Picture by kmakinen
It’s funny the way things dovetail. Yesterday afternoon I put up a link to a song by Billy Bragg, ‘There Is Power in a Union’. It seemed to me a timely thing to do, as Cameron and Osborne flex their muscles and prepare to plunge us all into a new Thatcherite era. Later that day I heard that Dan Gordon (of One Night In November fame, and if you haven’t seen that play, Virginia, remedy that omission at the earliest possible moment)…Where was I? …Oh right. Dan Gordon was on BBC Raidio Uladh/Radio Ulster recently.
What was he on about? The performing arts, of course. Acting. What it comes down to is this. Belfast Metropolitan College is keen to sell or rent out their building at Tower Street. Why, you ask, Virginia? Because as the bank robber said, they want the money. A major stumbling block to this cunning plan is the existence of a Performing Arts course, which by all accounts is thriving, with 120 students at present on their books. Four weeks ago they auditioned 150 more for the course. What was Belfast Metropolitan’s reaction? Sorry, girls and boys – you’ll have to go to Bangor. No ifs, buts, maybes. Tower Street building is not for using.
It’s not as if this course was some airy-fairy exercise with no real connection with local theatre. As I say, Dan Gordon is in there expressing his indignation at BMC’s plans. So too is Paul McEnaney, the director of Cahoots Theatre Company NI and Jimmy Fay, who’s artistic director at the Lyric Theatre.
What is happening is that an axe is being taken to the world of theatre: the axe-wielder is Belfast Met and the life-line they’re thudding down on is the one that gives us a healthy arts industry here. If BMC have their way, there will be no one coming into that industry.
But those involved, as I say, are determined not to go quietly, if go at all. Dan Gordon has a a Facebook campaign going. There’s support from the public and from politicians like MLA Judith Cochrane of the Alliance Party. The students themselves have put together an online petition and have had over 1,000 signatures inside two days. The union is firmly behind the staff and students also.
Playwright Marie Jones says
“Before it was Belfast Met and BIFE and Rupert Stanley it was a waste ground where us kids from the streets around played and put on our little plays with sets made out of bricks and stones and whatever we could find, never thinking that one day kids like us would have a real theatre school a proper auditorium and a real opportunity..Now we are going back to the waste ground. Progress.”
Former Lord Mayor of Belfast and Sinn Féin councillor Niall Ó Donnghaile says:
“Concern is growing in East Belfast and beyond at the proposed closure of the pioneering and first class Performing Arts Course at Belfast Met in Tower Street. This afternoon I met with local actor Dan Gordon to discuss these concerns but also how we could start to energise a campaign against it. It will need and I’m confident it will get a unified response from all shades of political parties in this constituency as well as an enthused campaign from the students themselves and the broader arts community. I’ve already spoken with our Minister Carál Ní Chuilín about any support she can offer even though the department responsible for the proposed cut is Employment & Learning. The Save St. Mary’s Campaign showed that even when under vicious Tory attack from London, people power can still prevail! Why would DEL want to cut the very bedrock of our ever growing creative industries sector?!”
It’s a clear-cut battle: between money-making and a healthy arts industry. Think about it: if you’re like me, you’ll know that live theatre can pack an emotional wallop, can bring to life social issues, can entertain and at the same time educate us in ways that nothing else can. So if you’re on the side of Dan Gordon and other good people who want to keep healthy something that helps make us human, hurry to Dan Gordon’s Facebook page and learn more. If you’re on the side of Belfast Met and the money people and the axe-wielders, just sit there and scratch yourself.
But have a listen to Billy Bragg before you do. And listen out for two lines that capture what the struggle to resist cuts in general and the axing of the Performing Arts at Tower Street in particular is all about:
‘Money speaks for money, the devil for his own
Who comes to speak for the skin and the bone?’
