Life is slowly beginning to come back to some degree of normalcy in many parts of Australia, with easing restrictions seeing cinemas open again and a trip to the pub in sight.
But live performing arts — whether that's delighting in a blockbuster musical, taking in the opera or seeing the latest in independent and experimental theatre — looks like one of the last things that will return to normal when this pandemic is under control.
Our performing arts companies have had to cancel shows and shutter their doors since mid-March, cutting off what for many is their main income stream.
Earlier this month, COVID-19 claimed its first major arts scalp: Carriageworks — Australia's biggest multi-arts venue — went into administration due to a combination of lost income from the venue closure, insufficient reserves and a last-minute failure to secure its anticipated state government funding.
Elsewhere in the arts sector, companies are reeling from the latest funding round announcement by the Australia Council, the Federal Government's arts funding body, which left 49 previously funded small-to-medium arts organisations without four-year operational funding.
We asked five companies — from major players to smaller companies without federal funding — how they are faring through the shutdown.
Their answers highlight fears around the uncertain future and significant hurdles to overcome, as well as the creative ways they are adapting to the sector's shutdown.
'A very creative time'
Julian Louis is the artistic director and CEO of the Northern Rivers Performing Arts Group (NORPA), a theatre company based in Lismore in northern New South Wales.
NORPA has had to cancel six productions and postpone another. The company's income has taken an additional hit from cancelled venue hire.
While they have been able to keep their core staff on through the JobKeeper program, this doesn't include artists (who are employed on short-term contracts, making them ineligible for the scheme).
Louis told RN's The Stage Show that during the shutdown he's asked his staff "to work outside their normal spheres, to think about the company differently — and it's actually [been] a very creative time".
"It's a rare time where you're not under the pressure of an opening night [coming up], ticket sales and box office success. So we're actually looking at renewing ourselves, which is really valuable and very rare."
Louis says that despite the setbacks of COVID-19, his company's future is secure after NORPA found themselves on the right side of the Australia Council's recent funding decisions.
That means that from 2021, NORPA will have four-year-funding for the first time in its 27-year history.
"I know that [federal arts funding] is a very small pie though, and the number of companies that miss out on this, and we've been one in the past … and it's devastating," says Louis.
The arts sector's current funding crisis can be traced back to 2015, when George Brandis, then minister for the arts, siphoned $104.7 million away from the Australia Council into the National Programme for Excellence in the Arts, a fund distributed at his discretion.
"The Federal Government really has not increased its funding as our industry has grown," says Louis.
In the last financial year, the Australia Council distributed $186 million of funding (across the entire sector, from the Major Performing Arts companies down to individual artists), down from $199.2 million in 2013-2014 (which, adjusted for inflation, is equivalent to $216 million today).
'A perfect storm'
Perth children's theatre company Barking Gecko is one of the 49 companies that will lose federal funding from 2021.
"The funding announcement coming right in the middle of COVID-19 has really created a perfect storm and taken the planks of stability out from under the company," says artistic director Luke Kerridge.
Barking Gecko has had to postpone their 2020 season due to COVID-19, including their ambitious touring plans and the creation of new work.
"Then [we had to] pivot really quickly and reimagine what right now looks like, and what 2021 looks like," says Kerridge.
Kerridge says that by accessing JobKeeper and repurposing touring funds they have been able to retain their staff, which has enabled them to launch a new digital initiative to continue connecting and creating with children through the shutdown: Isolate > Create > Connect.
This program sees Barking Gecko partner with Indian youth arts company ThinkArts to deliver weekly creative tasks to children, designed by artists.
Despite the challenges wrought by both the pandemic and the funding decision, Kerridge is feeling "strangely optimistic".
"My hope is that coming back together in a physical space will take on more meaning post-COVID; maybe we will enjoy that sense of togetherness more now that we've seen that we can take it for granted."
Kerridge and his team are looking forward to returning to the production that Barking Gecko had been developing before the shutdown — House — which has an eerily timely story.
"It's about characters who wait out a storm in a house, and then have to summon the resilience to go back out there once it's over."
Concerns for the future
At the end of last year, Lee Lewis left the intimacy of Sydney's 105-seat Griffin theatre to become artistic director of Queensland Theatre — a major performing arts (MPA) company funded through the MPA framework.
Queensland Theatre has two spaces — the larger one with 350 seats — and Lewis says they've had to scale back hours at the company and let some of their staff go (the company is a statutory body of the Queensland Government, and thus ineligible for JobKeeper).
"We're talking about the next steps beyond that, depending on how long this goes for. If we manage to perform before the end of the year, then we're hoping to minimise that impact," Lewis says.
