The new cultural cringe

The ingrained assumption that work made by regional companies is of poorer quality than metropolitan productions needs to be fought.
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A scene from Stephanie Lake’s If Never Was Now for Dancenorth, from the double bill If_Was_. Photo by Amber Haines.

The concept of the cultural cringe – an internalised belief that Australian culture was somehow inferior to that of Great Britain – has evolved over the years since literary critic and teacher A.A. Phillips first coined the term in the pages of the journal Meanjin in 1950.

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Richard Watts OAM is ArtsHub's National Performing Arts Editor; he also presents the weekly program SmartArts on Three Triple R FM. Richard is a life member of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, a Melbourne Fringe Festival Living Legend, and was awarded the Sidney Myer Performing Arts Awards' Facilitator's Prize in 2020. In 2021 he received a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Green Room Awards Association. Most recently, Richard received a Medal of the Order of Australia (OAM) in June 2024. Follow him on Twitter: @richardthewatts