NATIONAL PUBLIC FUNDING FOR THE ARTS IN 2008

Theatre Forum, the voice of the performing Arts have recently updated Second Age on expectations for Arts Funding for the coming year, and unfortunately it does not bode well for either our audiences or the Arts Community in general. They are urging that we lobby more actively to have our collective voice heard and ask that increased funding be allocated by Government to the Arts Council so that companies such as Second Age can continue to develop and improve the programme that we are providing. Several of our audience have already responded to our surveys and the response is unanimous: that Second Age is of enormous value to a national audience, and without our programme that several thousand students nationally would be "disadvantaged". The following is the update and call for support from Theatre Forum. We urge that you write to the people mentioned below and post your responses here, where we will be happy to forward them on your behalf......


You may have seen the pre-budget announcement last Friday. Theatre Forum's understanding is that the Department of Arts Sport and Tourism has been awarded €654 million for 2008, an increase of €6 million on this year. However €253 million of this - i.e. 38.7% - is capital money.
According to the Examiner newspaper:
Most of the increase is going to the tourism sector;
36% less will be spent on cultural infrastructure, 20% less on cultural programming;
The national cultural institutions such as the National Museum, National Gallery, and National Concert Hall are down 11%. There is one exception, the National Gallery is getting a 14% increase, bringing their budget to €13.3million.
So the signals are not good in terms of funding for the Arts Council and hence for arts organisations next year.
We are obviously going to have be more active as an arts community and fight for as much as possible for the Arts Council. At the risk of stating the obvious this involves you making representations to your local TDs, and to Minister Seamus Brennan ASAP. Ideally this could take the form of a letter to start with followed, where possible, by a meeting in their constituency office.
WHO'S ON THE ARTS, SPORT AND TOURISM COMMITTEE IN THE DAIL
The new Committees were announced last night by the Taoiseach. The Chair of the Oireachtas Arts Committee is Mr M.J.Nolan, a Fianna Fail TD from Carlow Kilkenny, the Vice Chair is Mr Michael Kennedy, a newly elected Fianna Fail TD for Dublin North.All TDs can be contacted c/o, Leinster House, Kildare Street, Dublin 2, or via their local constituency offices which is better for local events. The other members are:
Áine Brady (FF Kildare North) newly elected
Cyprian Brady (FF Dublin Central) newly elected
Sean Connick (FF Wexford) newly elected
John Curran (FF Dublin Mid West)
Dinny McGinley (FG Donegal South West)
Olivia Mitchell (FG Spokesperson on the Arts) Dublin South
John O'Mahony (FG Mayo) newly elected
Mary Upton (Labour Party Spokesperson on the Arts) Dublin South Central
Jack Wall (Labour Kildare South)
Mary White (Green Carlow Kilkenny) Deputy Leader of the Green Party
0rganisations based in these constituencies should ensure the TDs are notifed of arts events in the area and invited along.

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Set Designed by Eileen Diss for Philadelphia, Here I Come!

Eileen Diss the Multi Bafta Award Winning Designer whose work includes classic films such as 84 Charing Cross Road, Jeeves and Wooster and the Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, to name but a few, is the designer of Philadelphia, Here I Come! On opening night she gave as a good luck card to all the cast and crew a card with the most exquisite drawing detailing the Set of Philadelphia, Here I Come!

The following interview that I found on the Bafta.org website gives an idea of what an illustrious and diverse career Eileen has had.


Award-winning production designer Eileen Diss reflects on her 50-year career with Quentin Falk.

Eileen Diss wears more than half a century of production design very lightly indeed. Yes, she admits that the idea of driving herself to a remote film or TV location at six in the morning is, these days, perhaps less than appealing. But that hasn't stopped her from recently commuting between Dublin's Gate Theatre and London's Barbican where she has been tirelessly involved with simultaneously staging no fewer than ten of Samuel Beckett's plays.

It has, by any standards, been a brilliant career from those very earliest days at the BBC in the Fifties where her skills were required on everything from 'The Sunday Play' and Muffin The Mule to Maigret and The Railway Children. Film and theatre followed along with BAFTA awards for TV's Jeeves & Wooster and Longitude as well as further nominations for A Dance To The Music Of Time and Porterhouse Blue.

That kind of small-screen recognition, along with an RTS Lifetime Achievement Award in 2002, together with this year's Special Award at the British Academy Television Craft Awards might explain why, when pressed about her preference, she notes that TV has probably afforded her most enjoyment. No, not because of the trophies but, she explains ever businesslike, "simply because of the multi-camera. Logistically, it's very interesting to plot a studio." This was especially true in the days of live television drama. "That was fun," she sighs, a little nostalgically.

The daughter of a dental technician and a sometime dress designer, Diss grew up in East London with an addiction for film from her teens and a burning desire to get into the industry. Her letters to the likes of legendary art director Carmen Dillon received polite replies but no concrete result.

