Right, it's official...

If you're not on Twitter, then you're no one. Get on it.

There's even an interesting list being compiled at The Social Pages of Australian creative organisations from film, the visual arts, broadcasting, performance and media already there.

There's Company B, Sydney Opera House, MCA, Carriageworks, Griffin Theatre, FBi, Sydney Writers Centre, Sydney Festival, The Art Life etc etc etc.

Facebook is dead. Twitter it.

In fact, anyone who tweets a decent 140 character review of a show in Sydney and sends it to me, I'll post it on the blog. (If you do it straight after the show, that's even better).

Fairfax should strike more often

Since writers at Fairfax went on strike just over a week ago there has been a sudden increase in locally generated arts stories that are actually interesting. Maybe they should go on strike more often.

In Saturday's Spectrum, Bryce Hallett wrote a great feature on Barrie Kosky and Tom Wright (with a fantastic photo of Kosky standing outside a closet as Wright is coming out).

Relative newbie, Louise Schwartkoff gave us a great news item about the latest Performance Space show from a Perth based collective who put on street theatre based around an anti-civil disobedience taskforce.

Valerie Lawson did a great interview piece about poet Robert Gray, also in Spectrum over the weekend where Gray talks about 'the exhilaration of looking'. Unfortunately this article isn't online.

And today there was a great piece about Damien Millar's new play The Modern International Dead which is opening tonight at the Stables. I must admit to be quietly really looking forward to seeing this. Having just recently read Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures) which Millar also staged as a play, this production directed by Chris Mead and designed by Genevieve Blanchett should be a bit great. 

Now, if we can just sort out that Ravenhill piece, the SMH could very well be making a bit of a comeback. The scary question, however, is who out of the arts writers will get the chop in the latest round of Fairfax redundancies?

 

Any suggestions?

Imagine you are the publicist for a theatre company with a production due to open in Sydney. The playwright happens to be happy and available to give the media an interview to assist you in publicising the show.

That playwright happens to be Mark Ravenhill - someone who you may very well not rate - but still, he is one of the most influential playwrights and arts writers currently engaged within the international theatre scene.

And not a single newspaper is interested in interviewing the man. Not the Sun Herald, not the Sydney Morning Herald, no one. And he'll even do a photo shoot if you want.

What do you do as the publicist? How do you generate articles in the local media when you have journalists and arts editors more interested in either copy and pasting second hand articles printed in The Guardian, the UK's Daily Telegraph and the Sunday Times or writing about the latest non-event personality clash in an arts institution?

Are these editors and journalists ignoring the interview opportunities because you happen to be producing the show in an independent theatre? Would this same response be afforded to the mainstream?

This is quite an amazing situation which happened this week.

I'll put my hand up and interview him if no one else will.

Nothing like a bit of a re-hash

The Daily Telegraph must be short of arts articles as well as the Herald. Today they have decided to re-hash a news item that the SMH first broke in February.

Nearly seven months on and their film editor, Vicki Roach, pulls out a good old copy job as a news item on page 19.

This must be welcome news for arts and entertainment publicists, because it is now official - your target journalists are running out of ideas and stories. If they have room to reproduce old stories then they surely have room to get some fresh items out there as well.

If I were you, I would hit them up big time this week and next. You could even start your conversation along the lines of, "I hear you need some stuff to write about. Well, have I got a story for you... and better still, it's new!"

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.

Wave that red flag

There is nothing like a bit of media driven controversy around a theatre production is there? And somehow, young Sydney-based theatre director Shannon Murphy seems to know how to pick them.

Yesterday, the Daily Telegraph published a pretty irresponsible and simplified article about a play that premiered at the Old Fitzroy theatre last night.

"THE murderers of British toddler Jamie Bulger are being given a sympathetic treatment in a controversial new comic play opening in Sydney tonight," it started.

"The play The Age of Consent presents a series of monologues by a character named Timmy, who is based on the two Jamie Bulger killers Robert Thompson and Jon Venables," it went on.

Ninemsn picked up on the story and paraphrased it a bit in an article entitled, "Bulger killers get sympathetic treatment".

(It's almost like something out of Media Watch.)

The article then goes on to say, "the boys who murdered a British toddler will be portrayed as victims in a theatre comedy that opens in Sydney tonight."

Aside from all the Hettyesque wowser reactions on the Daily Telegraph website which included statements like;

you have got to be sh%$$ing me, what is this world coming to when we start to 'pity' child killers! Posted by: Diana of penrith

Ok this is just a sick joke how distasteful to say the least.
Posted by: what the of brisvegas

Maybe she wouldn't be so sympathetic if it were her child that was beaten to death.Let's hope for her children's sake she never has to find out.Bring back hanging's I say.String them both up!
Posted by: mumof2 of sydney

This play should be banned. Oh but its 'art'! In a world where crimes against children are increasing at a frightening rate, I find it sickening beyond words that this black 'comedy' has been allowed.
Posted by: Rose

I think Shannon Murphy and Peter Morris are the victims here. Victims of their own stupidity and overblown egos.
Posted by: GJ of Glenfield

I am absolutely outraged! These killers be child or not don¿t deserve any recognition whatsoever. To create a black comedy play based on such a crime is morally wrong and plain insensitive.
Posted by: Esther Barndon of Perth


And in exactly in the same way as the Henson affair, ALL of these people made these comments without having either seen nor having read the play. What a pack of gullible fools.

