Australian Theatre Forum: And that’s all there is

A toast to the future. (Notice the obnoxious glare of blogger's computers in the front row.) Photo thanks to Olivia Allen.

4:12 PM and we’re sitting collected in the Visy theatre at the Brisbane Powerhouse, and I think I can speak for everyone – if not at least for super bloggers Augusta Supple and myself, who collectively have typed somewhere in the air of one million words in the past three days – when I say we are exhausted.  It has been a huge three days.  Mine weren’t helped by the lovely hobbling and limping I’ve been having fun with, thanks to the sprained ankle I received after hitting the Brisbane galleries a bit too hard.  Yeah, I’m hardcore.

But more so than that, it was an intense three days of ideas and processes: panels, talks, open spaces, wine, beer, shows and picnics have all played a part in where we are now at the end of 2011’s Australian Theatre Forum.

Wesley Enoch is talking through the top points which came from the open spaces, through to action meetings, before being presented and voted for by the group.  Ten votes each with red dots, he is talking us through the strategies, the ideas and the plans which we are going to move on to and act upon outside of the forum.  “These things will go forward as a way of promoting the things we do as a united voice”, says Wesley.  On to policy makers, on to the Australia Council, on to government, on to the sector, and on to Australia as a whole.

Australian Theatre Forum: Convictions – Naming The Top Ten

The key words from the five action points from the ten action topics.  Created by copying down the exact wording of everyone’s action points, and creating a word cloud of popularity.

Australian Theatre Forum: Audience Activations

Griffin Theatre's thousand wooden spoons around Sydney: a viral momentum.

Who are our audiences?  How to we connect with them?  How do we grow them? How do we talk to them?

At Activating Audiences, we were given four very different takes on growing these audiences, and what it means to really connect with an audience beyond an exchange of money for tickets and spending an hour or two together in the dark.

The four people who spoke are trying to connect and activate with different audiences, and through that expand the people they are talking to.

Sam Strong talked about Between The Lines, “a venture that puts events and activities around [their] core events”, which are the four or five theatre works Griffin Theatre Company produces a year.  Bring different types of art into their theatre, and bringing parts of their work and audience interactions out of the theatre, Griffin has seen a measurable increase in interaction with the company – both online and in seats.  “Different art forms equals different audiences.”

One of the ways the company has done this over the past couple of years has been changing the nature of the idea around marketing: “Not seeing marketing as this necessary evil you have to put up with when you’re making your art, but discovering the art in your marketing.”

For Kyle Morrison and Yirra Yaakin, “it’s the community you want in the theatre, it’s your community you want to talk to, it’s your community you want to connect with.”  Kyle told us of “one of the most beautiful moments [he’s] ever had in the theatre”: performing with the company he is now artists director of when he was nineteen, he saw two young Aboriginal girls with a school group in the audience, and he delivered one of his lines in their language directly too them.  They were the only two people in the audience who laughed, and “they were there, they we with us, they were following the community.  It really was the most beautiful point in my theatrical career.”

Australian Theatre Forum: International Collaborations Skype Conversation

Getting My Haircut by Children at the Junction Regional Arts Conference

Our morning started with a Skype conversation between Lenine Bourke (Contact Inc) and Darren O’Donnell (Mammalian Diving Reflex ) on their international collaboration.

I first meet MDR at the Junction Regional Arts Conference in Launceston last year, where I attended haircuts by children.  It was an interesting experience.  I found the children who cut my hair rather timid, but they were probably feeding off my fear of hairdressers (it was the first time I’d been to a hairdresser since I was ten or so, and the first boy was so nervous he ended up asking someone else to do it).  The best part about the experience was the fantastic energy and crazy idea of being in a salon run by children: they took the bookings, they ran all the equipment, they wilfully whirred away at the electric razor – not on my head, but my friend Shaylee ended up with an undercut which, depending on who you asked, was a star, a map of Australia, or a road-killed cat.  One of the great things about the project, says Darren, is “adults and children who don’t know each other actually have a lot to say to each other,” and it was a really interesting experience getting to sit down and talk for forty minutes with children I didn’t know.

Mammalian Diving Reflex started as a theatre company, and then they moved into working with people, rather than performers.  Says Darren “We often work with non-artists as performers as participants.  We ask them to do what they do best.  We ask them to represent themselves and not be anything else, and we do that very theatrically.”

Australian Theatre Forum: A terrifyingly amicable discussion between artists and critics

Open Spaces thoughts: two.

“Terrifyingly frank discussion between arts and critics”, is what was proposed by Cameron Woodhead,  and “Given the ABC has just dropped its in house arts coverage, how do we nourish and sustain critical connections?”  was instigated by Alison Croggon.  I was very excited by the size of the group which choose to attend the discussions.  I was disappointed together, everyone was much more “terrifyingly amicable” than “terrifyingly frank.”

There are so many issues surrounding both prongs of this debate.  For me and my “career” as a critic it boils down to two key issues: how do I receive critical feedback of my work as an emerging writer, and how do I create a sustainable career in a field which is rapidly being removed from our traditional media sources?  I am paid for only two of the publications I write for – and this sum is minimal.  I figure in a good month I might be able to bring in as much as $220.

I have not yet had one of these months which I would describe as good.

(And then, of course, I buy tickets for a great chunk of the shows I review for this blog, so that’s where that money goes. I am often struck how often I am praised for my work on this blog, and how few media lists I am on.)

This career is currently completely unsustainable, this blog is completely unsustainable.  It’s not necessarily that not getting paid is the issue, it’s that I’m not paid and I work full time and then and then and then.  It can all get a bit much.

And on the other point, it is really really hard to get artists to talk to critics about criticism.  I’ve been having more luck in Adelaide in recent months, perhaps my “contribution” to the arts scene there more visibly seen or appreciated?  My annoying voice popping up in more forums, people figuring out I’m not going away?