making theatre "mainstream"...

There's also another point - Australian TV and film are suffering a low at the moment, which greatly affects the state of arts everywhere. Funding for theatre has been considerably bad, with this year's Budget handing down funding to precious few companies. This is because several performing arts companies are about to go under, and can only be saved with the money (Sydney Dance Co. is one of them - so it's also the mainstream that suffers). Funding also tends to be going to 'mainstream' ideas, not taking risks. A lot of performing arts company managers say that they would love to produce more original theatre by emerging artists, but find it is too risky to do and have to consider the budget first. Other companies are increasingly producing American and UK plays, because they are tried and tested - Aussie stuff isn't. In Melbourne you will find an especially large fringe scene, and while all of us want to be bigger and able to do more, I don't think many of us want to become 'mainstream'. Then we'd be doing more predictable work, become beholden to our funding, and forget why we're doing our art in the first place. Then you have the rise of DVDs and the increase in online entertainment, with sites like YouTube offering free videos and uploading which a lot of smaller performing arts groups use (although mainly not a big thing here in Australia yet, I'm sure it will catch on). Mainstream also depends on your point of view - to some David Williamson is a hero of Australian theatre, to others he is a 'has-been'. And it depends on the time of year - the Melbourne Fringe is huge in terms of audiences seeing theatre that they normally wouldn't attend, but the rest of the year it's like pulling teeth to get them to see the same show. Perhaps the environment also contributes. How to make theatre mainstream? I would think it already is. The question is more about the style of theatre - puppetry is hardly considered mainstream for adult audiences, but Puppetry of the Penis brought a change in opinion for that. There are too many factors to answer this question properly. The Prompt Copy Networking emerging theatre professionals www.thepromptcopy.com Sticky Apple Legs http://stickyapplelegs.artsblogs.com