making theatre "mainstream"...

Please don't quote me on this one but I remember the ballpark figures of people in Sydney watchin live theatre at all is around 14% (2 years ago). While 14% is prominent, it's not exactly mainstream...maybe things are different in other states :D The feeling I get from the posts from Na, Neville and Logos is that the government does not create a encouraging, let alone nurturing environment. There has been vast debate relating to where funding goes, etc. Some people believe that it is necessary to have government support for theatre at the grassroots level, whilst others have the idea that you have to support the bigger fish (like STC's more prominent gigs) in order to encourage the masses to actually attend theatre and be open to it in the first place. I appreciate both views regarding government funding, but somehow I don't believe real government funding is going to happen and I agree with Logo's comment that the gov't will not "support" theatre unless somehow it gets a big bang for the small buck that it's spending. The sad thing about this is that everyone simply knowingly accepts that the government does not care about the cultural identity of its people, merely the economic value, and competitiveness against the rest of the world. I feel that we can only rely on audiences. If they come, then we have people to tell our stories to. I understand that as artists, no one wants someone else dictating what they will be doing. But could we be creating artworks for a society who is not ready to receive it? I think the audience have a strong mindset that "the consumer is right" and they generally do not like the idea of paying for something that is a little into the unknown. I take Neville's point that perhaps theatre is not supposed to be mainstream in modern society...but for anything to generate income, and hence to sustain it in a sense, I believe there needs to be some mainstream support somewhere within this realm to foster the growth of the artform. I guess that is ultimately why I am so interested to find out from everyone the second question: what are the ideas people have even toying in their mind as to how to make it appealing for mainstream viewing. Do we have some responsibility, as artists, to somehow train more people into being open to understand and therefore receive theatre as being something more than your average source of entertainment that they are paying to get?