Lyric Theatre - What's Their Role?

I had a meeting on Monday with the Cathedral Arts Quarter Festival Director Sean Kelly on Monday, and listening to him briefly describe where he thought his Festival sat in terms of its brand, content and audience got me thinking about other Northern Irish theatre brands, including the Lyric.  It seems to be there's a tough job to be done there in terms of carving out a niche.  The Lyric has to bridge both the preserving, conserving impulse of the classical theatre and the investigating exploring impulse of the new theatre.

 I decided that I'd like to see the Lyric defining its identity (programme/choices/etc) by asking and answering three questions from our perspective in Northern Ireland in 2006:

1. what is classic theatre?
   
2. why bother?
3. what is cutting edge or just breaking now that will be the classics of tomorrow?