2014: Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights

by Frank McKone

Formerly known as the Young Playwright’s Award, the 2014 NSW Philip Parsons Fellowship for Emerging Playwrights, made possible by the generous support of Arts NSW, was awarded on the occasion of the 2014 NSW Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture, Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir Street, Sydney on 30 November 2014.

Past winners include Zoë Coombs Marr (Is this Thing On?), Kit Brookman (Small and Tired), Brendan Cowell (Ruben Guthrie) and Kate Mulvany (The Seed).

Julia-Rose Lewis was selected for her play Samson from a short list which also included Jessica Bellamy (Shabbat Dinner), Christopher Bryant (The Mutant Man), Philip Kavanagh (Jesikah), Phil Spencr (You and Whose Army?) and Chris Summers (King Arthur).

The award is given to an outstanding playwright who is in their first eight years of professional practice, and the winner receives a writer’s commission and creative development of their play by Belvoir.

[Lewis’s] play Samson generated buzz at the PWA National Play Festival after its selection in their National Script Workshop after some development with La Boite Theatre Company’s Playwright-in-residence program. Lally Katz is mentoring her as part of the Australia Council’s JUMP Mentorship Program and she’s currently completing her Masters in Fine Arts (Playwriting) at NIDA. She’s written for productions and readings with Griffin, The Australian Theatre For Young People (atyp), La Boite, The Brisbane Powerhouse, The Rock Surfers Theatre Co. Hothouse Theatre Company, Grin & Tonic. Julia’s monologue This Feral Life has been produced for both stage and as a short film.
http://camerons.dreamhosters.com/julia-rose-lewis-joins-the-agency/

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2014: Parsons Memorial Lecture

Ralph Myers
(this is not his daggy shirt)

Ralph Myers The Artistic Director: on the way to extinction?
2014 NSW Parsons Memorial Lecture, Upstairs Theatre, Belvoir, Sydney, 30 November 2014.

by Frank McKone

Is Ralph Myers a ‘suit’?  That is the relevant question. 

His answer is emphatically, ‘No’.  Since his first meeting with the best of Australia’s theatre artistic directors, when he became AD of Belvoir in 2009, at which only he and Circus Oz’s Mike Finch did not wear a suit, he claims to have remained what he always was as an artist – a set and costume designer.

He even wore the same daggy shirt, jeans and Volleys to deliver his Memorial Lecture.  Though, as I recall, Philip Parsons would have dressed a little more nattily, I suspect that he would be concerned like Myers about the changing relationships between Artistic Directors and General Managers that we have seen in our theatres since his passing. 

Not only have GMs become CEOs, but we now see EPs – Executive Producers who supposedly combine the artistic dreamer (that’s what a real AD is) with the competitive business person (which is what a CEO really is).   The impossibility of integrating the two in one person, Myers explained, is because the manager wants everything to be done with a steady hand, while successful theatre needs a ‘violently shaking fist’.

In less dramatic terms, an artistic director must be ‘cultural and specific’, not ‘managerial and generic’. 

In his own case at Belvoir Street, he and Brenna Hobson, titled ‘Executive Director’, work as ‘equal co-directors’.  That means much argy-bargy as each fights for what they need.  Artistic directors, Myers says, are our cultural leaders, different from managers – whose task is to make things happen.  It’s a ‘ying / yang’ that’s necessary, which requires two people.  It can’t happen in one executive producer.

Myers sees two themes to explain what is happening. 

The Australian tall poppy syndrome has a long history, which he illustrated in the way the Griffins were treated after winning the Canberra design competition, repeated in Utzon’s experience as winner of the Sydney Opera House competition, and currently demonstrated by the fact that all the conductors of the major Australian orchestras are FIFO from overseas. 

Despite the case of the ‘bloke from Wollongong’ so successfully directing the Australian Chamber Orchestra, Myers sees an Australian ‘unwillingness to be led by artists’.  Selecting the Griffins and Utzon showed ‘great vision’, but snatching away their chance – perhaps their right – to take their designs through to physical completion, placing the work in the hands of, effectively, mere managers has left us with flawed results.  There is a deep sense of insecurity here, where artists cannot be trusted.

In more recent times, as funding has shifted from government towards private sponsorship and philanthropy, the old insecurity shows in the composition of boards.  It was the Nugent report which pushed towards more ‘responsibility’ – which in practice has meant arts bodies becoming more ‘corporate’.

