Shake it up

  

Australia does not yet have a vibrant theatre culture, certainly not when measuring it against the recent definition set out by the Australia Council for the Arts. We might recognise moments, signs, a feeling, of artistic vibrancy but it is a flare in a dark sky rather than hard evidence of a rich and sustainably vigorous theatre scene. Our theatre is alive, various, glorious, messy and idiosyncratic, world class even, but vibrant? So what is this vibrancy and why would we want it?

To describe something as vibrant suggests something that is energetic, vivacious and active – the derivation is from vibration, literally to shake, to pulse with energy and dynamism. In professional theatre terms, the Australia Council defined it as the incorporation of excellence and leadership, audience engagement, an innovative approach to art-form and artist development, a shared company purpose and community relevance.

Artistic vibrancy is therefore a glowing objective, a powerful beacon, a combination of merit and significance, effervescence, stimulation and excitement, both goal and measurable quality. That assemblage of qualities and achievements remains, however, far from our everyday experience. While there is excellence in theatre, it is not consistent; while there is ingenuity, it is occasional; while we please some audiences, six out of every ten Australians have no involvement in theatre at all, a far cry from genuine engagement or being germane to the Australian community. So how might we shake up our theatre culture, and our theatre companies, to promote and incorporate artistic vibrancy? Indeed, is there even a sign that we are interested in such vibrancy?

A heartbeat

In May 2009 the euphoria was almost palpable. While many theatre professionals, when invited to last year’s Theatre Forum initially despaired of another 20/20 Summit style gab-fest, the opportunity, however, proved the cynics wrong. What the Theatre Forum did with gusto was to remind us that we are an ingenious, heterogeneous, heterodox community. It reminded us that at times we can blaze vibrantly.

While it was not an event that would change Arts policy for good it allowed for both griping and boasting, brought independent practitioners into the same room as major theatre companies and revealed our common ground and common purpose, our multiplicities and parallels. Chock-full of challenges, provocations and potential ways forward the Forum participants sought to re-build, to re-fashion, our theatre industry to allow more artistic opportunities, more lateral collaborations, deeper community engagement and greater possibilities for the art form and for audiences. Some of the topics were pie in the sky, others entirely nitty gritty; some were achievable, others beyond the aspirational; but the Theatre Forum dragged us out of our bunkers, making plain our theatre industry’s size and ambition, scope and scale.

Not everyone was there - and of course many of those not there were busy making the art, rather than talking about it - but we can assert with some confidence that this event revealed the beating heart of a vibrant theatre culture – and well may we also point to certain playwrights, directors, companies, critics, arts centres, festivals, communities, styles or trends as further evidence of the possible. What the Theatre Forum exposed most pointedly was our desire to found a richer, more complex, vibrant theatre culture. It uncovered the euphoria that comes with vibrancy, and it unearthed the desire for real change. What the Forum also revealed, was our lack of systemic artistic vibrancy. The Theatre Forum was all blue sky; ripe with potential it reflected little of our day-to-day working reality.

Counting on culture

One of the most common claims at the Forum was for more Arts subsidy. It is a common cry since the Arts became a serious target of investment by governments – for the instrumental and the intrinsic benefits – with most artists feeling that they deserve some of that investment. Arts dollars are hotly contested of course and as a result publicly funded artists and Arts organisations are held accountable for, and called on to justify, substantial public funding in detailed terms - just as a sports club would, or a prison. Hence meaningful numbers are crucial in the effort to prove that funding of the Arts is beneficial to more people than just the small group of artists involved – government needs to hear that good art was made, it was done efficiently and it was enjoyed by many, to the social, spiritual, economic and civic good. The collation and analysis of these numbers takes up a huge amount of time and actually reflects the quotidian working reality of theatre artists more than any interest we may have in vibrancy.

At my organisation, PlayWriting Australia, evidence gathering often takes centre stage. We commission an annual quantitative and qualitative research report plus we spend almost half a year writing applications and plans, working with the accountant, our Finance Sub-Committee and the auditor proving that we are economical, have an impact and get results. And the main conversation we have with our funding bodies is about the timing and requirements of their funding cycles and this particular year’s priorities and focus areas. This may involve conversations about art-making, but mostly it is about budgets and acquittals, outcome reporting and appropriate performance indicators.

