Minister has greater power over the Abbey

MINISTER for Arts, John O’Donoghue, will have greater control over running the Abbey Theatre after its shareholders voted overwhelmingly for his proposals to overhaul the theatre’s governance at the weekend.

With the cash-strapped theatre heavily in debt, board and shareholders had little choice but to vote for the proposals. Government funding through the Arts Council was under threat if they were rejected.

In effect, to save the theatre, the Abbey’s board and shareholders had to vote themselves out of a job to make way for the new organisation and company.

The Arts Minister will appoint a third of the National Theatre’s nine-person board, and two members of a three-person committee controlling the composition of the remainder.

One shareholder, writer Ulick O’Connor, described the new structures as “total State control” of the Abbey.

“I wonder if it will ever resemble the place that this place was,” he said.

O’Connor was the only person to vote against the proposals at the weekend.

Now, the 101-year-old National Theatre Society Limited, set up by WB Yeats and Lady Gregory, will be dissolved. It will be replaced by a company limited by guarantee, called Abbey Theatre / Amharclann na Mainistreach.

Faced with an operating deficit of €3.5 million earlier this year and the revelation faulty accounting procedures meant debts were much greater than expected, the theatre had little choice but to reform.

The new company inherits the woes of the older, however. But as it is expected the new board will include people with financial as well as artistic expertise, the National Theatre is now expected to survive.

In a radical move, it will also be relocated to Custom House Quay, on Dublin’s northside. The new site, near the IFSC and in the Taoiseach’s constituency, was put forward by financier Dermot Desmond.

The proposal came after various other sites were deemed unsuitable.

According to Desmond, the aim in building a new Abbey Theatre on Dublin’s northside should be to create a cultural icon for modern Ireland, with the kind of global recognition Sydney Opera House has for Australia.

If the plan goes ahead, it will mark a radical break with tradition.

The Abbey has been on its current site since it was established, before the foundation of the State.