Back In The Spotlight

As published in the Sun Herald


It’s an interesting situation to interview an actor not long after who you’ve given them a ho-hum review. The review was for the Bell Shakespeare's Pericles. The actor was Marcus Graham.

Graham's eyes light up when he's introduced to me and he gives me a genuine smile as we sit on the balcony of the Sydney Theatre Company's headquarters, where he is rehearsing their latest production, Yasmina Reza’s God of Carnage.

But he is frank. “That weekend we opened [Pericles] there were some scathing reviews in Sydney. I’ve never been so beaten up in my life – but on the Monday after those reviews came out we sold $30,000 worth of tickets. Over 600 tickets in one day.

“Are people listening to reviewers?” he asks rhetorically.

“It put a wind back in my sails because you’ve got to get back up every night and do it.”

This tale gives some insight into a tenacious actor who has survived 20 years of working inf ilm, television and theatre and has only just returned to live in Sydney after coming out of a "very dark period".

He doesn’t elaborate on what the darkness was but it was enough to make him spend the last couple of years away from it all in the Blue Mountains, returning only six months ago to set up again in Kings Cross.

He has returned with a vengeance and seems be enjoying his new-found fame with interesting roles on both stage and screen that included appearing in Underbelly, the film Three Blind Mice and Pericles.

“I used to live in the Cross years ago and it’s very social and very interesting. And because I did Underbelly people come up to me and say: ‘I did time with the guy you played’. From a human standpoint, it’s great.”

His latest production re-unites him with director Gale Edwards in the newest hit from French playwright Reza, a play that has had different productions in Brisbane, Melbourne and now Sydney just in this year.

“It’s like the world’s favourite play at the moment … it’s such a wonderful representation of life as we know it … the ruthless nature of business, of humanity,” he explains.

Graham plays a corporate lawyer who works with a drug manufacturer that has put out a product that, while making millions of dollars for the company, is also making a lot of people sick.

He’s also the father of a boy who has had a fight with another young kid in the playground of the local school. The fight brings together two sets of parents from different socio-economic backgrounds to try to sort out the issue.

“It’s a lot about responsibility,” he explains. “Who’s to blame, who hit who and who will take responsibility.

"It then gets into semantics. Instead of he hit my son with a stick you say he hit my son, furnished with a stick. Because that’s what we’ve become [with] the fear of litigation. The protection we need to give ourselves because we might be f--ked over by someone else is paramount.”

The play becomes a comedy of errors as the two sets of parents (played by Graham, Sacha Horler, Russell Dystra and Helen Thomson) become more and more childish as the night wears on.

God of Carnage premiered in 2006 and has already had hit seasons on Broadway and the West End.

“It’s beautifully constructed and beautifully written – it’s such a joy to work on something that’s so wonderfully written,” he says. “There’s something really simple about theatre.

"You rehearse a show, put it on, people pay fifty bucks at the door - whatever – sit down, you tell them a story and that’s it.”

“There’s something really uncomplicated and honourable about that.”


God of Carnage opens on the 8 October and runs until 14 November at the Drama Theatre, Sydney Opera House. Tickets: $30 - $85. Bookings 02 9250 1777 or sydneytheatre.com.au.

ArtStart (kind of) Gets the Nod‏

As published today in Crikey.


Arts Minister Peter Garrett has finally delivered on his promise to give ArtStart, infamously described by Peter Costello in the lead up to the last election as ‘welfare’ for artists, the green light.

At the time of its proposal in 2007 the Member for Higgins tore into the Member for Kingsford-Smith saying:

The member for Kingsford-Smith said that I would never have thought of something like this. Well, blow me down! I never have thought of something like this: that somebody on welfare needs more time to produce art! What are the responsibilities of someone who is on welfare? Do they have to turn up at the office at 8am and take them away from their easel?

First proposed as a way to develop a "Social Security and the Arts" policy that bridged current Australia Council for the Arts, Centrelink and the Australian Tax Office rules, it aimed to determine “the most equitable way to treat earnings and royalty payments for artists currently receiving welfare.”

Sensibly, Garrett has removed the words "Centrelink" and "Australian Tax Office" from the funding measure and it has now re-emerged as a grant which will be administered by the Australia Council.

It’s a major commitment in this year’s Budget with the Rudd Labor Government to spend $9.6 million over four years which will provide two hundred $10,000 grants to "individual graduate artists to enable them to create a major work or event to build their portfolio and increase their self‑sufficiency".

Aimed at visual artists, musicians, designers and performing arts practitioners, it will provide a much needed leg up particularly for those in capital cities who face rapidly rising rental costs and little support from state based arts bodies -- particularly NSW.

However, the real coup for Garrett is how he has managed to maintain all funding for the arts portfolio, even after the massive injections his predecessor George Brandis delivered under the Coalition government. It was a tall order in the face of a downturn in the economy and in fact, the Arts Minister has even delivered a little bit more.

The Indigenous Arts is another big winner in the Budget. A recommendation of last year’s Senate enquiry into Indigenous Arts and part of the "Closing the Gap" initiative will see an additional $10 million provided over four years to “increase the support for art centre operations, ensuring appropriate staffing, training and salaries for art centre employees, and addressing poor recruitment and retention rates in remote areas”.

Other highlights include $8 million over four years to the Books Alive program and $5 million for NIDA, the Australian Ballet School and Australian Youth Orchestra to get out to regional and out metropolitan areas to teach young kids.

Screen Australia, the newly formed national peak body which merged the Australian Film Commission, Film Finance Corporation and Film Australia into one, continues with funding maintained. It’s just a shame that the new organisation hasn’t done terribly much in the last twelve months (although they have got a nice new logo). Hopefully an additional $750,000 in this year’s budget to help administer the new 40 per cent producer off-set rebate will get them going a bit.

Garrett has also tried to address the lack of touring arts programmes to regional areas with a number of grants to get art exhibitions touring. But Regional Australia’s continuing request left over from last year for $24 million in touring funding is still left out.

There is also no sign that the Rudd Labor Government plans to re-install any aspect of Alexander Downer’s policy of using the arts as a means of second-tier diplomacy. The removal of the previous Downer’s On the World Stage program has been a blow to many of our top arts organisations -- most particularly in their attempts to engage with Asia.

But in a time of recession the arts should be happy with the renewed commitment of the Federal Government and their new Arts Minister. Now they just have to find a way to stop corporate sponsors from leaving the fold.

Laugh at Danger

Preview article on hardcore clowns, The Dirty Brothers, published in the Sun-Herald.


They have been labelled "kamikaze clowns" by the Opera House and one of the performers in the sideshow troupe The Dirty Brothers admits things sometimes get out of hand. “Our shows always create a bit of an OH&S nightmare for theatres,” the Great Gordo Gamsby says with a laugh.

“It’s always fun filling out those forms for theatres. When you start talking about how we’re going to be climbing up a ladder and angle-grinding sparks onto somebody … that just raises all sorts of issues.”

For Gordo, whose signature act is to pierce a hatpin dressed in Hawaiian flowers through both of his cheeks, it's all part of the job of creating theatre that strives to make beautiful and evocative images.

“People like to see others push their bodies to the extreme and do things that they couldn’t fathom doing in their own mind,” he says.

The Dirty Brothers will be performing their new show, The Dark Party, as part of the Sydney Comedy Festival. They form part of a recent resurgence of sideshow performance, in which groups like the Jim Rose Circus and Tokyo Shock Boys have gained worldwide popularity.

The three Melbourne based performers (who share a collective history in theatre, circus and commedia dell‘arte) have recently come from packed houses at the Adelaide Fringe where they performed their dark clown routine.

“Sideshows did die out for a while – but it’s no longer 'pay your ten cents and gawk at the freaks'. Now it’s based on more rock'n'roll sideshow with an emphasis on creating extreme visceral theatre,” he explains.

“It’s all about creating images and we’ve taken pieces of our own lives with characters and we’ve built a show around it as much as we can."

Gordo is joined by Shep Huntly, who plays a broken man at the end of his tether, and Patrick Bath, the dark and fun-loving clown (who leans towards the more traditional clowning character).