For many theatre companies – once referred to as non-profit, now not-for profit, marking a shift that acknowledges that the sector is not anathema to making money - the preparation of these business plans, the main trigger for annual and multi-year funding, is a big deal. The danger of basing so much on business plans – which can provide clarity, better strategic thinking and solidify forward planning – is that they are entirely speculative, failing to capture the complex systems they seek to liberate. And of course, they are time-consuming. While important for government oversight and as a check and a balance for the organisation, marshalling a SWOT analysis, corralling a marketing plan, divining a mission statement, scrutinising cash flow and balance sheets, as well as determining KPIs is not necessarily the best way to ensure that our organisation services and fosters a vibrant playwriting sector. Don’t get me wrong, spending money from the public purse demands sober and accurate reporting, clearly articulated objectives, sound planning and appropriate execution. I don’t think, though, that it gives the full picture of our organisation, is the best use of our time and staff power or gets to the heart of ensuring a vibrant theatre sector.

And we continue to do this reporting despite economic and cultural commentators’ increasing dismissal of culture metrics as an acceptable mode for describing the value of artist’s work, or of Arts organisations’ toiling. Recent studies by the RAND Corporation, John Holden, Paul DiMaggio and Jason Potts, all point to numerous fallacies, inaccuracies and vagaries with the untroubled use of numbers and their relationship to culture, a case of ‘methodological incommensurability and intransitivity’. The numbers remain in the ascendant however and their collection eats away at time we could be devoting to creating and producing opportunities for artists. And of course numbers are dry, not at all reflective of the productive cacophony of our working lives, or of the artistic ambitions that outstrip theatre companies’ resources.

And worryingly a 2006 study found that pressure on theatre companies to run at break-even or surplus tended to come at the cost of artistic programs and resulting company vibrancy. Our research supports this, showing that one of the first budget lines to get the chop is the line for new play commissions, assistant directors and professional development. This is proof that plans and forecasts and forms and metrics, and the pressure to run an Arts company as if it were a regular business, does not help companies foster artistic vibrancy, with theatre company business literally proceeding at the expense of artistic innovation.

The main stage

The industry looks to the major, most well-resourced companies, for leadership in many areas and vibrancy is no exception. How many changes do the Major Performing Arts (MPA) companies need to make from their current practice to embrace artistic vibrancy? They often feel like hotbeds of activity and artist support, and they are certainly major employers, producers and presenters, but what do they program?

In 2010, the MPA theatre companies will have produced 71 main stage works, 49 of which are extant, 22 of which are new and 6 of which are world premieres. Malthouse was the highest commissioner of new plays (3), the highest producer of plays (15) and it programmed the most ethnically diverse works – though Company B Belvoir produced the most indigenous content proportionally (2 out of 4 indigenous works programmed). Interestingly 45% of total programmed works were Australian in origin, 23% were American and 17% British. Of the British work 67% was historical, primarily Shakespeare. Men wrote 75% of the programmed works. Of the Australian works, nothing was programmed that had been written prior to 2000. Bell Shakespeare, perhaps unsurprisingly, produced no Australian works; Black Swan and Sydney Theatre Company produced equal numbers of Australian and American works; and Queensland Theatre Company produced more American than Australian works.

This gives a picture of our major companies as looking to white Australia, Western Europe and America for content. Such a crude analysis ignores many variables – such as box office analysis, occupancy rates, pricing models and their effects, number of works and their ratio of success or failure, commercially and critical, the leanness and flexibility of management structures, the scope of the art form development works and so on – but the overall conclusion to be drawn is one of a strong inclination towards box office certainty over risk, towards conservatism over possibility, the colourless over the vibrant. With the bulk of the work being by known writers, mostly male and white, this does not suggest strong artistic leadership, engagement with new audiences or community relevance. This is not a picture of an artistically vibrant theatre culture.

Let’s innovate

So we are at an impasse: Arts organisations and artists, busy with budgets and acquittals and all manner of business reporting, worried about box office and subscribers, are keeping themselves at bay from - especially if the company is in the small to medium sector - the creation of more lively theatre. Meagre resources are often the catalyst for ingenuity and innovation is often fuelled by the search for creative answers to overall community benefit, but what do we in theatre really know about innovation?

We know we like to innovate in the theatre – indeed it forms the intellectual and emotional background to much of what we do, most especially re-staging classics where hermeneutics is all - but we do so with little systematic understanding of it or notion of how to utilise quantitative and qualitative analyses not deadened by buzzwords.

The corporate world and the world of government, spends both time and money looking to capture innovation, index then implement it. Innovation, in the business world, is seen as the key to obtaining a competitive advantage and to encouraging growth. Despite business modelling becoming more common in the Arts, talk of product development, the delivery chain, maximising shareholder value and entrepreneurship through R&D is unfamiliar to many theatre artists. What’s useful here for us?

Management-speak, PowerPoint madness and Venn diagram love initially seems to clog some recent reports on innovation until you get to the details and see that some of the recommendations are simple but profound. In attempting to come up with an index or checklist for innovation these reports offer practical suggestions for organisations interested in guaranteeing systemic innovation. Recommendations include: a dedicated staff member looking after innovation; innovation teams built across an organisation and through the sector to superintend real change; new ideas backed up with certainty around their development and implementation; the re-framing of attitudes to failure; senior staff must back the focus on innovation; a culture of innovation must be built not waited for because it rarely happens organically.