As a somewhat reluctant axe-grinder rather than an axe-wielder, Esteemed Blogmeister, one is pleased to to inform you that down here in the not so wee Twenty Six theatre is thriving on all fronts.
(The reason why one is not an axe-wielder, incidentally, is because that particular market has been well and truly cornered by none other than The Woodman of Morning Ireland, who is known affectionately as The Edge among the media cognoscenti. And not just on account of the cute knitted woolen beanie he invariably wears on his hair while air-guitaring on air).
Take, as a random example, The Abbey Theatre /Amharclann Naisiunta na hEireann. Not just content with producing its statutory stage productions year on year in the underfunded Q’s English it has even gone out on a limb as recently as this week. To thrill the public with an add on app, as it were: free, gratis and for F All.
Entitled, modestly, a Noble Call for Marriage Equality. In which appearances were made by the,erm, nobility of the creative cohort of Irish society. Ranging from Roddy Doyle a la carte all the way to Gabriel Byrne (not to be confused with Gay Byrne) and other paragrons of the authentic bleedin Duballin accent, Joxer.
The usual apple-grumble of the disaffected malcontents was heard and for whom the Noble Call was, de rigeur,, dynamite.. Accusing the Abbey of bias and girls aloud, these Knockers of the No Bell conveniently overlooked the fact that down through the years on year the same National Theatre has been a consistent producer of the Japanese art form known as Noh Drama.
Pleasing too, to see the Big Kahuna of The Abbey Theatre (TAT), Senator Fiach O Conghail (mar is e a bhi ann !), overcoming his congenital diffidence to appear on telly with his T-shirt emblazoned with: T.A.T. (Tiocfiadh ar Ta !). Where once there used to be Pantos in the leprechaun (uggh !) every Chimbo, nowadays those Pantos have been replaced by Panti Hose (yippee !).
Cannot imagine somehow his predecessor, Earnan de Blaghd / Ernest Blythe or indeed, Micheal Mac Liammoir from the rival Gate Theartre, rising to such heights. But,then they both inhabited the pre-TATs era.
Thus, with its history of The Abbey says Noh ! this Nobel Call has been a balancing act, nothing more, nothing less, than any typical media circus act.
Indeed, so impressed by this generous gesture has Perkie’s inner haiku writer been that he was provoked to put pen to rice paper. There are two reasons for departing from his normal unsteady stab at a Limerick:
1. the Yepanese vibe and 2. the oft-alluded-to mere 17 words in the text of the Rederendum de dum to come.
Coincidentally,Article 26 of the Constitution of the Empire of the Rising Sun states, both explicitly and implicitly, that the number of syllables in a haiku is restricted to, yes, a mere 17 syllables.
Bearing this in mind, here go haiku of Pooh-bah Perkie:
Ursula Halligan on
the Mimsy O’Call Again Show
again
While the Abbey Theatre is located on the Left Bank of the Liffey matters dramatic are just as vibrant on the Right-on Bank. Specifically, in the Damer Theatre,oops the all-inclusive Unitarian Church, on St. Stephen’s Green. The oops moment comes about as during its dismal career as Dame Damer this theatre of dreams was confined to producing plays in compulsory leprechaun. Audiences broke all known theatrical records for non-attendance.
How different this delightful ‘space’ is during these vivacious days of overflow shows ! Especially ever since it became the Departure Du Jour venue of choice for recently deceased members of the motley crew known as the media. Not least those who were born Catholic and who died born-again Christians.
These sad but joyous all-inclusive ceremonies of fond farewell are invariably conducted through the underfunded medium of the Q.’s English.
One such still amongst us (TG/ Buiochas le Dia) is Archdeacon Patsy McGarry, who also doubles, curiously enough, as Religious Affairs Corespondent of The Unionist Times. He was in the Two Cathedral City of Armagh recently to report, in his fair but fairly hard-hitting style, on the doings of the dearly beloved delegates.