Of course, it does nothing like what is alleged but frankly, the hyped up and misinformed article from the Telegraph and Ninemsn has now meant that the Old Fitzroy was inundated with hits to their website, emails and a sudden surge in bookings.

You couldn't have organised a better publicity stunt - especially for a play that is over seven years old and has already been performed in Australia.

And I saw it last night and my review is to come. But I can say it is an intriguing and excellently executed piece of theatre with absolutely brilliant performances from two actors I have never seen before. I highly recommend it, especially if you're a raving right wing lunatic.

Why Michael Duffy's wrong about arts in Australia

As first published in Crikey.

Sydney Morning Herald columnist Michael Duffy needs to get out more. In Saturday’s op-ed pages Duffy wrote one of the more generalised and least researched pieces I have read from him in quite a while.

"One of the mysteries of my lifetime has been the disappearance of significant Australian artists, in any art form," Duffy starts.

"When I was at school, and an undergraduate in the 1970s, there was a pantheon of first-rate artists whose names were familiar to most Australians, at least among the middle class. Their work was widely taught or hung on walls or shown in cinemas: it was part of the national consciousness."

Duffy complains that he doesn’t know of any artists of any "significance". He longs for a time when there were names like Arthur Boyd, Patrick White and John Olsen. He even attempts to drag Australian culture to its glorious colonial past by quoting English writer John Betjeman who "visited Australia in the early '60s and wrote that we were experiencing a new Elizabethan age".

Unfortunately for Duffy, the artists out there creating and making and exploring -- and the audiences that see and experience and buy artistic work -- no longer need the approval of some authority from the motherland.

The fact is that Duffy ignores the great changes that have happened to artistic expression since he was a poor undergraduate. The time of the great exclusive artist who produces a "masterpiece" are thankfully gone as more and more people experience art in everyday situations. From community centres, to sold-out fringe theatres, inner city and regional galleries, alternative warehouse spaces, to street art and festivals, artists and their audiences are experiencing everything from cloth to film to dance and are making cities and towns come alive with colour and vibrancy.

Art is going on all around you Michael, with or without the support of you and your colleagues in the media. Australians attend more theatre and live performance than they do sport. But one look at our media organisations and you'd never know it.

I hope that Duffy took the time to read through to another section of the newspaper and he may have found the answer to why he doesn’t know any local artists. A quick glance at the Good Weekend magazine featured a very interesting article on the Australian Institute of Sport.

"The AIS produces the winners Australians love: by some counts, more than half the total medals at the last Olympics were associated with the AIS. And yet it produces them in exactly the way Australians like least: by creating a highly elite, exclusive, expensive system. So elite and exclusive in fact, it has to have a special mandate under the federal Anti-Discrimination Act to exist at all; and so expensive that its budget for 2007-08 is a cool $43 million, and each full-time scholarship is worth $30,000 a year," the article explains.

If you tried to have this type of funding model for an arts training program you could guarantee that media outlets across the country would have a field day. But for sports it’s ok.

The artists are there, but as far as the media is concerned, sport is what we care about. Each night, close to half of news bulletins is made up by sport. Each day in our newspapers, pages and pages and pages of analysis, reports, previews, articles and opinions are dedicated to sport.

The world that Duffy portrays makes you feel as though artists throughout the country are getting money left right and centre. If only that were true. The Sydney Theatre Company, as an example of funding, gets just under $7 per ticket in funding for theatre.

Duffy goes on to make the wild claim that he suspects that "government funding has had something to do with this drying up of major talent. An artist who depends substantially on subsidies, even if just in the early years, creates work for those who give out the subsidies rather than for the general public."

By that logic, if The Sydney Morning Herald stopped paying Duffy, we might get some better articles. Not a bad idea at all.

Bible stories can get on the nightly news

Salome got an ABC News plug as well... who would have thought.

http://www.abc.net.au/news/video/2008/05/12/2242048.htm

About time there was a theatre picket line

The publicity unit at Company B Belvoir must be rubbing their hands with glee as controversy swirls around a show opening tomorrow night.

A mysterious opinion piece in The Australian today takes aim at the director (of a co-operative show, mind you) with the provocative title 'Roll up for the show trial with the Jews in the dock'.

It then goes on to say that director of the show 'Shannon Murphy ... doesn't understand objections to My Name is Rachel Corrie'.

Murphy is quoted in an article in the Sydney Morning Herald saying, "I don't know how on earth this incredible woman's story could make you not want to have it told - it's actually quite disgraceful. If the arts start having censorship, where do we go?"

