Feedback for Foss on Effies Loss

The Letters page in today's (31/8) West featured a couple of responses from prominent and well respected actors commenting on the demise of Effie Crump Theatre. I found myself concurring with pretty much everything they had to say.Overnight practically one quarter of our mainstream professional industry died. If you tallied up the number of productions and theatre artists employed over a year by Effies and compared the output of this tiny theatre to that of some of our fully funded outfits, you might well surmise that we lost better than half the industry!While Foss is reported (The West, 18/8) to have said that funding for the arts is "... not an employment subsidy for actors...", i'd like to know when the voters asked for it to be a million dollar employment subsidy for managers, executives and bureaucrats (on 3 times the salary of a jobbing actor) to sit in dark theatres making deals to import expensive interstate and overseas shows.It was interesting though to examine what the two correspondents had to say about "amateur" and "unpaid" theatre. One letter opened "Shame on you, Peter Foss. You are obviously more comfortable dealing with the amateur rather than the professional performer". I'm not sure that the distinction drawn gave much credit to the argument. Given the rate of unemployment and abysmal working conditions for professional actors, i think the amateur and professional in Perth share some things in common. Perhaps most of all, that none of us are in it for the money. We are all in some sense "amateurs" - doing it for love. That successive governments have played on this factor, decimating our theatre industry, is inexcusable.The second correspondent contrasted the huge amount paid to a private firm to manage major Perth venues and the low level of funding received by the Blue Room Theatre. The former providing few if any opportunities for local artists while the latter "exists for the under-funded locals where actors work for nothing. It has a loyal following because of cheap tickets and the passion and innovation of the artists." Does that sound familiar to anyone?CheersGrant