Using silent films and famous Buster Keaton skits as inspiration, the group are aware of the centuries old sideshow tradition they follow when travelling troupes would shock audiences with anything from bearded ladies to fire eaters.

“We like the audience to make up the story in their own minds and we try to get the audience to really feel for the characters. So when you see me putting a screw through my face, you’re actually feeling the emotions the character is going through.”

Gordo waited until he was an adult to try his more extreme stunts. "I didn't do any of that stuff as a kid and I don't like seeing it as self-mutilation - it's more about creating art. I do it to create images," he says.

So is there anything this kamikaze clown won’t do? “Shep attaches a car battery to his nipples and I tried that once. I don’t want to ever do that again.”


The Dark Party plays at the Sydney Opera House from April 29 to May 3. Phone (02) 9250 7777 or see sydneyoperahouse.com.

Break New Ground

Preview as published in the Sun-Herald.

It’s not just the footy field where passions run high between rival states. In the world of Hip Hop the antagonism is just as in-yer-face as any testosterone fuelled game of Rugby League.

“I feel like I’m invading when I go to other states,” says Leah Tilney (aka B*Girl Flix) a Brisbane based breakdancer who will battle with groups from around the country during Platform 2, a two day Hip Hop festival hosted by CarriageWorks.

“Off stage we are all friends, but when we’re battling…” Tilney trails off, clearly looking forward to competing against the very best breakdancing crews for the second year in a row.

“Queenslanders are super friendly compared to the other states. We’re also known for big power moves and big acrobatic head spins,” she explains. “Sydney people are more about style.”

Break dancing is only one part of the hip-hop culture which first emerged in New York during the 1970s.

The term refers to the four key elements of MC-ing, DJ-ing, graffiti art and breaking (or b-boying or b-girling) - each to be showcased during the festival.

“Hip Hop has really found its own voice in Australia,” says the director and organiser of the festival Nick Power (aka B*boy Rely). “We’ve got a lot of talent and artistic ability.”

Exported here in the 80s, its popularity has skyrocketed in recent times particularly within western Sydney and among young indigenous communities. Big names synonymous with the local movement such as Good Buddha, Morganics, Killer Queenz and The Last Kinection will descend on the old railway yards site in Eveleigh (near Redfern) for the weekend.

“Turntables now outsell guitars,” Power says. “The hip hop scene has been rolling along for over 20 years but what’s great now is that a place like CarriageWorks and even the Opera House are opening their doors and saying: ‘We want to be a part of this.'”

For Power, who will be joined by over 70 artists over the weekend, hip-hop is a legitimate art form that young people identify with more than other mainstream activities.

“For young men, it’s a great thing,” Power explains. “For instance, in dance, high school teachers will ring me up and say ‘I can’t get any boys to dance’ and I come out and say 'I’m a b-boy' and they’ll have thirty boys line up straight away.”

“It’s got to the point that if you’re the best b-boy in the school you’re now on par with the football captain. It’s become a stature thing,” he says.

It seems the days when parents just dropped their kids off to footy or ballet training are disappearing. Tilney, who earns most of her living from teaching breakdancing at centres and schools throughout Brisbane, has classes with a starting age of just 6.

“I’m amazed at how quickly the art form has taken off in the last five years,” she says. “Parents and schools are ringing up all the time now trying to get their kids in. It’s better than footy.”


The Platform 2 Hip-Hop festival takes places at CarriageWorks, 245 Wilson Street, Eveleigh, on March 27, from 7.30pm and March 28, from 2pm. Phone 1300 723 038 or see carriageworks.com.au.

NSW gov plastic cup initiative putting women at risk of drink spiking?

As first published in Crikey.


The NSW State Government just this week issued a release warning party goers of increased drink spiking incidents despite allegedly having industry advice that an introduction of plastic glasses would increase the number of spiking incidents, particularly against young women.

“The run-up to Christmas is peak party season, and it is very easy for a pill or powder to be slipped into your drink,” the Minister of Police Tony Kelly said in the release. “The results can be horrendous, with victims vulnerable to date rape, violence or theft without having any ability to defend themselves."

But Crikey understands that the alcohol industry warned the government during recent consultations that banning RTD (alcopop) bottles after midnight would increase the risk of spiking further. The industry advised them that open plastic cups with wide tops would be easier to spike than narrow topped bottles.

The joint Department of Health and Department of Police release referred to data from the Bureau of Crime Statistics and Research which revealed a “150 per cent rise in spiking incidents between January and June this year”.

“The State Government has gone against advice and implemented the plastic glass policy, fully aware that spiking is already on the increase,” an alcohol industry source has told Crikey.

In a release sent by the Premier’s Department on 30 October, regulations only required venues to use plastic or polycarbonate glasses for "beer service after midnight". But between the distribution of the release and the implementation of the new licensing regulation all glass containers were to be banned and bar staff would be required to pour all drinks including wine, champagne and alcopops into open plastic cups.

The end of the release issued this week warning of drink spiking provides advice to party goers;

When preparing a night out, to protect yourself it is important to:

• Plan your night and tell people where you are going.

• Never accept a drink from a stranger or leave drinks unattended.

• Tell bar staff if you see someone spiking drinks.

Yesterday, Crikey also reported on the growing problem of violence caused by party drugs GHB and ICE within pubs and clubs in Sydney.

Crikey has since found out that police have no power to test whether a violent "drinker" is actually on drugs such as GHB or ICE. If a suspected person denies they have taken drugs only the venue receives a mark against their record and it is treated as an alcohol related incident.

Crikey tried to contact both the Minister of Police and the Minister of Health who issued the release, but were referred to the Minister for Gaming and Racing, Kevin Greene who overseas the NSW Office of Liquor, Gaming and Racing with advisors telling us that 'they are fielding all of the enquiries'.

The Minister's office didn't get back to Crikey in time for our deadline, but questions must be asked of the State Government about why they allegedly ignored specific advice and are now potentially placing many young women at risk from further increases in spiking.

Sydney nightlife: plastic cups and no shots after midnight

As first published in Crikey.


As the nation twinkles its way into the final weekend of Christmas celebrations spare a thought for those of us living in the international city of Sydney -- a world of plastic cups, lockouts and bar service stoppages.

The plastic cup rules, introduced on December 1, are part of a new wave of nanny state regulations around drinking recently introduced by embattled new Premier Nathan Rees. They include:

* Mandatory 2am lock-outs (with the exception of existing members wishing to enter registered clubs);
* Cessation of alcohol service 30 minutes before closing time;
* Plastic or polycarbonate glasses for beer service after midnight;
* No shots and drink purchase limits after midnight; and
* Ten minute alcohol sale time-outs every hour after midnight.

They certainly make good front page news stories, allowing the new premier to wag his finger at those in the community who get a kick out of glassing someone during a night out in the city -- but for the rest of us, the measures are nothing but patronising and credulous.

Police can now be seen regularly entering premises from Bondi to the city, equipped with little video cameras to catch any unsuspecting patron who dares drink out of a glass container after the witching hour of midnight.

Before they turn into pumpkins, fearful publicans and bar staff rush around like Christmas elves transferring schooners and wine glasses into plastic vessels for the ‘safety’ of their patrons.

Crikey went out during the week to witness this world class city with its night-time economy and plastic cups to see how the new regulations were being swallowed by patrons and staff in the heart of Oxford Street.

"At least it makes the work of the bar staff easier," one bouncer told Crikey late one evening in Taylor Square.

"They can just go around and pick up all the cups in one swoop," he said.

It isn’t just plastic cups you have to put up with if you happen to be a night owl. On the hour, every hour for ten minutes bars have to close down their service as perplexed punters queue and wait for the service to resume.

"It is certainly bringing out the Christmas joy,” one patron at another Oxford Street hotel told Crikey. “Everyone has their eyes on the clock and as soon as it nears the hour you get countless offers from your mates willing to buy you a drink because they’re racing to get to the bar.”

The band-aid solutions now enforced on a majority of the population who are peaceful in their night-time activities there is pure resentment towards the decision makers.

For John Wardle, the lobbyist behind the Raise the Bar campaign which is working to get a small bar culture back into the Sydney scene, the problems are far more deep-rooted.