My Name is Rachel Corrie is a play based on the real life events around a woman of the same name who went to Palestine at the age of 23 as a member of the International Solidarity Movement (ISM). She was then run over by an Israel Defense Force bulldozer not long after arriving.

ISM are a Palestinian based left-wing organisation that is "committed to resisting the Israeli occupation of Palestinian land using nonviolent, direct-action methods and principles". They have some pretty hard core elements as you would expect and are not all flowers and roses.

Murphy is quoted further, saying "when I read it, I felt so passionate about making sure that, if it had not been done in Australia, that it was seen as soon as possible. I couldn't fathom why nobody else had jumped on it straight away.

"I then learned other people had tried [to get the rights from Corrie's parents]. I think it became hard for a while - a lot of people were wanting it, so they wanted to restrict who received it because it's a true story. I think her parents are cautious and just want it to happen at the right time. Timing is everything, really."

The Australian then quotes Cynthia Ozick of the Israel News;

"ON Justice Brandeis's celebrated principle that "The remedy (for free speech) is more speech," it is good and salubrious that My Name Is Rachel Corrie can finally be seen on a New York stage. Every word is Rachel Corrie's own, culled directly from her journals and e-mail messages.

"Corrie is in Gaza, a member of the International Solidarity Movement, a front for the PLO. The new recruits are called on to stand as human shields before arms caches or shooter hideouts or outlets, concealing tunnels dug from Egypt to Gaza (to) smuggle guns, rocket launchers, explosives intended for assaults on Israeli citizens.

"For Corrie, in 2003, living and writing in the very heart of the second intifada, there is no mention of intifada, only of Israeli aggression; no acknowledgment of ongoing suicide bombings, rockets, bus explosions, attacks aimed at discos, eateries, malls, holiday gatherings no recognition, for all her concern for children, of kindergartens inculcating six-year-olds with the beauty of "martyrdom".

"Finally Corrie begins to contemplate departing from Gaza: Succinctly, she advises herself: "Travel elsewhere."

"There is an old-fashioned word for this mentality, the kind of earnest temporary do-goodism that is likely to do harm: the word is slumming.

"As it turned out, Corrie did not travel elsewhere. A tragic casualty of the war she chose to join, she was cut down -- horribly -- by an Israeli army bulldozer (which) was clearing brush to thwart cover for launchers, explosives, and ambush.

"In view of the play's manifestly political intent, and particularly in the lurid light of the editors having concluded with an accusation of deliberate murder, the London audiences who jubilantly welcomed My Name Is Rachel Corrie, and the New York audiences who weepily do the same, should know at least this much: they have been spectators at a show trial. And there are Jews in the dock."

Unfortunately, The Australian doesn't really explain what the Israel News is. It shoudn't be confused with local rag The Australian Jewish News, but rather a weblog run out of the Zionism and Israel Information Center which has its own clearly-defined agenda.

The review from Ozick isn't a bad one - maybe a bit too long-winded for my liking. But it would have been nice if The Australian properly declared the source to show the subjectivity of what the reviewer was writing. Well, at least before having a good old go at this Co-op theatre production.

But as they say, any publicity is good publicity.

Brag, brag, brag

If there is one thing that I can't be accused of - it's that I don't have my finger on the pulse.

As one of my esteemed colleagues once said, 'your blog is like going to a party and hearing all the latest gossip'. Indeed.

But two events this week brought a wry smile to my face.

The first is the Sydney Morning Herald, again, picking up a story of mine which I broke weeks ago. I just wish they would credit me somehow - I always credit them. My story HERE, their story HERE. Do you think Media Watch might be interested?

(Speaking of which, I'm going to break another story in the next day or two - watch the mainstream zone in.)

But the second event was even better. The son of Fearless Nadia (Mary Evans), who was depicted in Theatre Kantanka's latest production read my review in The Daily Telegraph and quickly booked tickets to go and see the show with his whole family the next day.

The startled cast and crew of the show were absolutely stoked, as they had been unable to track down the man who is now in his late seventies.

He took down notes throughout the show and made a speech at the end praising the show for its accuracy and even commenting on how lead actor Chris Murphy looked so much like Mary.

Now, that's a great little yarn.

Retirement Plans

I spluttered my coffee all over the table his morning thanks to a little comment in an article in today's Sydney Morning Herald - Much ado about NIDA's direction by everyone's fave arts journo, Valerie Lawson.

Like all good arts features in the Herald, it starts off with the obligatory Shakespeare reference - well, not just one - but three;

"The secret plottings at Elsinore. The clash of ambitions in the court of King Lear. The deadly rivalry of the Montagues and Capulets. All familiar theatrical scenarios to the students and staff of Australia's leading acting school.

"But the National Institute of Dramatic Art has seen them all in a more intimate way in the past four years. Not so much on stage as in-house."

The article then goes on to profile the gordian relations between NIDA's GM Elizabeth Butcher, the former director John Clarke and the recently appointed Artistic Director Aubrey Mellor.