The research is telling us that we must act, that innovation and artistic vibrancy must be constructed and then applied. Ideas and technology drive growth and innovation, but the research is telling us that this is true only to the extent that they are adopted and retained by the industry’s workers. And big business approaches innovation - just as we should - from a desire to drive their industry forward, embolden their staff and ensure that one and all are investing in the greater good.

More than box-ticking or hazy management weasel words, this research into the planning and delivery of structures around innovation and vibrancy can help us plan better, think more clearly and offer our audiences work that is richer and more satisfying. Indeed beyond achieving a competitive advantage, taking innovation and vibrancy seriously means a real commitment to advancing our culture, its quality and its possibilities.

According to Hasan Bakhshi and David Throsby, we in the Arts suffer from ‘a lack of a systematic understanding of how innovation relates to the functions of . . . cultural enterprises’. They go on to make the point that ‘innovation is a key to gaining competitive advantage and enhancing growth prospects in difficult times’. They argue that we must start to innovate, renovating our thinking about audiences, art-making and revenue. They proscribe four key – quantifiable and actionable - areas of innovation: art-form development (risk and excellence), audience reach (broadening, deepening, diversifying), value creation (how to measure our economic and cultural value and explain it) and business management and governance. They present two UK case studies – of the Tate Galleries and the National Theatre - to propose an interim model for the value chain of innovation with respect to cultural institutions. Their analysis well understands the various trade-offs Arts companies make, focussing on how and why their two focus organisation make certain areas a priority - balancing accessibility with money-making, vision with audience responsiveness, experimentation with revenue maximisation. This study suggests we need to do a lot more to both understand and realize innovation and vibrancy.

The Arts vs the artists

Cultural critic and commentator Marcus Westbury recently observed on his blog that Arts funding is trapped in a nineteenth century mindset, a system that favours organisations over artists. He makes the point that erecting artform boundaries around artists’ work in order to make funding them easier to justify is retrograde. Westbury instead recommends nurturing ‘the niche and the nimble, the new and insurgent, the creative and consequential outside strict historical artform boundaries’.

I mention this here because in the pursuit of artistic vibrancy we rely almost entirely on companies to do the heavy lifting. They need to build new corporate structures, measure innovation, implement artistic vibrancy and report to funding bodies against these objectives and many others, and yet it is the artists at their heart that the institutions themselves are meant to empower, not over-burden and thus cripple. And it is often too easy to forget - we so often talk of the Arts as if it is one coherent group rather than a series of individuals, as easy to predict as a series of chaotic weather systems - that it’s the artists that drive the Arts, their vision, passion and ingenuity.

And this I think was what we all got out of the Theatre Forum, that we need, as a profession, to talk more, as artists – to share discoveries, to commiserate on common challenges, to work together remembering that we are not in competition, but must all pull together to ensure that skills, succession and fresh approaches flourish. This was the great re-discovery of the Theatre Forum, a sense of collegiality. Institutionally however this can be difficult to instigate – so what are some models to develop healthy, vibrant theatre artists?

If the first step to encourage artists to flourish is more meaningful communication, we need to acknowledge that when companies currently converse it mostly centres on nutting out co-production deals and sounding each other out about which major new British or American play, repertory classic or Australian premiere, they will program. It’s not strictly speaking talking in the sense that I meant, instead it’s primarily about deals between the majors – timing, teams, and cost and recoupment structures. Anyone working in a company knows just how hard staff work and how little time there is to do anything other than the several jobs to hand in getting a season, the next show, a subscriber briefing, a board report, a bump out, the catering, and so on, up and on its feet. Anything less tangible, say notions of inter-connection or sustainability, remain inevitably on the back burner. Jackie Bailey’s paper of 2008 for the Australia Council, Love your Work, provided the hard evidence for this, identifying the systemic failures in our industry and the barriers to succession and communication.

Communication has begun to improve between the various hierarchies – and there is already talk of the next Forum taking place in Brisbane in 2011 - and a possible new model for communication, beyond another Theatre Forum, is PlayWriting Australia’s annual industry program at the National Play Festival. Since 2008 we have invited all theatre company staff to join our conversations around new work, cultural brokering, pay rates and pay discrepancies, lobbying politicians, allied developments in the film industry and contemporary performance, dramaturgy, cultural diversity and repertoire structures. The Industry Programme is a platform to raise issues, concerns, dilemmas and new ways of thinking. Two other organisations are noteworthy in this context, Theatre Network Victoria (TNV) and the Sydney Arts Management Advisory Group (SAMAG).

