02/04/2008:
Festival Director's Address at Festival Launch
Address by Brian Merriman Artistic
Director of the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival at the
launch of the Festival’s programme 2008 at the Cultivate Centre in
Temple Bar on Wednesday April 2nd 2008.
"It is hard to believe that we are here
to launch the fifth programme of this event that has grown at an
incredible pace since its inception in 2004. I am overwhelmed by the
support and enthusiasm for this unique event and for the wonderful
new voices and audiences that are finding a cultural space within
this event. The programme is a most dynamic one – with plays on
religion, race, Iraq, the holocaust, gay marriage, Irish
revolutionaries, historical figures, and current gay life love and
culture. This year we will present a staggering 216 performances of
42 plays and events in city centre venues over 16 nights, including
34 World, European and Irish premieres – question for the Arts
Council – why do you classify this as a small festival?
The context for the fifth Festival is
very clear. Professor Roy Sargeant from South Africa who will deliver
the Dr Aiden Rogers Memorial lecture this year self described his gay
generation of the 1960s as the ‘timid generation’. That got me
thinking to what we might be in the 21st century. Thanks
to the many brilliant people who championed gay rights in a more
unkind Ireland, we are now the ‘explaining generation’.
The Context for the Festival
I think this European Year of
Intercultural Dialogue is a valid context for the Fifth International
Dublin Gay Theatre Festival – one that embraces the challenge,
along with many others, to dialogue with wider society and to explain
who we are. The anticipated Gay Rugby World Cup – the Bingham Cup
in DCU in June and our newly revamped Pride celebrations will make a
most positive contribution to our growing sense of self esteem and
celebration, as does the work of new groups like Marraigequality and
Noise in cooperation with the many long standing pioneering groups
that have realised so much positive change for gay people in Ireland.
It is appropriate that The European
year of Intercultural Dialogue is not narrowly defined or confined to
visible diversity such as race or ethnic origin. It is an opportunity
to give space to many diverse aspects of the cultures that co-exist
on this Island. That is what this Festival does well. We engage
mainstream Ireland in a standards driven arts dialogue which presents
our culture and explores and discusses its characteristics, value and
relevance through theatre as an art form.
It is essential that we do explain
ourselves as we still struggle for our human rights in a modern
pluralist society. Noel Coward said in 1969 that he didn’t want to
offend people’s prejudice by coming out. Today politically it’s
still the same. When it comes to human rights, like the right to
love, marry and raise a family, we find ourselves in that peculiar
situation in Ireland. Certainly progress is being made. Indeed
compared to some countries which submitted proposals to the Festival,
it is wonderful to see this Festival in Ireland, and Dublin, the
birthplace of Oscar Wilde, being that international centre for
intercultural dialogue on gay theatre, life and culture
Politics and Marriage
We may be on the brink of finally
getting civil union. Following defeated legislative proposals from
Senator Sheila Terry of Fine Gael, Deputy Brendan Howlin of Labour
and of course our Festival’s esteemed Patron, Senator David
Norris’s Bill looking to have same sex relationships recognised on
a par with marriage, the Government parties are committed to bringing
forward new legislation. What is emerging may be a very welcome
development in one way, but it is in danger of being the first piece
of legislation to formalise a lesser status of citizenship for gay
people since criminalisation was erased in 1993. I hope it won’t
come to that.
Why is same sex marriage proving
difficult, especially when one appreciates the sincere bona fides of
many politicians in pursuing this rights agenda on our behalf?
Opinion polls show 58% in favour of gay marriage, only 26% are in
favour of gay people forming civil union’s but not marriage and yet
it appears this view may prevail. With such overwhelming support
for gay marriage, the political system still struggles with the
consent for equal legal provision. It is not because gay people are
different per se – it is because we are treated differently,
because we have been constructed differently, by those who seek to
oppress us through the negative stereotype. The Festival plays an
important cultural role in challenging this prejudice, alongside the
many policy and political groups that campaign actively for change
within and beyond the gay community.
