Hi Folks,

No news is good news so they say although we've been waiting with baited breath to hear whether or not the arts council were going to supply us with some festival funding. Word arrived only this week and it was not quite what we were expecting:

"I regret to advise you that the Arts Council has decied not to offer funding in response to your application. 

I would suggest that you look at making an application under the next round of Projects, details of whihc are available on our website.

The Arts council welcomed your application and acknowledged the work involved in preparing and submitting your proposal. I realise you will be disappointed with this decision and wish to assure you that it does not preclude you from applying for assistance from the Arts Council in the future....

If I can be of further assistance please feel free to contact me.

Yours sincerely

Una McCarthy

head of Festivals and Events"

Well if at first you don't succeed, try, try again and again and again. I think you actually have to pester people until they grow tired of hearing your voice. Even then it doesn't necessarily work but at least they won't forget you and it's often just about making your presence felt, preferibly in a nice way. I have however of late been obliged to raise my voice on behalf of others too afraid or too shy to speak up for themselves. It's not something I'm necessarily cut out to do but having studied Theatre of the Oppressed and having grown up in Ireland I'm beginning to come to grips with our acceptance of repression and why I refuse to be silenced by the tyranny of the masses whose response in these situations is

'sure there's nothing you can do. That's the system.' 

Well I regret to advise you we are the system and in the words of Jean Paul Sartre there are no excuses. 

A writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution.

Jean-Paul Sartre, Upon refusing the Nobel Prize, Oct. 22, 1964

I don't think I'll be refusing the nobel prize anytime soon or the financial aid of others in bringing off this festival but nor should it be ruled be money when there is so much benefit in kind and economic resources at our disposal that don't require money but the goodwill of the community to sustain itself.

What bothers me more than anything else in life is waste. Waste of time, waste of resources, energy and talent due to our acceptance of cultural norms. I'm not going to rant, nor am I going to ignore or accept that that's just the way it is. 

Some things do change but someone or something has to instigate change. Peacemakers are condemend as  agitators, freedom fighters as terrorists, theatremakers as entertainers but what we all are responsible for is our legacy for generations to come. If we can't transfrom our class structure we can at least resist it and be happy within ourselves knowing we have a clear conscience when we face the final curtain. We may be born into slavery, whether we are aware of the puppet masters and their gods but "once freedom lights its beacon in a man's heart, the gods are powerless against him." Jean-Paul Sartre.

I'm quoting quite a lot from Sartre these days as I'm studying Existential philosophy at the moment among other schools of thought such as John Stuart Mill's notion on the tyranny of the masses that keeps us from questioning our representative bodies that don't represent us all but a smail proportion of the population and though I'm not interested in becoming a politician I am aware that politics is present in our passivity and willingness to cope with injustice rather than confront our fears, whatever they may be.

"Very few philosophers other than Jean-Paul Sartre have emphasized as much that we are entirely responsible for not only what we are but also what we will be.

If we look at ourselves and find that we are unhappy or we are in circumstances which limit us, then Sartre states we have only ourselves to blame.

We cannot blame our parents or teachers or friends for their influence. For, if they have influenced us, it is because we have allowed them to do so.

Insofar as we allow others to influence what we really want, we are inauthentic human beings living in bad faith.

We usually become this way through "trying to get along." We do not have the moral courage to "lead our own lives" and set up our own projects. Instead, we drift from thing to thing, being "controlled," so we think, by external circumstances."

It's up to each and everyone of us to make our midsummer dream fesival come true and it will because there is a lot of goodwill in our creative community as I'm discovering. It's not about the money but the value we give things and I believe we're beginning to go beyond the monetary value of life by valuing the phenomena that is life and achieving some sense of pupose and unity in "being" true to ourselves and ultimately free from our immaterial fears.