Are things really better for the performing arts in Ireland?
As Fishamble's hit production Heaven arrives in the UK, the company's artistic director writes about what it is like to make theatre in Ireland at the moment. Plus: three shows to see next week.
Hello, and welcome to The Crush Bar, a newsletter about theatre written by Fergus Morgan.
This is the free Friday issue, which usually contains an interview with an exciting theatremaker or an essay on a theatre-related topic. This week, it is a guest essay from Jim Culleton, artistic director of acclaimed Irish new writing company Fishamble. After that, there are your usual three show recommendations: two in London and one in Nottingham.
In case you missed it, here is this week’s issue of Shouts And Murmurs, which is a weekly round-up of the most interesting reviews, interviews and articles on theatre elsewhere…
You can get Shouts And Murmurs straight in your inbox every week - and help keep all this going - by signing up as a paid supporter of The Crush Bar for £5/month or £50/year.
There are a couple more things you can do to support this newsletter: you can share it with anyone you think might enjoy it and encourage them to subscribe, and you can use it for promotional purposes. There is more info about that here.
Both Ireland and the UK have traditionally been at the low end of the league table when it comes to the percentage of GDP spent by European countries on culture, writes Jim Culleton.
We have always been down at the bottom of that list, along with Italy, Portugal, and Greece. With a European average of about 0.5 per-cent, Ireland and the UK have been under 0.2 per-cent, while some countries, including Hungary and Iceland, spend over 1 per-cent. Thankfully, this has started to change in Ireland over the past decade or so.
People throughout the world connect with Ireland through our culture. Whether it’s the literature of Joyce, Beckett, and Yeats, or the performances of Saoirse Ronan, Cillian Murphy, and Colin Farrell, or television series like Derry Girls, or films like An Cailín Ciúin/The Quiet Girl, or traditional music, the arts are central to how Ireland engages with the world. Irish governments have recognised this increasingly in recent years, with funding edging a little closer to the European average. There is a lot more work to do, but it is reassuring that things are starting to improve here.
Things really shifted in Ireland during Covid. The country appreciated the value of art and culture when it was taken away. People missed the ability to come together as a community to a live performance event. This was backed up by our government investing more to protect the arts during Covid. Crucially, that support did not vanish once the pandemic was over. The government has continued to help the sector grow.
Annual funding to the Arts Council increased substantially – up to €140 million in the latest budget – as well as to Creative Ireland’s community culture and wellbeing programmes. The government increased funding for Culture Ireland, the agency that promotes Irish arts abroad, too, and it also appointed heads of culture in embassies and consulates throughout the world to promote cultural connections internationally.
Perhaps most significantly, it introduced the Basic Income for Artists pilot programme, which provided 2000 artists with €325 a week. This scheme has changed the lives and careers of many, and is now set to change those of so many more, after the latest budget included €35 million intended to extend and expand it.
The arts are so crucial obviously for all sorts of social, community, and human reasons, but the economic argument is often the one needed to sustain and increase funding. The economic contribution of the arts to society is substantial, so it’s always been frustrating that investment in the industry has traditionally been so low.
Theatre here is funded primarily through a range of Arts Council funding strands, including Strategically Funded Organisations. In Fishamble’s case, as a Strategically Funded Organisation, our annual grant represents about 40 per-cent of turnover. This means that, for every €1 we get, we generate €2.50, and 92 per-cent of that goes directly to paying people making art, with only 8 per-cent spent on our running costs.
This is a powerful economic argument for sustained investment in the arts. It has enabled us to build an infrastructure and a body of work that lets us make connections, generate partnerships, and seize opportunities in a cost-effective way. Yes, being a Strategically Funded Organisation does come with increasingly onerous governance requirements, but it also allows us to think long-term about each production reaching its full potential through national and international touring. I worry when funding becomes more project-based, rather than company-based, because although the money might go directly towards an artistic project, it is very hard for that project and that company to have a long and healthy future life.
One of Fishamble’s current touring productions is Heaven by Eugene O’Brien, which began in Ireland in 2022, transferred to 59E59 Theaters in New York and the Traverse Theatre in Edinburgh in 2023, and won the Irish Times Best New Play Award and the company’s fourth Scotsman Fringe First. It is now transferring to London’s Southwark Playhouse and returning to the Traverse. We have been able to tour this production around Ireland in 2022 and again in 2025 with Arts Council funding and by working in partnership with a number of venues and arts centres. The runs in New York, Edinburgh, and London, have been supported by Culture Ireland.
