COURAGEOUS CONVERSATIONS - Pt3 SOS: Save our Sector • Save our Stories • Save our Stages

The five myths of BLAKSTAGEtheatre

Within this current environment many myths have surrounded the BLAKSTAGE companies. These flow into a general perception of our work being somehow ‘less than’, our companies being a separatist Western notion of ‘community theatre’ which somehow is ‘less than’, our artists being typecast or somehow ‘less than’. Without hearing from the companies themselves, or empowering more voices in the sector to engage in national discourse, they remain divisive sentiments that in reality continue the BLAXploitation by those who lean on us for our knowledge and wisdom whenever they wish to dip into Black content and themes. With our sector in a subservient space we are offered only token attachment roles, grasp at financial offers that drag us away from core aspirations, and remain benchmarked against, and vulnerable to, a style of theatre I refer to as an ‘Al Jolson’ – white writer, white director, white company, with an all-star Indigenous cast.

Myth 1: Mainstream companies produce better BLAK work

Whitestage companies do well-funded theatre. Most companies who touch Indigenous themes and content are the major performing arts companies, and their budget per show is often on par, if not double, the entire annual company budget of a BLAKSTAGE company. They have the capacity to produce six-handers, whilst a BLAKSTAGE company struggles to produce a three-hander. They can indulge in white translation and adaptation theatre with Indigenous themes, or they can commit to Indigenous writers and sometimes an ‘Indigenous director’.

However, the question of whether they produce better BLAK work is fallacious. How could they? They are not Indigenous and have no concept of the process to which authentic Indigenous productions are developed.. BLAKSTAGE companies make a commitment to Indigenous processes and methodologies – equal to if not more important than the final outcome. So how is mainstream work superior? It is just money. And if it is just money, then call it something else, because it is not black theatre, it is passing off.

Myth 2: BLAKSTAGE companies do not produce enough work

BLAKSTAGEcompanies exist on largely static subsistence funding. They often do not produce annual subscription seasons because they are in survival mode, barely keeping afloat of increased costs and overheads. They produce work and outcomes directly related to these budgets. You get what you pay for which is one or two main stage theatre shows per annum, if we are lucky. Is this enough work? Not really, but it is what you get when you attempt to draw blood from a stone.

Equally, any attempt to produce extant work from back repertoires or the collection of Indigenous theatre classics such as those by Jack Davis, Jack Charles, Kevin Gilbert and Jimmy Chi is a high point of contention with funding bodies. This double standard does not apply to whitestage companies who program translations and adaptations that have no real value to the Australian identity, but seem to be beyond reproach by funding bodies with an obsession for a constant stream of new work.

Personally I heard this loud and clear with the comments levelled at the internationally successful, mutli-award-winning commission and play I produced, written by David Milroy, entitled Windmill Baby. Quite deliberately, and on the back of this play making Australian history as the first Indigenous script ever to win the prestigious Patrick White Award, it was strategically pitched and picked up nationally and internationally for tours and seasons so that we could maximise the reach and delivery of authentic BLAKSTAGEtheatre. As the awards grew and international opportunities for this work increased, we were lambasted and remarks grew in the form of “they should call themselves the Windmill Baby Company because that’s all they do”. [FU1]

What was not understood by those making such comments was that Windmill Baby was an attempt to embed a financially viable lifecycle for the company and the sector, so that we could provide ongoing employment and opportunity to artists and practitioners. In reality, it was an effort to look toward a new approach to stabilising earned income beyond workshops and the borderline cultural tourism gigs that had become our dilemma which were fast becoming artistic and cultural prostitution.

Invariably we were penalised for this and it resulted in declining funding and limited opportunity for other works, which at the time was an ever-growing backlog of three new plays in development. All were unsuccessful in obtaining support from arts funding bodies because it seemed the ‘peers’ were not convinced we were capable of delivery of an annual program of any real scale.