"The school, based at the University of NSW campus in Kensington, has been swept up in an intense but secret battle over the leadership of the institution, which is funded by the federal government and counts among its alumni such actors and directors as Cate Blanchett, Baz Luhrmann, Judy Davis, Mel Gibson and Hugo Weaving," the article continues.

"The private machinations were partly revealed late last month when Neil Armfield, the artistic director of Company B in Sydney, wrote to NIDA's chairman, Malcolm Long. His co-signatories were 20 other artistic directors, actors and film directors from all over the country.

"These future employers of NIDA students protested about the way in which the school's board had failed to renew the term of its immediate past director, Aubrey Mellor, calling his imminent departure an 'apparent dismissal'."

Apparently Butcher doesn't like Mellor very much and is making life a little difficult for everyone around.

Lawson writes that the signatories "suggested that Mellor continue in his past role as artistic director, with a 'strong and supportive' chief executive - the key word being 'supportive'. This referred to the past few years at NIDA when Elizabeth Butcher, general manager for the past 39 years, was often at odds with Mellor."

She continues by saying that "just as important is the involvement of... John Clark, 75, the director for 35 years."

And then the coffee splatter moment;

"Immersed in NIDA's past, the pair seem reluctant to let go."

Valerie, I like you and your wry humour had me buckled over today, bless you.

Reluctant to go indeed. Like chewing gum from a shoe. But it's all less a Shakespearean tragedy and more a British farce don't you think? Maybe more Ayckbourn than hard hitting tragedy. I mean, no one has died have they... well, not yet.

The board did try and get Butcher out of there with 'retirement plans' but they "f---ed up".

Often I think, thank god I didn't go to NIDA. I know there are a lot of you out there that feel very affectionately for the place, but for the rest of us there is some advantage to being at an arms distance from the major cultural institutions of this city. As my old aunt Margaret Rutherford once said, "we've got to be centrifugal".

All those incestuous appointments, the back scratching, the village mentality egotism. And NIDA isn't alone - oh no, no, no. Merely part and parcel of the whole cultural fabric. Again I ask the question - what is it with the committees of our arts institutions? Do they have too much time on their hands?

By the end of Lawson's article my head was spinning with the intricacy of the sphere of influence and the knots that they were tangled in.

If you were a manager employed under the eyes of these committees, I am sure you would start to develop some type of anxiety or phobia. "Another committee meeting tomorrow! Whatever will I do?!" There must be a word for it... maybe phronemophobia.

In the meantime, if these future employers of these NIDA students are so worried about the future of the organisation, just remember there is an institution down the road called the Victorian College of the Arts. Now, there's a place that's pumping out some damn fine talent... and they even know how to rig some lights as well.


Images: John Gielgud as Hamlet (top); Retirement plans? (bottom)

Yang blogs it

An exciting bit of information just came past my desk with the news that performance artist and photographer William Yang has joined the great army of bloggers as he documents his way around his latest tour to the United States.

So far there is one entry from Friday, where he takes you from the reaction of ex-pats in Maryland to a showing of Shadows to receiving a parking ticket in Washington DC.

For fans of William's work, you can hear the tone of the text he uses in performance through his blog entries. It is a beautiful insight into what could be the subject of future performances.

(And another hint to my esteemed friends at Fairfax - or The Australian even - maybe this could be a good blogging idea to bring your arts blogs out of the doldrums... get people like William and any other Australian artist to start contributing whenever they are on a special tour internationally.

You can blog that.)

Why Cate Blanchett makes perfect sense

As first published in Crikey.

Andrew Bolt came out from his dark curtain yesterday to throw a little dart towards Cate Blanchett yesterday. "Cate Blanchett? To help pick the brains to guide us through the century? Spare me. Rudd is not picking people who’d give him ideas but who’d give him lustre."

Blanchett, who was selected as the arts representative of Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's 2020 Steering Committee, has been reported in two mildly different ways by the media.

Reuters filed a story yesterday saying that the government had given her the posting as a "consolation prize" after not winning an Oscar. The BBC reported it as a way for the PM to "sprinkle the gathering with the glitter of Hollywood celebrity".

For the media to question her intelligence is just a little bit naive. Is it because she's a well dressed female actress that news outlets and commentators feel the need to assume that she is not an intelligent and shrewd advocate for the arts?

It is safe to say that in many ways she isn't the most qualified person to represent the arts in Canberra during April - any number of academics, journalists, lobbyists, advocates or arts workers could be better placed. But surely her experience as an actor and director, her capacity to deal with the media and her sponsorship lobbying credentials place her in an advantageous position.

Just look at the company she has just taken over, the Sydney Theatre Company. Yesterday they posted yet another deficit of us much as $350,000 with subscriber numbers falling another 10%. This has been the steady trend while out-going artistic director Robyn Nevin has been at the helm. The company posted a similar loss last financial year as they continued to lose big chunks of their subscriber base.

The fact that a standard subscription costs $420 for six plays could go some way in explaining why they lost nearly 2,000 subscribers this year.

