has been a problem in Ireland in general. You know, European standards are just leagues ahead of us. And what Cork is trying to do, after all, is compete with Europe on this, and I think we will." He won't reveal figures, but John Kennedy says Awakening accounts for "between 30 and 50 per cent" of the €1 million spend allocated to this weekend's opening. Weary of talking about budgets, he's insistent that Cork can deliver on this sum.
"I think we're getting good value for money," he says. "They're short, sharp elements. We're going for the spectacular rather than the long drawn out." At this stage, he says, he's "defensive" about the budget, and the overall budget for the year, having come in for criticism from several fronts both for his handling of the Cork 2005 budget and for his failure to secure a budget comparable to the tens of millions enjoyed by previous European capitals of culture. Kennedy insists that the year can be done, and done well, on €13.5 million.
Quinn too is eager for proceedings to kick off. "A lot of it realistically won't come together until the night," he says. "You can't let off pyrotechnics for a dress rehearsal. And even with that, you know, we can't do a full rehearsal. If we were to do a full-scale rehearsal, we'd have a full scale show on our hands." But tonight, that's what they, and the people of Cork, will finally have.