Another model worth considering that privileges artists and creative management relates to the priming of artistic staff, their reinvigoration and re-engagement. Firstly however, we need to note just how few people are involved in the programming decisions of major theatre companies. Indeed in every company in which I have worked there has not been more than three staff actually making the play programming choices. This gets to the heart of the problem of both diversity and vibrancy. I’m not suggesting that all decisions should be by committee but we should build structures that allow for greater transparency of artistic decisions and for greater company input and discussion. Beyond that I strongly advocate bigger artistic staff at most companies. An artistic director must have the freedom to pursue their own goals and dreams, but decision-making should be robust and occur with more than just a couple of voices in the mix. We need, as Fiona Winning commented to me recently, at least five or six people with different postcodes and different address books to be involved in programming in each theatre. This group needs to meet at least fortnightly and they need to reflect the wider community, being made up of different and sometimes opposing viewpoints. As well as issues of vibrancy and diversity, this group can be part of wider structural reforms relating to issues of artistic succession and gender disparity. To this end I think that Company B Belvoir has done the most here – employing two to three associates, now buttressed by three more associate artists.

My expertise is in new play development and there are two areas in particular worth renovating in order to bolster art form development even further. I am consulted frequently on new plays, and advocate on their behalf much of the time, and I find that while it is handy to be talking about a particular play script, it belies the way a play appears and is then developed. Selling a play is difficult, and our research shows that most theatre companies are either not completely convinced by a new play’s quality, or it simply doesn’t fit that year’s programming mix. Searching for a perfect play is a dead end. New play development needs some re-orientation around the idea that it is playwrights who require support, focus, resources and skill development. New productions are not just about plays that need fixing. Artists need to be developed over time and over a number of different stages and new play development should be re-configured as new playwright development. Too much time is wasted on play text repair when it is the artists that need the maintenance.

Another thought on new plays: world premieres are great, but soak up too much attention. The statistics show that new play production focussed on world premieres comes at the expense of second productions. Like an artistic version of modern consumer culture, we use it once then throw it away. This phenomenon also occurs in the United States and has been dubbed ‘world premiere-itis’. An innovation there has been rolling world premieres across a number of different theatre companies. The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has backed it with real money, the ‘Continued Life of New Plays Fund’. Jason Loewith, the Executive Director of the US National New Play Network commented recently that the fund was designed to help ‘organizations that are looking for innovative ways to solve the problems facing new plays and playwrights. He remains hopeful that with more interest in the structure of new play productions, and with improved communication and collaboration, that it is better for the field as a whole.

One final area that is in need of urgent attention is a genuine approach to outreach opportunities. I have written on this elsewhere, but I believe we avoid it at our peril. Not only does it build capacity – finding new artists and new audiences – but it means we are working harder to make great shows that are of relevance to our communities, opening theatres to all Australians. The pursuit of excellence and the pursuit of genuine access are not anathema. As Nicholas Hytner pointed out in his introduction to ‘Democratic culture: opening up the Arts to everyone’, the author ‘takes on the cultural snobs, for whom a democratic culture is a debased culture, and he challenges cultural professionals to acknowledge their responsibilities as educators and public servants’. Not everyone presently enjoys funded culture equally and it is surely incumbent upon us to ensure that they do. There should be no barriers to entry and no protection of the Arts for the elite, as if there is a difference between artists and audiences. We must be transparent, support plurality, respect the public and not give up on reaching out to potential artists and new audiences. As Arts professionals we can only benefit from our expert opinion being challenged and enriched by disputation, media scrutiny and populist sentiment.

According to Bakhshi and Throsby there are more precise ways - less ad hoc perhaps than my suggestions above - of assessing and demonstrating one’s commitment to innovation and vibrancy. With respect to audience development the technology being used in marketing is worthy of further examination and exploitation, as is pricing, its structure, the diversity of the repertoire and the use of theatre’s foyers and public spaces. On artform development they spotlight the new works and new talent included within a season. Commitment to or investment in a studio or laboratory space, the utilisation of new technologies in rehearsal and performance and the re-invention of classic texts, most especially their delivery, also indicate willingness and interest in innovation and vibrancy. Value creation - that is, how well does a company explain to government its ongoing job at hand - can be clearly reflected in a company’s mission statement and how explicit it is about seeking out the new and the vibrant, but also in how many artists they are training up and how their workforce may move between the commercial and the subsidised sector, or work internationally. As for business models, Bakhshi and Throsby argue that it is the ratio of risk to success in programming that is of note here, as well as how quickly a company can plan and then respond to opportunities for further productions of programmed works, beyond the co-production model.

Oscillate wildly