making theatre "mainstream"...

>The Age i think has a good coverage. the recent coedy >festival saw they review a quarter of the acts, not bad >effort i would say That doesn't mean the cover theatre (or the arts) very well. It just means they were a sponsor. I think you'll find that the newspapers are trending towards 'entertainment' news rather than 'arts' news. They also tend to report on things that everybody else does, and are hardly reporting on anything that isn't high-profile or odd enough to get a mention. Reviews I find particularly annoying - The Age has a tendency to review one show several times in the one issue of the paper. As for 'mainstream' - Stuck Pigs Squealing I would not consider fringe. Though most people might not have heard of them, they are big enough to be considered medium... It's like the Government recently handed Chambermade Opera funding because they were 'small'. I'm sorry, but I have three people in my company, no budget for a second show (we lost most of it on the first!), no funding, no premises, no sponsors, and no audience interest because we don't have the money to maintain it. Chambermade have their own premises, presumably a board of directors and a skeleton full-time staff, national touring, a high profile, funding, etc. I have no disrespect for the people working within Chambermade, I just have a problem with the Government's definition of 'small'. But herein lies my point - what is mainstream for one person, isn't for another. Having found MTC's work highly trite when I was in school, I have not seen their work for at least 7 years. I would hardly call MWT's performances 'mainstream', since they are written by and for the workers of the city. The Malthouse has gotten considerably more mainstream since the new AD arrived and cancelled their Indigenous seasons, and meanwhile the MTC's new venue is millions of dollars over-budget. Having watched many small and unknown cast and crew struggle to find even one-tenth of the publicity that one of these companies can afford, 'mainstream' becomes less about creativity, and more about what you can sell. Yes, this is all generalisation - but then, what does the term 'mainstream' mean? There are non-mainstream performances in every mainstream company, and mainstream performances in every non-mainstream company... But I digress... What are we talking about? The Prompt Copy Networking emerging theatre professionals www.thepromptcopy.com Sticky Apple Legs http://stickyapplelegs.artsblogs.com