Or how has theatre managed to sustain itself and continue to overcome the varying social conditions over time?

On the first day of acting college I remember our senior lecturer asking the whole group a question. He told us that theatre as a medium had survived many cultures over many millennia through censorship, state control, competing technologies and all manner of oppression. The thing is, theatre had still survived; it flourishes and sustains countless people who continue to dedicate their lives to it. The question then is not so much could the theatre survive without us, because obviously it could. The question became; could we survive without theatre?

It is a parable, which still reminds me to contemplate my position with regards to the theatre and to resist the urge to see myself as bigger than the form. However it sparked another question in me, one that I have asked throughout my career; how has theatre managed to sustain itself and continue to overcome the varying social conditions over time? Not as historical detective story but more in terms of how it functions, how people function within it and how it makes meaning and culture.

Theatre is a truly unique social phenomenon. It is separate of everyday time, space and relationships. Yet it can only be understood by an audience if it is reflective or a closely imagined interpretation of those same relationships. It requires the cohesive efforts, will and determination by a dedicated group of people to carve a space in which they can tell a story, for whatever reason motivates them. It also demands of its audience a commitment and effort; and by that I merely mean the effort to drag oneself off the couch and away from any number of other distractions and pay good money to sit and watch a fantasy for an hour or two. It is unique amongst the creative practices in this collective energy to make manifest the event.

The esteemed lecturer who posed the question on that first day was none other than David Kendall, a founding member of the Pram Factory and colleague of the likes of David Williamson, Jack Hibbard and the birth of rebellious Australian theatre that burst forth from Melbourne throughout the seventies. He was not the first politically motivated mentor I had. At school I was taught by a South Africa-Indian for whom theatre was a vital weapon of resistance and political advocacy during the turbulent apartheid regime. After college I worked for a number of years with a dance in schools company and money can’t buy the experiences of watching children who had never spoken before hug the performers and babble away ten-to-the-dozen, or seeing a bully and victim reconcile after being part of a show about bullying. This theatre thing is important. It can create real meaning in people’s lives and for that it must be respected.

So naturally I am interested in how theatre continues to make meaning in the new century. In an industry that is governed by funding systems based upon antiquated philosophies of moral self righteousness, the dark arts of marketing, the social capital of ‘being seen to be seen by the people who are seen to be seeing’, new technologies being integrated into the experience, commercial behemoth productions and the taken for granted struggling artist giving their time, expertise and body for hope of ‘great exposure’; how does theatre define its meaning?

So I have just completed a Masters of Philosophy in the Anthropology of theatre in an effort to understand how these meanings are made and reinforced throughout a culture. As I embark on the next phase of my career/craft/vocation… job, I am caught in a semi-existentialist reflexive state. As such I continue to explore the function, form and method of making theatre; what are the structures that define it; how does cultural capital engage in an individualistic neo-liberal economy; how and where do the spaces of performance reflect function efficacy and legitimacy? In my performance and academic work I explore the taken for granted assumptions about the craft and the business, the ethics and the ideals and how they are defined, enforced and perpetuated.

Theatre makers and artists in general (although that term is contentious, but more on that later) are uniquely positioned at the edges and in the margins of everyday life, to reflect and question the nature of being a social human engaged in a culture or community. My task is to shine that reflexive attention on the practice of that practice. It’s not often done, certainly not by those embraced by the warmth of success within it. To borrow a analogy; it’s as if we all throw stones at the castle to let us in, embrace us and make us important, relevant and paid. Once we’re inside though, we often forget to let those in behind us and a fog of memory forgets what the wall, even was. Most creatives struggle so hard for this stability and legitimacy that we seldom investigate those structures of authority in the first place.

Now don’t get me wrong, I like a good rollicking story, a romantic comedy and unadulterated whimsy (yes I recognise the irony of using ‘whimsy’ as a pretentious term for fun) as much as anyone and I am not here to be a sour old Puritan. But neither am I interested in accepting blindly the status quo of practice. In terms of the febrile post-NPEA environment that we find ourselves in, when the national conversation is tenuously investigating its own practice and culture, having a conversation and understanding our ‘culture of culture’ is essential.