The Red Stitch Actors Theatre artistic director talks cleaning toilets, discovering new playwrights and organising chaos.

By complete coincidence, Red Stitch Actors Theatre’s new production, The Honey Bees, and the brutal Government funding cuts that have plunged the Australian arts community into financial havoc, share a surprising synergy. Commissioned by Red Stitch, Caleb Lewis’s new play, premiering this week at the company’s home in St. Kilda, explores “colony collapse disorder” – the phenomenon that has decimated bee populations around the world. Just like the buzzing pollinators in The Honey Bees, Red Stitch is also facing an uncertain future, as one of 62 arts organisations which lost multi-year operational funding from the Australia Council on “Black Friday”.

However, artistic director Ella Caldwell is far from despondent. Red Stitch, which celebrated its 15th birthday last week, has a proud history of thriving against the odds, and as a founder member of the company, joining aged just 19, Caldwell experienced these humble beginnings first hand. “In the early years, we literally did everything ourselves,” Caldwell shares. “We had what we endearingly – or not so endearingly – called ‘schlep days’, where each of us took it in...