Only Circus Oz still has more than two artists on the board.  Boards, says Myers, appoint business people who appoint more business people like themselves.  They can be ‘trusted’ in matters of profit & loss, reading balance sheets and behaving prudently.  These are, ironically, ‘white, middle-class men like me’.  “I,” says Myers with unerring bravery, “should be replaced with someone more interesting.”

Apart from maintaining the separation and difference between the artistic director (who should have the final say) and the managerial director, Myers proposes three practical actions:

1. Board membership should be 50% artists.
2. Artistic directors should be appointed for short-term tenures without the option for rolling over – say 5 years max.
3. Boards should delegate the appointment of artistic directors to an independent expert panel of artists.

In keeping with his proposal, Myers has already announced his leaving Belvoir in 2015.

But to end on a positive note, in discussion of the apparent conflict of interest between artistic vibrancy and economic viability, Ralph Myers became suitably emotional.  The suits’ concept of artistic vibrancy is alien to the artists’ concept.  What is artistic quality?  It’s when a show ‘takes off and starts to sell’.  This is not always predictable, but at this point you can feel the energy coming off the stage and being returned by the audience, in a virtuous circle.

Yet it must be a worry that if artistic directors like Ralph Myers are extinguished in favour of good management: this will extinguish theatre and nothing will be left worth managing.

My report is necessarily limited in scope, but the full transcript of the lecture is available here http://belvoir.com.au/news/artistic-director-way-extinction/

The Philip Parsons Memorial Lecture is supported by Arts NSW and Currency House.

Recent relevant Platform Papers published by Currency House and previously appearing on this blog are:

Take Me to Your Leader by Wesley Enoch
The Retreat of our National Drama by Julian Meyrick

© Frank McKone, Canberra

2014: Education and the Arts. Platform Papers No 41

Education and the Arts by Meg Upton, with Naomi Edwards.  Platform Papers No 41, November 2014: Currency House, Sydney.

Commentary by Frank McKone

Think of education as a living cell within the body politic.  The impermeable outer membrane of the cell has bas-relief oddly shaped indentations.  To access the inner cell, for good health – as Upton and Edwards intend – or for ill – as Donnelly and Wiltshire are bent on – a mirrored matching convoluted ‘key’ must insert itself.  Only then can the positive protein or the destructive virus make changes from within the cell.

Education and the Arts was already going to print when the recommendations of the
Review of the National Curriculum (August 2014) began to surface.  “What is of concern,” wrote Upton and Edwards, “is the growing sense that arts education for Australian children will become ‘optional’ as opposed to mandated."

The problem for Upton and Edwards is that they have not been given the key which has been handed on a silver platter by the Abbott government to Dr Donnelly and Professor Wiltshire, neither of whom show the slightest understanding of the nature of arts education, let alone its importance in a modern education system.

Here’s a quote:

The Reviewers heard substantial evidence that content was added to the curriculum to appease stakeholders, which has led to an overcrowded curriculum.  Such inclusions pay homage to the very evident inclusive development process undertaken by ACARA….

It was … apparent that many stakeholders believed the curriculum has far exceeded any nominal time allocations that curriculum writers may have been given.  One strongly argued reason was that this was due to the many compromises ACARA made to accommodate the very vocal advocacies of some groups about the essential nature of content relating to their discipline.  The arts curriculum was particularly singled out in this regard. [My emphasis]
Executive Summary (p2/3)

There is a long history behind such snide language as ‘appease stakeholders’ who are ‘very vocal’ advocates, as you may see in the writings of Donnelly since he escaped from teaching to set himself up as an education ‘expert’.  There’s an interesting profile of both Donnelly and Wiltshire on the SBS website at

http://www.sbs.com.au/news/article/2014/01/10/national-curriculum-review-who-kevin-donnelly

Of course, Upton and Edwards know the needs of the education cell: to have the arts placed on an equal footing in the curriculum, and indeed the teachers and government representatives across the nation have already recognised that need in the Australian Curriculum:

“An education rich in the Arts maximises opportunities for learners to engage with innovative thinkers and leaders and to experience the Arts both as audience members and as artists. Such an education is vital to students’ success as individuals and as members of society, emphasising not only creativity and imagination, but also the values of cultural understanding and social harmony that the Arts can engender
(National Education and the Arts Statement, 2007).” See

http://www.acara.edu.au/verve/_resources/Shape_of_the_Australian_Curriculum_the_arts_-_Compressed.pdf

A teacher quoted by Upton and Edwards, who are active in bringing live theatre to school students, brings their work into focus:

If there were no education programs, I could still take students to the theatre; but what I love about education programs in theatre companies is that they offer experiential learning; students learn through doing and it emphasises their emotional engagement in the form.