"When you’ve got rows and rows of beer taps, violent sports on plasma screens, blaring music and people are losing money with pokies on the side, maybe the problem is about the design of these bars. It shouldn’t be surprising these venues are a recipe for a bun-fight," he told Crikey.

Wardle is advocating for more alternatives in places where people can go at night in an effort to get a culture that encourages live music, performance and comedy. So far he has been successful in lobbying successive state planning ministers in removing what Wardle refers to as the "notorious Place of Public Entertainment (PoPE) approval process" which he believes discouraged alternative venues and encouraged "aberrant behaviour".

The absurdity of the previous laws was that a publican could install countless plasma screens and sound speakers without any regulations. If the publican wished to have some live music with a guitarist or jazz band in the corner they would have to get a development consent as well as upgrade their fire safety and construction which may cost up to $300,000.

On the ground change is gradual but slow and the enormous barnyard drinking holes with their televised violence, sports and pokies are still the norm for punters in Sydney.

"We are trying to change a drinking culture decades old with liquor laws designed by people who didn’t think things through properly," Wardle says.

But the great impetus for politicians such as Rees to introduce these harried regulations is the sudden proliferation over the last twelve months of people glassing each other. In Sydney there was 506 non-domestic glassing attacks in 2007.

Those who work on the ground in the inner city of Sydney all know that a majority of the violence is not caused by the people drinking alcohol, smoking joints or popping a few e’s. This new trend of glassing someone is directly related to the recent proliferation of the real party drugs -- ICE and GHB. Put these two drugs into the mix with the barnyard approach to pub design and the results are clear to be seen.

In the meantime, law makers will continue to punish the greater general public and regulate everyone into the ground. So spare a thought and raise your plastic cups for those living in Sydney now that glassing someone is du rigeur all of a sudden. Merry Christmas.

Interview with Daniel Brine - new Artistic Director of Performance Space

It's a journalist's worst nightmare. After organising a time, date and venue, reading background information, preparing questions and conducting an interview with a subject, you suddenly lose the recording due to some technological malfunction or misadventure.

The fact that I had flown all the way from Sydney to London to catch Daniel Brine, the newly appointed Artistic Director of Performance Space before his arrival in Australia made it that little bit more painful. The fact that I lost the recording on my MP3 player on the last leg of my journey after twenty-one days of keeping it safe made it just pure frustration.

Kindly, Daniel afforded me some extra time while he was in Sydney for a quick catch up during a handover week with the outgoing AD Fiona Winning who has left after nine years.

The changing of the guard at Performance Space and Brine's appointment to the role of Artistic Director is one of the biggest changes to occur in the contemporary arts scene internationally this year as he fills what he describes as 'Fiona's very, very large shoes'.

It's extraordinary that not one major newspaper in this country has reported on the change. But we've seen this laziness before and know that they are able to editorialise similar appointments. Performance Space is no small-to-medium organisation out the back of hickville. It is, quite simply, a company that is at the forefront of contemporary art experimentation and presentation with an international reputation in excellence. And not a single column inch was spared by any news outlet.

My first meeting with Brine found us at the headquarters of the Live Arts Development Agency UK where he is finishing up his role as Associate Director. Based in a converted old girls school, the headquarters couldn't be more English with a beautiful old lawn courtyard with a walled garden nestled behind one of those typical London squares with a canopy of leaves. It's quite an oasis in the Shoreditch area of London just ten minutes walk from the hustle and bustle of the Liverpool Street financial district.

The day I arrive the stock markets worldwide had lurched downwards, Halifax Bank of Scotland had collapsed and suits were loitering in office buildings reconsidering their career choices. Maybe it is a good time for Brine to get out of the UK.

An Australian, Brine has been based in the UK for over eleven years after working for Live Arts, the Arts Council England and the NOW Festival. His biography reads like a degustation menu of contemporary performance, curating Live Culture at the Tate Modern, You Are Here for the Liverpool Biennial, Performing Rights for Performance Studies International Tanzquartier and China Live at the Chinese Arts Centre. He has even worked with Forced Entertainment, La Ribot, Blast Theory and Janine Antoni.

A quiet and considered man, Brine has acquired that slight English accent despite his heritage. "My move back to Australia is not about returning home, it is about going to work at Performance Space," he explains.

The industries in Australia and the UK could not be more different. In a forward to one of the many books that Brine gives me he co-writes with Lois Keidan (of Live Arts as well) and David Micklem from the UK Arts Council;

"Over the last decade or so there has been a growing sense that artistic directors and programmers across the UK are expressing greater interest in work that pushes at the edges of our expectations of what theatre could be. Some venues are actively programming experimental works. Others are expressing a keenness to explorethe opportunities for taking their audiences on new journeys. Whilst it is acknowledged that this work is challenging, sometimes difficult, often compelling and engaging, it is also work that can attract new audiences, offer new experiences, and add bold new strands to a venue's programme. Whether it is the National Theatre collaborating with Shunt, Duckie's events at the Barbican, Noble & Silver at Soho Theatre, or Gob Squad working on the main stage of Nottingham Playhouse it is increasingly evident that theatres in the UK are excited about a new set of relationships with experimental artists and companies."

Maybe that is where he sees the future role of the company he is about to take over. His respect for Performance Space is immediately obvious. "The role of the company internationally places it as one of the top three organisations presenting inter-disciplinary practices. It's part of the international infrastructure of contemporary performance," he says.

What's most interesting about Brine's experience is his role in developing unique and tangible avenues for artists and the arts industry to have a dialogue. Whether it be through publications, conferences, events or library resources, it is clear that his greatest strength is the way he inspires conversations.

If he brings his experiences in creating dialogue to Australia's shores it will be a much needed element to an extremely fragmented and fractured industry. Do we have a situation where it is increasingly evident that theatres in Australia are excited about a new set of relationships with experimental artists and companies?

As he takes me on a tour of the agency's premises he explains that the three pillars of Live Arts work is based around offering resources, professional development services and projects. "As you can see, we are not a performance space and we do not present works. Live Arts is more a resource, an organisation that brings together artists and venues to expand the cultural sector," he says.

He escorts me to an astonishing library where from floor to ceiling, tapes, DVDs and books document years of performance and contemporary arts writing. It's the sort of place you could spend months in, pulling out one DVD and then another until your eye catches something else you have always wanted to watch.

"Working at Performance Space gives me a chance to build more resources and focus on professional development through consultation and strategic thinking. It will also allow me to bring together art form practices particularly in film and dance," he says emphasising that until he takes up his position and has time to listen to the staff at Performance Space, speak with artists and the industry, the future direction of the company could involve anything.

The role of Performance Space after their move two years ago from their home of twenty years on Cleveland Street in Redfern to Carriageworks is one of the greatest challenges Brine will face. Winning oversaw the transition but it is now Brine's role to consolidate. Performance Space no longer enjoy the privilege of being a stand alone performance and artist space, now sharing the converted train yards with a family of other similar minded arts organisations under the umbrella of the financially restricted Carriageworks management.

Seeing him a month later in the cavernous Carriageworks building and a world away from the well manicured lawns of the old girls school he is realistic about the challenges facing him.

"It's clear there is a challenge of making big things and there are big issues in the industry that need to be addressed," he says.

But it's not just the issues facing the fragmented industry, it is also the mere size of the Carriageworks space. "A lot of people told me that Carriageworks was big, but I had no idea it was this big," he says. "It is an enormous space to fill."

But you can see the excitement in his face ... and the adrenalin. Asking him about our conversation four weeks earlier in London and how he feels now that he is in Sydney he is comforted with the fact that the organisation feels 'familiar' to him.

Hopefully, before long, all of us engaged with the arts will also become familiar with Daniel Brine and the future path he will carve in inspiring creative dialogue between all the spheres of performance in the country. An enormous space to fill indeed.

Opera Australia does its bit for the SMH arts pages

As first published in Crikey.

If you think the Brits' inferiority complex in sport was bad, you should see what’s going on in the world of opera. The Brits are quite displeased with the way that a certain antipodean singer is treating one of their own.

"There is more drama off-stage than on at Opera Australia as a serious rift is developing between the company's star singer and its British musical director," Roger Maynard wrote in the UK’s Independent.

