Aust Perf Arts Centres: How we failed and don't even realise it

Canberra recently hosted three performing arts conferences, the APACA Forum, The Australia Council's Marketing Summit and the Australian Theatre Forum.

I attended parts of each forum and it was during the middle of the week that it dawned on me, the subset of the performing arts industry that I work in (Government funded venues) have almost universally failed in our mission to be centres of creativity and culture for our respective communities and what's more, no one even realises this or even cares.

This is a pretty sweeping and damning statement and I make it not to pour scorn on the many, many dedicated professionals all over the country who are fighting the good fight and trying their best, I say that we have failed only because our overarching eco-system is fundamentally flawed.

Let me start with what I believe every subsidised venue across the country was probably designed for.

Pre WWII, there was no such thing as a performing arts centre, towns and cities had town halls, larger ones had commercial theatres and schools and universities had theatre spaces too. Their were thriving audiences for the works of JC Williamson, small touring opera companies and popular vaudeville entertainment. 

Over the course of the Twentieth Century audiences for live performing arts were eroded by new initiatives, recorded sound, radio, movies, television, video and the Internet. People still saw something special in the art of live entertainment but it's numbers declined to the point where these forms of art began to disappear from our communities. So Governments did what Governments usually do when popular markets fail, they intervene in the hope that there is a vote in it.

And so this idea began to take hold, old run down Town Halls were gradually replaced by new state-of-the-art Performing Arts Centres, a couple in the Sixties, a few more in the Seventies and a veritable flood throughout the land as bicentennial projects in the Eighties. But why? Why build such structures?

For most Governments the stated rationale is "To create a place where the community can come together and share culture and experiences" .

Now this is where I believe most venue have failed especially those Council funded venues. Leaving aside the number of nights of community hire (Not because it not important, it is and should definitely be a KPI, but because Centre's don't have to do anything to get them other that offer a rate), you would be flat out finding a venue in the country that devoted any more than 15% of its activity to genuine community engagement programs - by this I mean the commissioning of local works, education programs, community out reach programs and the like. What should be the main gain for Arts Centres has become the sideline, the thing we do when we have time and spare money.

We sell our venues out to anyone who wants to rent them and stand up comics and licensed cartoon characters with foam heads swing through town and take our money and leave. But what of our subscription seasons you ask? Well I cannot see much difference between a touring show funded by Playing Australia swinging through town on a 1-3 night stand, playing, maybe offering up a Q and A forum, taking our money and leaving anymore than I do Ben 10 with a foam head and taped dialogue doing the same thing.

Each impacts on its desired audience in a certain way, but their is no engagement, no lasting legacy there is only the momentary impact of a nice night out and the McDonalds Touring Franchise that is the APACA touring route rolls on into the next town.

Venue hire and the snobbish belief that Season work is somehow more special, more impactful and more beneficial than other artforms have not just become the main game, for most venues across the country it has become the only game.

Instead of being genuine centres for the the betterment of the local population, each one unique with its own demographics and challenges, we all all just Subway outlets peddling the same menu - Happy Meals for the kids and 'posh' Angus burgers for the grown ups. And like a lot of fast food a short while later you are hungry again, for without genuine community involvement these meals lack nourishment.

You can't blame the Centre's of course they have budgets to meet, community programs generally come at a cost and the entire ecosystem is geared toward providing a nice little earner for the production companies. Without knowing it we have become subservient to the Opera Australia's and the The Bell Shakespeare's of our world, rolling into town in the belief that they will enlighten the unwashed masses and in 12 months time they will come back and do it all again.

There is also another reason why the model has failed and that is apart from a handful of indigenous touring production companies the works funded for touring almost universally exist within the European cannon of arts and culture. Think about this, how relevant is a Noel Coward play in the West of Sydney, where 55% of the population don't speak English at home? And most don't have butlers or apartments in Paris. And yet year after year the work is offered up and funded is WASP theatre. Again there are many many dedicated arts professionals working against the tide in the West of Sydney but when the ecosystem throws up works that are not relevant even in the slightest to the bulk of their population, those venues run the risk of being an anachronism. Forced to cater for an ever decreasing population of ageing white folk in a sea of people who never attend the venue except for school speech night, because there's nothing there for them.

So what to do? Overseas there are great companies such as Roadside Theater who only present work drawn directly from it's Appalachian community. Appalachia is an incredibly unique part of the US being dirt poor, rural and white, people in this part of the US really are different to the rest of the Country and culture runs deep in their veins, like the Welsh, music is a part of every home, the Carter Family came out of this region (Daughter June Carter married Johnny Cash) and practically invented country music as a genre. As a theatre they only produce work drawn from the community, the work is produced with the engagement of the community and one story about a court case had so much engagement that people stood up in the middle of the performance to argue about what took place. (Source: Counting New Beans)

This is an extreme example of course, 100% locally produced work and a clearly defined community and singular aim. However its lessons are there for us, unless our regional and suburban PAC's can invert the model and start making local engagement the main game rather than a sideline and unless they start to truly represent the diversity of their population and stop serving up theatre for WASPs. Our relevance will only continue to diminish.

A very good start would be to stop voting for franchise theatre at our annual show cases each year and say that unless your company is willing to invest something more that 3 nights on a 20 venue national tour we don't want you. We as venues need to demand more from our production companies, local acting workshops, school visits, the engagement of locals within certain parts of the performances (Another Counting New Beans example has a touring show that requires each venue to put to together a multi-racial local church choir together for the musical numbers otherwise it doesn't go there)

Anyhow, I'm sure I will offend some people with this post, but before you fire back with all the great programs you are running in your venue - tell this is it more than 15% of your total activity? Do you schedule any work in your season that isn't either European at heart or indigenous? Explain how your subscription season represents and impacts upon your local community. 

The challenge is there, either convince me the model isn't broken or tell me how your venue is working to change the model because I'd love to hear about it.