A source who once worked on a committee headed up by Donnelly (when he claims to have personally written John Howard’s education policy) has told me that he simply could not appreciate such feelings.  And indeed  it is clear from the Review that Donnelly and Wiltshire have produced, that the language changes as the Departmental team of four have had to try to find the appropriate words that can be seriously published at this level of importance.  Read the Review while imagining yourself in that committee room as it was put together and you’ll see what I mean.

Here’s a bit that won’t please Upton and Edwards (or the rest of us):

The impact the bloated size of the Australian Curriculum was having on a school’s ability to offer a school-based curriculum was regularly brought to the attention of the Reviewers. So much mandatory content is included that some argued it was taking up more than the total teaching time available in a school year. This is having an impact on the amount of time available for co-curricular offerings…
Executive Summary (p5)

“Co-curricular offerings” include the arts, according to this Review, so education programs in theatre companies may as well give up the ghost.

If this quote was written by Donnelly / Wiltshire, then you can see in the next – the conclusion to Chapter One: The Australian Curriculum and the purpose of education – where the departmental team have done their best to write a proper paragraph or two:

“... the Australian Curriculum represents a compromise where a number of conflicting models of curriculum exist side by side and where, in an attempt to meet the demands of all the key players, rigour, balance and standards are weakened. The need to ensure that all involved would commit to a national curriculum has also led to a consensus model of decision-making and an overcrowded curriculum that has weakened the process of developing the Australian Curriculum. Yates, Woelert, O’Connor and Millar describe this as follows:

One particular issue is a new form of content cramming (even though the ACARA website cites an explicit guideline that this should not happen). Here the public circulation of documents and the search for a reasonable degree of consensus around the country tends to lead to things being added (especially history) rather than taken away.
 
  Yates, L, Woelert, P, O’Connor K & Millar V 2013, ‘Building and managing knowledge: Physics and history and the discipline rationales in school curriculum reform’, paper prepared for the Australian Association for Research in Education 2013 Conference.

“Evidence of this can be found in the way the Australian Curriculum burgeoned from the initial four subjects to embracing the entire Foundation to Year 10 curriculum in eight learning areas, as the various stakeholder experts and subject associations argued that their particular subject or area of learning should not be left out.

As a result, while the Australian Curriculum privileges a combination of a utilitarian, a 21st century, a personalised learning and an equity and social justice view of the curriculum and the purpose of education, it undervalues introducing students to the conversation represented by ‘our best validated knowledge and artistic achievements’.

The Australian Curriculum being implemented across the Australian states and territories also fails to do full justice to the Melbourne Declaration’s belief that the curriculum has a vital role to play in the moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians.”

Have a look closely and you’ll see that Donnelly / Wiltshire are what I would call ‘museum’ thinkers.  Anything like actually doing the arts is, as Donnelly has often literally complained, ‘left-wing’.  After all it means children will be creating new cultural artefacts, being critical of their own creations, as well as learning where their culture fits into the past – which is also always open to critical thinking.  Not for Donnelly, who already apparently knows the accepted canon of ‘our best validated knowledge and artistic achievements’ and is confident he understands what should be ‘the moral, spiritual and aesthetic development and wellbeing of young Australians’.

With his virus key in Donnelly's hand, all the attempts not only by Meg Upton and Naomi Edwards, but of all those hundreds of people who have produced the as yet incomplete and not yet fully implemented Australian Curriculum will be defeated.  Those of us who have worked since the mid-1970s to get drama, dance, and media arts into the curriculum alongside the earlier successes of visual art and music will now have to overcome the Donnelly virus from within.

But I fear that this Federal government’s attitudes and funding will leave the ‘co-curricular’ activities of institutions like the theatre companies with no protein key to activate.  The full title of this Platform Paper is Education and The Arts: Creativity in the promised new order.  I fear this will be another broken promise in the body politic.  My thanks to Upton and Edwards for an excellent paper; but my commiserations for the future they may never see.

© Frank McKone, Canberra