Monday, September 28, 2009

We Are Here

Thank you, Nicholas Pickard, for your clear sighted questions about the lack of women directing for our main stage companies. Believe me, we women directors exist. It would be an insult to the many capable and experienced directors I know to suggest they are not there or that they don’t have main stage skills. But there are obviously problems with the way the selection of cultural product is managed in Australia’s professional companies. Culture is universal, both high and low in its concerns, free to everyone as an interest, and essential to the health of all. Women make up half of society. Men are born of women and often choose to live with women and create daughters as well as sons. Therefore women are not a sub-group to them, and should no longer be characterised this way. If book stores stocked their shelves the way that many companies choose to stock their culture, they would go broke. Women can see their own lives reflected in the creation and composition of books, movies, music, dance and circus, and the visual arts. Are Australian theatre companies really serving their audiences?
Theatre is for audiences, and women are the majority of single ticket buyers in many countries. Please note that the word ‘audience’ is generic and has no genetic code. So where are the women? Elizabeth Schafer has theorised that women directors have been critically marginalised. Many directors, including myself, don’t want their gender to be the issue. To quote Nancy Meckler of Shared Experience “I just want to be chosen because I am good.” But it is the notion of being chosen that is the problem. It is impossible to have a career path as a successful director in Australia. Like many directors I have followed the good energy of alternative directing opportunities, and currently turned away from the mainstream companies because I can’t get ‘chosen’, despite working for and succeeding at MTC, Playbox, QTC and The State Theatre Company of SA. This is also despite many letters, pitches and visits to such companies in recent times. I have rejection letters ranging from charming to churlish. At this year’s Australian Theatre Forum, it was implied and acknowledged that there may be an issue with the leadership patterns of some of Australia’s companies, and I agree. I have no axe to grind regarding the individual’s right to choose repertoire and select the individuals they prefer to employ. But I believe that publicly funded companies have a duty to get real about succession plans and to consciously reflect Australia’s cultural diversity in leadership models and in artistic planning. Due to the influence of an implied global mono-culture, which is shaped essentially by celebrity marketing, it seems as if the companies believe they now have the freedom and the right to programme largely pre-tested overseas works and share a handful of ‘talented directors’ who bring with them the whiff of America and Europe. I have no patience with this. It looks like the Australian cultural awakening of the late 1950s and early 1960s never happened. The co-pro has killed any notion of cultural complexity. It is time for transparency of theatrical opportunity. The exclusion of women’s input to this degree wouldn’t be tolerated in any other industry.

3 comments:

  1. Kim what a wonderfully argued response to the current issue. Later today I will speak to the Age in what I hope will be as clear and succinct voice as yours. What really matters at the moment is to keep this issue running. Not just now but for the long haul. We need to try to allow a quality debate to ensue . I also think we need to ask all theatre makers to think deeply about this issue and to ask themselves whether through their silence and practice they are being complicit in the exclusion of women and culturally diverse practitioners from the more resourced theatre companies . I think some soul searching may need to be done by all of us!

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  2. The issue is now up and running - as I pop in and out of the hubs around fringe I find there to be an increase in foyer conversations about these issues you raise Kim. Furthermore I sense an growing realisation about the impact of a theatre industry in which the strongest voices (in the sense of having power to shape works, select repertoire etc)do not reflect the diversity of audiences. Your point that we must not allow women to be categorized as a sub group to men is a vital component of the message that it seems we must continue to 'get out there' ... particularly in light of a recent comment coming from the MTC that links the invisibility of women directors on the mainstages to the "real issues" faced by "all emerging creatives". The ghettoisation of women as a marginalized group in a population that Kim aptly points out is 50% female is frustrating to say the least. The notion that women directors are collectively "emerging" is outright insulting. As one of the leading voices on issues of equality over many years Kim - bravo for your persistence and insight.

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  3. I also think we need to ask all theatre makers to think deeply about this issue and to ask themselves whether through their silence and practice they are being complicit in the exclusion of women and culturally diverse practitioners from the more resourced theatre companies . I think some soul searching may need to be done by all of us!

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