Fiach Mac Conghail
PER
Fiach Mac Conghail Fiach Mac Conghail
The Abbey Theater was already collapsing with debt when the government appointed Fiach Mac Conghail to be its next director early last year. He revamped the Abbey's antiquated legal structure, persuaded the Irish government to clear its 4-million-euro ($4.9 million) deficit, and won the largest grant ever awarded by the government's Arts Council, for 25.7 million euros ($31.3 million) over three years. Mr. Mac Conghail feels free to tackle what he sees as his principal task: reorienting the Abbey on its original mission as a politically relevant national theater. He said that the notion that the Abbey had to continually and centrally interrogate a repertoire was gone, and he thought that was a good thing.