ArtScape: As the Arts Council awaits the outcome of the financial audit to find out how and why the Abbey Theatre ended up with an extra, and undetected, €900,000 loss for 2004, a recent statement from Merrion Square promises Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue that it will soon be able to provide him with "detailed advice" on introducing governance change in the theatre.
Presumably this entails reform or even abolition of the outdated shareholding structure that is the National Theatre Society and putting a new board in place now that Fiach Mac Conghail has taken over day-to-day direction of the company. The Arts Council statement reports that "considerable progress has been made on the change programme, which is advancing according to our timetable".
It is understood that Mac Conghail has been putting a "change programme" in place, proposing a new management structure, revamping marketing and communications and continuing a successful voluntary leaving scheme for staff. As part of management reorganisation two new senior positions are to be created: a director of finance and administration and a director of external affairs who will be responsible for marketing, communications and front-of-house. What is awaited, along with the fiscal audit, is detail of how the much trickier governance reform - which has legal implications - can be implemented.
The Arts Council believed that the independent financial review by KPMG would be completed by next Tuesday, in time for an Abbey board meeting the council thought was taking place on that day. But this is not the case.
Sources at the Abbey - where there is some annoyance that the council issued a premature statement - say its board will not meet until the findings of the audit are available and only after any named individuals in the report have been given time to respond. With the audit taking longer than the Arts Council might have expected, there appears to be some impatience in Merrion Square, which is still holding most of the €2 million which O'Donoghue provided as additional funding for what the council insisted had to be a "comprehensive restructuring programme". Mindful of the lack of vigilance that allowed the €900,000 to vanish unnoticed into a black hole, the Arts Council, in its toughly worded statement, promises a further review "of accounts for the six-month period, January to June, to establish the half-year returns". This is likely to take place in August.
Minister's new adviser
"Imaginative" and "astute" were two words used this week to describe Fiach Mac Conghail's successor as arts adviser to Minister of Arts John O'Donoghue, who takes up his position on Monday. Tony Sheehan, who is currently a programme director and director of community-based projects for Cork 2005, steps into the role Mac Conghail has played since O'Donoghue's appointment to the Department of Arts in 2002.
There had been speculation that O'Donoghue, who is now settled and at ease with the arts brief, might not seek to replace Mac Conghail, who is regarded as having had considerable influence on arts policy and direction during his tenure as adviser. However, in view of O'Donoghue's triple responsibility (sport and tourism as well as arts), many in the arts will be relieved that someone acting on their behalf will have the Minister's ear.
One immediate comment about Cork-born Sheehan was that he has a "grassroots, on-the-ground sense of what is happening".
Prior to starting his job with the Capital of Culture, Sheehan was director of Fire Station Artists' Studios in Dublin's north inner city, establishing and developing the facility over 10 years and forging partnerships between artists and local communities. His experiences as an artist and as an arts manager (at Cork's Triskel Arts Centre) are bound to have helped form the views he will bring to the Minister in his new part-time position.
Tricycle to the Abbey
The Tricycle Theatre's celebrated dramatisation, Bloody Sunday: Scenes From the Saville Inquiry, will play at the Abbey during this year's Dublin Theatre Festival, writes Patrick Lonergan. The Tricycle's director, Nicolas Kent, has always hoped to bring the play to Ireland, but being invited to stage it at the Abbey is a massive endorsement for a show that has earned universal praise since it opened in London last April.
The Abbey's new director, Fiach Mac Conghail, has frequently expressed his admiration for the Tricycle's dramatisations of legal tribunals. At a 2004 Theatre Forum event on the subject, he suggested that Irish theatres needed to produce similar work as a way of showing leadership in Irish society. The arrival of Bloody Sunday in the Abbey shows that Mac Conghail isn't wasting any time in providing such leadership. There's sure to be huge enthusiasm for the show when ticket sales begin in mid-July.
The announcement of the run was made at a conference on Irish theatre in England, at London's National Portrait Gallery last week. The conference showed that Bloody Sunday is just one in a series of fascinating English productions about Ireland. Ben Levitas recalled that John Bull's Other Island was performed at Downing Street for Asquith and George V during the 1911 Home Rule crisis and we also learned that Lennox Robinson's lighthearted play, The Whiteheaded Boy, toured England while the Black and Tans were being unleashed in Ireland.
Theatrical traffic between these islands hasn't focused exclusively on Anglo-Irish conflict. One speaker discussed how Irish dancing was smuggled into the repertoire of the English Royal Ballet. Irish director Yvonne McDevitt spoke passionately about her attempts to produce James Joyce's Exiles in England, arguing that this much-dismissed play should be seen as a "European classic". So far, she's failed to secure the rights for a professional production from the Joyce estate.
"Joyce's works come out of copyright in 2016," said McDevitt. "I'll be ready to do the show when that happens." This was the second annual conference of the Irish Theatrical Diaspora project, an international network of scholars headed by Nicholas Grene of Trinity College Dublin.
Imma tremors subside
Given its brief but turbulent history, a tremor of anxiety must run through the Irish Museum of Modern Art (Imma) when the appointment of the board comes up for consideration, as it did last week, writes Aidan Dunne. The way things worked out, though, there were probably sighs of relief all round, the most important appointment turning out to be a re-appointment, with Eoin McGonigal SC remaining as chairman.
McGonigal is regarded as having been instrumental in getting the museum back on track following the acrimony over the departure of Declan McGonagle as director. He oversaw a long process that led to the appointment of Enrique Juncosa, who has been a popular and effective director.
Others who remain on the board, apart from McGonigal, are: civil servant Chris Flynn; writer, artist and actor Gerard Mannix Flynn; journalist Emer O'Kelly; PR executive Jackie Gallagher; Rosemary Ashe, of the Irish Youth Orchestra; artist Pauline Flynn; and Kevin Kelly, of Business2Arts. They are joined by seven newcomers: Frank X Buckley, known as a significant patron of the arts and for his work with the Contemporary Irish Art Society (CIAS); curator and lecturer Valerie Connor; Irish Times film correspondent Michael Dwyer; Brendan Flynn, director of Clifden Arts Festival; artist and gallery proprietor Aine O'Driscoll; artist and collector Brian Ranalow, also active in CIAS; and Patricia Tsouros, patron, collector and founding member of the Imma Foundation.
There are some good appointments here, as well as some that might be described as quirky. In announcing them, Minister for Arts John O'Donoghue rightly alluded to the popularity of many of Imma's recent exhibitions, but a reference to the Luas stop at Heuston Station improving accessibility to the museum is a bit rich. It improves accessibility in the sense that pretty much anything would be an improvement. A car remains the best option for access.
Art awards closing date
The closing date for this year's RDS Student Art Awards is Friday next, July 1st. The fact that the total award fund is now in excess of €25,000, and that the major Taylor Art Award is a significant €15,000, should in itself be a considerable incentive. The winning and commended entries will be exhibited at the RDS as part of the Dublin Horse Show from August 3rd to 7th.
www.rds.ie; 01-6680866.