At the centre of the affair is a letter from mezzo-soprano Fiona Janes which has been circulated to media outlets in Australia and the UK. First picked up by the Sydney Morning Herald, it alleges that the company is descending into "an abyss of mediocrity".

The letter also makes very serious allegations of ageism and discrimination within the company. For The Independent newspaper, it is all the more tense because of “the fact that there is a Briton at the centre of the row”.

Which, of course, is absolute garbage but this affair does bring into sharp focus the fragile relationship between media outlets and arts organisations.

The far more interesting story is how arts journalists at The Sydney Morning Herald have been put under the magnifying glass in the last few weeks. Ever since Rural Press took over the Fairfax management, there has been an order that they can no longer enjoy the freedom of working from home and that they need to put out more results.

A few noses are out of joint down at the Pyrmont headquarters in Sydney, which makes Opera Australia’s affair all the more tantalising for the arts desk at The Herald.

But arts organisations are generally not very good at dealing with public criticism at the best of times with so much sensitivity around their use of public funds. So as soon as a debate spills onto the pages of a local rag, organisations shrivel up quicker than you can throw a tomato.

As usual, this new affair with Opera Australia is primarily about personalities. It’s similar to recent public rows between disgruntled actor Colin Moody and the Sydney Theatre Company and arguments between Barrie Kosky and pretty much everyone else.

Janes’ letter is just another of these explosions. What’s interesting is that the letter was leaked to the media even after the Opera Australia board agreed to meet with the singer. The company certainly learnt a lot of lessons from the brouhaha that exploded in the media over conductor Simone Young in 2002.

But this debate is getting even more out of hand for the company as director Elke Neidhardt and singer Kirsti Harms get on board with further criticisms published in the Herald today.

Usually arts powerbrokers are unwilling to publicly open up and have a constructive debate about creative decisions, but in this case Opera Australia appears to be on the front foot and opening up communication channels.

They have sent a letter to The Herald which is yet to be published and they are re-starting a consultative committee to discuss future creative plans for the company.

The two positives out of this will of course mean that The Herald gets some more much needed arts content and the company will appear to be transparent in its dealings. As for the Brits and their sensitivities, maybe they should just concentrate on one thing at a time and keep shaming us Australians at the Olympics.

WYD wash-up: NSW put on a great party (even if it snubbed most)

As first published in Crikey.


It’s amazing what the NSW State Government can do when it puts its mind to it.

For a week they set up road closures and bus lanes in the heart of the city that created an urban-wonderland for pedestrians and cyclists.

The much maligned rail network was suddenly on time, efficient and quick.

Live music events filled venues from the harbour to the Domain, public debates and discussions were held in halls and a major theatrical event was staged to an audience of thousands creating the ultimate spirit of festival.

The sheer infrastructure of World Youth Day surpassed even APEC and must have made those that run major sporting, cultural and arts events in Sydney weep with envy.

The Greens have alleged that in total the NSW State Government provided at least $108.5 million which included substantial costs in police, public transport, emergency services and road works. This is in addition to half the $41 million costs to the Australian Jockey Club for the use of Randwick Racecourse as a temporary place of worship and as a camping site and does not include the $22 million that the Commonwealth threw in.

Just imagine what type of event could be staged in Sydney for close to $150 million that was for all citizens. The possibilities are endless. Sports fields could host major carnivals. Regional theatres and public halls could be given a breath of new life. It could be a week long event that would reach from the very east to the very west.

It was a model of commitment and a fantastic orchestration of infrastructure. But the problem always will be that World Youth Day was an exclusive event controlled through the compulsory registration of participants. It has left a sour taste in the mouths of those not involved with this particular strand of religion.


Unlike the Olympics or the Sydney Festival, the people of Sydney found themselves catering to a very specific cross-section of society. I can only imagine how the Protestant factions of the Christian Church felt over the last seven days.

There’s something to be said for the tolerance of people who live in Sydney. For those that lived in the inner city, taking the swarming masses of pilgrims in their stride, a secret code emerged. Faced with the youth group chants on your way to get milk or bread, you would come across a local non-participant and give each other that look of understanding that said, "Don’t worry, it will all be over soon."

For the victims of child s-x abuse they saw a real opportunity to engage with the Church, the Vatican and the Pilgrims. The Foster family was on the minds of everyone, not to mention that taxi drivers who listen all day to talk-back radio. But in the end, it was a closed shop. The Foster family didn’t get what they wanted and neither did victims of child abuse.

Others were more freely engaged. A protest of one thousand people gathered in the gay heart of Oxford Street to voice their concerns about the Catholic Church and their dominant political and social policies. Lesbians and gays joined with socially liberal Christians, atheists, disaffected Catholics and representatives from Broken Rites.

They made it clear during all of their speeches that they weren’t anti-Catholic but rather they demanded tolerance and acceptance. Even when a stray group of young American pilgrims found themselves in the middle of the protest they were greeted with smiles and good humour.

And it was smiles and good humour that really summed up the week. I found myself on the final day of World Youth Day sitting on a pub balcony watching the thousands of pilgrims returning. Sitting with a few locals we waved and cheered them for no particular reason.

The local drunk kept yelling at those carrying banners and flags asking where they were from. This was always followed by a cheer. We waved goodbye and found ourselves exactly the same as when the arrived. Nothing has changed and it is such a shame that after all that money, after all those people and all that effort, most of us -- the Foster family -- weren’t included.

WYD: Sydney converted, it's time to rein-in Spain

This has absolutely nothing to do with the arts but I am posting it anyway as I am covering World Youth Day for Crikey.

This is as it was first published today.


On Sunday Pope Benedict will announce that Madrid will be the World Youth Day host city for the next event in 2011. The focus will then shift from Cardinal George Pell and Sydney, as the Catholic world focuses its attention to another battleground in the fight to resurrect a dying religion's popularity. Spain is, for the Vatican, the last bastion.

Not only is Spain experiencing the usual drop in Catholic adherence, but the country now has a socialist government within a society that is very liberal. Abortion, divorce and gay marriage are all legal, so the Church must make some inroads to reverse these trends.

Leading the charge will be some of the most right-wing and conservative elements of the Church. The elite Opus Dei with their stranglehold on power in the Vatican will of course be there but not far behind are the newer and more youthful right-wing organisations. And they are all here in Sydney.

From the outside, this big youth day event appears to be a religion united, but nothing could be further from the truth. Such is the rift between the right-wing and more liberal elements of the Catholic Church many within are busting at the seams to come out and say what they think.

To understand the politics of what is happening domestically, it is vital to understand that Pell isn’t particularly popular among your rank-and-file Catholics and this whole World Youth Day event is less about the Pope, and more about our local Cardinal boosting his career opportunities in the Vatican and impressing the people that matter.

With the Pope by his side, he can hurl a few two-fingered salutes to the liberal members of the congregation. Aside from Opus Dei, one of the organisations prominent in youth day events is a big contingent of neocatecumenals, an extremely conservative organisation that emerged out of Spain and has spread to more than 105 countries and more than 860 parishes worldwide. I understand that 40,000 neocatecumenal pilgrims have descended on Australia, 3000 from Spain.

For a moment, forget about all the Guy Sebastian, hippy type guitar events, this World Youth Day is largely influenced by restorationist Vatican I theology. Out with new fangled liberal views on environmental concerns, the role of women in the Church, contraceptives and gays and in with Opus Dei, Eucharistic Adoration, aggressive evangelism, relics of stigmatics and a host of rites that haven’t been seen in Australia since the introduction of Vatican II.

Cardinal Pell will be presiding over a meeting of the neocatecumenals on Monday and has asked them to make the Gospel spread around Australia and provide some spiritual help for a country that has some “very serious problems”.

For the left of the Church these associations are having some very practical and alarming consequences. Stephen Crittenden reported in last week's episode of the ABC’s Religion Report, that in one instance “the Jesuits have been ordered to withdraw their plan to host a forum with the gay Catholic group Acceptance and PFlag, the organisation for parents and friends of young gays and lesbians”.

All this will very pleasing for the Opus Dei members in the Vatican.