Culture Ireland has been a wonderful development over the past 20 years, as it funds the costs related to international travel. A company only needs to cover the running cost of the show, just as you would do at home. This is a powerful tool to have when negotiating with international presenters, as they know these costs could be covered.
Even though things are better in Ireland than in the UK for arts funding, there is still plenty to be done. Funding to the arts has been increasing, but we were starting from a very low base, so it needs to continue increasing. Thankfully, in a recent pre-election hustings with the current arts minister and spokespeople from other political parties, all speakers expressed their commitment to continuing to increase investment in the arts. Our new coalition government needs to be held to those promises.
It is also important that theatre gets its fair share from the Arts Council: since 2008, the Arts Council budget has risen by €52 million, but the theatre allocation has only risen by €1.1 million, while the cost of producing work has increased substantially.
There is still a way to go before Ireland matches the average European percentage of GDP spent on culture, but at least funding for the arts is going in the right direction. We look forward to sharing our production of Heaven with audiences in London and Edinburgh soon, thanks to the support of Culture Ireland. Long may it last!
Three shows to see next week
…blackbird hour - Bush Theatre, until March 1
This drama by babiliye bukilwa was a finalist for the Bruntwood Prize, the Women’s Prize for Playwriting and the Alfred Fagon Award. The follow-up to bukilwa’s acclaimed debut …cake, it focuses on Eshe, a young, queer, black woman struggling with her mental health. You can read my 2021 interview with bukilwa here and book tickets for seargeant malakai’s world premiere production via the button below.
Outlying Islands - Jermyn Street Theatre, until March 15
David Greig’s play about two ornithologists on a remote Scottish island during the summer of 1939 premiered at the Traverse Theatre during the Edinburgh Fringe way back in 2002. Now, it is getting a revival at Jermyn Street Theatre, courtesy of director Jessica Lazar of theatre company Atticist, who is best known for her acclaimed 2023 production of Rafaella Marcus’ Sap. You can get tickets via the button below.
Girls & Boys - Nottingham Playhouse, until March 1
Dennis Kelly’s deeply disturbing one-woman play was a huge hit when it ran at the Royal Court Theatre in 2018 with Carey Mulligan. Now, it receives its regional premiere in a production directed by Anna Ledwich at Nottingham Playhouse with Aisling Loftus stepping into Mulligan’s shoes. You can read my interview with Loftus in The Stage here and book tickets for the show using the button below.
That’s all for this issue
That is it for this week. If you want to get in touch about anything raised in this issue - or anything at all, really - just reply to this newsletter or email me at fergusmorgan@hotmail.co.uk. Or you can find me on Bluesky, where I am @FergusMorgan.
A quick reminder of the ways you can support The Crush Bar. You can share it. You can use it for promotional purposes. And you can become a paid supporter, which means you get an extra weekly email, Shouts and Murmurs, every Tuesday. There are currently 3822 subscribers, 111 of whom are paid supporters. If you would like to join them, you can do so above.
Fergus
I'm not an expert on theatre at all, so the situation could well be different within the context of producing a play or show, but it strikes me that Ireland and the UK have proportionally small subsidies from their respective governments because they already punch above their weight in the arts, rather than vice versa. There's a global demand for British and Irish actors, musicians, writers, filmmakers and so on – mostly, I think, because we speak English – and we have massive private sector investment in the arts which means we don't *need* the government to fund our artists. There's a huge market for them already.
Compare that to Hungary and Iceland, as mentioned above: can you name a single contemporary Hugarian actor, musician, author, artist, filmmaker who has household name recognition? Iceland is a different case; they regularly produce well-known performers, writers, musicians etc. But it's an extremely homogenous country of less than half a million people; of course they can spend all their money on the arts, because their economy is vastly different to that of larger nations. It has very different needs in terms of infrastructure, healthcare, defence (Iceland literally doesn't have an army). In fact, they probably have to spend more on the arts – they have a much larger public sector workforce proportionally than the UK or Ireland, which is reliant on state spending.
All that said, I am ready to be told that theatre is uniquely reliant on arts funding. If that's the case, then fair enough – spend away. I just don't know that proportion of GDP spend on arts subsidies is a good measure of the cultural health of a nation, necessarily?