The sensitivities of the prejudiced
always seem to take precedence over the need for civil society to
ensure access to basic human rights for all its citizens. Like Noel
Coward, Irish society still regards the prejudice over the human
right, for fear of offending the sensitivities of those who show us
no sensitivity, as they offend us by their discriminatory utterances
and beliefs. This is why the work we do in the Festival, especially
in this European Year of Intercultural Dialogue is so important.
Gay Identity
Gay people are often defined as just
and only that – gay. We, as people, apparently have no other
significant attributes other than the negative stereotyping of our
sexuality. In the Festival we use the term gay as part of the concept
of the whole identity of the artist. I am fully aware that there are
gay artists, administrators and people who don’t like, or are not
comfortable with, what we do – emphasising the whole identity of
the valuable contribution gay and lesbian people make to society –
clearly in the cultural context here through theatre as an art form.
Internalised and externalised homophobia, developed as a result of
witnessing discrimination, is ongoing and deeply felt in Ireland. The
quality and richness of the art presented I hope will help combat
that barren homophobia while hugely entertaining and informing our
diverse and growing audience.
This Festival and many other great gay
community initiatives, are the best response to such learned
negativity. Gay people are many things – but we are confined by
wearing only one label. In proudly acknowledging that label, we do so
as a defining part of the whole identity of the artist. It is not
acceptable to laud the art and loath the artist. This is the
challenge of gay theatre.
Being gay is not just a description of
a sexual orientation but a description of a culture of expression, of
love, of struggle, of oppression and of liberation. It is an emerging
culture. We struggle for the whole identity of the artist to be
acknowledged in the works we present. We present high quality works
without censorship, that allow us a unique opportunity to dialogue
with other cultures in our society. I salute all who participate in
this event for their openness and their willing to communicate
culturally with a society, like so many others, that is far behind in
its appreciation of the full nature and diversity of human life and
love. I salute the ambition, artistic integrity and high productions
values achieved often with scarce resources.
Different Treatment
Gay people are treated differently. The
Festival is treated differently by the Arts Council, who after 681
performances over the past four years, has failed to attend anything.
On this basis, they offer their Council members insightful
recommendations on where taxpayers money should be wisely spent. Gays
and lesbians are the most highly taxed in our community, as we are
entitled to fewer benefits than straight people get for the same tax
contributions. The International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival fulfils
the standards and criteria for arts funding – it’s about time we
got it.
Gay people are treated differently.
Last year when it appeared a Tribunal may be enquiring into the
personal life of a leading politician, moderate Ireland was appealed
to and responded fairly. The view that it is not appropriate for
people’s private lives to be encroached upon needlessly in a public
tribunal, appeared to be the majority public opinion. The view also
prevailed that the relationship between a person and their life
partner was a valid one, which should have its privacy and status
respected and rightly so.
KAL case
Did anyone apply the same test to
Katherine Zappone and Anne Louise Gilligan when all they sought was
justice in the taxation system? Few seemed to think the required
exposure of their private life in open court – and they were not
accused of anything - was unfair or unwarranted. It’s a double
standard. A valid marriage in Canada for a man and a woman is
recognised in Ireland – it is the exact same marriage law for same
sex couples in Canada. They do not have a two tier system. There is
only one marriage law in Canada. If you are straight it’s
recognised here – if you are gay its not. Why isn’t the same law
recognised for us – because we are treated differently?
Adoption
Another difference in treatment is the
deliberately misnamed debate on gay adoption. There is no such thing
as gay adoption – unless the child is gay. The assertions that have
been published in the national media about gay parenting are deeply
offensive. If you replaced the word gay in this correspondence, with
Black, or Muslim there would have been a justified outcry. In other
circumstances, these flawed letters to the Editor would never have
seen publication, because of the deep offence and prejudice they
cause, stereotypically arguing that apparently our natural sexuality
is seriously damaging to children and makes us unfit to be considered
as potential parents, especially for the 69 children available for
adoption in Ireland last year.
