Belfast’s Lyric Theatre awarded extra £3.23m

Published Tuesday 13 May 2008 at 14:55 by Michael Quinn

The Lyric Theatre in Belfast, Northern Ireland’s only building-based producing company, has been given an additional £3.23 million by the Department of Culture, Arts and Leisure towards the cost of constructing its new home.

The award, announced by Arts and Culture Minister Edwin Poots, brings total government funding of the project to £9.23 million - more than half the estimated £17 million cost of the project - and leaves the theatre within 5% of its overall target.

Designed by architects O’Connell and Tuomey and scheduled to open in March 2010, the new theatre - which will be built on the site of the existing venue - will house a 350-seat main auditorium and 120-seat studio space, as well as new front of house and backstage facilities and offices.

Re-building the 40-year-old theatre was first mooted in 1998, but a series of financial crises and the failure of successive artistic directors to raise the profile of the south Belfast venue in recent years hampered the development.

Lyric Theatre executive director Michael Diskin told The Stage: “The last two years have been ones of retrenchment, caution, getting procedures in place, repositioning ourselves on the starting block for a new beginning.”

He added that the new venue “will be the home of professional theatre in Northern Ireland” and said: “It will allow the Lyric to get back to where it should have been all along - one of the top five or six producing theatres in Ireland. It will represent a big leap forward.”

In June last year the theatre made history with a record-breaking £1 million private donation, the largest ever sum made by an individual to a Northern Irish arts organisation, and in January this year, received £1.25 million from Belfast City Council.

The new premises will form part of the largest investment in Northern Ireland’s arts infrastructure in living memory and will be joined by a new home for Belfast’s Old Museum Arts Centre and a major refurbishment for the Playhouse in Derry.

Speaking at a ceremony to mark the beginning of the demolition of the Lyric’s existing 40-year-old premises, Poots said: “Through this investment we are not only helping support the arts in Belfast, but we are also contributing to the economic and social development of our capital city. The arts play a vital role in the cultural and economic life of Northern Ireland and help to bring in tourists and further development.”

An appointment of a new artistic director for the Lyric is expected to be made during the summer.