Australian Theatre continues to suffer a Brain Drain

The stark reality is that every arts company now has to find sponsorship to maintain a flow of productivity. This, of course, can lead to some tricky outcomes.

When the Melbourne Theatre Company programs a Steven Sondheim musical starring a popular television actress, then the corporate sponsors stand in line. They won't - and who can blame them - put their money into a Stephen Sewell piece deriding capitalist excess.

Yet the lavish Sondheim, or a revival of The Sound of Music, is exactly the show that doesn't need the sponsor's money. A much loved piece of middle-brow musicana featuring recognisable faces will invariably pay its way.

The airing of new and challenging material, by its very nature, won't attract the corporate dollar. Can one imagine the conservative radio station, 3AW, which has backed numerous mainstream shows, throwing capital behind the Melbourne Workers Theatre?

The result is a form of cultural constipation. The major companies offer comfortable theatre in comfortable surrounds. The arts media dutifully publicise and meekly critique these offerings. Those practitioners who continue to push the form and content of theatre - often erroneously referred to as fringe-dwellers - are by and large ignored. Many interesting pieces and many fine and brave performances spring forth, only to disappear into a morass of apathy and conservatism.

So we lose a Kosky and a Jurisic and many others who simply throw up their hands and give it away. The passionate and innovative director, Nico Lathouris, with no work offers in Melbourne, ended up as dramaturge on the Sydney ABC's Wildside, where his influence was observed in the many brilliant semi-improvisational performances. This was television with a hard edge and it is justly celebrated but it was theatre's loss.

Might some lessons be drawn from this brain drain? Of course, more money would be welcome - at least to lessen the reliance upon sponsorship – but that alone would not solve the problem. The major companies have no divine right to public funds. If they lack energy, imagination and courage then they must lose out to groups that don't. What money there is needs to spread more equitably among the performing groups.

Arts Ministers and their advisers need to be acquainted with the breadth of theatrical activity in our cities. They need to get their hands dirty; that' s part of the job description, or ought to be.

While it may be too much to think in terms of the Viennese tradition of a challenging, diverse and assisted theatre community, there remains the hope that we may move away from the suffocatingly snug and perhaps retain our bravest practitioners.