The counter argument that children of
gay parents are openly recognised as being vulnerable to bullying
must be appropriately responded to by any society. The appropriate
response is to end the bullying, not to deny the parents and the
children. It is astonishing that the expertise of the Adoption
authorities now needs to be roadblocked by preventive legislation
only in terms of gay people. It is apparently, under the proposed
legislation, going to be in the best interests of a child of a gay
parent, not to be adopted by his or her parent’s legal partner, so
on the death of the natural parent what future has the child…this
apparently is the best we can do? But then again we are treated
differently.
There is an international fashion for
national apologies for past wrongs. I happily put the criminalisation
of gay people on that list, though it will do little to undo the
wrong done and to retrieve the wasted opportunities and talents of
gifted people long past. The meaningful apology will come with the
advent of full citizenship rights for gay and lesbian people in
Ireland in all areas of civic life and participation.
So as you can see there is a clear need
for a confident cultural response to the significant information gap
that still prevails to justify a lesser esteem, respect and rights
culture for gay people in modern Ireland. I salute those who join in
this very vibrant debate on who we are in Ireland today.
The arts continually help define the
Irish as a nation and a race. Gay arts can do likewise. Theatre has a
wonderful capacity to educate, inform and discuss issues raising the
veils on cherished taboos and enriching pluralism and diversity
within society. Theatre as an art form is a key to liberating
silenced voices, to encouraging emerging voices and to recognise the
capacity we have to contribute and the value of the contribution in a
civilised society. It’s a challenge that oils the wheels and drives
forward our actions in this unique festival of world theatre.
The Festival’s Programme 2008
The new writing which this Festival
prioritises is a major contribution to informed debate and an
important statement from which we may be able to assess and identify
the true characteristics and qualities of gay theatre and gay
culture. All but one of the plays will never have been seen before in
Ireland – that is a significant cultural contribution. We are proud
of this. The diversity of this year’s programme and its cultural
and entertainment value is of the highest quality. Come and see it.
This year, if we had the resources, and
if we had accepted all submissions, we would actually be bigger than
the great programme presented each year by our good friends in the
Dublin Fringe Festival. I stopped counting after receiving the 120th
submission. We had submissions from Ireland, the UK, the USA –
practically every major city, Canada, Brazil, Mexico, Estonia,
Germany, Italy, Netherlands, Senegal, Republic of South Africa,
Israel, Cyprus and Australia. I have a dozen submissions for Festival
2009 already, from excellent international companies literally
queuing up to be accepted to perform in Dublin. This is staggering
for an event so young and so badly financially resourced. This is
wonderful for theatre and its audiences in Ireland.
Our productions have also been
supported by Failte Ireland through Dublin Tourism, Dublin City
Councils Arts and Intercultural Offices. The Department of Arts,
Sport and Tourism gave us a special grant this year recognising our
5th anniversary.
Hundreds of authors and actors from
around the world join in this discourse here in Dublin or across the
worldwide web. All make great sacrifices to come to Dublin and
present their works…the number of repeat applications is most
encouraging. They, along with our growing audience, are our
shareholders – they are this Festival.
The Festival has prompted great new
theatrical activity in Ireland. Outhouse, the gay and lesbian
resource centre will proudly unveil their new performance space in
105 Capel Street for this year’s festival. We are delighted to have
helped them drive this initiative at a time when performance space is
at a premium in the city.
Our box office grew by 150% in 2007.
For the first time ever, such is the demand, online booking opens
tomorrow morning on www.gaytheatre.ie.
We give back over 70% of the box office receipts to the companies,
pay for all the venues and accommodate all the visiting artists each
year free of charge, with the generous assistance of Travelodge.
