Where actors are all Cinderellas

'Just because I appear on TV does not mean I am rich" is a comment from an actor that features in this week's report on pay and conditions for those working in Irish theatre. And indeed the public might be surprised to learn how little even household names, or those regularly working at the top rates in our main theatres, earn.

It's not news that people working in theatre are badly paid. They work hard and are well-educated but have precarious careers, rotten pay and difficulty getting mortgages. This has been known for years, but with the publication of the Arts Council's new study, Socio-Economic Conditions of Theatre Practitioners in Ireland, the facts and figures are there as proof. And when you see them in black and white, they're pretty stark. As actor Jane Brennan commented on reading the report, it's shocking but not surprising.

Freelance theatre work is precarious, and the Hibernian Consulting survey found that its sample worked on average for 20 weeks a year, with median annual earnings from their main specialist areas of €5,500 (performers) €10,500 (production) and €19,675 (technical/ managerial). Actors are the Cinderellas of what is an appallingly badly paid sector, earning an average of €456 a week in the weeks they are working. Effectively, as Mary Cloake said at the survey's publication, theatre is subsidised by its practitioners (doing unpaid work and taking other jobs to pay the bills) and their spouses and families.

This research represents a starting point for improving the lot of theatre workers, and the council is looking for responses before lobbying or making recommendations. Some suggestions from actors included in the report indicate that the Department of Social Welfare has a long way to go in understanding what working in theatre involves ("what I do needs to be recognised as a proper job").

The survey found that many theatre people are good at managing on frugal incomes and juggling short-term contracts. And despite the poor pay and conditions, and the fact that many are forced to have multiple jobs, they love their work: the survey found that eight out of 10 would not change their occupation. See the report on www.artscouncil.ie

Friel needs no translation

The Royal National Theatre's autumn homage to Brian Friel is in full swing, writes Bernard Adams. While Aristocrats is pulling them in at the Lyttelton on London's South Bank, a touring production of Translations is filling theatres all over Britain.

I saw it at the Dome in Brighton, where a largely youthful audience was rapt. According to the director, Sean Holmes, the production got a similar reaction in the Lake District, in Liverpool and in Mold in north Wales, where of course the language issue would have added potency.

Interestingly, Translations is an NT Education Mobile production, which will nevertheless conclude in mid-November with a three-week run on a main stage - at the Cottesloe, the smallest and most versatile of the South Bank theatres.

"On tour, the audience may be 70 per cent young people," Holmes says. "They can be tough and you have to be honest with them and do the play as well as possible. Nicholas Hytner [director of the National] said the wanted this production to be a 'proper' National show."

It is one indeed, even if the necessarily portable set seems to owe more to Scandinavian wood than Donegal stone. The famous love scene between a young English soldier and the uncomprehending Irish-speaker, Máire, worked as well as ever as it swirled touchingly through comedy, pathos and sheer bafflement.

From early on, the soldier, Lieutenant Yolland (Tom Vaughan-Lawlor) was portrayed as a fish out of water in the British army. "This was a choice - not to make him the classic Englishman," says Holmes.

Holmes has already directed Aristocrats and he found Translations something of a revelation.

"It's so carefully conceived, the way it creates a whole world, starting deceptively simply in the first act and then kicking you in the shins in the third," he says.

What he likes most is the way Friel has made something so universal and timeless out of a highly specific historical situation.

Is Translations the Donegal maestro's masterpiece? He may go deeper in some other plays, but it's doubtful he has written anything more thought-provoking or ingenious - or if anyone has provided a clearer approach to understanding the implications of colonialism.

Shaping a broader vision

The Sculptors' Society of Ireland (SSI) has voted to adopt a new name and will in future be known as Visual Artists Ireland, writes Gerry Smyth. The change was voted in by a substantial majority at a recent emergency general meeting and is part of a rebranding programme. The organisation's membership has increased by 250 per cent over the past three years to its current level of more than 1,100, a rise partly attributable to the demise of the Artists Association of Ireland (AAI), which ceased trading in 2002. The loss of the AAI deprived artists of support and representation.

The name change reflects the broadening of the organisation's membership to include professional visual artists in all disciplines. It is envisaged that Visual Artists Ireland will take on a more pro-active advocacy and lobbying role, and it is currently campaigning for retention of artists' tax exemption.

"Over the past 25 years the SSI has continually responded and adapted to the needs and concerns of artists and has thus remained relevant to its constituency," said SSI chairwoman Therry Rudin. "This new phase of development is rooted in that same commitment to evolve with and engage with the major changes and developments in the landscape of the visual arts sector".

The new initiative will include a web-based information resource for artists, an information and advice inquiry centre, and a programme of national and international representation.

This year the SSI secured an additional €120,000 in funding from the Arts Council, which has been keen to see the re-establishment of a service organisation for visual artists. The new name will be launched by Arts Council member and artist Willie Doherty on November 18th at 7pm in La Catedral (Phoenix Studios), St Augustine Street (off Cornmarket), Dublin 8.

Sisterly support for Cork

While there have been strong visual arts events under the umbrella of Cork 2005, they have included projects originated outside the immediate organisation, including initiatives on the part of the Glucksman Gallery, the Sirius Arts Centre and Triskel, writes Aidan Dunne.

The European Capital of Culture has been tardy in producing major new projects of its own by big-name artists. Admittedly, luck has not been on its side: due to circumstances not within the organisers' control, a couple of significant events have had to be postponed (though one of these will come onstream when John Berger's collaborative show of drawings, made with Spanish artist Marisa Camino, opens in the Vangard Gallery on December 8th).

Given the record so far, Tacita Dean's new film and site-specific installation, curated by Sarah Glennie and also opening on December 8th, will be particularly welcome for Cork 2005, especially as the artist has zeroed in on a local subject.

During the summer, Dean spent some time with the nuns of the South Presentation Convent and was taken with the camaraderie that underscores the rituals of prayer, work and meals around which their lives are structured. Her hour-long film, Presentation Sisters, is a response to the daily routine at the convent, made with an awareness that the nuns embody the end of a tradition in a home built by the founder of the order, Nano Nagle.

For her installation, The Presentation Windows, she replaced the stained-glass windows in the chapel sacristy with panels of a type of Italian alabaster historically used in place of stained glass. She has inscribed drawings on to the translucent alabaster.

Dean is known for her thoughtful, understated film and installation pieces. One of her best-known films was inspired by the tragic voyage of the would-be round-the-world yachtsman, Donald Crowhurst, and an air of mystery and loss characterises her work as a whole. Her film and installation will be on view at South Presentation Convent, Cork from December 8th to 31st.