Why is it so HARD?

Can anyone out there help me? Why is it so hard to find a theatre company out there ? Why is it so hard to get a decent Agent ?

Its obviously not a question of talent, Anyone seen Home & Away?

I moved to Sydney from Brisbane, just to make a success out of my career, and here I am. Posting a msg to people who probably wont even read it.

I swear, sydney is horrible!

I can say alot of people feel the same. I am moving from Perth to Melbourne and you just have to keep trying, keep going, continue training, volunteer for any Theatre, build your resume, network with people and knock on lots of doors to get an agent and have a back-up job to earn money. You never know if you don't give it a go..keep going

You are not alone Andrew. I have a very good friend who moved form Perth to Melbourne to be an h'actor/director type and now bemoans the lack of opportunities in Melbourne compared to Perth. He says that in Perth there are always companies with open arms begging you to direct plays, welcoming your ideas. I also beleive that the bigger citys do not get the chance to cultivate the kind of close theatre community that we have here in Perth, because the clubs are all miles away from each other.

I seriously think that we have it pretty good here in Perth. I mean if you want to make a living out of it, Perth probably aint for you. But is Melbourne or Sydney? Does anyone know ANY of our talented Perth ex-pats who have actually gone East and been able to feed and cloth themselves through art alone?

So what is the solution? We have the talent and the administrative foundations in Perth for an extremely sucessful thriving theatre industry. What is missing? My guess would be audiences. Maybe we need less ameteur and more co-op? I don't think we lack theatres. Maybe we need something to induce our talent to stay West.....

That's the sorry tale! Here in Perth we have the venues, we have the talent, we have the enthusiasm... At he moment what we don't have is a critical mass of audience numbers to let it happen.

But the numbers are slowly going up. Just look at the phenomenal success of the Blue Room Theatre - they are now doing two shows per night every season and a lot of these play to 75% capacity. That wasn't happening five years ago.

But audiences don't spring up overnight. As practicioners we have to seed and nurture them. We can only do this by producing exciting work otherwise they lose interest and find better things to do with their time and money.

Another five years and Perth may well be the La Mama of Australian Theatre.

Just gotta hang in there and keep honing the craft!

"Life wasn't meant to be easy"... Hmmmm.. anyone care to guess if Mr Crisp's middle name is Fraser?

Trouble is, he's right. And as long as there are more attractive options for potential audiences which don't involve getting off their collective bottoms and... well, getting involved, it'll be a struggle. Most of our potential audience, I fear, is bone-idle. Witness the ratings for bilious TV atrocities such as Weakest Link, and the FOULNESS that is Big Brother.

Hooray, too, for the medium upon which I presently vent my spleen, pancreas and the lesser of my two livers. Good ol' technomogolical gimmickry is in danger of rendering "live experience" obsolete. I can see it now... "Megabyte Theatre Players presents the first interactive performance of 'King Lear'- YOU decide which of the three daughters gets voted off!!!"

How does one build an audience? Ay, there's the rub...

Eliot