In my early days as a chorus member at Canberra Opera I was told that someone in the audience is always looking at you, so every performer’s role is important. Laurence Olivier commented once that he was only the King when he played one because everyone else on stage believed he was – it took one person to treat him otherwise and all the acting in the world wouldn’t work. I was also taught to “Sing out Louise” and remember the audience in the Dress Circle.
Later, at the technical course at NIDA, these lessons were underscored by arts practitioners who encouraged me to leave the production desk during technical sessions & see the show from other perspectives – not everyone is sitting in centre stalls.
This all seems simple enough doesn’t it? And yet these lessons (and hundreds of others) are not being learnt or passed on any more in Australia. Old hard-earned skills are being lost. The major training institutions are hijacked into theoretical training by academics at the cost of the loss of word-of-mouth and hands-on training.
In 1935 Gertrude Johnson, an Australian soprano with a successful European and British career, decided to establish the National Theatre in Melbourne long before Government saw any justification for professional training in Australia. The new Company’s aim was to provide professional hands on training in opera, ballet and drama. Its motto was that training in the performing arts promoted life skills as well as possible careers. Teachers were hired who had experience in what they were teaching because how could you teach something you hadn’t done yourself?
Miss Johnson was one of the earliest proponents of vocational training. Performers from the National Schools and Companies went on to form the basis of the Australian Ballet and Opera Australia through their predecessors and the Elizabethan Theatre Trust. Likewise, early productions by both the Old Tote in Sydney and Union Repertory Theatre (now MTC) in Melbourne counted amongst their number many National Theatre personalities. These were not people who spent hours in classrooms – these were practising artists.
Fast forward to 2012: One by one the recognised performing arts courses are being downsized or sidelined, if not quietly closed as happened to the VCA Opera School, which went into hiatus in 2006 and has never returned. The performing arts are under direct attack across the country as economic rationalists cut budgets to any course requiring 1:1 teaching. Try teaching voice or piano to 25 students at once! The TAFE sector is in crisis. A total misunderstanding of the performing arts has taken hold like a plague at our universities where hands-on and vocational training has been attacked and replaced by general studies and classroom work. The dust is still settling at the VCA after the crisis of its absorption into Melbourne University and Edith Cowan University seems to have WAAPA in its sights. Gone are the VCA Opera School and Melba Conservatoire in Melbourne. Gone are many reputable regional schools.
I firmly believe in the practice of learning by doing. There is a reason that Australian singers, actors, technicians, film-makers and technicians are sought after all over the world. It’s because our people work hard and are totally flexible. It’s because we cross disciplines and are multi-skilled. It’s because we have practical experience across a wide range of skills, crafts and it’s because we don’t mind getting our hands dirty.
Quietly celebrating 77 years is the National Theatre with its two nationally recognised vocational training schools in Classical Dance & Acting based in a heritage live theatre. I love the fact that the theatre offers not just a high level of accredited courses but also a venue for community theatre where professionals can pass their skills on directly to volunteers as well as students. Performances are many both large & small. At the same time the new Opera Studio Melbourne (based in Richmond) under Linda Thompson has picked up the opera baton dropped by subsidised larger organisations and is celebrating her 5th year firmly believing in teaching stage skills and gaining stage experience by actually doing the work on stage.
It should be unnecessary to say it but it needs to be said and I hope it is repeated long & loud to the university vice-chancellors and to arts and education ministers in state and federal government.
I am reminded of Sir Joseph Porter in Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore –“He never ever went to sea but now he is the ruler of the Queen’s navy!”
Please, let dancers dance, actors act and opera singers sing.