Plays are very competitively priced and each venue hosts two separate
plays each evening. This has all been created and staffed by a team
of volunteers. 12 on the Executive Committee, and 50 volunteers in
technical, marketing, distribution, welcome and front of house
activities. I am so proud of them and full of admiration for the
warmth, skills and dynamic they bring to this event. This vibrant
team will combine with artists from 4 continents in an international
event, not only unique to the gay community, but in the world.
We have created the space for new
writers – about 98% of our programme hasn’t been seen before in
Ireland. We have a new mini festival of new Irish writings where we
will host three staged play reading in The George Bar this year. We
are making a difference at home – we have plays from Galway,
Kildare, Wexford, Dublin and one set in Northern Ireland this year.
Terrence Mc Nally
We are thrilled that the Fifth festival
will be honoured by the presence of four times Tony award winner,
Emmy Award Winner, Double Guggenheim Fellowship, Vice President of
the US Council of Dramatists Guild, Terrence Mc Nally. Mc Nally is
considered one of the leading American dramatists still writing today
and has been a pioneer and a hugely influential artist of gay
theatre. He has written wonderfully insightful gay and Aids related
plays. His work had been adapted for screen ‘Frankie and Johnny in
Claire de l’Une’ starring Al Pacino and Michelle Pfeiffer. He has
co written musical theatre ‘The Rink’ and ‘Kiss of the
Spiderwoman’ and ‘The Visit’ with Cabaret and Chicago composers
Kander and Ebb. He wrote the book for ‘The Full Monty’ and
‘Ragtime’ musicals, and the play of the life of Maria Callas
‘Master Class’ and a ‘Man of No Importance’. His current play
‘Deuce’ stars Angela Lansbury. It is a huge honour that Terrence
McNally will participate in a public discussion with Mark O Halloran
in the Project Arts Centre, and that he and his husband Thomas
Kirdahy will spend many days here at the Festival. We are overwhelmed
by the honour he is paying our event – truly making this fifth year
a year of celebration. I am sure the warm and spellbinding production
of his play Corpus Christi from Los Angeles we are presenting this
year will captivate Irish audiences.
This year in celebrating five years –
we are also celebrating our essence - that in these very self
centred times, there are still people who will volunteer, or write
and work passionately to create a better understanding of the true
diversity that makes up the arts and every society. I am moved,
grateful and impressed by the huge and generous support of our
sponsors, our companies, our audience, our friends and our volunteers
– my talented, generous, patient, efficient and welcoming
colleagues. Many of us might and do achieve good things on our own,
but we are truly great when we do it together, with and for our
community, contributing to respect for all cultures and lifestyles in
our wider pluralist society. In that, the contribution of straight
people to this Festival is one of the healthiest dynamics that fuels
the passion for this event and allows the full exploration of issues
like sexuality, feminism, masculinity and gender identity.
Any launch is a scary moment. I don’t
know how successful this Festival will be! 2007 is a tough act to
follow. 87% of the 3,500 people who filled out audience response
forms last year rated us at 5 out of 5 or excellent. Their generosity
and support encourages greatly and sets an almost impossible
benchmark to equal each year. But the one thing I am sure of is this.
There will be a sixth International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival
beginning on Bank Holiday Monday 2009. It will continue to create the
space for new, diverse and standards driven theatre. It will continue
to welcome all artists who contribute to the exploration of our life,
love and culture.
Today we launch our programme with
confidence, that as artists we merit your attention and as your
brothers, sisters, partners, children and fellow citizens we are
respectfully striving to make a positive cultural contribution to
society. I hope you can see yourself in this programme and that you
will join us, not only in attending many of the productions, but in
helping to pay the bills. Please support our Irish and international
artists by selling the tickets – they make such a wonderful
contribution to the richness of our lives and they need to eat!
To all who have helped us so much over
the past five years - thank you, and I mean that. The work that goes
into an event like this is challenging, frustrating, exciting,
demanding and enlightening. Every contribution, no matter how small
or brief, is valued and is important to us. That fact that your are
still making that contribution, even more generously, after five
years, speaks volumes as to the value of what we are trying to
achieve in the arts and in society. Please join us on that hectic
journey from May 5th to 18th in Dublin.
