JD Buckley, Sky Ireland’s Managing Director said, “Sky Ireland is proud to support Ireland’s vibrant arts and cultural sector and we are confident that this will be a very fruitful partnership for all of us. This investment, as part of our broader contribution, highlights Sky’s commitment to Ireland, particularly at a time when arts organisations need support to produce creative, original and entertaining work. We would like to extend a special thanks to the many arts organisations throughout Ireland who have supported this initiative to date and offer a warm welcome to Rough Magic and Opera Theatre Company.”

Lynne Parker, Artistic Director of Rough Magic and directing the production, said: “The Sky Arts Ignition award enables us to bring an electrifying work of art to one of the city’s most beautiful and atmospheric theatres, creating a new relationship between the audience, Brecht’s epic satire and Kurt Weill’s groundbreaking score.”

James Hunt, Director of Sky Arts said: “It was a particularly competitive year for applications for Sky Arts Ignition across Ireland, and we’re delighted to be able to build on the successes of the past two years by partnering with Rough Magic and Opera Theatre Company on such a unique project. We look forward to bringing this extraordinary piece to viewers and visitors across Ireland and the UK. We’d like to thank Business to Arts for its support throughout the application process.”

The piece will be staged in one of Dublin’s great 19th century music halls, the Olympia Theatre, which will be re-imagined and transformed to create a totally immersive experience. The action will take place all around the space - in the boxes, parts of the dress circle, the parterre stalls, as well as the stage.  The production will feature a 60-piece orchestra and a line-up of leading Irish singers and performers.

Sky Arts Ignition: The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny is just part of Sky’s growing commitment to Ireland, which includes its Sky Sports Living For Sport initiative that launched this year. Sky has operated in Ireland for over 20 years and over the past 12 months has created 850 jobs at its offices on Burlington Road in Dublin and announced a €1.25billion investment in Ireland over the next 5 years. Sky also supports young talent through Sky Academy Arts Scholarships, which support five young artists a year with a bursary of £30,000 each, enabling Sky to back the creation of their new creative work as well as offering mentoring to nurture emerging talent. Applications are open to artists in Ireland and the UK until 6th December at www.sky.com/academy 

- ENDS -

For further press information on Sky Arts or Sky Arts Ignition, please contact: 

Katherine Solomon, Sky Arts, on 0044 20 7032 0599 or katherine.solomon@bskyb.com or James Elms, Sky Ireland on 086 4528406 or james.elms@bskyb.com or Victoria Keogh, Slattery Communications on 087 2349707 or Victoria.Keogh@scomms.ie. 

For information on Rough Magic, please contact Christine Monk on 087 675 5329 or christinemonk@eircom.net.

Notes to Editors

About the Production

The opera was first staged in Leipzig in 1930. It tells the story of the creation and destruction of the city of Mahagonny, which was founded by three criminals and soon descends into  chaotic scenes of gambling, fighting, debauchery and murder. The opera gained huge notoriety for its satirical bent, seeking as it did to subvert and deflate what many considered the pompous arrogance of traditional opera.

Ireland’s leading architects, Sheila O’Donnell and John Tuomey, who recently designed the award-winning Lyric Theatre in Belfast, will play an important role in reimagining the use of the stage in the Olympia to ensure the most compelling audience experience. David Brophy, principal conductor of the RTÉ Concert Orchestra, whohas also collaborated with artists such as U2 and Sinead O’Connor , will conduct Weil’s eclectic score.   Oscar-nominated Consolata Boyle will design costumes, with lighting design by Aedín Cosgrove.

Rough Magic is based in Dublin and is one of Ireland’s leading theatre companies. Opera Theatre Company is the national opera touring company of Ireland.

The Goethe-Institut in Dublin will curate a series of events to provide a context for the production and for the work of Kurt Weill.