To, to wit, the most recent synod of the Established Church of the Establishment aka The Church of Ireland (sic). The news he brought back to the Two Cathedral City of Dublin was, alas, not at all of the joyous variety.
The disturbing tale he had to tell was that only 15 per cent of its target audience were turning up for its regular Sunday Morning services/shows.. Perkie’s inner number-savvy prebendary calculates .that 15 per cent of 15 per cent reduces – horrible dictu !- the Established C. of the E. (see above) to the diminished status of a (gulp) cult.
A Celtic cult, perhaps, but a cult, nonetheless.Let not that blunt fact be gainsaid.
What to do? In the context of the ongoing thespian text which this blog is being conducted, Perkie’s inner play producer has contrived to come up with a Solution.His contrivance has been focused on two elements, going forward; A. street theatre; and b. a vastly underused theatrical ‘space’.
To take A, first: street theatre is also in such a robust healthy state at the moment on the streets of Dublin.Which makes a mockery of the claims of the Galway-based Macnas group who speciously claim to be the sole practitioners of this particularly promiscuous art form.Where everything is left to, as is said, mar a deirteear, hang out.
Why, next Saturday alone, will give the lie to this bogus occidental claim when the Rainbow Colours of the victorious HY (Hissy Yis) campaign will celebrate its resounding victory from the bottom of Grafton Street to the bottom of O’Connel Street itself, in the Orient of Eire.
Already named, in full anticipation of success, as the ‘On a HY Parade’.
To get an inkling of just how riotously glorious the colours on offerwill be even as the cavalcade gaily steps on its way to Maire’s wedding to Mildred, the Norneverland (excluding Glenanne) native not familiar with the street topography of Dublin is referred to a painting of Picasso”s.
The one entitled ‘The Wimmin of Algeria’ which Pabs based on the original by Eugene Delacroix and which fetched a few drachmas, give or take,of late.It belongs to the genitalia genre, one understands. One uses the verb ‘based’ somewhat loosely as even the Ma’s of the original houris would find it a tad difficult to recognise their own dishy daughters from the second edish.
Featuring as it does the formerly curvaceous females morphed into ruby-lipped cubes and angular dandelion yellow harpies. Two eyes on the same side of the one nose sort of thingy.There is even a school of thought about one of the wimmin in the Picasso oeurvre which has no emphasis on the second syllable on his surname, unlike the Delacroix number.
To the effect that it bears a striking resemblance to a certain Dublin street character called (gulp) Ursula. Perkie dismisses that suggestion out of hand; his drachmas are securely on one, May Oblong. Fames in song and street rhyme alike.
But, of course, next Saturday’s exhuberant outpouring of love, compassion, courage,guts and joyous inclusivity will not be without its attending probs. Consider, for instance, the effect it will have on,yes, the horse population of Dublin.
Which, while it may well be less that 15 per cent of the entire equine poplualtion of Eireland are nonetheless worthy of our consideration.
And here’s where the criminally underused theatre ‘space’ comes into play: a solution which is so simple as to be almost simpleminded. Why not give the empty St.Patrick’s Cathedral a make over and transmogrify it into a stable and safe haven for the horses during the street theatre extravaganza.?
There has been a precedent, you know. Like when Oliver J. Cromwell in the 1600s stabled his cavalry of thoroughbreds in the same premises.. Certainly, some compromises might have to be swallowed but nonetheless, noblesse oblige.for the greater good of the theatrical life of the capital city.
Such as the commandeering of the those sacred pennants, The Union Jacks and the Union Jills for use as nosebags and other unmentionable purposes. Even though as one understands it, the s. of pennants is a central feature of the Established Church.
The replacing of hyms with houyhmhynms seems a small price to pay. Certainly a deal less than the number of drachmas the picture of Pabs fetched.
Let he who is without worts, and other objectors, take the next Dort out of town.