But the trend hasn't spilled over to other government sponsored theatres in Australia. The Financial Review reported yesterday that Neil Armfield's Company B has stayed steady and the Queensland Theatre Company has actually increased its subscriber base.

The board of the Sydney Theatre Company, headed up by documentary maker Ian Darling, recognised over the last eighteen months that something drastic needed to occur to stem the financial problems. Government funding from with the Australia Council was not likely to increase much and the NSW State Government had already provided quite a lot of direct and indirect funding through a heavily subsidised rent at their headquarters and through the building of the new Sydney Theatre at Walsh Bay.

It left just one option open -- the sponsorship dollar. What better way was there to increase the profile of the company than to appoint the high-flying couple of Cate Blanchett and her husband Andrew Upton? It was a smart financial move that will ensure that the company can continue to pay for its large budget theatre productions despite a falling subscriber base.

Commentators have been quick to condemn their appointment, but to be frank we do not know what the capacity of Blanchett and Upton as artistic directors is. What we do know is that their appointment has brought an extraordinary level of positive -- and free -- publicity to the arts in Sydney and internationally with Blanchett's appointment at the 2020 conference.

Blanchett may be spreading herself a bit thin, with another baby on the way and various other commitments and appointments, but she has held similar appointments before and has already had two children without anyone really noticing. Her level of intelligence and her skills in arts advocacy cannot be easily dismissed. She is quickly bringing in dollars to solve the financial problems of the Sydney Theatre Company and now she is putting Australia’s cultural sector on the front page of newspapers. For an easily dismissed industry we aren’t just talking about "lustre", we are talking about building blocks.

Image: "Thou wretched, rash, intruding fool, farewell!" Richard Briers as Polonius,

Gear up for a showdown

Literary critic, Peter Craven has gone after Alison Croggon in a blistering attack on her recent profile of playwright Joanna Murray-Smith.

"Croggon's piece is an odious piece of work and has caused widespread dismay," he writes in Crikey today. "This so-called profile is an extraordinary case of poisoning the wells and it is also a category mistake. Alison Croggon has written a hatchet job opinion piece and served it up as a profile in a way that (if it were to set up a precedent) would make anyone apprehensive of an arts interviewer."

The article More bubble bath than kitchen sink which was published in The Australian states that Murray-Smith's writing "seems like privileged whingeing".

Croggon goes on to say that "it's certainly true that Murray-Smith's plays have consistently focused on the upper middle classes. As one critic put it, it's a world that is 'fairly smug and comfortable', peopled by characters who are 'articulate, have every material advantage and a highly developed sense of their own anguish'."

Craven believes that "Alison Croggon has not ridden into battle, all colours flying, she has presented this attack under camouflage of the conventional profile and in such a way that The Australian may not have realised quite how poisonous the portrait was. Much of the article sounds like an interview where a fair fraction of it is made up of cobbled together quotes taken out of context."

He likens her article to profiles written by Lynn Barber of The Observer (notThe Guardian, as the Crikey article states).

But Craven also points out that the article is no surprise given that "Croggon despises a world in which Joanna Murray-Smith is performed by actresses like Diana Rigg or Eileen Atkins, at places like Britain's National Theatre...This is the world of Mammon to her. It represents the meretricious glow of the bright lights of the big city."

I am not going to get into the debate from south of the border, but I urge Sydney-siders to line up and watch this match play out. We don't really have this rough and tumble debate, which I actually love and applaud on both Craven and Croggon's side.

Hopefully it moves on from the 'you shouldn't have said that' type of old white men defence and into something a bit more chewable.

Ding ding. Let round three begin!

Virus Catching

I think that I may have got a dose of the Green Room Virus (GRV). So my apologies for the lack of blog post updates over the last week.

It is quite a debilitating infection that causes a type of chronic fatigue that affects your work, your output, your eating and your sleeping patterns. The first symptom of course is a lack of writing and blog posts.

It seems however that I am not the only one who has received a dose of the GRV. Fairfax and Rural Press have got a terrible dose of it which is causing not only fatigue but consternation, indecision and delusion.

Do you remember when Fairfax management proudly announced last year that they would be reducing the size of the Sydney Morning Herald to a more practical size, using the Financial Times broadsheet as a model?

It's now a year later and it appears that the whole idea has been scrapped, to never be mentioned again.

Instead, Fairfax and its owner Rural Press have stalled over the change... in fact they have stalled over any changes at all.

But the stakes are high and out of pure desperation Roy Morgan has been brought in to help lift the lid off the truth of the Herald's readership and all their thoughts on the Fairfax paper.

One of the problems that has come up is the fact that Herald readers (who also happen to be a little environmentally aware) are starting to feel a bit uncomfortable with the whole bulky size of the Saturday paper. If you happen to be like me, not looking for a job or a car or a house, you end up throwing away three-quarters of the paper... not a good feeling at all.

One section editor suggested that maybe a solution to the problem would be to put recycle bins in every newsagency where the Herald is sold. That way, the customers could offload all the bits they do and don't want. They’re really tackling the problem of decreasing newspaper sales down at Darling Park aren't they!

