This time last year, as a part our 40th-anniversary celebrations at Rough Magic, Diarmaid Ferriter hosted a conversation between founding members of four theatre companies that started life between 1983 and 1985.
Paul Mercier, of the Passion Machine, in Dublin, Jim Nolan, of Red Kettle, in Waterford, and Eleanor Methven, of Charabanc, in Belfast, joined me at Rough Magic’s base at Project Arts Centre for a brilliant session full of spiky, funny observation and unmistakable energy.
When Diarmaid described the bleak hinterland of 1980s Ireland, and the deep recession that prevailed, we agreed to a person that we were thankful not to have been aware of how dreadful everything was. For us the time was characterised by purpose, momentum and fun.
It makes me want to ask why there was such an explosion of creativity at such a grim time – and why conditions for the theatre industry in our newly wealthy, apparently progressive country are now so much less favourable.
Because they are really not good. Seven hundred and seventy people have now signed a letter, initiated by theatre practitioners and supported by the Performing Arts Forum and Irish Theatre Institute, urging the Arts Council to focus on the sector’s ongoing challenges.
The key issue is financial: council funding has gone up since the Covid pandemic, but the proportion of that money spent on theatre has gone down by about 9 per cent.
People are surprised when you point this out. Theatre gets a sizeable chunk of the budget, they say, and they’re not wrong. But when you look at how it’s distributed, how many people it needs to serve and how much civic, social and artistic interaction depends on the infrastructure provided by the theatre industry throughout the country, the picture becomes more complex.
It fluctuates from year to year, but nearly half of the Arts Council’s theatre spending goes to the Abbey; another quarter goes to the Gate, Druid and Dublin Theatre Festival. These are all important organisations, and not one is overfunded, but it leaves the rest of us – including long-established companies – financially hobbled. Emerging companies can only look on in perplexed despair.
There are significant areas where the difficulties are particularly acute.
For many decades the Abbey has been funded as Ireland’s national theatre – and has borne that title and responsibility. Some regard its funding – €9.5 million for 2025, up €1 million from last year – as disproportionate. I would argue that the responsibility it has been asked to take on is equally so.
The Abbey attempts, through its institutional infrastructure, to fulfil a leadership role, be custodian of the canon, support artists and new work, stimulate audiences, drive production models, form outreach initiatives – and on and on. The list is long and, I believe, overwhelming. I admire the Abbey’s current management greatly, but their job is staggeringly difficult.
Institutions have a vital role in supporting and sustaining art and artists. But the National Library and National Gallery of Ireland do not make art: they exhibit, curate, disemminate and support it. The Abbey is additionally tasked with the generation and production of theatre.
It has for some time been hard pressed to make work that can claim automatic superiority over the activities and work produced by companies that manage on a fraction of the Abbey’s budget. I believe the answer to this is not to reduce its funding but to deploy it more efficiently and to raise the State’s support for theatremakers across the country, to create a more level playing field.
Like most theatre companies – like many national theatres – the Abbey was set up by a couple of mavericks in partnership with an enlightened patron. It became a national theatre in response to the formation of a new republic and the need to assert a cultural identity. That great ambition was essential in forming the nascent State, but in the intervening century, particularly in the past two decades, the country has changed fundamentally.
The pathway to production is blocked by more and more barriers that in turn are guarded by fewer and fewer – and so disproportionately empowered – individuals
We need a national theatre for a 21st-century Ireland. No organisation can deliver this alone. The “single-vision ethos” once quoted in relation to the Abbey cannot serve the spectrum of activity across Ireland. A new generation wants to make theatre for a new audience and must be supported to do so on its own terms. A more generous, inclusive and – crucially – nationwide structure can help reignite the energy and creativity that have been sapped in recent decades.
The hugely cheering boom in TV and film production in Ireland, and the habits formed around screen consumption during Covid, have created new challenges for theatremakers. So I think it’s worth reminding ourselves that theatre and the spoken word are the bedrock of our cultural identity; Irish dramatists and actors invented the language of theatre in the English-speaking world, from Richard Brinsley Sheridan to Eugene O’Neill, from Peg Woffington to Fiona Shaw. Narrative theatre is a form in which we are world leaders, and our film industry consistently stands on that legacy. Film is a vibrant evolution of theatre, growing from its foundational roots.
The explosion of work that began in the 1980s was one of the great successes of Irish theatre. I was working in Glasgow and Edinburgh around the time that the National Theatre of Scotland was being set up. Irish theatre was then the envy of Scotland – and it wasn’t so much the institutions that excited admiration as the energy and diversity of the work coming to Edinburgh Festival Fringe from the independent companies that had mushroomed from the 1980s onwards.
But the economic crash forced the State to rein in spending – and the arts, seen as low-hanging fruit, were devastated. Successive funding cuts have resulted in the demise of more than 30 independent companies, to the great impoverishment of our theatre culture.
An idea took root that the profusion of administrative structures around small companies was wasteful, that the funding should go directly to artists. This sounds like good thinking, but what it really meant was that a very successful ecosystem that supported an astonishing amount of work, including by emerging artists, was dismantled in favour of rescuing the big institutions. That included perpetuating sluggish systems and patching up a series of high-level mishaps. This policy created a continuing divide in Irish theatremaking.
