'We want plays that cry out to be performed’ says Fishamble theatre company's Jim Culleton

THE Fishamble theatre company celebrates its 35th anniversary this year.

Next month the award-winning organisation, which has been dedicated to new plays by writers from across the island of Ireland since its foundation in 1988, will bring two of its shows to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, namely King by Pat Kinevane and Heaven by Eugene O'Brien.

This week its co-founder and artistic director, Dubliner Jim Culleton told the Irish Post what makes a Fishamble play and why he never tires of his job...

So 2023 is an important year for Fishamble?

Yes, we are 35 years old this year. It all started off in 1988, when myself and a number of other students started putting on plays during our summer holidays while in college.

That group also included the likes of Fergus Linehan, who was director of the Edinburgh International Festival until recently, and Ed Guiney who is the producer of the film Room and many others.

Over the years it gradually kind of whittled down in numbers, but we have been committed, all that time, to new plays, developing and producing new plays. We are still the only company in Ireland dedicated exclusively to that.

Tell us about the company’s name?

Our tag line is Fishamble: The New Play Company, which actually took us years and years to come up with.

But the Fishamble name, well there is actually a street in Dublin called Fishamble Street and it is where people would sell fish from carts in the street.

There is a famous song in Dublin about Molly Malone, and she would have traditionally sold her fish on Fishamble Street.

It was in the 1740s that Messiah by George Frideric Handel was first performed in the playhouse on Fishamble Street.

Also, in the 1700s that playhouse was the first theatre in Ireland to produce plays by Irish writers, when all the other theatres produced plays by writers from London.

So we are kind of named in honour of that theatre being the first theatre to champion Irish writers.

What brought you to such a lengthy career in the theatre?

There was definitely not a 35-year plan.

I started off when I was a child. I was always into drama, and so I started off acting.

I did some films and I was the resident child actor for RTÉ radio dramas.

If they needed a boy I would be called in, and then later, obviously, my voice broke.

I was always more interested in acting originally, and then I did a degree in Drama and English at TCD and I suppose got interested in directing while I was there.

Once we started Fishamble I just more and more involved in directing and that’s kind of just the way it went.

Also having a company doesn’t necessarily suit every director but I was also enjoying the business of running a company and being involved in a company - being able to build up an infrastructure that could create a body of work and have some audience recognition and let that be a way of growing and supporting artists and writers.

How many plays have you directed to date?

Oh gosh I am not sure how many I have directed, its over 50 anyway.

As artistic director I direct most of the productions although as we have grown in recent years, we bring in different directors for different productions as well, which is also very rewarding.

I imagine there is no shortage of new writing in Ireland to keep Fishamble busy?

There is no shortage of writing, Ireland is a small country which has produced many top writers of many centuries, so there is a strong tradition of writing here.

For example, we put out a call a few years ago, to capture people’s perception of the state of the country after the economic crash of 2008 and 2009.

It was a discussion on how we would emerge from that and what type of society we would be.

So we put out a call for tiny plays, for people to write plays of up to 600 words, expressing something they felt very passionate about, and we had over 1700 people sending us those plays.

So compared to other countries and other calls for submissions it is high, there is a real creativity in the country.

We revisited that more recently, after the Covid-19 pandemic, when there were similar discussions about what we would be and would things be better when we emerged from it, and we had a similarly high level of people sending us plays.

So there is definitely a lot of people writing and, reassuringly for us, using theatre as an artform to express themselves as well.

What makes a Fishamble play?

I suppose we like to have a wide range of plays and not get too narrow about it.

But we are always thinking about whose voices get to be on stage in terms of gender equality and diversity, and all people from different backgrounds.

So, it is wide in that way but in terms of what we are looking for, the kind of unifying element is that we want to produce plays that feel urgent, that feel like they are helping us grapple with contemporary life, that cry out to be performed.

Plays that have a need to reach an audience.

So, we often produce plays that are part of a national debate on issues. We have done plays and documentaries on things like the banking crisis in Ireland, for example.

We are kind of attracted to that type of thing and to work that represents giving a voice to the underdog, the people on the fringes of society.

We are drawn to kind of plays that are theatrical in how they tell the story, but are really looking at issues of concern and trying to engage an audience in the state of the world.

