A few days ago, I was talking with someone about a certain hack from the Herald Sun, whose name evades me and I’m too lazy to Google him, but who is notable for describing Diamanda Galas as something like a goth who shrieks and carries on. The philistine in our conversation is actually an arts reviewer for the paper though more notable for being something of an arts hater and pandering to the more imbecilic, vile, uncultured and cretinous sector of the population that comprises the Sun’s readership.
We’d both read his unnecessarily toxic remarks on the Melbourne Arts Festival, and I remarked I was so completely astounded by his vitriol I couldn’t even bring myself to slag him off here, and that it was really disappointing the very targets of his attack remain mute and unresponsive. He replied that unfortunately those people who are getting flayed are in the public eye and to some degree their continued funding is dependent on them being uncontroversial.
So this in a country where largely the very people and organisations being lined up for the abattoir are too afraid to speak out because they may lose funding, Dance Works gone, Sydney Dance Company, La Mama on notice, and I’ve lost track of the number of remaining companies also with that noose around their necks. It seems like all of them.
The last thing the arts in Australia needs when Australia Council is busy trying to work out how to not fund anyone, and Neil Jillett, Andrew Bolt and assorted other colonial trash are basking in the right-wing anti-arts thuggery of Australia today is for the artists themselves to be too pathetic to even respond. It’s in no small way ironic the voice for survival of performing arts so often comes from journalists who aren’t concerned with self-protection so that we artists can have our freedom of speech.
(Alison Croggin of Theatre Notes has some additions to this piece that didn’t make the editorial cut. Yay for correcting disinformation, outright lies or slander.)
ANYONE who cares at all about Melbourne will be shocked by the news that La Mama Theatre may lose its federal funding.
La Mama is unique in the world: no other city boasts a company of this nature, with its committed and democratic support of artists. Famously, it was the seedbed of the Melbourne theatre revolution of the 1970s that launched many a stellar career.
It still provides an umbrella for a huge diversity of new work. As one of the small Victorian arts companies that are, according to state Arts Minister Mary Delahunty, “the bedrock of our thriving and innovative arts industry”, La Mama recently has received a 20 per cent boost in its state funding.
But this bonanza came as La Mama’s artistic director, Liz Jones, was reeling under a totally conflicting evaluation from the Australia Council, which has put La Mama and three other companies “on notice”, warning that if the company does not change its ways, it is in danger of losing its federal funding — about $170,000 annually — next year.
So how has the Australia Council reached such a different conclusion from that of state funding bodies?
Backhand way of stifling our freedoms
The funding threat to La Mama Theatre is a threat to Australian society as a whole, writes Alison Croggon.
ANYONE who cares at all about Melbourne will be shocked by the news that La Mama Theatre may lose its federal funding.
La Mama is unique in the world: no other city boasts a company of this nature, with its committed and democratic support of artists. Famously, it was the seedbed of the Melbourne theatre revolution of the 1970s that launched many a stellar career.
It still provides an umbrella for a huge diversity of new work. As one of the small Victorian arts companies that are, according to state Arts Minister Mary Delahunty, “the bedrock of our thriving and innovative arts industry”, La Mama recently has received a 20 per cent boost in its state funding.
But this bonanza came as La Mama’s artistic director, Liz Jones, was reeling under a totally conflicting evaluation from the Australia Council, which has put La Mama and three other companies “on notice”, warning that if the company does not change its ways, it is in danger of losing its federal funding — about $170,000 annually — next year.
So how has the Australia Council reached such a different conclusion from that of state funding bodies?
La Mama’s “on notice” status comes as the Theatre Board looks for ways to stretch an increasingly tight budget across an increasingly active theatre sector. Melbourne is experiencing a theatre renaissance, with a plethora of independent companies producing exciting work and the revamped Malthouse opening up spaces for younger artists.
This renaissance is in large part due to La Mama itself. It is a crucial incubator of new talent, which often moves on to larger stages elsewhere, both locally and overseas. To cut La Mama is to cut Melbourne theatre off at the feet.
Arts funding is not indexed, and this means that the average grant for a small-to-medium company has, in real terms, fallen by 24 per cent since 1998. Simply, in the absence of increased funding to meet increasing costs, the Theatre Board needs to cut its budget somewhere.
Reportedly, one possibility being canvassed is to cut all triennial funding of key organisations, which locks up 50 per cent of the theatre budget. Certainly the issue of triennial funding is being reviewed in 2008, when all companies, whatever their status, will compete on a level playing field.
That Melbourne can be even in the remotest danger of losing one of its cultural treasures is much more significant than an argument about competing claims for funding. It illuminates one more front in the Howard Government’s war of attrition on freedom of speech.
Every theatre — from the MTC down — is worried about its budget, but the present tight times particularly affect smaller companies, which are the engines of innovation in any culture. Significantly, from Milton and Shelley on, innovation in the arts has often gone hand-in-hand with political dissent.
Last year, a controversial Australia Council restructuring saw the loss of the New Media and Community Cultural Development Boards. The threat to La Mama — which saw part of its mission as picking up where the boards left off — confirms the fears of many that the restructuring was about disenfranchising the innovative artists who work in these areas.
“Freedom of expression and public debate is not only the foundation of a free and flourishing literature,” says Angela Bowne, president of Sydney PEN. “It is one of the critical underpinnings of our democracy.”
Restricting funding is less dramatic, just as slow starvation is less dramatic than outright atrocity. But, in creating an atmosphere of insecurity and self-censorship, it is just as effective a means of killing dissent.
Ceaucescu’s totalitarian regime in Romania, for example, did not dare to ban the internationally respected Bulandra Company. Instead, its funding was whittled away by 90 per cent, a more effective way of stifling its voice than even the extensive censorship to which it was subjected.
Alison Croggon writes the theatre review blog Theatre Notes at theatrenotes.blogspot.com