But after eventually graduating in theatre design at the Central School, one of her father's wartime contacts paid off with an invitation for to meet the head of design at the BBC. Six months later, she received a letter asking if she'd like to join one of their production courses. She'd love to, Diss replied, but how much would it cost her? "No, we will be paying you £9 a week."

It was such fun, she recalls, "but then everything was fun when you're 21. After the six-week course we went into Lime Grove to assist people. I'd never done any technical drawing as such but you learn that very quickly. There were ten designers in all and I had no long term thoughts at all; I was happy just getting on with it."

After her second child - Diss, who was widowed a decade ago, has three children (her oldest, Dany, is an award-winning costume designer) and six grandchildren - she went freelance in 1959, "although I still worked totally for the BBC. The idea was that I wouldn't be working full-time as I had two small children, but it didn't seem to work out like that; it was as intense as ever."

Early highlights for her include Maigret and one of Ken Loach's earliest TV plays, Up The Junction - "Ken looked rather like a sixth former then - come to think of it, he still does" - before, thanks to introduction from Harold Pinter, her feature film debut in 1973 for Joseph Losey. A Doll's House, with a contractually all-powerful Jane Fonda, took her "to a little town in Norway just below the Arctic Circle. It was all a bit of a shock for me because I had to go by myself and set it all up. At the BBC I'd been used to big backup; now I was all alone in the snow. It was very hard and although educational, I can't say I really enjoyed it struggling to keep 10 minutes ahead of things.

"Did I have a bigger budget to work with? Oh God, no. I've never done anything with a big budget. They've always been minute. I'm not even sure I'd be comfortable with a big budget because I'm now so used to small art departments."

Her award-nominated production design has generally been associated with period drama - Longitude skilfully recreated the mid 18th Century while Jeeves & Wooster veritably dripped turn of the Thirties - though her own historical preference is for the 19th and early 20th Century. "I like in particular the social history of those periods and have a read a lot of it."

It is, though, typical of Diss, at just 75 still ever the team player, that TV design-wise, she prefers instead not to sing her own successes but rather pay tribute "to a whole area out there which is far more inventive.

"I'm talking about really big studio complexes for something like Strictly Come Dancing. Those are staggering sets, yet they never seem to be considered for awards," she harrumphed, elegantly.

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Saturday Independent review - 20.10.2007

On Saturday Anitra Guidra wrote a great review of Thursday nights show ...


A second coming for signature Friel play
Anita Guidera
Saturday October 20 2007


THE challenge for cast and crew with a composition as played as this Friel masterpiece is to find its freshness anew.


In fact, two of the cast from this Second Age production played the same roles in Adrian Dunbar's version in the Gaiety. Walter McMonagle reprieves his role as taciturn father, S B O'Donnell, and a charming Marty Rea as Gar Private.

But with lightness of touch, director Alan Stanford succeeds in eliciting from a talented cast a keen sense of the repressive early 1960s in rural Ireland.

This is aided by a meticulously detailed set by award-winning designer Eileen Diss.

Here, in this Donegal backwater of Ballybeg, Gar Public, performed with sensitivity and youthful exuberance by Donegal-born rising star Sean Stewart, is on the cusp of cutting loose for Philadelphia.

Dimension

His inner turmoil, actualised by Rea's Gar Private, gives the play its dimension as he struggles with lost love and desperately seeks an eleventh-hour demonstration of love from an uncommunicative father.

Among the theatrical high points is the poignant visit and awkward embrace of Gar from old schoolteacher, Master Boyle (Enda Oates), who is drowning his love for Gar's dead mother in alcohol, and Aine Ni Mhuiri's touching performance as world weary Madge, about to lose the closest thing she has ever had to a son.

But tying it all together is humour, not just from the excellent mimicry of Gar Private and the thinly-veiled pathos of Aunt Lizzy (Joan Sheehy), but from the lads who call to say goodbye only to distract themselves from the moment with grandiose claims of their own past conquests.

Perhaps stealing the show is the hilarious John Olohan as smug Canon Mick O'Byrne, one of the few characters who's truly delighted with himself and his lot.

- Anita Guidera

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Packed Houses in Donegal

Over the last 5 days, the Second Age production of Philadelphia, has played to almost 2,000 people, and the overwhelming response is that this production is a hit..... The show opened to a predominantly school audience on Wednesday 17th October, and only 29 of the 393 seats at an Grianán were empty. The following day another Matinee with not one seat empty in the house, and that night, the first non-schools performance took place. With nearly every seat in the house taken at an Grianáns beautiful new auditorium, the atmosphere was fantastic. Every nuance and subtle play of humour was seized upon by the delightfully attentive audience and when the cast took their bow, and the Donegal audience gave them their first standing ovation.

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Philadelphia Here I Come - Dress Rehearsal Shots

On Tuesday last at the Dress Rehearsal, we got some production shots. See for yourself just how beautiful the show looks

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PHILADELPHIA Publicity Stills - Photos: Anthony Woods

Have a look at some of the great stills we got for Philadelphia, Here I Come! and let us know what you think of them....

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