(I should point out that this problem isn't just within the doors at Fairfax, with The Daily Telegraph also losing ground in sales. But Fairfax is a more fun example.)

Roy Morgan also did some research on the sections of the newspaper and the readership demographic.

One of the problems that the Herald has is that there are too many sections that are similar that could be merged into one liftout. Think Metro/Spectrum/Good Weekend/Sydney Magazine all rolled into one with quality journalism and features and planted as a direct competition to the new Time Out magazine.

But of course no section head is going to suggest a merger with another section... unfortunately the Kamikaze mentality hasn't really taken off in Fairfax just yet.

Even more surprising for some of the editors is finding out exactly who reads their section. None were more surprised than those than run Friday’s music and entertainment lifout - Metro.

Apparently, readers of Metro typically go to the opera or ballet once a year (70% plus) and over 50% never go to the pub.

Ironic, considering that Metro never writes about the opera or ballet and always writes about pubs. The people they are trying to target are unfortunately reading the street press paper Drum Media and finding out all they want to find out five days before Metro comes out.

It has suddenly dawned on Metro that there most common reader is probably over 50 and lives in the Eastern Suburbs or the North Shore. Which is possibly why they put a ballet feature on the front cover last week. Watch this space for more high art and less pub culture..

And of course the Herald is ignoring that big fat elephant in the room. Broadsheet vs Tabloid.

Why they are stalling a decision is beyond me. For goodness sake, just do it. Change the size of the paper and go the way of the UK's Independent. You won't lose any readers but you might... just might gain some more.

It's certainly a better idea than putting recycling bins in newsagencies.

PM calls on best and brightest?

It's all over the front page of The Australian today:

"The Prime Minister announced yesterday that 1000 of the nation's 'best and brightest' would be picked to attend a two-day summit in Canberra to articulate radical solutions to the 10 most pressing problems facing the nation over the next decade."

And to my general shock and amazement The Arts gets a guernsey, coming in at number 8 (just after Indigenous Australia and just before Democracy).

It does have to share a place with film and design, but I suppose that if The Arts are considered more important than democracy we shouldn't complain too much.

To be held in April, the weekend forum will aim to propose long term options for the development of Australia towards 2020. Rudd's press release goes on to explain that "this Steering Committee will select up to 100 participants in each of the Summit areas who will attend in a voluntary capacity. The participants will be drawn from business, academia, community and industrial organisations, the media and include a number of individual eminent Australians."

This is where you, dear reader, come in. The last thing we need is for the usual suspects to be lining up and representing 'the arts'. Can you imagine anything worse than a continuation of the status quo? It's enough to make you shudder.

It's very important that a 'real' cross section of the industry needs to be represented at this event in April, not just the institutionalised individuals at the top of the pecking order. You need your James Strong representatives in their bow-ties and jaguars, but you also need your fringe theatre artists. You need your Cate Blanchetts with their business sponsorship deals but you also need your regional arts organisation and their struggling relationship with state governments.

Unfortunately state premiers will be in attendance, so you can look forward to Premier Iemma of New South Wales having a chat with you about the merits of rugby league over opera. So the two day ideas-fest will spend at least one of the days discussing terms of reference.

Unless of course you convince Premier Iemma not to come, explaining to him that there isn't a sport category up for discussion. In fact, maybe he can just stay in Sydney that weekend and check out the footy. Doesn't the rugby league kick off that weekend?

I think there are a number key areas that must be addressed by the two day forum. The first is, of course, the funding structure of the arts with a greater integration of federal, state and local funding. The situation in New South Wales where funding keeps get cut and cut and cut, will soon enough spread to other states and territories. How can greater integration stop this from happening?

A new and fresh vision for the Australia Council must be discussed. The grant application procedures are at times ridiculous and anti-creative and the whole idea around 'peer review' needs to re-evaluated.

One of the other things that could be discussed would be an equivalent of the Australian Major Performing Arts Group (AMPAG). Maybe we could call it the Australian Minor Performing Arts Group (AmPAG), representing artists outside the gates of Troy.

The third area of importance is the state of arts education. This is an area that needs critical attention not only at a school level, but more urgently at a tertiary level. Arts faculties across the country have shrunk and a stream of subjects have disappeared at every institution.

And don't even start me on the National Art School which each year struggles to stay afloat. Just fund the damn thing.

The fourth area of importance is arts reportage. Is the standard offered by our media outlets (I'm looking at you Mr Fairfax and you Ms Rural Press and also you Mr Murdoch) really that good enough and how does it need to be renewed with vigour. And how do we stop the arts section from being just a pit stop for cadet journalists to practice their prose?

The fifth area of importance is greater integration of multicultural arts and collaboration on an international scale. Why is the AsiaLink programme so under utilised for cross-cultural collaboration? What does the Federal Government plan to do about expanding the touring programme for artists and arts organisations? What will be our vision for cultural exports?