As soon as the Pope arrived, Pell swiftly transported him to Australia’s Opus Dei headquarters. Pell is one of its 500 or so members in Australia. Opus Dei isn’t particularly popular here and is at odds with many.

"There is a great dissatisfaction with the Restorationist spirituality, which is also devoid of any commitment to social justice," Fr Confeggi, a parish priest in the outer Sydney suburb of Mount Druitt, told The Sydney Morning Herald.

Many of the kids flying in from all over the world would be unaware of this theological undercurrent. Nevertheless, they will be the ones taking part in these baroque rituals that will not necessarily take them closer to God, but will move them toward the Opus Dei view of the Church.

At one stage, George Pell even wanted to get the Catholic conservative and sometime racist Mel Gibson to direct the WYD Stations of the Cross ritual. It never happened, but we are getting close to the type of doctrines exposed on the youth walking around Sydney with their red back packs.

And none of this even comes close to the worries within the Church over the cost. It's costing the Church an estimated $150 million on top of the $86 million that NSW taxpayers are throwing in. The left of the Church might have other ideas for where they would rather spend that money. Let's see how they go in Madrid in three years time.

A show about people

As published in Arts Hub.
Friday, 5 October, 2007


Shaun Parker is the consummate collaborator. Despite being only a short time out from premiering his new work This Show Is About People at the Melbourne International Arts Festival, he is still writing the piece.

“What’s really good about doing interviews like this is that I can talk it out, and the things that will come up I will take back to the rehearsal,” he says as I sit down with him at a café in Sydney just before his departure.

This Show Is About People has been three years in the making so it’s no wonder that the Robert Helpmann Scholar has got used to constantly revising the piece and reacting to feedback from peers.

“When I came back to Australia from Europe, I had this piece in my head where I wanted to just do a show that was about people. A piece that looked at the human condition and the duality of life – light and dark, violence and peace, man and woman, freedom and confinement.”

For the Australian choreographer who has also worked as a singer, dancer and physical theatre performer for the last fifteen years, arriving at such a work has been a lifelong journey.

As a young boy, Parker was unable to speak until he was six years old due to a long series of speech impediments. “But strangely enough,” he says, “I could sing. My mother said she would walk in and find me singing all the songs on Playschool! I could sing the words of the songs, but I could not speak them.”

For Parker, this lifelong connection to song represents a starting point for his collaboration in creating This Show Is About People. “I wanted to create a soundtrack to people’s lives”, he says.

“You see, there is just so many dehumanised dance pieces and an overuse of multimedia”, he adds. “I want to start a rebellion by just using people and telling simple stories using performers who simply use their bodies.”

This Show Is About People, which will premiere at the Melbourne International Arts Festival and then tour north to the Sydney Festival in January is a close collaboration between Parker and musical directors Mara and Llew Kiek. Using five dancers and five singer/musicians, the creative team frame the action of the piece in a waiting room with the score intertwining the lives of the performers.

“When my mother was diagnosed with secondary cancer, just before I commenced the first stage development of this work, she was thrown into a period of grief and questioning,” he explains.

“I remember sitting with my mother in the waiting room of the Oncologist’s surgery, and when I looked around at the other families and patients who were also waiting, they too had their own questions – each as specific and potent as the next.”

This close-to-home experience directly impacted Parker’s initial creative processes so that by the time the origins of the piece where discovered the setting was drawing itself to the idea of a waiting room.

Asking Parker whether he had the opportunity to see Swiss director Cristoph Marthaler’s latest work Seemanslieder at the Sydney Festival earlier this year, a piece which is also set in a waiting room and where characters communicate in song, he shakes his head. “I am kicking myself that I never got to see that. So many people have told me how wonderful it was!”

I can indeed see similarities between the two creative’s. Parker, like Marthaler uses music as a core part of creating his vision for the piece. But even though the concepts of these two works are similar, Parker centres his process around the performer as dancer. As well as this, his choice of music, Bulgarian mountain music along with counter-tenor Early music, is far removed from the sea-shanty and 60’s pop music of Seemanslieder.

“The Bulgarian singing invokes for us a sense of community and belonging,” he explains. “One song, Neven Tsafti sung by Silvia Entcheva and Mara Kiek speaks of the Wild Marigold that is growing between the paving stones. It is a healing flower. It is waiting, ready to be found, but there is no-one there to pick it. Many of the Bulgarian songs speak of small tales of everyday life, yet their underlying meaning speaks many words.”

“The Early music is mostly a selection of medieval songs by counter-tenor Tobias Cole and musicians Nick Wales and Llew Kiek. This time it is the men who drive the medieval music, which for me, provides an essential link to religion, to a belief system,” he says. “The importance of the men leading this music, sits satisfyingly in opposition to the women’s Bulgarian vocal songs.”

This blending of dance, movement and music has been something that Parker has been refining as a creative process since his days studying at the Victorian College of the Arts over fifteen years ago.

“I began my work with live singing in response to my childhood experience. I related to its form. However, as well as closing my eyes and listening to music, I was sure I could fuse it with the body, where they would co-exist within the same theatrical space. This led to my first dance work in 1992, at the VCA, where Duane Morrison and I created an original score for voice and piano. Then in 1996 whilst dancing with Australian Dance Theatre, I created Worldes Blis, in which I collaborated with an Early music ensemble and sang as a counter-tenor.”

Even Meryl Tankard used Parker’s amazing gift for music and utilised it as part of her creations INUK and Seulle.

This time, however, Parker is at the helm of his first full length work, and he clearly wants to bring all of his experiences together and strip them right back to the very basics. “I want audiences to feel something. To think something. That’s all I want.”

I imagine that little boy standing in front of the television at home, unable to express his thoughts, but able to sing from the heart. I imagine that that is what his piece will be like… a song from the heart.



Credits
Director and Choreographer Shaun Parker
Musical Directors Mara Kiek & Llew Kiek
Set and Costume Designer Robert Cousins
Sound Designer Peter Kennard

Collaborative Performers:
Anton, Matt Cornell, Marnie Palomares, Guy Ryan
Collaborative Musicians
Jarnie Birmingham, Tobias Cole, Sylvia Entcheva, Llew Kiek, Mara Kiek

Stephen Jeffreys: guiding Sydney's stages

As published in ArtsHub Australia

by Nicholas Pickard
Thursday, June 07, 2007

The Sydney Theatre Company headquarters is one of the most beautiful places during the day. On a long finger wharf that’s nestled in the heart of Port Jackson, the view pans out to the east, with the Harbour Bridge arching over the waters that glides from the river out to the Pacific Ocean.

At 10am, I am introduced to Stephen Jeffreys, a tall and amiable Englishman who has one of those rich home county voices that has that quiet and respectable authority to it.

The two of us are decked out in our fair skin and we cover for shade on one of the beautiful decks that takes in the harbour. In no less than one minute, a waitress swiftly announces that we are in the way of preparations for lunch and shuffles us down to the blaring sun of the morning. Welcome to Sydney.

Jeffreys is synonymous with the rise of new theatre writing that hit the British stages during the late 80’s and 90’s. As resident literary manager of the Royal Court, he implemented a revolutionary programme that put new British playwriting at the centre of the rich platter of theatrical delights that that little island has to offer.

Names such as Sarah Kane, Jez Butterworth, Mark Ravenhill, Conor McPherson and Marius von Mayenburg were tried and tested as part of one of the most aggressive playwriting programmes ever introduced in the theatrical world. And it was the rise and rise of Jeffreys programme that has made him one of the most well known writers in the United Kingdom. It was his play The Libertine that caught the attention of actor John Malkovich and was then presented at the Steppenwolf and then turned into a feature film.

It was the British summer of last year that STC Artistic Director, Robyn Nevin flew to the UK to meet with Jeffreys wife, Annabel Arden who is a director most notably known through her work at Theatre de Complicite. Approaching Arden with the idea of directing something down at the Wharf, it was suggested that the play they should produce be one written by Jeffreys.

The collaboration was agreed on by the party of three and the result is The Art of War now showing at the Sydney Theatre Company. Jeffreys explains that The Art of War “is part of a trilogy… although it didn’t start out like that.”

