Breaking out of Melbourne’s theatre ghettos

I’m going to go out on a limb here but it is fair to say that if you work in indy theatre in Melbourne in the year 2013, you live north of the Yarra river.

I work in independent theatre and I have a confession to make: I live south of the river – Balaclava to be exact. I have for some time now. Worst of all, I love it.

To avoid snide remarks and a general sense of faux pas, those of us that work in Melbourne’s pretty amazing independent theatre scene who live south-side simply tell our colleagues in the north-side majority that we live there too. They’re none the wiser, no one notices us hailing cabs towards Punt Rd after meetings, all of which in recent memory seem to be held somewhere alongside the trench that the 86 tram shuffles along.

I have always found this all quite strange as the south is riddled with theatres! In 2011, my now infamously nomadic theatre company, MKA: Theatre of New Writing, established a pop-up venue in Prahran, right on Chapel Street. At this time one could count six functioning performance spaces from Red Bennies in South Yarra  to TheatreWorks in St Kilda and the David Williamson Theatre at Swinburne Prahran campus.

By contrast, directly over the Church St Bridge,  the City of Yarra possesses no venue exclusively for theatre within its borders that it supports vocally let alone financially. The Owl and Pussycat is there of course, plugging away solidly, but the local council is cold towards it to say the least.

After two years of moving MKA six times to every corner of the compass within the confines of inner-city Melbourne, I find this lack remarkable. We have found that the vast majority of our audience members come from this very theatre-less borough. Perhaps the council there doesn’t feel it needs one, given the the excellent programs of North Melbourne’s Arts House, Carlton’s La Mama and the newly relaunched Northcote Town Hall all so relatively close at hand and so heartily supported by their local councils?

It also could have something to do with the City of Yarra’s social make up at this moment in time which, since the late 90s has been in flux. Rapid gentrification over the last decade is evident everywhere in what remains the most populous and culturally diverse municipality in Melbourne. The area is yet to settle on what exactly it might be and who makes up its population.

Down south that sense of place has developed at venues such as Theatre Works. Under the stewardship of Creative Director and Adelaide native, Dan Clarke and his savvy GM, Mark Crees, Theatre Works has a program and curatorial vision that understands where it is and who is around it. Each show in their 2012 program cleverly touched on an element that spoke directly to the local community whilst managing to make the devoted attendees of independent theatre from the north migrate south in their droves night after night.

They have tapped into the local communities: queer, Jewish, the nouveau riche with their gentrifying ways, the disenfranchised and the sporty beach culture. All that makes up the social fabric of St Kilda has been touched on theatrically in this past year without feeling tokenistic. The local community has been presented with images or reflections of themselves and, additionally, shown something new. Something they had never seen before but instantly recognised as an undiscovered part of themselves.

I get excited when I see spaces like Theatre Works go from under-utilised and a little lost to being the jewel of the south. I also get excited when I see the small to medium theatre sector turning heads. Of course, the south has its white elephants (Gasworks, I am looking at you). But I believe that the south is on the cusp of becoming a real hub for the performing arts in Melbourne once again.

I once asked Theatre Works’s Creative Director Dan Clarke where he lived in Melbourne, assuming he’d be local to the southern suburbs like me. His answer baffled me at the time:  Williamtown! Later, I realised it made perfect sense. Williamtown looks straight at St Kilda from across the bay. It is only ten minutes by boat from the pier and, better still, it is the only suburb of Melbourne from which one can get a proper look at St Kilda.  My bet is that more Melbourne theatre people will be looking south over the next few years.

Robert Taylor, CEO of the National Theatre in St Kilda responds:

No mention of Red Stitch? Or are they too
successful now? What is the so-called ‘independent’ theatre scene?
Does it mean unsubsidised or just a co-op or what? Is it anything not
done at The Malthouse, MTC, or commercially? What about the substantial
number of shows done at Gasworks (easy to dismiss lightly but the
activity there cannot be denied). And any perusal of the City of Pt
Phillip Arts Grants will show the independent, new, innovative (all the
old catch crys) productions are well-represented.

Maybe its our northern neighbours who should be slinking off on the 96 tram after rehearsals?