Festival 2008 at a Glance
We have great friends in the Dublin
Theatre and Fringe Festivals, in the Project Arts Centre, the Theatre
Forum, Smock Alley, in the Temple Bar Cultural and Information
Centre, in all our venues, in national and international academia, in
the media, amongst playwrights, actors, technicians, musicians,
dancers, poets, authors, directors and producers. We are generously
supported by the commercial gay community, our fellow gay community
organisations, gay theatre groups, The Edinburgh Festival and amongst
mainstream audiences at home and abroad.
Thanks to Dublin City Council we will
have a new Intercultural dialogue award to present this year, along
with our magnificent Tipperary Crystal new writing, outstanding
performances, and aspect of production awards named after Oscar
Wilde, Micheal Mac Liammoir and Hilton Edwards and our award
sponsored by the Labour Party in honour of the late set designer
Patrick Murray.
International actors like Sir Ian Mc
Kellern, Adrian Dunbar, our patrons Emma Donoghue and Senator David
Norris, double IFTA award winner Mark O Halloran, The Lord Mayor’s
office, The Minister today by his presence, and the President of
Ireland very kindly offered to send us a message of support.
President McAleese said ‘The Festival since its establishment in
2004 has served to build important bridges of cultural understanding
across Irish society and to offer a fuller picture of cultural life
on our island’. We are honoured, grateful and inspired for her
insight and kindness.
We will hold a seminar on gay theatre
in Oscar Wilde’s alma mater Trinity College with eminent Irish and
international speakers on Sunday March 11th. We continue
our programme of free events bringing theatre into the community with
our series of play readings and the Story of Zrazy – Ireland’s
fantastic lesbian jazz duo at weekends in The George. Our gala night
and awards will feature special guests and a great celebration of
five years of international gay theatre in Dublin on May 18th.
And we host the best parties on opening and closing night in the
Front Lounge.
We have created the space for new
writers – about 98% of our programme hasn’t been seen before in
Ireland. We have a new mini festival of new Irish writings where we
will host three staged play reading in The George Bar this year. We
are making a difference at home – we have plays from Galway,
Kildare, Wexford, Dublin and one set in Northern Ireland this year.
We have a retrospective feel to the
programme with Lightning Strikes a ghostly tale set in a London pre
decriminalisation in the 1960s and today, directed by renowned Film
and Theatre director Patrick Wilde. We look at the lives of Russian
ballet dancer Nijinsky and of Truman Capote. We have the world
premiere of The Countess and the Lesbians about the Gore Booth
sisters from Sligo, Constance and her sister Eva – who sustained a
long term relationship with her female partner for over 30 years and
while Countess Marciewicz was fighting for Irish freedom in 1916 -
Eva was publishing the first lesbian journal in London. This play by
renowned US playwright Carolyn Gage was inspired by her participation
in last year’s event and the play itself is set during rehearsals
for the International Dublin Gay Theatre Festival.
We musically inform the current debate
on same sex marriage, where our society still struggles with the
concept of equality for all loving adults. Our first ever opera,
Knotty Together by Njo Kong Kie is a Canadian production that may
help raise awareness of an issue that as a democracy we are in danger
of creating second class citizenship through our marriage laws.
We deal with race in an American comedy
‘Christmas in Bakersfield’ – the local HQ of the KKK. We will
present the true life account of a gay american soldier who served in
Iraq and came out on national television using the ‘don’t ask
don’t tell’ policy to be discharged, so that he could become an
anti war campaigner. We have real life ‘Priscilla’s’ all the
way from Adelaide, Australia in our first ever transsexual drag
cabaret called the Girly Side of Butch. We have new writing on young
people’s issues with Slipping from Chicago dealing with young
suicide and Kildare Youth theatre’s Burying your Brother under the
Pavement. We have West End and Irish singers presenting Memoirs of a
Gay Show and Singing Out 5.