“I did a play in 2001 with Annabel in California called Wind Interruptions and the idea behind it was to do a political play in a post modernist way to find a new style for that kind of work. The style of was an imaginary coup with little bits of 20th century history from all over the place and it out of chronological time - and I said to her at the time that I think that there are another couple of plays that will belong to this one.

“And I described a very sketchy idea to Robyn which was called The Art of War which was about warfare and Sun Tzu’s ideas of warfare. And she thought immediately that this was the right idea to do”.

Immediately Jeffreys set about writing the third part of the trilogy, before he had even finished the second. The result, after intense collaboration with Arden and the STC’s Actors Company is what he calls “an unsual play.”

“This meat of the play,” he says, “is in the Iraq scenes which I became very interested in researching. And I discovered that when the Americans were planning to invade that there were some dissident voices in the US army who were essentially saying they can win a conventional war against the Iraqis. But what will happen when they get to Baghdad, is that instead of fighting the US directly, if they have got any sense at all, they will take the Sun Tzu theory and not oppose the initial invasion. What they will do is they will take all of the key guys out of uniform and keep them in the background for six months and fight an insurrection – which is precisely what happened.

“The Americans have got themselves in a classic situation that Sun Tzu would have avoided. To be embroiled in an endless conflict without any clear strategy, where you are just bleeding resources the whole time”.

Jeffreys has framed the present conflict onto Sun Tzu’s theories with three different strands in the story. There first is the story set in Iraq in 2003, the second a series of love affairs and the final part is a business story centring around an Australian company. All twelve actors from the company are on stage almost the entire time and the result is what Jeffreys describes as “a free flow between the chorus part of the work and the more naturalistic play which is going on around them”.

Jeffreys couldn’t be a more qualified literary influence for Sydney’s performing arts.

He spent nearly 11 years as literary associate of the Royal Court and he holds workshops in the UK and often travels to countries to work with emerging writers. While he has been here, he held workshops with a young group including Hilary Bell, Greg Woodland, Nick Simpson-Deeks, Patrick Carr, Jack Douglas, Jane Harrison & Nicki Bloom.

While researching this article and looking at his website, I noticed one of the major selling points of his workshops is – What Theatres Want. “I will tell you exactly what they want,” he says. “They want the writer to speak with their own voice. I always start from the point of view that you can’t actually teach someone to be a writer unless they have got something to say, some urge to put it out there. And they either have that or they haven’t got that.

“I am really against the word ‘develop’”, he explains. “I don’t think that plays nor films are ‘developed’ actually. When a producer tells you that they are ‘developing’ something – you think, actually you are not. The writer is sitting there writing it and every couple of weeks you meet this guy for a coffee and you think it is work. But it’s not. The work is done. It’s the person sitting alone in a room.

“What they want is your own voice. A lot of writers seem to think that you have to fulfil a lot of prescriptions of what a play is or how a play is constructed. Really, when a literary manager is reading between ten and twenty plays a week, they want to open it and think - there is something original here, they don’t want to hear imitations of people.

“Its amazing! When we did a play by Jez Butterworth called Mojo, which is about gangsters, six months later you get a whole bunch of scripts with severed heads in the fridge and stuff like that. Or The Weir, suddenly there was a bunch of plays set in an Irish pub. You think, well if we just had a big hit with a play set in an Irish pub, why would we want to do that? It’s incredible how imitative people become”.

The Art of War plays at the Sydney Theatre Company till Saturday 30 June.

For tickets and more info, visit www.sydneytheatre.com.au

Nicole Alexander: recalibrating Australian opera

As published in ArtsHub Australia.


Most things you read about Nicole Alexander are centred on how young she is. It's almost an obsession for writers. However, it's not really Alexander's youth that stands out but rather the passion and confidence she has for her work along with the belief she has for her productions that is most impressive.

It is so acute that it rubs off on you. If she decided not to pursue her career as a producer she could certainly make a big living as a motivational speaker standing in front of a hundred thousand people getting them all to rise to their feet.

Right now, however, she is motivated to get the Australian public to rise to their feet in the name of opera. Viewed by many as an antiquated art form, Alexander is determined to make it not only accessible to audiences, but also accessible to the young talent emerging from the recital halls of the Conservatorium of Music.

"I am critical of the fact that it's very hard for a younger performer to break into the industry even if they are as good as the older performers," she says. "I am trying not only to provide opportunities but also attract the attention of a wider audience from the established opera audiences.

"I really believe in developing younger performers and I don't think there is nearly enough opportunities for up and coming artists and that's been my whole thing. We have one national opera company and they are a great company, but there really isn't anyone in Sydney giving the opportunity. We have the most incredible talent here. It's quite disturbing."

Her newest venture is the opera Dead Man Walking, a multi-million dollar production that she has been trying to get off the ground for almost two years. Originally a book written by Sister Helen Prejean and then made famous by the 1995 film starring Susan Sarandon and Sean Penn, the opera is the debut of American composer Jake Heggie.

The pride with which she talks about this production shows that this is something very close to her heart, not only for its subject matter, but also its creative possibility. "I watched the film and then I read the book and when I heard that there was an opera I went and got archival copies of the DVD from the Adelaide and overseas productions. I just fell in love with the music. It's very romantic. It may be a modern opera but its not a-tonal, it's lyrical, it's got heart.

"The movie is one thing but to heighten the drama of it through music is just another thing. Dead Man Walking is a great conglomeration of different genres. There's pop, there's rock, there's opera, there's negro spiritual.

Putting this production together has been one of the hardest tests that Alexander has been through. "There were people when I started campaigning for this that said 'you will never get this up'. Two years ago we had a sponsorship launch and I said I am not going to stop till I succeed in this. I went and got a tattoo of Dead Man Walking on my hip and I said I am not going to stop till I get this up. It's about the piece, it's a work that's really important."

Talk about dogged determination. At first, the conservatorium trained singing graduate attempted to raise the funds to tour an American production to Australian capitals. She aggressively fundraised for a number of years till she exhausted the local philanthropy market. When that reached a dead-end, she changed tact. The result is an all-Australian cast in an all-new Australian production that hopes to tour overseas.

"When I couldn’t raise the funds," Alexander explains, "I went back to the drawing board. If we put together a brand new Australian production there must be an Australian producer out there that would get behind it. But I thought, cost-wise, it would be more effective to bring in a production but it's not the case at all.

"So I took this to Andrew McManus who I had done some work with in the past and he was very interested in taking this on. For rock-n-roll producers their philosophy is that you don’t have to treat classical music the way you are 'meant to'. You must think outside the square. Just because Opera Australia will produce events a certain way - we don't have to".

This attitude is central to what sets Alexander apart from the opera establishment. It is a risk-taking conviction to produce work that not only incorporates the talent of new and emerging artists but to also bring together the skills of people who wouldn't normally be involved in an opera production.

Nigel Jamieson, whose latest success was Honour Bound, a physical theatre show that explored David Hicks' five-year incarceration in Guantanamo Bay is the director. New Zealand opera pin-up Teddy Tahu Rhodes who adorns the hero-image of the marketing collateral takes the lead role of Joseph de Rocher. Hayden Tee, a familiar face on the Sydney cabaret circuit also makes an appearance, as well as Australian Idol celebrity Anthony Callea. Put radio personality Alan Jones into the mix as the para-legal character and the show is a marketing managers dream.

Alexander talks of Jones with a great deal of affection. "Alan has been a fantastic patron who has helped raise money for our trust over the last couple of years. He has been an amazing supporter of the project from day one and he feels so strongly against the death penalty the he wanted to be involved to make people aware of this".

It's clear that Alexander wants to open up her preferred art form to a wider and more appreciative audience, particularly when it comes to serious social issues. "We need to continue to develop our audiences for the future otherwise we aren't going to have an industry. We also need to be putting on works that open up discussions about things that we are facing as a society. Capital punishment is relevant to what's happening in Australia right now. The Bali nine, the hanging of Van Nguyen. We're having to deal with this issue at the moment even though we don't impose the death penalty. It's something that we have to face. We should discuss it."