There are more and you will be able to make your submissions online, when a website is created for the summit. So don't be silent and don't rely on those that are currently in the ears of government. It does make a difference.


Story UPDATED HERE.

From the dead it re-emerges

The Sydney Morning Herald managed to get some pennies out of its elder brother Rural Press to run a blog entry on the Sydney Festival.

At the end of the festival that is.

A kind reader brought my attention to it as a comment on my previous post. The entry makes for great reading, especially when you consider that the last Green Room they had was on March 21... last year. Welcome back from the dead!

Interestingly, the first comment was from 'Rocket Scientist' who said, "Was there a festival in Sydney? Sorry I must have blinked. I'll keep my eyes peeled for it next year."

If you had been reading the Herald print version or online, you'd be right in making that assumption. But then again, as one Fairfax journo said to me the other day - "what happened to you? You start working for the telegraph and suddenly you become an a******?!"

Bryce Hallett and Valerie Lawson penned a summary article yesterday complaining that, "the program, on the whole, was energetic, fascinating and entertaining, particularly its range of contemporary music and dance, yet it wasn't especially coherent or intellectually challenging."

At the end of the day, the festival left Lawson and Hallett with very little to write about and was more geared towards the Terrier's demographic... intellectual or otherwise. There were no Sir's or Dame's from the RSC for them to gush over or an Italian Maestro for them to swoon.

They also mention there wasn't a genuine hub during the festival. Now I understand why I never saw either Lawson or Hallett down at the Spiegeltent gardens having a drink and chat with all the artists that were hanging out there night after night after night.

They do however bring up some big points that I totally agree with... specifically that the dance programme for the About An Hour series could have been better curatored and that Cirque Ici was... well... I think you and I have had enough... No more writing about the Sydney Festival any more...

In the meantime Fairfax, what do we have to do to get you lot to keep that blog going???

Just one step too far...

Published today, the Sydney Morning Herald have gone just that bit too far in an article about musical theatre company Kookaburra.

Valerie Lawson, a journalist who has a reputation for taking no prisoners, published a follow up story to one which initially addressed the messy financial clean-up occurring after the cancellation of Floyd Collins.

It was a good article that put the company on notice and ensured that the public was aware of the company's good intentions as well as the positive work being administered by the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance (read Union Bosses).

"The production company, Peter Cousens's Kookaburra: the National Musical Theatre Company," the 16 November article said, "is in negotiations with the creative team, with the actors and with the Media Entertainment and Arts Alliance over fees still owing under the terms of various contracts."

Lawson, however, has now taken MEAA comments out of context in an article published on page 5 today entitled "Legal Action Warning on Actors' Pay".

In it she says, "the Actors Equity director of the Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance will take legal action on behalf of 10 performers if the national theatre company, Kookaburra, does not pay $30,000 of outstanding debt".

But this afternoon, Simon Whipp from the MEAA has sought to clarify its comments, saying that “today’s newspaper report was both premature and unhelpful in that we are presently engaged in amicable discussions with Kookaburra and are confident of reaching an arrangement to suit all parties.”

Whipp also stated that any legal action would only be "the logical last resort in the unlikely event of an agreement with the show’s producer, Kookaburra, not being reached by the end of the month."

Why did Lawson decide to take that extra step beyond a normal news article? What motives are behind her decision to rub Kookaburra's beak in it that little bit more?

Goats and sheep

And so it continues. Things may have quietened down a little today within the Herald pages, but since my post yesterday, I have been drawn into another battle within the theatre blog pages.

It seems that we are all exhausting a lot of energy on discussing the terms of reference about the ‘problem that is the STC’ and at the centre of this problem is the way the Herald started it all.

As I wrote on Monday, I agree with Alison Croggon that the validity of what Moody is saying is questionable as it is firstly emotive and secondly not helpful.

Despite this, the debate is turning into other more constructive avenues, and maybe what the Herald have done is give us all a good kick up the bum and ask in all honesty, “whadd’ya reckon about this STC mob?”

My attention has now been directed to an article that Diana Simmonds wrote on Stage Noise. Unfortunately I missed it as I find the Stage Noise website hard to navigate… which I probably need to get over if I am going to keep missing the latest opinion pieces.

For most, the article in the Herald on Saturday has been met with dismay, but for Simmonds, it was vindicating after her recent attack on the progress of The Actors Company ensemble at the STC.

“In a recent review of Upton's Riflemind I expressed concern about the self interest, sycophancy and starstruck silliness now surrounding the STC and its new artistic leaders. Who is going to tell the playwright when he's prancing around starkers? Who will dare tell Cate that she looks fantastic in Armani but having Giorgio "dress" a production is a dodgy way of enticing theatre-lovers into an auditorium. That you might get your corporate sponsors' youngbloods tearing themselves away from edgy bars and edgy apartments for an evening, but will they return? Will it translate into theatre-literate audiences? Will it halt the dribble-away of subscribers?”

There seems to be a lot of contention over who is and who isn’t worth the time. For Alison Croggon, “it seems to me that there are some outspoken voices who want their theatre nice, and want to get rid of adventurers like Kosky, and any excuse will do.