[ The Abbey’s €1m controversy: What went wrong?Opens in new window ]
For the remaining independent companies, partnerships with relatively well-funded producing houses are a means of survival. They are (puzzlingly) frowned on by the Arts Council, but, given the paucity of funding and its inefficient application, these arrangements are the only way work can be made. As a result the pathway to production is blocked by more and more barriers that in turn are guarded by fewer and fewer – and so disproportionately empowered – individuals.
And, at entry level, structures intended to increase access for artists offer totally inadequate sums that enable dreaming but not making. Given the lack of producers and administrative support, artists now have to self-produce, adding marketing and accountancy to their skill set when they should be focused on the rigorous process required for the creative act.
Make no mistake, business acumen is as necessary as artistic vision, but none of these skills can be fully practised part-time. Overload and burnout are inevitable, and diminution of the result increasingly evident. Some excellent producing hubs have been set up to support individual projects, but even they are overwhelmed. More are needed, but it’s worth observing that, when properly funded, independent companies such as Rough Magic are able to support emerging collectives at the same time as producing first-class professional shows with a mix of senior and emerging artists that frequently leads to intergenerational learning.
The opportunities to make and present work are now in the gift of a small number of people who are themselves under extreme pressure, from Dublin Theatre Festival to the Arts Council itself. This is a criticism not of individuals but of the chain of events that has created a hierarchy when what is needed is a self-sustaining, artist-led, democratic ecosystem.
A further pressure on the production of independent work concerns arts festivals. The problem, as far as theatre companies and artists are concerned, boils down to bottlenecks – but that’s another day’s work.
So how do we address this pickle?
A new structure could be formed around the diverse entities that make live theatre. This could mean a federation or consortium of theatre artists, managements and collectives, representing all regions and constituencies on the island of Ireland. Diversity is key, pluralism essential. Autonomous hubs across the country can determine the work they make and host, and the artists they support. This is already happening in centres such as Waterford and Limerick.
The Abbey Theatre would now become a linchpin in a new network that responds to and supports a 21st-century ecosystem. The Abbey must retain its funding and its production muscle, with a renewed remit to focus on its primary nature as a literary theatre and to support the development of playwriting – by playwrights – across Ireland.
[ Losses widen at Abbey Theatre even as revenue increasesOpens in new window ]
In terms of the burgeoning new forms and huge advances in scenography and design, the independent companies are already leaders. Project Arts Centre should be recognised as the national-theatre studio, by whatever title, and the spaces around the country that do similar work should be accorded the same status. Dublin Fringe Festival, originally run, like Edinburgh Festival Fringe, as a retort to the senior festival, has become a vital platform for new work and was our partner in setting up Rough Magic’s Seeds programme for emerging artists. Collaborations like these are the key.
The historical legacy of Irish theatre is that of its actors and playwrights, many of whom predate the Abbey. The more recent movement towards European models of production does not diminish this: we remain a culture characterised by mastery of the written word. Our writers are globally recognised, but their early work has frequently been championed outside this country – by new-writing houses in Britain, for example.
We need to refocus on making work for a national audience, honed within Ireland, before moving to international platforms. The Abbey can support this – it is already uniquely funded to do so – while remaining an anchor custodian of the classic canon from the Irish, anglophone and world theatre traditions. International exchange will be part of this remit, but it can be shared: Pan Pan has been covering this area for decades, supported by Culture Ireland. The skills and structures exist across the sector. Let’s make use of them.
To generate, fully develop and produce new or even canonical works will need co-production arrangements with artists and the companies who support them across Ireland. Work should frequently premiere outside Dublin. (Rough Magic’s Compass strategy of producing with partners in other cities has been one of our most successful recent initiatives.)
A significant development in the past few years is the number of artists who have moved out of Dublin, largely but not exclusively for economic reasons. A coherent plan for making, touring and sharing of work, built around artists and audiences in all parts of the country, must be part of a national endeavour by festivals and venues of every scale and nature, and in locations across Ireland, north and south.
And, yes, all this will need extra cash.
The funding of theatre as an art form must continue to be the responsibility of the Arts Council, but, if the sector is to be properly supported, some of the infrastructure cost will have to be borne by other bodies.
Given that two of the major buildings – and their accompanying costs – are in Dublin, the city’s council should contribute to the houses that offer some of its most iconic cultural experiences, both for tourists and for the home crowd. Around the country, the support for such buildings, and the staffing they need, is often the concern of the local authorities whose citizens they serve; there is no reason why that cannot apply to Dublin. But whatever the result of those conversations, the final responsibility must rest with the Department of Arts.
For too long the State has assumed that Irish theatre will just happen – because it kind of did. But we live in a harsher world than that of the 1980s. If the Government is serious about creating a cohesive, diverse and representative culture for all its citizens, and for sustaining an industry that is a major employer as well as a world-class cultural force, it must free up funding for the Arts Council to channel towards the creative artists and ensembles (including producers and technicians) who make possible the one experience left that cannot – cannot – be replicated by artificial intelligence.
This will all need to be researched, modelled and piloted. The pause in theatre production offered by the Covid-19 crisis was a useful period of reflection, but now is the time to arrest the deflation of a defining creative industry so long taken for granted.
I suspect that this movement will take place organically, but it would be very exciting to see the current national theatre help to lay the foundations for the new one. The key to this is to share the responsibility for the future strategy of theatre across the sector, by treating artists and collectives as a resource and not a problem, and by recognising that an adult conversation between the funding bodies that exist to promote art and the people who make it happen can be a fruitful endeavour.