About Sky

Sky is the UK and Ireland’s leading home entertainment and communications company, and is the UK and Ireland’s biggest investor in television content, investing more than €2.75 billion a year in channels such as Sky 1, Sky Atlantic, Sky Living, Sky Arts, Sky Sports, Sky Movies and Sky News. Around two-thirds of Sky’s content spend is home-grown and Sky is the fastest-growing source of investment in original home-grown programmes such as International Emmy award-winning Moone Boy, Treasure Island and David Attenborough’s ‘Flying Monsters’. More than 2 million people tune into Sky channels each week in Ireland.

Alongside its commitment to offering customers a greater choice of high-quality content, Sky is a leading innovator.  Customers enjoy total control and flexibility over their favourite TV through Sky+, watch TV on the move through Sky Go, and enjoy the best quality TV experience at home through High Definition and 3D.

Sky believes in making a wider contribution to the communities in which it operates by taking positive action on the environment, supporting grassroots sports and increasing access to, and participation in, the arts.  Sky Ireland is located in offices at Burlington Road, Dublin and employs more than 850 people.  

Sky Sports Living for Sport is the award-winning, free secondary school initiative that uses sports stars and sports skills to help build young people‘s confidence and life skills. Our dedicated team of Athlete Mentors, led by Sky Sports Living for Sport Ambassador Katie Taylor, kick start each project by sharing inspiring stories from their own lives. We’ve already reached one third of UK secondary schools - now we’re aiming to work with 100 Irish schools this year and one third of Irish schools within three years. We’ve just unveiled a team of 11 elite Athlete Mentors including Alan Quinlan, Mark Rohan, and Natalya Coyle, and with 50 schools participating since September we’re already half way to our first target. 

Sky is increasingly engaged in grass roots activities across Ireland: Sky became the title sponsor of the Cat Laughs Comedy Festival in Kilkenny earlier this year where it held a series of workshops on TV programming and production; following a rigorous application process involving 100’s of organisations, Sky Arts Ignition will see a €230,000 investment exclusively allocated to a selected Irish arts project to be announced in autumn; and the Sky Sports Living for Sport Programme will this year see up to 100 secondary schools across Ireland participate in life skills initiatives aimed at 11-16 year olds.

Sky’s commitment to the Arts 

Sky Arts offers an eclectic mix of the best music, arts, biographies, chat shows, film, drama and comedy. Sky is the only broadcaster in the UK and Ireland with channels dedicated solely to the arts. Sky Arts now reaches more than 6 million viewers every month. 

Sky Arts also seeks to connect with culture on the ground; creating and collaborating with the best of the arts in the UK and Ireland to bring new experiences to life. Sky Arts Ignition, launched in 2011, supports leading arts organisations in the creation of brand new works offering €230,000 (£200,000) and amplification through Sky’s programming, marketing and technologies.

Last year, Sky Arts Ignition: Doug Aitken - The Source was in partnership with Tate Liverpool who with Sky’s support commissioned world renowned artist, Doug Aitken to create a multi-media video installation in a specially designed structure, built in collaboration with British architect David Adjaye OBE. The work was Aitken’s first public installation in the UK and ran for four months from September 2012, receiving 50,000 visitors. To promote the opening of the exhibition, Aitken took over Sky Arts for 24 hours, curating a selection of special documentaries, films and exhibitions over one day exploring the creative process.

This was followed in June 2013 by Sky Arts Ignition: Memory Palace, a multi-dimensional exhibition experience created in partnership with the Victoria & Albert Museum in London and based on an original work of fiction by author Hari Kunzru, transformed into a walk-in story by leading graphic designers, typographers and illustrators including Le Gun, Oded Ezer, Erik Kessels and Luke Pearson. It was visited by over 30,000 visitors and also supported with an exclusive documentary airing on Sky Arts, and a digital Memory Bank available within the exhibition and online where the public shared over 13,000 memories.

Sky also supports young talent through Sky Academy Arts Scholarships, which support five young artists a year with a bursary of £30,000 each, enabling Sky to back the creation of their new creative work as well as offering mentoring to nurture emerging talent. Applications are open to artists in Ireland and the UK until 6th December at www.sky.com/academy .

For more information, visit:

www.sky.com/arts

www.sky.com/academy