You have won multiple awards over the years, including an Olivier Award for Pat Kinevane’s Silent in 2016. How important are they to you?

It’s pleasing to be recognised, and for people to win awards but we don’t set out to win awards or do things because we want to win awards.

In a way they don’t matter as much to us as the audience reaction and the feeling of making a connection with audiences through live theatre, but the awards are very nice to get and they do help to bring the company forward.

They help it to grow and they can open doors and opportunities as well, sometimes, so from that point of view they are definitely very useful.

When don’t win we grumble that awards are foolish things and when we win we think they are great, obviously.

How far geographically does your work take you?

We have toured to 20 countries across the world. In the last 12 years we have had 15 off-Broadway productions in New York and we have two shows playing in Edinburgh next month.

We’ve just been to London and Australia and we will brought our play Heaven to New York this year. So, we are very busy touring internationally.

Since Culture Ireland came along, and more recently the Department of Foreign Affairs appointing heads of culture in cities across the world, there is a real sense in Ireland of the Irish Government putting culture and art at the centre of civic life and at the centre of how we engage with the rest of the world and that they see value of art and culture by doing that.

So, for Fishamble and lots of other companies and artists, there is a real sense of being able to tour and travel our work as a way of engaging people in Irish culture and in other aspects of Irish life.

We are really benefitting from that and delighted with it. As a small island you can run out of audience after a while so it’s good to get beyond Ireland itself.

How does your work resonate with international audiences?

We find, surprisingly, that people really connect with the work wherever it goes.

Work that can be really specific and jargony or which might feel very Irish, actually people respond really positively to that.

I think there is something about the authenticity of it that people love.

I remember one time in America we did a play where the accents were really strong and the vernacular was unusual for people there.

But this man turned to me and asked if I was the director, and said, ‘I didn’t follow everything they said, but I sure knew those two people loved each other’.

We do include a glossary in the books for some plays, so when we did Heaven in New York this year we included that, explaining that ‘on my tod’, means on your own, or being ‘up the duff’ means you’re pregnant.  But we don’t change any words in the play.

There was another play once where one of the characters was said to have ‘gone to the Jacks’ for a long time. Afterwards, all everyone wanted to know was who Jack was. So you do have things like that crop up.

Do you have any highlight plays from the many you have worked on over the years?

I have strong feelings and love for so many productions.

I think that sometimes when a play is a small play but kind of grows and has a huge appeal, there is something very rewarding in that.

We have produced plays with Pat Kinevane that have certainly done that, and we have produced a few plays by Sebastian Barry, such as On Blueberry Hill, which transferred to the West End, or have gone on to be audio plays or radio dramas and t is lovely when plays like that have a life for years and years.

That’s one of the great things that I really enjoy about being involved in a company, that a company has the infrastructure and the resources to give things a longer time period. Theatre sometimes can be gone so quickly because it is live.

It is a lovely position to be in, to choose plays, to pick the ones you feel with connect best, and I love all the plays we do, but those that have a really big connection with an audience, that’s so rewarding.

What drives you to keep going at Fishamble after 35 years?

I suppose I just love working in theatre.

I love working with theatre artists, actors, designers, writers, they are fantastic people.

So even though 35 years is a long time in one company it’s changing all the time, no two days are the same.

There are always challenges but I really believe in the power of theatre to connect with people and to raise issues in ways that other forms can’t quite do.

So, to be engaged in contemporary work that constantly improves life or questions life or gives people a chance to come together and think about something as a community, we are just constantly energising ourselves really.

What are your goals for the years ahead?

I suppose we want to continue the work that we do.

We have expanded and grown over the years and the goals of the company now, well we have recently been working with younger people through a number of schemes and initiatives which came about partly as a result of the pandemic.

Like lots of theatre companies we found ourselves filming production as broadcast quality, which we hadn’t really done before, during Covid.

Some of those productions have been shown in schools and we have had a real positive, enthusiastic response to that.

So we are looking at further ways of engaging with students and young people and it would certainly be an ambition that that would grow and develop into a strong element of what we do in the future.

Fishamble: The New Play Theatre Company brings Heaven and King, both directed by Jim Culleton, to the Edinburgh Fringe Festival next month. For tickets and further information visit www.edfringe.com