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The Spring/Summer season at Upstate has been one of the most prolific and successful for many years.  Highlights have included the Drogheda Arts Festival world premiere of Conall Quinn’s ‘The Ones who Kill Shooting Stars’, described by Irish Theatre Magazine as “magnificently theatrical... Conall Quinn’s writing and dialogues are at times breathtakingly poetic and yet hilarious, too."

This show also enjoyed a short midlands network tour.

Also at the Drogheda Arts Festival, as part of the Civic Engagement programme to accompany Quinn’s play, Upstate curated a day-long event involving ten open-access workshops across various artforms for all ages, in temporarily occupied shops and arts buildings all along West Street.  At the heart of this was a popular Forum/Playback theatre presentation where four actors engaged a full house in a lively interactive performance.

The Solidarity Youth Project followed in mid-May with 3 well-attended nights of 'Tribal Rivals', a show devised over eight months by 25 teenagers drawn from various housing estates within Drogheda.  With inter-cutting scenes exploring episodes of conflict from medieval Drogheda, world history and contemporary gang culture, this highly visual show entertained an audience largely made up of their teenage peers, with all proceeds going to the youth-run Drogheda Youth Café.

Finally, from 10th to 12th June, history was made in a unique collaboration between a professional theatre company and a long-established amateur drama group, St. Brigid's of Drogheda.  With support from Upstate, 18 players took to the Barbican stage with their own original, collectively written play, ‘The Rhythm of Strife’.  A large-scale, visually ambitious, drama that gathered together the lives of seven characters and their families and associates over seven typical days in a regional town, this show proved enormously popular.  In exuberant scenes, the packed house on the final night spilled onto the stage at the end, like a crowd invading a football match!  Community theatre at its most vibrant!

Next up in June/July are a workshop for practitioners by our British guests and friends, Frantic Assembly, followed by the sixth annual visit to Drogheda by graduate students of New York University, in town to observe at first hand and participate in Upstate’s community-engaged theatre projects.

Following a carefully managed process involving staff and board, a number of agreed structural and personnel changes are to be phased in at Upstate Theatre Project.  In light of theatre policy developments nationally and in response to recent indications from the Arts Council about funding priorities, the company intends to suspend its professional production and touring work for the foreseeable future and to concentrate upon its community, youth and intercultural programming within Drogheda and the North East region.

The position of Artistic Director, which has been concerned primarily with overseeing the Upstate Live production wing, is to be discontinued.  Declan Gorman, who has held this post since the company’s formation in 1997 will leave his executive position permanently on July 9th.

The position of Drama Development Officer with responsibility for education, community and intercultural programming, held since 1998 by Declan Mallon, is also to be discontinued.  From July 12th, Declan Mallon will take up the new position of Director, with overarching responsibility for artistic programming, networking and community-engagement initiatives, in the context of the re-structured, Participatory Arts model that the company intends to pursue for the coming two- to three-year period.

From January 2011, a new, non-executive Advisory Council will be established to support the board and staff in areas of artistic programming.  Declan Gorman will head up this Council as Senior Associate Artist, thus continuing his link with the company in a new, advisory role, following an initial six-month break.

Paul Hayes who stepped down from the General Manager’s role in 2009, continues meantime to provide financial and literary management services to the company on a consultancy basis.

For the foreseeable future Upstate shall not mount professional theatre productions or take such productions on tour.  The company shall continue, however, to commission writers and to hire professional artists where they can add value to our local participatory programmes.  We will also maintain our relationship with New York University and other national, cross-border and international partners and associates.

The Board of Upstate Theatre Project regrets the funding cuts and macro-policy changes which have led to this departure from the long-standing operational model of the company.  The Board continues to hold to the vision of an integrated organisation wherein quality professional production and best practice participatory theatre work proceed side-by-side in a community-engaged context.  But we acknowledge that funding will not be available to produce professionally in the immediate future and are pleased to concentrate for the moment on our expanding programmes at local level, for which there is great community demand and international interest.  It is our intention to keep these structures under review and to remain in constructive dialogue with the Arts Council as well as Louth Local Authorities about our future artistic work.

The Board acknowledges the many years of dedicated service that Declan Gorman has given to Upstate Theatre Project.  We wish him every success in his continuing professional career and look forward to calling upon his expertise under new structures in the future.  The Board welcomes the appointment of Declan Mallon to the post of Director and looks forward, under his guidance, to many further years of the kind of quality programming which has placed Upstate at the forefront of community-engaged theatre practice internationally.

As part of a re-structuring compelled by external funding and policy changes, my post as Associate Artistic Director at Upstate is to be discontinued and I am to take up a non-executive role as Senior Associate Artist from January 2011.  While I regret the national policy trends and funding cuts that have led to these changes, I am pleased with the new arrangements and the manner in which they have been arrived at.

It has been clear for some time that the integrated vision which drives Upstate – that of a professional but community-centred theatre company – while no less valid now than at any point in the past thirteen years, is financially unsustainable under current funding conditions. It is therefore appropriate, if disappointing, that the Artistic Director post be made redundant now and the company evolve to meet new realities.  I am pleased as part of the restructuring to have been asked to head up the new non-executive, advisory council from January 2011 and to continue, through this voluntary mechanism, to collaborate closely with my long-standing colleague Declan Mallon and with the Board.  I have been party to all of the dialogues that led us collectively to arrive at these solutions and arrangements.  My relationship with the company is excellent and I will value the opportunity to remain part of the Upstate story and the wider discourses about socially-engaged arts over the next five to ten years.

I would like to wish Declan Mallon continuing success and innovation in his new post as Director.  I am also pleased that Paul Hayes, who stepped down from the General Manager post last November, continues to provide financial and literary management supports to the company on a consultancy basis.  Above all, I wish to thank the present and previous members of the Upstate Board for their unwavering support for the vision which Declan Mallon and I (and latterly Paul) have held strong and sought to implement.

The company is in a great place now, with huge local awareness and demand for its services within the Drogheda and Louth region.  In a small way we have rewritten the book and offered a viable, alternative model of regional theatre creation and local cultural engagement not only to Ireland but the wider world.