Her point of difference is also ensuring that the seasoned professionals are teamed up with the young talent of the country whom Alexander is totally dedicated to. "Not only do we have the cream of the cream in terms of the best performers in the country, we also have a cast of 15 children between the ages of 7 and 10. We have a very talented 16 year old who played Escamillo in my production of Carmen as well as a mix of older and younger singers straight of the conservatorium."

Alexander has found a rare niche in the performing arts. With that space now filled by her ambition and drive, the only thing left is to continue ensuring the longevity of her love of opera and to keep audiences coming back. And no one will be able to tell her otherwise.

"There are so many people that are put down in industry and give up. But it's so important to not to listen and to just keep going. Particularly in opera, otherwise it just won't evolve."


Images: Top - Nicole Alexander, Bottom - Teddy Tahu Rhodes

A view from the top

As published by Arts Hub Australia here.



I only live up the hill from the Australia Council offices in Surry Hills. They sit on the busy Elizabeth Street just a stones throw away from Central Station.

It's an area dominated by Korean Restaurants, 24 hour convenience stores and late night hotels. I suspect that the infrastructure is there to support News Limited staff situated in a building just behind rather than Council staff.

Then again I could be wrong.

I have a midday meeting with Kathy Keele, the newly appointed Chief Executive Officer of the Australian Government's principal arts funding and advisory body. The only time I have ever been to these offices was to seek advice about an application I was doing for a New Work proposal a few years ago. An innocent and naive young theatre director hoping for a few grand to help put on some strange Serbian play about war. Needless to say, they didn't fund it.

The OzCo foyer is filled with flyers, booklets and programmes advertising every possible artistic event, pretty much all occurring in Sydney. Whack a coffee shop in there and artists might feel more at home. But it's got that corporate feel - complete with secretary, the desk, security detail and forms to check in.



Ms Keele's personal assistant comes down to meet me and escorts me to the fifth floor of the Council's Home Office, a pleasant waiting area of leather lounges with quite a nice painting of Sophie Lee.



I am starting to feel uneasy. I check my recorder one more time. A complicated contraption with one cord for microphone, one cord for earphones and enough buttons to stock Lincraft for a year.


I check I have my notes - again, pen - again, pad - again, and before I know it, my lap looks like my desk at home. With immaculate timing the CEO walks in to greet me. I put one hand on my lap to try and keep the clutter from falling to the floor as I stand to shake her hand. Good start.


We head into a beautiful room with soft furnishings, balcony and a view out to the spires of Sydney University.


Kathy Keele is a tall and gracious woman. She has a soft north western American accent, easy on the ears.


Originally from Oregon, Ms Keele's career is solidly entrenched in corporate sponsorship and marketing with tenure's at Siemens, Telstra and BHP. It's obvious from the outset that we both come from very different quarters of the arts.


She has only been in the role as head of the Australia Council for a few months, after making the leap from the Australian Business Arts Foundation. Indeed, Chair James Strong and George Brandis, our new Federal Arts Minister, are all relatively new to the organisation which she says "presents us with an opportunity to go through our strategic planning process in a fresh way".


Traditionally, artists are wary of conservative governments and their arts policies. The Australia Council is often at the centre of these disquieted attacks as organisations call for more funding, more assistance and less bureaucracy.


The height of criticism occurred two years ago when the council decided to dissolve the CCD and New Media Boards and merge them into the other existing boards. Since then, it's been relatively plain sailing for the council as arts organisations and artists waited to see what this new CEO will do.


Ms Keele's appointment sits very comfortably with the Federal Government's arts policy of leveraged public funding through corporate partnerships. Her experience and insight are ideal as a champion for growing better and more comprehensive relationships between the arts and business.


Ms Keele explains that "James [Strong] and I knew how many missed opportunities there were just by the fact that there were two different ways of talking about the same thing. A lot of the art organisations will talk about how 'wouldn't it be great to produce this art', so its primarily about them and producing the art. But for the business, if the arts organisation is approaching the business through the marketing area of the business it has to remember that the business is required to have a return on the investment.


"But if they are just talking about producing the art they need to go through the door of the foundation or get a donation, which is fine because a lot businesses accommodate that.


"But because of that lack of understanding, it becomes more of an exercise in saying 'no' than rather in how to get to 'yes'. James and I are adamant that there a lot more opportunities with arts and cultural organisations than business realise. But they are so primed to say 'no'. If both sides are more geared to getting to yes then they will a lot better off.


It is clear that her perspective of the arts is clearly defined by her years of work in sponsorship. For the Australia Council, it might be a blessing to have such a strong advocate of the arts to attract even greater investment at a time when the Federal Government has very little intention of altering the funding scale of the arts at present.


She is, however, unafraid to throw the gauntlet down to the Federal Government and seek more funding. Keele even raised the ire of the Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt, after she and Strong asked for an additional $19 million for second tier arts organisations in December last year.


But it's her work at ABAF that will influence the organisation more than anything. There, she implemented comprehensive systems and networks that were the envy of every arts organisation in the country. They established an advice bank to tap into the infrastructure of businesses, a board bank to get the best board members for arts companies and promoted shared learning in skills development. The annual awards night is, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, the one arts event that Prime Minister John Howard makes a point of attending. This is along with the 900 or so arts organisations that want to rub shoulders with potential corporate investors.


"At ABAF we spent time helping arts and business in developing their own business cases in how they might use each other. They start using the same language and they think in terms of the challenges that they each have to measure," Keele says.


The way she talks about the potential of corporate relationships is exciting, even for a small time theatre director like myself. But I wonder where the small to medium sector fits into this.


She believes that "more and more small to medium arts organisations are becoming skilled at being able to attract that type of funding.


"I think what we are going to find is that a lot of businesses are investing in the small to medium organisations - not enough, never enough - but these organisations are good value for them and they are getting more and more skilled in developing the business case to attract those guys.


She admits that "it is a tough call for small to medium organisations because they are resource short and they almost have to come to a decision to either raise funds or service partnerships. And they have a tough call in working out which is going to give them a long term sustainable piece of investment for them."


Many are wondering whether there will be a merger between ABAF and the Australia Council. In one sense, it seems that has already occurred. If Ms Keele's pledges manifest, the national arts community can look forward to a diversified and more streamlined peak body that will advocate for culture to not only to government, but to the community and especially, to business.


She believes that "we really do have to understand what it is that makes the Australia Council perceived as cumbersome and hard to deal with." Business case, investment, partnership and skills are words we are going to hear a lot more of from the Australia Council. It will alter the way it is viewed to the business community, to society as a whole and to arts organisations.


It is going to be an interesting experiment to see how far the business artists relationship will go. But if major arts organisations can become more reliant on partnerships, it may free up extra opportunities for the individual artist or small theatre company. We may even find arts advocacy being shared around for the common good of the industry. Keele's tenure will see a change of philosophy and that may not be such a bad thing when we consider the alternative.

A Festival For Insomniacs

The whistle blows and the fireworks bang. Suddenly Sydney is beating to the sound of theatre, dance, art, performance and music in a dizzying spell that captures the imagination of a city often too cool to dance to someone else’s tune.

But dance they did. Fergus Linehan, Artistic Director, suddenly realised he had gripped the city on the second weekend when “we had about 18 or 19 things going at the same time and there were tens of thousands of people pouring out of the domain concert. The Hyde Park Becks bar was humming – there were all these kids sitting outside, and I love this, because they are too young, they just sit outside and listen to the music.

“You also had a huge queue of people waiting to get in and it was just jumping inside. And then down at the Spiegeltent, the garden was absolutely full, and all the international performers are in there. And there was just a moment and I thought ‘ok, we now have a festival city’.”

It hasn’t always been like this. In fact, it’s never been like this. Linehan believes that “it broke through to a broader consciousness; the overall event just seemed to be really well loved, a warmth, people were almost affectionate towards it”.

The Sydney Festival which wrapped up last weekend, had a programme of over 100 events incorporating the talents of 780 performers from around the world. It was an extraordinary programme which put its technicolour fingerprint on the face of the city. It’s no wonder that they engaged with it - it was so terribly hard to ignore.

It’s Fergus Linehan’s second year at the helm, and he has built on the cumulative success of his debut last year as well as the previous festivals since its inception in 1977. It attracts around 1 million people making it the biggest cultural festival in the country.