A biggest and most radical women’s
programme also looks at women and the media in Big Sister, the life
of lesbian dominatrix Josie Pickering, Some Are People by Kathleen
Warnock from New York. A new Irish lesbian murder mystery play Bed
Death by Alison Martin from Wexford and 2 new lesbian shorts by
Suzanne Lakes and Vickey Curtis are included in the return of our
sellout theatre shorts programme. The shorts also feature 4 new
works from Ireland, including award winning writer Sean Sturnick with
a Brian Boru tale ‘Connubial Celts’ and two shorts on religion
and ‘Tom Cruise’ from the USA. We have a South African macabre
tale from the Artscape new writing programme called Dalliances and a
mystery tale of a two straight young strangers waking up in bed
Shackled from the UK.
Butch – is the life of a fem gay man
from the Netherlands stuggling with his masculinity. A theme which is
reflected in two plays, a short Tumbling Down, the Iron Eyelashes is
the impact of the rise and fall of the Berlin Wall on gay people.
Burying Your Brother Under the Pavement from Kildare Youth Theatre is
the only play in our programme to have been seen before. The Night
Fairies from Italy recounts the almost invisible stories of gay men
and the holocaust when 250,000 people were murdered because of who
they loved.
Tales of 6 different gay lives feature
in Love Scenes from New York, and we even tackle religion with
Confessions of a Mormon Boy and the Irish premiere of the renowned
gay play on the life of Jesus Christ, Corpus Christi by Terrence Mc
Nally.
The contribution this event will make
to the European Year of Intercultural Dialogue is also unique. The
Festival will continue to be open and to inform the dialogue by gay
people within Irish society. It will not censor or inhibit the
freedom of expression, which when respectfully presented, is so
necessary to build understanding, and to open the closed minds, who
so often condemn without ever listening, hearing or knowing what is
being said.
The Festival, and its hugely gifted
artists reach out and welcome all who want to hear our voice and who
might value the incredible, but often invisible contribution, of gay
artists to the arts and to society, past and present.
A gay artist is one whose whole
identity is recognised and not one who is only recognised by being
gay. That’s the space we are creating and the respectful space gay
artists are entitled to, as they create, write and perform, bringing
new insights into issues and the understanding of human life and
love. It is from that acknowledgement, that role models will emerge
giving much needed guidance, inspiration and purpose to the future
generations of young gay people – replacing the damage of
homophobia in behaviour and policy, with a goal, purpose and
acknowledgement of the special gift that every individual’s
sexuality and ability to love brings, when expressed fully and
without fear, and acknowledged and respected equally in and by every
person.
The Festival and our artists will
continue to work on and to challenge those who won’t listen. Our
mere presence does that, but the quality of the work presented is the
key to getting the attention of narrowed minds. We will continue to
create the space for gay people and our many friends to express
themselves in the arts, because we all are entitled to ownership of
and to contribute to theatre as an art form. In that the contribution
of straight people is one of the healthiest dynamics that fuels the
passion for this event and allows the full exploration of issues like
sexuality, feminism, masculinity and gender identity.
We will continue to encourage new
writing, new companies, new stories, new performances and new voices
– gay and straight, on subjects important and relevant to us and to
society. We will continue to insist on playing our role as full and
equal citizens and by doing so, will challenge those who actively
undermine our human rights and our citizenship. This is still
necessary in a country that in many ways is a shining beacon of
growing respect for gay people, but which still struggles with our
right to love, cherish and honour our chosen partner and to care,
nurture and provide decent, safe, healthy and loving environments for
our children.
The President has said the Festival has
served to build important bridges of cultural understanding across
Irish society. It is our determination in building those bridges,
that we now encourage everyone to join us in crossing those bridges,
to participate and benefit from what the President has so generously
described as, our ‘offer of ‘a fuller picture of cultural life on
our Island’.
Thank You."
