'Wretched' pay for Irish actors, says judge

Prof Nicholas Grene was loudly applauded at The Irish TimesTheatre Awards in Dublin when he said: "The 2005 Arts Council report on the conditions of theatre practitioners in Ireland made us all aware of just how wretchedly Irish actors are paid; I don't imagine that it has got significantly better since then."

The event at the Burlington Hotel on Sunday night was attended by more than 400 guests, most of them actors.

Delivering the judges's speech, on his own behalf and of colleagues Maureen Kennelly and Sinéad Mac Aodha, Prof Grene of Trinity College's English department, saluted "the excellence of the work being done in Irish theatre".

In the course of 2006 the three judges had attended "between 140 and 150 shows all over the island". He said it had been astonishing to see "the range and depth of theatrical work, of plays and operas of every scale and form", adding "it is very much nationwide, not only in the greater Dublin area . . . not only in Belfast, Sligo, Galway, Limerick and Cork, but in smaller theatres and arts centres up and down the island".

Prof Grene said they were especially pleased to see the return of touring, "a development that is bound to benefit theatre everywhere". The judges were also "particularly struck by the work of younger actors and actors in mid-career and their professional versatility, their capacity apparently effortlessly to take on such a huge range of roles" and they "were excited by the number of new, talented companies coming forward".

He noted that "the standard line among theatre historians has always been to say that the Irish theatrical tradition is a literary one". There had also been complaints "about the insular and unadventurous nature of Irish theatre, uninfluenced by the dramatic practice of the wider world", but "none of this is true any more".

"Irish theatre is now well internationalised; in the course of the year we saw American, English, German, Spanish and Norwegian plays, not to mention our own Playboy of the Western World rendered into modern Chinese."

He also disclosed that some of the most heavily contested categories in the awards were in design. "Again and again we have seen strikingly creative uses of set and lighting, the skilful use of mixed media, group-created and site-specific shows."

This was true even of smaller companies working to very limited budgets, he said.

Paying tribute to Gerry Smyth, managing editor at The Irish Times, Prof Grene was applauded again when he said: "We are lucky, The Irish Times is lucky to have someone in this senior position with such a deep commitment to the arts. I had known Gerry for years as a fine poet, but I hadn't been aware until this last year of just how serious his interest in theatre was."

He extended the judges' thanks to Mr Smyth, to the newspaper, and "especially to Natasha Keogh" who had day- to-day responsibility for running the awards "and who looked after us so well".