A planned new academy for the dramatic arts, to train actors, directors and designers in Dublin has moved a stage closer.

After plans were approved in April, the work has now gone to the tendering stage with a list of contractors bidding for the project at Dublin's Trinity College.

In collaboration with RADA, it is being funded by a trust set up in memory of Cathal Ryan, an arts lover and son of Ryanair founder Tony Ryan, who died four years ago.

His daughter, Danielle, a RADA graduate, announcing details of the plan in Dublin last December and said it had always been her father's ambition to create such an academy in Ireland.

RADA will be involved in designing the academy courses and in staff and student selection.

The first student intake is already planned for the 2011/12 academic year with work set to begin in the autumn, once contractors have been selected.

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Places will be limited, with entry by audition and/or interview. The academy will offer a three-year degree course in acting, a two-year higher diploma in stage management and technical theatre, plus a Master's course in fine art, specialising in playwriting and directing, as well as stage, lighting and costume design.

The announcement of the academy came just two years after Trinity College provoked controversy and criticism by axing its degree course in acting, the only one available in the Irish Republic.

In mid August, tenders are being issued to a list of contractors for the works involved with the construction of the academy.

It will be at Trinity Technology and Enterprise Campus, on the corner of Pearse Street and Grand Canal Quay, Dublin.

The work will involve the partial demolition of the existing two-storey building and the change of use of the retained two-storey building from the Enterprise Campus to use as the new Drama Academy with internal layout changes and modifications to suit the elevation at Grand Canal Quay in the retained building.

It will also involve the construction of a two-storey extension of 448 square metres to create a two-storey building with an overall total floor area of 1,623 square metres.

Part of the new elevation at Grand Canal Quay will also be the new main entrance at the east side of the proposed extension with an innovative, external wall-mounted digital media screen of approx 4.8 square metres facing Pearse Street.

The architect is Smith and Kennedy and the consulting engineer is Hendrick Ryan and Associates.

(BMcC/GK)