So here we are in 2009 mired in the deepest recession since the dinosaurs roamed the earth or Tommy Tiernan was funny, whichever was earlier. Nobody can afford anything. Of course nobody could afford anything during the boom either but it didn’t stop us because we were effectively in a war with all of our neighbours and we had armed ourselves with the latest and greatest in credit card technology, the kind which thankfully didn’t incorporate anything as inconvenient as a spending limit.
The carnage is everywhere. A first time visitor to our country might take a look around vast tracts of our once coveted landscape and be forgiven for thinking that the War of Independence only ended yesterday. It’s all over all right, the people who are in charge of all these things and consequently know what to do have declared an armistice, a ceasefire, a truce even.
And of course it affects virtually everyone so it’s big news, seemingly it’s the only news. Not only is it news in its own right but we are now seeing a trend develop whereby it has to dragged into other, seemingly unrelated news. Every bit of news must contain an element, a touch, a smidge, a taste of recession news.
So a piece came up on the six o’ clock bulletin a few nights ago about the forthcoming Dublin Theatre Festival. Being someone with a keen interest in things of this nature I, quite reasonably I thought at the time, became excited at the prospect of finding out what plays were to be performed and in what locations, what new playwrights we might expect to be showcased and things which generally pertained to the content of the festival. The theatre festival.
How naïve I was. The four minute report consisted exclusively of the correspondent’s dire predictions regarding the glut of tickets which would remain unsold and a very helpful comparison with previous years when, yep you’ve guessed it, all the tickets were sold. I was surprised he managed to get through it without unleashing a pie chart or venn diagram or some such convoluted schematic to give pictorial validation to his verbal synopsis of the despondency which he obviously believed that everyone connected to the event should feel. The director of the festival was given a brief airing wherein he said that he was confident that any unsold tickets would be snapped up between now and the start of the event. His positive outlook was obviously deemed to be off message and his contribution quickly guillotined to allow the reporter roll out yet more frightening statistics as to the financial train wreck the whole thing was going to be.
All of which might have been palatable if it was aired in conjunction with some useful information. But it wasn’t, he never mentioned the name of one fuckin’ play, writer or venue.
The recession is the play, the writer and the venue. It’s the only show in town. And it’s on a long run.