“Frankly, I think if they succeed, it will be a tragedy. Do you really want a straight diet of Noel Coward, dead plays and musicals up there? Not that there's anything wrong with Coward, or musicals, in a balanced menu; but I rather think that's the subtext.”

I think that’s quite unfair and I couldn’t disagree more. And here we get to the nitty gritty of critical commentary. Barrie Kosky is a great talent, but I left his previous adventure bored and bewildered and had to depart by the middle of the third act. Having followed his work in Sydney, then Vienna and then back to Sydney again, I am personally sick of the same theatrical images over and over and over and over again. Is it good theatrical practice to have so much repetition? It’s not about Noel Coward, it’s about furthering the field of opportunity.

Alison Croggon has made it clear that she thinks Benedict Andrews as a director is positive. And as she is aware, I am well and truly yet to be convinced, having seen similar work, styles and designs in Germany.

For mainstream reviewers the latest work of Andrew Upton was pretty good… for everyone else, it was a walk-out-able performance of the greatest magnitude.

I could go on and on about the differences between what Alison, Diana, Bryce and anyone else has to the talent that the STC employ.

But what underlies all of this is a frustration with opportunity. A frustration that is naturally going to be directed towards the institution with the most money, with the most prestige and the most to lose.

People see the leaps and bounds that Blanchett and Upton have made up the ladder of opportunity while a plethora of others have been digging away, both here and abroad for years and years. And it is all part of that generational change, particularly of generation X and Y that don’t understand why there isn’t more opportunity… more money.

They see a husband and wife team that have been entrenched in institutions their entire adult lives and wonder, where will the adventure come from? Where will the originality? And for many, the originality hasn’t been shown yet. For many Andrews doesn’t represent it and Kosky doesn’t either.

For many directors I speak to, they are utterly perplexed by the actors company. Why doesn’t the STC appoint a regular director and creative team to unite and explore theatrical exploration over time, they say. For them, it just doesn’t make sense to have an ensemble sitting there like a train station greeting trains as they come in and then sending them on again never to be seen again.

There are real questions to be raised about the STC and The Actors Company, and as Alison Croggon has so appropriately put “the real task is sorting out the valid criticisms from the bile”.

And if we can get over the Moody affair, we may very well begin to start answering the question about where we want out STC to go. And for the first time in quite a while, we may very well be heard.

Squeeze that stone

While we are on the topic of Fairfax, it appears the powers that be at the Sun-Herald have decided to stop reviewing both opera and dance and instead use the space for more advertisements.

"The Company,” Noel Staunton, Executive Director of the Sydney Dance Company told Sydney Arts Journo, “is saddened that the Sun-Herald will no longer cover dance with either reviews of performances or feature stories on upcoming events.

“Julie Huffer is a valued member of a very small group of very fine dance writers in Sydney and it is disappointing to hear that we can no longer look forward to seeing her work in print,” he said.

Saddened is certainly a word for it. The Sydney Dance Company, Opera Australia and every other dance and opera company in the city are hopefully now reflecting on exactly how much money they are throwing at Fairfax for advertising space.

A quick flick through the ads in the Herald during the week, and then in Friday’s Metro followed by the weekend papers and Spectrum shows that the arts industry are pulling their weight more than most in advertising revenue.

A single line in that monetary black hole called the Theatre Directory costs nearly $40. When the average number of lines is around 5-10 and you add in BOLD font ($117) and a logo, it becomes a very expensive exercise. And despite research that shows, across the board and without exception, that less than 3-4% of people attend a show because of the Theatre Directory, it is a questionable investment.

Why do arts organizations continue advertising in there? The SMH website says that with the Entertainment Classifieds you “reach a big audience for your next performance with Herald Classifieds Entertainment sections”. It’s a shame they don’t look at it.

Then you have the cost of module advertising. The SMH considers that there are 24 modules per page which makes them very small spaces. Each module costs $550. If you want to specify where it is, just add on a further 30-40%. If you want it in colour you add on a minimum loading of $1,400.00

So at the moment, if you have a quarter page colour ad published on Friday and Saturday, and my maths are right (which is questionable), it is $4,400 Friday, plus $5,500 Saturday, plus $1400 for the colour you can look at paying over $10,000. Add that up by the number of advertisements per week, not just on Friday and Saturday and add it up over a year.

Of course, if you are a regular advertiser you get some discount through media buyers and bulk purchase. Maybe 50% if you are lucky which makes it $5-6,000. If you are at the SDC, you would hope to sell 120 tix before you even start covering your costs.

And then the Sun-Herald decides that its already paltry arts coverage san be streamlined even more by saving around $2000 a year in reviewer costs and one wonders who exactly is making these decisions. Things must be pretty desperate at the Sun-Herald if they have to save $2000 a year.

And don’t even start me on the arts coverage in the Spectrum with their pages and pages of imported book reviews and sporadic arts journalism... Newspapers are really getting on the nose.