"But if it goes longer than we're projecting at the moment, then there's not a lot of great future for the permanency of this company."
With no income from performances, Queensland Theatre's expenditure nonetheless continues: they are still delivering their education program to 100 schools around the state (which they've now taken online), staffing the winding down of their subscription season — and starting to plan for the eventual re-opening.
Lewis says mounting plays at the scale of Queensland Theatre is costly and would be unsustainable with the reduced audience entailed by social distancing restrictions.
"I feel like the Federal Government, especially, just doesn't have any interest in addressing the problems that we're facing in the arts community. And that was before the shutdown," Lewis says.
"I feel like we've failed as an industry to convince government over the last 20 years of our inherent worth to the society that we live in. I think we've got to stop trying to lobby government and I think we've got to take our focus back to winning over audiences."
Keeping the magic alive
Queensland Ballet, also funded through the MPA framework, employs 180 people (including 60 dancers) and has been able to keep staff on through the JobKeeper scheme.
Artistic director Li Cunxin says that the first step the company took once they knew the shutdown was imminent was "creating as much online content as possible".
This has included classes and coaching sessions for the dancers as well as the public.
They also had to get flooring and portable ballet barres out to their dancers so that they could stay fit at home.
Cunxin says there are two priorities for his company at the moment: "One is to keep our team together … So during these isolation period times … [when things try] to pull us apart, we have to be even stronger as a team."
"And the second thing for us is really planning ahead to not only survive this pandemic but also emerge a stronger and more focused organisation."
Queensland Ballet performs in a theatre with a capacity of 2,000, making a return to "business as usual" highly unlikely in the short term; accordingly, the company has made the decision to move its entire 2020 season to 2021.
"[But] we obviously still have expenses we have to pay. And our 60-year anniversary gala was pulled a week before [it was scheduled to take place] — so the whole program [was] set, choreographed, rehearsed, we had overseas creatives fly in," Cunxin says.
The company is forecasting a 43 per cent decline in revenue for 2020 but is hoping donors and corporate partners will step up, launching — a campaign and website to generate donations.
Queensland Ballet will also be releasing 60 new short dance works on this platform, choreographed by their dancers and commissioned to celebrate the company's 60th anniversary.
"I do hope when we come out of this that we all will be able to continue to practice or deliver the magic of this art form," says Cunxin.
Live streaming and removing barriers
Declan Greene is the new artistic director of Griffin — the country's only theatre company dedicated to new Australian writing, which performs works in the 105-seat SBW Stables Theatre in Sydney's Darlinghurst.
"You're literally breathing the same air as the performers, but that sounded a lot more appealing before COVID," says Greene.
Griffin have retained their casual front-of-house, box office and bar staff — who are directors and playwrights with their own artistic practices — in part-time jobs as literary associates during the shutdown.
They were also able to pay the actors and creatives for their production of Kindness, which was scheduled to open shortly after the shutdown began.
He says that they were in the financial position to do so because the first show of the 2020 season — David Williamson's Family Values — "far exceeded its box office targets".
Griffin receives funding from the Australia Council and Create NSW, and is supported by philanthropy; Greene says they are unlikely to share Carriageworks' fate.
"The more troubling thing for us is just … it's obviously a hugely uncertain world that we're attempting to plan for."
None of the artistic directors we spoke to know when, or for how long, social distancing measures will be eased enough to allow for performances.
"So it just becomes very, very unpredictable about just how we … still manage to employ artists to make art, which is something that is a huge priority for the company," he says.
In the meantime, the company undertook an experimental program of works called Griffin Lock-in, in which they paid five artists to make one-off performances for live streaming.
"It's really interesting to explore ways that we can kind of create liveness and create a sense of live theatrical community online," Greene says.
His interest in online performance extends beyond the pandemic, "because there are a lot of accessibility barriers in theatre as well, which are sometimes financial … and also [sometimes] to do with just access for neurodiverse and disabled folk".
"So that's definitely something I want to continue exploring as a company."
https://news.google.com/__i/rss/rd/articles/CBMicGh0dHBzOi8vd3d3LmFiYy5uZXQuYXUvbmV3cy8yMDIwLTA1LTIyL2F1c3RyYWxpYW4tdGhlYXRyZS1mYWNpbmctY29yb25hdmlydXMtc2h1dGRvd24tYXJ0cy1mdW5kaW5nLWN1dHMvMTIyNzE3NjLSASdodHRwczovL2FtcC5hYmMubmV0LmF1L2FydGljbGUvMTIyNzE3NjI?oc=5
2020-05-21 23:31:16Z
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