making theatre "mainstream"...

One more point occured to me as I was rolling off to sleep last night. and NA has definitely hit the point on the head. Theatre is relatively expensive to put on, and therefore must be relatively expensive to attend. or it must be reliant on funding that is increasingly going to 'easier' or 'safer' works. I sat on funding boards for a while, and increasingly a focal point in discussion had to be whether the project's budget worked. In a world of decreasing funding, we were constantly faced with 50+ worthy projects, and enough money for less than half that. theatre was consistently the most expensive artform, therefore you could not fund more than one or two projects inside the big picture. Finally, at the end of the day you had to account to the govt, and therefore the bean counters for every dollar you 'spent'. It's a bloody difficult job, and often quite distressing for some panelists. Knowing an artist like yourself will only be able to work, or even eat or not, depending on your funding decision is not easy. Rock concerts, pubs etc.- much cheaper. When you consider what the vast majority of rock bands are getting paid (nothing or close to nothing), it's just easier and therefore more mainstream. Something that few people know in Perth. In WA, outside of the WASO, most musicians are being paid significantly less than they were in the eighties (less than half). This probably has much to do with the fact that the WASO remains the only highly-unionised group of musicians in WA? We are living in a time when the almighty dollar is supreme. Under the current federal leadership, everything comes down to the money factor- does it make it or not? and I believe the bulk of the population has followed this stream. So to be mainstream, theatre has to make money. To do this it needs big audiences. Either these audiences pay big money, or the govt subsidises heavily. and either way, people (the masses) want what they want for that money (e.g. the safe and comfortable entertainment) and here lies the rub. Neville ps- next question- Does the government still have the responsibility to ensure that this work gets created, whether it is massively popular or not? Whether it can make money or not? I know my answer, interested in others' It's the simple things stupid...