PS Just how much more progressive, civilised and tolerant we have become in the theatre of the Free Southern Stateen, Esteemed Blogmeister, is evidenced by the Noble Call for Marriage Equality one night stand at the (world famous) Abbey Theatre.
Which was further ennobled by the (blessed) absence of any theatrics on the part of the sheep-like audience which had been shephered into their seats without a baaa of dissent . And who seemed to actually wallow in having the right-on message, erm, rammed down their compliant throats.
A far cry indeed from the shambles of 1970 downstairs in the same venue. This was the hullabaloo/ raic, ri ra agus ruille buille which punctuated the Peacock Theatre production of ‘A State of Chassis’, a politico-polemical-satirical revue to do with the to-do in Norneverland.
The rumpus erupted when the then Chairman of the Derry Labour Party simultaneously jumped out of both his seat and his skin, sprinted down the aisle and vaulted on to the stage in an Olympian display of anything but ovine compliance.
-This display of the struggle against British Imperialism in Northern Ireland is abysmally ignorant !
Roared the interrupter in a perfectly rip-Roaring Megaphone type baritone with just a soupcon of the Lecky Road reasonableness to add the required spice to the voice.
Needless to say, the lackeys of British Imperialism who had meanwhile remained seated were not best pleased. And one mezzo-soprano voice which was accented in such a way as to suggest daily readership of The Unionist Times, shrilled:
-The only solution is non-violence !
-Non-violence my bottom ! Tell that to the British Imperialists.
The Afro-topped white boy who had commandeered the stage did not, in fact, use the b-word to describe his back passage but rather the a-word. Which goes to show just how far we have matured linguisically down here on Liffeyside. Bottoms up all round these liberated, giddy and anal-retentive days.
The director and co-script writer of the revue then intervened.
Tomas Mac Anna (mar is e a bhi ann !): The show will go on.
To which the space invader retorted:
Eamonn Mac Cann (for it was he !): Anyone who thinks that the events in Northern Ireland are a matter for laughter is a hypocrite.
To which his namesake (after a fascistic fashion) responded, to the audience:
-All we can say is to echo the words of Byron: if we laugh at any mortal thing, is that we may not weep.
But then, what would someone with an uncouth name like ‘Mac Anna’ know? Troglodyte proponent of this culture-identity thingy called the Gaelic that he undoubtedly was.
-Go to hell !
Piped another in the unmistakable mezzo-baritones of a TUT reader. Which words of friendly advice were like Foyle water of the Derry duck’s back, being the professed non-believer in the h-place that he was. In fact, either h-place.
After much pulling and dragging (such as is associated with the G.A.Association who promote an barbarian game called bogball that the bland Bogsiders do not play) the gallant one-man show called McCann was ejected from the premises.
Though not before he was heard to bellow below in the lobby:
– ‘The actors are bucklepping around the stage for the delectation of those Dublin people who can afford 17s 6p a seat’.
Ah, yes: the reduction of all to shillings and pence. Which begs two questions:
A: can you spare a copper, sor?
and
B: who paid the 17 Queen’s shillings and sixpence for the ticket of the impoverished Foyle-side prole?
Still, Eamonn McCann (who, hopefully can still make all n’s meet) was sadly missed at the Noble Call for Marriage in TAT (The Abbey Theatre) and thespian wing of TUT (The Unionist Times).
Whatever can have happened to McCann? Can it be that the fellow has actually mellowed even as he enters the sere and yellow,erm, stage of life?
Or.
Or, could it be -perish the v. thought !’ – that with the profusion of McCanns and Mac Annas on display in the Peacock that melodramatic night back in 1970, that Perkies’ memory has become muddled in a puddle of senior moments?
Could it, in fact, not have been Eamonn McCann at all at all but that arch blue collar radical (gasp)……. Edward du Cann?
Is doigh liom gur coir go nochtfar an fhirinne / One suspects we ought to be told.
“There is no prejudice that the work of art does not finally overcome.” Gide