July 26, 2000

ARTS ABROAD

Upstart Irish Theater Settles Into a Sleek New Home

By BRIAN LAVERY

	Photographs by Derek Speirs for The New York Times
	Kathy McArdle, top, the Project's artistic director, in its new home. Alumni include Gabriel Byrne, bottom right, shown with Tom Murphy in 1978.

UBLIN, July 24 -- Along one of the quieter streets in Dublin's bustling Temple Bar, a row of traditional terra cotta brick buildings is interrupted by a stark sky-blue facade that runs half the length of the block. Glass and steel doors swing into a high-ceilinged foyer with smiling receptionists. Only the rough concrete floor, splattered with paint, hints that this could be something more than the hip office for yet another Irish dot-com start-up.

Instead, the $4.5 million building belongs to Project, a 34-year-old artists' cooperative credited with leading the drive to bring progressive visual and performance art to light in Ireland. It also provided a training ground for future stars like Liam Neeson, Gabriel Byrne and U2.

The doors have only been open a few weeks, and Project is not yet accustomed to its new building.

From 1974 until construction began in 1997, Project operated out of a dilapidated factory on this site that was as renowned for its leaky roof as for the controversial works it produced. When fire destroyed a two-story corner of the building in 1984, it was simply left unattended and christened the burnt-out space.

But Project's offices, gallery spaces and its compact, self-contained black-box theater -- only the second in Ireland -- are forcing it to reconcile old bohemian ways with a polished look. That means facing the challenge of remaining relevant in a country where much of the "very serious repressive stuff" no longer exists, in the words of the general manager, Tom Coughlan.

If Project ever had any semblance of a strategy, it was one of direct confrontation with the conservative elements of Irish society. In the late 1960's, for example, Project's founders invited Edna O'Brien, the writer, to visit Dublin and read from her work, which had been banned in Ireland.

To make a point, she opened her suitcase to Customs officers, thus forcing them to confiscate the books.

So Project members instead recited some of her work from memory. In 1982 a performance by a British theater company, Gay Sweatshop, caused city officials to withdraw financial support. .

Project traces its origin to 1966, when Colm O'Briain graduated from college, rented out the Gate Theater here for six weeks and provided space for artists. Mr. O'Briain, now 56, went on to become the youngest director of the government's Arts Council and to serve as adviser to the Minister for Arts and Culture.

Over the years Project continued as one of the only venues for contemporary artwork or for the experimental theatrical productions that could not be produced at the Abbey, Ireland's national theater. Because there was no similar art space available, everyone ended up in Project, Mr. Coughlan said.

Mr. O'Briain described the essence of Project as a constant process of redefinition and readjustment.

The most important function is to keep pushing progressive and experimental works, according to Stella Coffey, executive director of the Artists Association of Ireland, an independent trade organization. She said that contemporary art had never been properly received in Ireland.

Ms. Coffey recalled that the country's museum of modern art did not open until 1991, and that the government in 1977 turned down an offer by Christo, the avant-garde artist, to create a wrapped walkway on St.

Stephen's Green, the city's sprawling central garden.

"They're talking about the cultural renaissance in Ireland," Ms. Coffey said, "but it is a myth. And it is a myth that the decision-makers believe."

Kathy McArdle, 35, Project's artistic director, said she anticipated public controversy later this summer over "Without Hope or Fear," a dance choreographed by Paul Johnson that features nude dancers.

"Project is now part of the establishment, by virtue of longevity," said Peter O'Kennedy, 35, a sculptor and interior designer who exhibited his work at Project in the 1980's. But Mrs. McArdle said that Project's mission was to avoid the predictable and to uphold a tradition of supporting the arts at the far end of the conventional spectrum.

Certainly there will be little blandness in the work shown in the coming months as artists begin to contribute to the reinvented Project. Next month John Frankland, a British installation artist, will lay a wood tile floor in one of the galleries and flood it with one foot of water, causing the floor to warp and buckle. Later in the year Richard Greenberg's "Three Days of Rain" as well as newly commissioned plays by the Irish playwrights Marina Carr and Tom MacIntyre will be performed in Project's black-box theater.

These works will have to win over Project's skeptics because the cost of the work on the building surprised many people for whom Project had been defined by its shoestring budgets. "There's a lot of nostalgia for the buckets under the roof and the things that didn't work," said Project's visual director, Valerie Connor.

In addition to funds from the local and national government, Project now solicits from private patrons. The annual budget of almost $1.25 million is more than double that of any previous year. But Ms. McArdle insists that Project still operates on a shoestring and that it faces a steep increase in costs with the new building.

And Mr. O'Briain said that the building might impose a culture of compulsory success, as Project's audience becomes less forgiving of its unpolished edges.

But on a typically rainy Irish afternoon recently, even $4.5 million worth of glass and steel could not let Project escape its leaky past, as water dripped in through the wall above a second-story window.

Ms. Connor grinned when she saw the growing puddle, as if it made her feel more at home in the place.

She said: "I don't think it's too precious; it's still rough."