While arts journo has been paddling around natural waterholes, walking over headlands and taking in the sun, a little exchange has occurred between Sydney and Melbourne that needs quick attention. 
It all started with a biennial review, of sorts, from Diana Simmonds that reflected on the work of the STC Actors Company after two years. To my mind, her piece reflects a lot of the mutterings that happen in pubs and foyers in Sydney and summarises the feelings of many I have spoken to over the course of the ensemble's existence.
Then came the Melbourne sermon by Alison Croggon, which, from what I can gather, truly reflects a lot of the mutterings in pubs and foyers in Melbourne about the STC Actors Company and summarises the feelings of many I have spoken to from that great southern city.
Isn't is absolutely marvellous that amongst the imagined rivalry between two wonderful cities, there should be this underlying praise and admiration for each others theatrical industry's. Here we have the most elemental situation and problem all entwined into one and you can't escape an analysis of the STC Actors Company without further looking at a larger city-wide study.
It's all very well to theorise over whether the Actors Company is good, bad or ugly but I think that what is appropriate is to see where it sits in relation to the industry.
In Sydney, we look south drooling at the mouth at your small to medium sector. The way that the various pockets of the industry inform one another, the challenges that practitioners set for themselves, the venues, the playwrighting, the directors and the raw theatrical innovation that we can only imagine in Sydney. In all honesty, it probably makes more sense for an 'Actors Company' to exist in Melbourne.
We look at your Malthouse, your North Melbourne Town Hall, your Red Stitch, your La Mama, your Theatre @ Risk, your Storeroom and we say to ourselves "why can't we have that!". This is not to mention the bars, cafes, music venues and non-theatrical art spaces that are in every nook and cranny of your fair but flat city. A vibrant arts city.
On a recent trip to Melbourne, I was taken by the wonderfully hospitable Alison Croggon to see a show at North Melbourne Town Hall. I had been through a few weeks of seeing relatively competent theatre in Sydney's independent scene and get taken to this absolute gem of a production that apparently goes on 'all the time'. For its pure theatrical simplicity, innovative playwrighting and non-commercialism, it was like I had taken a big breath of fresh theatrical air.
But it seems my dear Melbourne friends that you are a little bottom heavy and are just a little frustrated at what is happening at the apex of your industry - namely the Melbourne Theatre Company.
By contrast, the STC Actors Company sits like a jewelled crown on a starving beast in Sydney. There are some rings on the fingers of this dishevelled animal, namely Urban Theatre Projects or Performance Space and the once-in-a-while 'amazing new play' (usually from the US or the UK) that may play at one of our independent venues, but overall it's gasping for air trying to fight enormous rents, lack of exposure, media ignorance, commercial curatorships, marketing proposals and a state government that doesn't give a stuff.
There is nothing creatively wrong with having an Actors Company and from what I have seen, it is posing some interesting developments and puts a new spin on the creative playground that the top end theatre industry has there for itself. The Lost Echo and Season at Sarsparilla are just two examples of top quality and adventurous work.
But that's where it really stops in an industry that is so fragmented that it bears the hallmark of a communist state where one hand doesn't know what the other is doing.
One of the major problems in the creative landscape of Sydney is that there is so little cross-over between the small-to-medium sector and the institutions. I know that big organisations like to pretend that they are constantly poaching talent from the smaller stages but the reality is that it is minuscule in size.
The second problem is that Sydney doesn't have the medium part of the small-to-medium sector. We have it in spades in performance art and physical theatre, but in the text based artform, there is only really the Griffin Theatre. And we have a large and diverse small sector constantly constrained by the bottom dollar unable to really get their teeth into pushing theatrical boundaries.
Belvoir Street in the minds of many is seen as the innovator of smaller and less mainstream theatre, but that era disappeared around five years ago and it is now an institution right up there with the STC.
The future of one exciting element on the theatrical landscape, Wharf2Loud, is a little uncertain as plans for its creative direction are yet to be made public. All we know is that Blanchett and Upton will be taking over its curatorship next year. Will it continue the good work that Chris Mead and Brendon Cowell started by exposing smaller theatre operators to the working of a large company or will it slip back into exclusivity?
When Simmonds says that there is "even more crème left out in the cold, unable to get a gig because of this mob" I think that what she is expressing is an enormous frustration within the sector at the lack of bridges (medium size companies) and the lack of opportunity within the institutions for new actors. But in this basket I would also put designers, directors and playwrights.
Alison Croggon places some excellent emphasis on the cynicism that comes out of Sydney stating that, "Australia's theatre history is littered with the wrecks of possibility, with enterprises of great pith and moment whose currents turn awry, smashing against the rocks of indifference or conservatism or simple envy. More than anything, we are suspicious of ambition."
And for that reason, we as a city should get behind the work of the STC's ensemble, but push it to where we want it to go more than talk about what it did or didn't do.
Since Robyn Nevin took over the STC, it has been a particularly actor driven company which is appropriate considering that Nevin has had a long and illustrious career as an actor. With Cate Blanchett and Andrew Upton taking the reigns, it is unlikely to shift much from an actor focused theatre company but will more than likely start to engage more on a literary/script level. This should create an interesting dynamic to the acting base that it has established but will hopefully engage with even more diverse texts that are a little more on the adventurous side. We already know that three new Australian works have been programmed.
But both Croggon and Simmonds talk about theatrical figures of the past in relation to what the Actors Company does and does not do. They speak of Peter Brook, Pina Bausch, Ariane Mnouchkine, Nikolai Akimov, Darko Tresnjak, Craig Walker, Deborah Warner and Peter Sellars. It's all very well to talk about these models of creativity, but something that isn't talked about is the environs that all of these people came from.
Each of these practitioners broke new ground within environs that were ripe, full bodied and well funded. They emerged like Tall Poppies in a well cultivated flower bed. If you really want to take a close look at the flower bed in Sydney you'll see exotics choking the natural flora and soil that is full of rocks and sand. We will never create something like Brook, Mnouchkine or Bausch because we do not support our arts industry as a whole. The Actors Company can exist for eons, but until we have a well orchestrated industry that shares ideas between the independent sector, the small-to-medium sector and the performance art sector it will remain in isolation.
Alison Croggon makes an interesting point stating that "we have a weird glitch in our cultural memory: things that were attacked fiercely in their time become hallowed emblems as they fade into the past".
Suggesting that the Actors Company could become like that is a very real possibility and we should protect it through constructive criticism and through the exchange of ideas. But if only we had a culture of accepting and speaking about cultural criticism in Sydney.
Speaking with a colleague on Friday evening in a conversation that was nicely fuelled by far too much wine, we despaired at the fact that the theatre industry in the city does not know how to take criticism or engage in debate. Every time you dare say anything critical about anything you either get ignored or you get yelled at.
The theatre industry in its fragmentation is so protective of its own little corners, that it appears more often than not a petulant school boy in the corner of the playground. To suggest to him that maybe he should play with the other kids is akin to calling him every name under the sun and he throws one hell of a tantrum or gives you the silent treatment.
Until that attitude can change, I will maintain that the best place for an Actors Ensemble is Melbourne, where at least there is some hope of cross fertilisation and its real potential could be realised.
