Sydney Theatre Company – not for profit even with a Hollywood star?

Would you think it possible? A theatre company gives top billing to one of the hottest Hollywood stars in a famous and popular play. The theatre company takes the play to New York, with the assistance of Government funding, where this production is one of the hottest tickets in town. Yet the company is still short of funding. To add insult to injury, the company asks taxpayers and subscribers to make up a $20,000 shortfall! Is it the plot for a new play? No, it’s actually the story of the Sydney Theatre Company’s reprise of Hedda Gabler.

To think that through a lack of planning and accountability, the STC will lose money on a production that stars one of the biggest celebrities is quite astonishing. Before taxpayers and subscribers put their hands in their pockets to help out the STC, it is worthwhile considering the company’s funding provided by taxpayers. Last financial year, it received a total of $1.8 million in government grants and they will most probably receive the same this financial year. In addition to this, the NSW Government assisted in the building of the new Sydney Theatre and guaranteed further funds to help create a full-time acting ensemble. In addition, the company receives substantial sponsorship deals and in-kind support. The STC in return provides 20 theatre productions annually. You would imagine that they could stick to a budget.

The funding provided by the Arts Councils is actually a tiny amount compared to the other sources of funding that the company receives. To the new burgeoning independent theatre sector, however, that $1.8 million is cause for great concern. This concern is magnified, when the STC seeks to take even more from the pool of funding to help cover the costs of a $480,000 production. This request may have been averted if the company actually budgeted appropriately and organised a longer run.

During the last month, I embarked on a grant application to the Australia Council for the Arts. It was a production grant, submitted to the Theatre Board of the Council requesting funding assistance for a new Australian theatre production to be performed in Sydney. It was the first time that I had embarked on such an exercise with my colleague, Bojana Novakovic. Together we spent weeks writing, editing and formatting the application in the hope that the council will approve a request of $20,000. An amount this size means an awful lot to an independent theatre group and can provide it with the essentials needed to create a basic theatre production.

While it doesn’t sound terribly much to most people, a lump sum of this magnitude would mean that there was a pool of funds to assist in the development and production of a show that has been an ambition for my colleagues and myself for nearly three years.

The Australia Council has a funding structure that says that all people involved in the production must be payed according to award rates. If they aren’t payed appropriately, the council won’t be interested in funding it. It isn’t exactly the most convenient situation for independent theatre makers trying to carve out an existence alongside the mainstream theatre companies. A standard independent theatre production budget can blow out to nearly $100,000 when the award wages of its participants are totaled against production costs.

In theory, the concept that actors, designers, playwrights and producers are payed a proper wage is something in which I passionately believe. It would mean that many of us could legitimately leave our ‘day-jobs’ and for six weeks be completely devoted to a creative project, much like the staff at the STC.

For an independent theatre maker, there are other avenues for funding; State-based Arts Councils, philanthropic organizations, corporate sponsorship as well as the ever- present maxed-out private credit card. To successfully fund a $100,000 production according to Australia Council guidelines, a producer could spend at least three years sourcing the funding for a four-week show. At the end of the day, however, Arts Councils are strapped for cash, philanthropic organizations don’t tend to favour independent theatre and corporate sponsorship is all but non-existent.

For the category to which I am applying - new theatre productions - the Australia Council tends to allocate an amount in the vicinity of $800,000 annually nationwide. This can fund around twenty productions each year. The amount they provide is aimed only at assisting the productions, not funding them in their entirety.

When I saw the article in Sydney’s Sun Herald newspaper noting that the well-funded STC desperately needed an extra $20,000 to help take its critically acclaimed production of Hedda Gabler to New York, I struggled to remain calm! It’s extremely disheartening to see NSW’s flagship theatre company willingly take further funds which could otherwise fund a group of emerging theatre makers. This absurd situation illustrates that Australia’s funding structures have become elitist. At the top are the organisations that receive enormous amounts of financial support to create a body of work which could otherwise be supported by their subscriber bases, and at the bottom are an enormous body of independent theatre makers who are fighting over peanuts.

The Sydney Theatre Company is, in short, rolling in it. The company has an enormous subscriber base which represents a demographic of the city who strongly governs its conservative programming choices. Very little of the company’s artistic vision is funneled into the development of new theatre practices or new theatre writing.

The independent theatre scene, however, is relishing the gap left by the Sydney Theatre Company. Young and bolshie directors, producers and playwrights are pushing their agenda to create exciting, new and irreverent theatre that is quickly gathering a solid audience. They aren’t seeking to take their shows to New York, they just want to create Australian theatre for Australian audiences.

In short, the balance in funding between these two groups needs to be redressed and the STC should be subject to a charter much like the Government-funded broadcaster the ABC, so that new, innovative and exciting Australian theatre is produced. At the very least, it really is a choice between doing a Norwegian play in New York or a new Australian theatre production in Sydney. It really is time to give independent theatre a fair go.