Theatre sector's low salary levels criticised

Anyone who read last year's Arts Council survey of "the scandalous pay and conditions that operate within the theatre sector" should have been dismayed at the extent to which people were expected to subsidise their profession, Gerry Smyth, managing editor at The Irish Times, told those attending The Irish Times Irish Theatre Awards ceremony.

What was perhaps most remarkable about Irish theatre in recent years was that people continued working in the area in such numbers, and with dedication and commitment, he said.

"Apart from the precarious reality of theatre as a career, I am thinking of the frugal nature of the rewards," he said.

He was speaking at the awards ceremony in Dublin's Burlington hotel on Sunday night.

On the same subject, host Pauline McLynn noted the same Arts Council report had established that the average annual wage for a performing artist in Irish theatre in 2004 was €7,000.

She said that a nominee for one of the awards, "a very successful and talented performer, earned €12,000 from theatre work last year".

She further pointed out that "if you earned top whack as an actor at the Abbey for 52 weeks you'd earn €46,000, €36,000 at the Gate". In her view these salaries were "less than the starting salary of most primary school teachers".

The chairman of the awards judging panel, Tony O'Dalaigh, said that from feedback they had received in attending over 150 productions around the country in 2005 "the general question of touring needs attention" with "too many one-man and two-person shows, an obvious decline in large or even mid-scale productions".

He also suggested The Irish Times create two new categories in the annual awards - one for sound, "as important a medium as lighting or set design", and another for "hard working venue staff".

He was applauded when he noted that the Arts Council's budget for 2006, at €72.3 million, was an increase of €10.8 million on 2005 and commented "Minister O'Donoghue deserves much credit and our thanks for his success at Cabinet on behalf of the whole arts community".

Mr O'Dalaigh said that "guaranteeing increased grant levels to the Abbey in 2007 and 2008 certainly suggests to me that the Arts Council must be confident that their own Government subvention will not be ungenerous in those years and I am sure that many companies here would, following the Abbey, welcome the reintroduction of multi-year funding".

Speaking of The Irish Times's involvement with the event, now in its ninth year, Gerry Smyth said the newspaper was "very happy to continue this commitment to Irish theatre".

It was also happy to know the theatre sector continued to value the awards "and this annual event to which you bring a sense of occasion and true celebration, and at which you give testimony to that remark of John Millington Synge's that 'all art is a collaboration'."

He praised the three judges Tony O'Dalaigh, Patrick Sutton and Philomena Byrne, who had been "unstinting in their commitment and devotion throughout the year and I want to express our thanks to each of them".

The judges for 2006 are Maureen Kennelly, Nicholas Grene and Sinead Mac Aodh.

As before, the night belonged to Pauline McLynn who slew dragons, a lot of bull, and a Hindu festival of sacred cows, all without a drop of blood. Well, apart that is, from an anecdote from Colm Toibin's 50th birthday party last year. There, as she recounted it, Gate theatre director Michael Colgan "became embroiled in a row with feisty Irish writer Tom Murphy," and "blood was noticed on the playwright's furrowed brow". Further indelicacies followed, to the great delight of her audience.