Some food for thought

An article sent to me which i think is well worth a read. If you think you are just an actor and not part of a theatre industry you may want to stop reading here.


On stage, screen, radio and in galleries our artists are wilting under commercial pressures and public neglect. Joyce Morgan reports.

CALL it the case of the shrinking Cyrano. When the Sydney Theatre Company raised the curtain on Rostand's play in its first season in 1980, 25 actors took the stage. It was a big cast, even in its time. Today it is unthinkable.

The company used half that number of actors when it produced the work in 1999, thanks to judicious doubling of roles. Most of its productions average eight actors. And our premier theatre company has fared better than others. At Griffin, which presents new Australian work, five is considered a big cast, its artistic director, David Berthold, says.

"All the companies of Griffin's scale are doing two, three, four-handers," he says. "That's a big difference from even five years ago. It's very depressing for me to read a new play and realise it requires six actors. My first thought is we're unlikely to produce that, without even reading the first page."

Casts have been cut to rein in costs. Inevitably that affects which stories are told - and how they are told. But the shift on the theatre stage is emblematic of a shrinking vision across the arts in the past decade as companies face an increasingly tricky balancing act. How can producers create quality work when resources are stretched, sponsorship has plateaued and competition for people's leisure time has never been greater.

There have been an unprecedented number of inquiries in the past eight years into aspects of the arts - inquiries that have produced tangible financial benefits. Yet what's lacking has been any bigger picture or debate from either side of politics about the role of art in contemporary culture.

There have been triumphs and paradoxes. We've celebrated as Nicole Kidman, Geoffrey Rush and Russell Crowe have collected Oscars, Hugh Jackman a Tony and the director Baz Luhrmann acclaim for his work. But at home, young actors, directors and performers who emerge from our training institutes in growing numbers struggle to find work in a shrinking market, particularly in the second tier and regional companies where they can cut their teeth.

We've seen indigenous art attract international critical recognition - and record prices - while reconciliation has dropped from the national debate. And while the art market is hot, visual artists are the poorest of all, earning on average just $3100 a year from their art. Performing arts organisations have adopted various strategies to tackle the challenges they face. Opera Australia, with less scope to cut cast sizes than theatre companies, has reduced the number of operas it presents next year from 15 to 14. The Sydney Symphony Orchestra effectively hires itself out as a backing band as it did with Dionne Warwick, and next year with k.d. lang.

Music album sales were down 10 per cent in the first half of the year, although Australian artists have increased their share, partly due to the success of TV talent shows shows such as Australian Idol.

The film industry is rethinking its funding and script-approval processes. Australian film production is at an eight-year low, down from an average of 28 in the late 1990s to 15 in 2003-04.

Arts sponsorships remain controversial. As sponsors demand ever more bang for their buck, the line between art and commerce gets fuzzier. The Australian Chamber Orchestra in its 2005 season brochure has billed its performance of Schoenburg's masterpiece as "Caltex Transfigured Night". Another music organisation was briefly known as the GlobalFreeway Australian Youth Orchestra in 2000 after a sponsor paid for naming rights. At the Sydney Opera House's 30th anniversary gala last year, the bill featured a dance work, Pearl, that had its origins in a commission by jewellery company Tiffany.

There has been little public debate on the broader question of whom performing arts companies should answer to in an environment of shrinking public funding and increasing need for sponsorship dollars.

Should arts organisations account to the community or the corporation that provides its finance? At what point does this affect on the appointments of artistic directors or program selection? Should the national culture be shaped by commercialism? As one arts administrator put it: "How conservative do we become by providing material that is acceptable to sponsors?" Arts companies may toss over such questions privately, but they are not part of the public cultural conversation.

A lack of debate over the arts has been a feature of recent years, says the economist and cultural commentator Professor David Throsby. "The [arts] have taken something of a backseat, which isn't to say they've been neglected. But they haven't had the same prominence in public policy."

The arts used to attract bipartisan support with politicians of all persuasions acknowledging it was integral to a civilised culture. This was reflected in high-profile arts policy launches, once an essential part of any election campaign.

The mood shifted before the 1998 election when the Coalition attacked the arts as elitist. There were no votes in the arts, but there was a perception there were votes in denigrating the arts. It set the tone as the millennium arrived. And while the nation's artists were called on to present images of Australia to the world in the Sydney Olympics opening ceremony, there was no sense that the mood had shifted.

When Kim Beazley told the arts community they mattered before the 2001 election, he did so at a private function at Paddington's Bellevue Hotel. Labor launched two initiatives last week - for film and the ABC - but there was no mention of a broad arts policy. The Coalition has yet to launch its policy.

Even the national broadcaster has become squeamish about the arts, with the ABC's director of programming, Sandra Levy, referring to arts programming "by stealth". It might be OK to mention the war, but don't mention the arts seems to be the prevailing attitude.

The leaders of both major parties have shown little enthusiasm for the arts. The performing arts do not rate a mention among the interests of John Howard or Mark Latham in Who's Who. Howard lists film, along with cricket, golf and reading. Latham cites horse racing, cricket, football and reading.

The leaders' lack of enthusiasm is a contrast to developments overseas. In his 2003 bestseller The Rise of the Creative Class, economist Richard Florida argues that a thriving creative sector is essential to a thriving economy.

An international forum was told last month that government cultural policies could no longer be considered secondary, fragile and peripheral. Brazil's Culture Minister, Gilberto Gil (also called "minister for cool" by CNN), argued that creative industries should have a distinct policy and that culture should be included among basic policies to promote economic development and foster social inclusion.

The Keating era is often cited as a golden era for the arts - producing the broad brush Creative Nation cultural policy document (if not significant additional funding). By 1997 many of the biggest arts companies were at breaking point with a combined deficit of $2.6 million. The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company and all the state theatre companies were among those in the red.

The Government responded by establishing the Nugent inquiry into the major performing arts, arguably its single most significant arts initiative. The inquiry resulted in additional $43 million in federal funding over four years, helped put the companies on more secure financial footing, build reserves and infrastructure.

Inquiries into other aspects of the arts have followed, including the visual arts and smaller companies. A review of the nation's orchestras is under way. Indeed, the number of arts-related reviews established has been unprecedented.

But five years after the Nugent report, the improvements it brought could be eroded, says Helen O'Neil, executive director of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group. A key recommendation - full indexation of government grants to keep pace with inflation - has not been realised.

"All that hard yakka in building up infrastructure that can support artists and long range planning of new work gradually gets whittled away unless we keep the value of the funding model."

Most needed now is renewed debate about what cultural policy means in the 21st century, says Throsby.

"The reviews were necessary and there's no doubt the inquiries bore some fruit. But in the end, with these specific inquiries you end up not being able to see the wood for the trees, because you are concentrating on one area to the exclusion of the others: the visual arts, the small companies, the big companies, the orchestras, whatever, and you lose sight of the bigger picture. And that bigger picture includes how we see our culture evolving in the 21st century.”

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