Equity President Chloe Dallimore reveals legal loophole allowing overseas artists to dominate Australian musicals.

The President of Equity Australia has issued a statement in response to complaints received by the Union regarding the number of international artists being imported to perform some of the most high-profile roles in major musical theatre productions over the coming year. 

Many international producers, including Disney Theatrical, Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Really Useful Group and Cameron Mackintosh, have leapt on the public demand for musical theatre in Australia, with a number of blockbuster productions from New York’s Broadway and London’s West End having staged successful tours Down Under in recent years. However, a trend has started to emerge of artists from overseas being cast in principal roles for Australian tours, and many Aussie artists have begun voicing their concern over the lack of work being secured by home-grown talent. 

British actor Alex Jennings will play Henry Higgins in Opera Australia and John Frost’s hotly anticipated production of My Fair Lady, directed by Dame Julie Andrews, Callum Francis, also from the UK, is set to play Lola in the upcoming tour of Kinky Boots, and James Scott and Arielle Jacobs, both from the U.S., will be appearing in Disney Theatrical’s production of Aladdin, as the Genie and Jasmine respectively, which it opens in Sydney later this year.

It’s not only actors who are unhappy about the number of overseas professionals taking Australian jobs, as many of the creative and technical crews for these productions are also brought from abroad.

In response to the outcry from the industry, Equity President Chloe Dallimore has issued a statement revealing a problematic legal loophole which has left the door open for overseas artists and technical crew to take Australian positions without any consideration of the impact on local professionals.

“LPA (Live Performance Australia) tore up the Imported Artists Agreement 4 years ago, without prior notice, and have refused to have any discussion about the Agreement since. Repeated efforts have been made to negotiate a new Imported Artists Agreement, and LPA has still refused to talk. The issue was brought up again with them as recently as February,” Dallimore shares. The agreement described, which was formerly put in place by actors’ union Media, Entertainment and Arts Alliance and the association of producers, Live Performance Australia, limited the number of appointments that could be taken by overseas employees. However, while the agreement remained in place from the 1990s until 2012, currently there are no legal protections or limitations on the number of overseas contractors that can be engaged. Crucially, the terms of the old agreement limited the number of non-Australian principals in a production to just one, however, as has become apparent with recent casting announcements, this is no longer being observed.

Since legal action is not currently an option, Dallimore has called on Australian artists to become more proactive in voicing their concerns to producers. “The Union can only get change on this front if we rally together. It’s been four years of unregulated imports, and as many have said, it feels as if we are regressing and returning to the JC Williamson days when all the Principals were imports and the Ensemble and understudies were Australians,” Dallimore’s statement says. “How on Earth will our Australian live theatre stars be made at this rate? One show can make a career and our talented Aussies are being robbed of that opportunity. We must instigate change, but we can only do it together as an industry. Your Union needs your voice to create change.”

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