What differentiated this year’s festival, however, was the breathless way it changed the city. Linehan believes that “in general there wasn’t necessarily the one thing that absolutely jumped out. The whole thing has gathered a momentum. It is bigger than all of us.”

In a programme of events that included Lou Reed’s Berlin, a Gate Theatre Beckett trilogy with Ralph Fiennes, Cristoph Marthaler’s Seemanslieder, Maly Drama’s Uncle Vanya, Stomp, Akram Khan, Batsheva Dance Company and a hot air balloon symphony floating over the city, Sydney as a whole engaged with the cultural events like never before.

The Sydney Festival’s accessibility is an enormous factor in its appeal. Last year the NSW State Government provided an extra injection of funds to specifically bring down the cost of tickets. As well as that, each event has an allocation of tickets for ‘next to nix’ on the day of the performance.

“There’s a whole gang of people that did the whole festival like this,” says Linehan. “And every morning they go down to Martin Place to get their tickets, queuing from 3 or 4am and going to shows that night. And they were doing it night after night. It’s for insomniacs this festival!”

If only locals showed such passion and commitment for the arts scene already on their doorstep. Which, when you know and understand Sydney, highlights the amazing challenge that Linehan has managed to overcome. In fact, he believes that audiences here are “very experiential and you’ll never get wrapped across the knuckles for mucking around with form and tradition”.

This is a city of 4 million people spread out over 12,000 square kilometres. Bringing together people for anything is a hard ask. The 2007 festival however, or more specifically, the overall programme of events with their strategic placement through the city, has meant that it is exposing cultural events to an extraordinary amount of people. He has proven that it can be done.

From the Sydney Opera House, to Circular Quay, Hyde Park, the Domain and Parramatta, the Sydney Festival had its pink street banners along every esplanade and city street screaming - ‘This is our city in summer’. And perhaps that new slogan has struck a chord with the citizens. This is OUR city.

Linehan likes to point out that “this is always a festival that is specifically for Sydney-siders.” And he believes that festivals must always be programme driven and “if you get that right, it all just fits in place”. Which is why it’s so hard to put your finger on the reason why his festivals work so well.

There is very little criticism of Linehan’s tenure. He is a darling of the public, the power brokers and the media. In fact, most journalists tend to be more consumed by the fact that he wears a t-shirt and sneakers to work, rather than commenting on the semblance of the festival he puts together. This year, however, more than previously, the lack of local content was glaringly obvious. Out of the entire programme only eight events had Australian acts. This disappointed many, particularly contemporary performance companies, visual arts organisations and the local music industry.

Despite this, Linehan has managed to awaken something in Sydney that was never truly exploited – a passionate, culturally aware and sophisticated group of party animals.

One of the major things that Linehan would change if he could, is the length of the Festival. “I think we struggle with 21 days – it’s a little long – and audiences are wrecked by the end of it. And you can feel people thinking – if I never go to another show again it won’t be too soon! I am going home, and I am going to get out the box set of the West Wing and I’m going to watch it!”

A festival for insomniacs it really is.





Photo Credit: Prudence Upton, courtesy of the Sydney Festival

Article: Sexier, weirder stuff

Early last year, Sydney was bombarded with an intriguing little folder announcing the beginning of the next instalment of the Sydney Theatre Company’s small stage programme. It was distributed to every nook and cranny of the city and suddenly people were talking about what was happening down at the home of the STC. There was the taste of contention.

Not because of the slick marketing, matt finish or the revolutionary style font, but because of what it was saying. Robyn Nevin, artistic director, had appointed Brendan Cowell and Chris Mead, foot soldiers in the new wave of Sydney theatre, to curate the season in the Wharf 2 theatre and they were making some bold statements.

Their mission statement included words like ‘struggle’, ‘resistance’ and ‘unity’. It had a political ring that smelt of underground dens and oaths of allegiance. They declared a manifesto and a ‘Vow of Clarity’ that recalled the Dogme films of Lars von Triers and Thomas Vinterberg.

The STC, like most state theatre companies, have run alternate programmes to their main stage production but the STC Blueprints programme had trouble finding its voice. Many of the productions were hit and miss and it never captured the imagination of the vast body of independent artists who were pushing themselves like mushrooms through the floorboards of the establishment.

“We wanted to collapse some of the distinctions that exist in Sydney and the perception of the type of performance that happens at the STC”, Chris Mead reflected.

For better or worse, many believe that the productions by main stage companies, whether it be the STC or any other, are subscriber based, inaccessible and expensive. What Wharf2Loud has done in the last year is open up the doors to aggressive and contemporary theatre with cheap tickets and a season of plays that reflect the immediacy of entertainment loved by the under 30 audience.

“We took all the reasons why people said they couldn’t go to the theatre and we crossed them out” Brendan Cowell said. “We wanted to make theatre sexy and accessible again – often you feel like if you haven’t done a theatre degree – or are part of the hip intelligentsia of theatre artists, that you can’t go to the theatre. That’s not saying we have dumbed it down at all – but we wanted to make it sexier and exciting”.

Cowell and Mead set about shaking things up again. Traditionally, the small stage season was three productions usually attempting to challenge theatrical form, often with expensive technical and stage costs. To free this programme up, Cowell and Mead removed one of the productions and spread their budget to six smaller shows, called Pushes. Each of them are rehearsed in only eight days with three performances.

Each of these Pushes are designed to conform to a set of ten rules established to inspire ingenuity with small resources. The set, costume and props are not to be purchased or built but found within the confines of the Wharf, all sound must be produced on stage with no special effects and the shows must not be longer than 83 minutes. Other rules, such as actors must be willing to be naked on stage and a limitation on swearing are a little less clear in their intention.

The manifesto of limitations divided the independent industry. As Cowell points out “We had lots of people criticise the manifesto, and people calling it the best thing and people calling it the worst thing and in the foyer people are throwing fists over what theatre is and that’s great!"

Creatively they are challenging the independent scene to steer away the aspirational high-tech productions and to get back to the basics of story telling. But what the introduction of these Pushes has really meant is that more and more emerging writers, directors and actors are walking through the stage door of the STC and a platform is being provided to harness their skills closer to the professional stage.

This is a relief to many. The infrastructure around the theatre scene in Sydney means that there are two distinct tiers in place with little cross over. The funded professional theatres and the non-funded fringe scene. Between the two of them, there is little to prepare independent artists with the responsibility and glory of a larger venue.

As Chris Mead says, “we wanted to build up independent artists who were at that point where they had distinguished themselves. They really need to get that experience at the middle level before they hit the big stages.”

In the last year Wharf2Loud has drawn on the talents of 37 actors, 15 playwrights and 9 directors from the independent scene. The results for these artists are tangible. Lee Lewis, a director from one of last year's Pushes, will be directing Robyn Nevin in a STC main stage production at the Sydney Opera House and another Push team have been offered one of the more established spots in Wharf 2’s season later this year.

For audiences, the attraction of Mead and Cowell’s curatorship has seen an explosive theatre programme which is attracting future audiences. Indeed, Brendon Cowell said that “we had people turning up who hadn’t been to a performance since high school, and they just heard about this space. Thursday night would be industry night and then the Friday – we wouldn’t recognise a single person!”

The cost of the Wharf2Loud season is nearly half a million dollars to the STC, with very little real return in box office profit. But with packed houses and people being turned away from nearly every performance, the investment for Robyn Nevin and the STC is social capital.

This year the manifesto and the energy continue but without Chris Mead, who goes off to head PlayWriting Australia as its inaugural Artistic Director. Brendon Cowell, however, will continue the work established in the last twelve months to see more packed houses and more independent artists re-discovering the simple art of story telling.


Wharf2Loud has two Pushes coming up in the next two weeks - Dead Caeser by ABC Chaser Chris Taylor followed by certain Australian companies from version 1.0. The next Wharf 2 mainstage production is Self Esteem written and directed by Brendan Cowell. Further information: http://www.wharf2loud.com/

Images:
Top - Belinda McClory, Ewen Leslie & Rhys Muldoon PHOTO: BRETT BOARDMAN
Bottom - Victoria Longley and Brendan Cowell PHOTO BY: TRACEY SCHRAMM