New vision for the arts
‘Look before you leap’ says theatre historian
Dr Meyrick, right, with actor Neil Pigot, in rehearsal last year for Will Eno’s Pulitzer-nominated play, Thom Pain.
As governments look back in history for solutions to the economic crisis, a La Trobe researcher is taking his message to the newly formed Creative Australia Advisory Group.
Dr Julian Meyrick, former Associate Director of Melbourne Theatre Company and a research fellow in the University’s Drama Program, attended the first meeting of this important national committee in February.
The group, which includes actress Cate Blanchett and Australia Council Chairman James Strong, was formed by the Federal Minister for Environment, Heritage and the Arts, Peter Garrett, to rethink the Government’s cultural policy. Dr Meyrick’s appointment comes at a crucial time for the theatre sector when the quest for audience numbers has become widely regarded as the measure of artistic merit.
In the free-market environment of the past decade, theatre companies defined themselves as small businesses and competition has been intense but not always productive, Dr Meyrick says.
‘Competition, like all values, can be used strategically but it is toxic if valorised. We need to move from a competitive view of arts provision to a robust, co-operative model.’
The outspoken researcher is keen for the Government to take a leadership role in developing a new vision of cultural practice, one that views the artist as more than a provider of goods for the market.
His argument is not based on a distinction between high and popular art, nor is he advocating a return to the classics. His position springs from a respect for the arts sector’s unique contribution to the broader expression of Australian creativity.
Dr Meyrick did his PhD thesis on the Nimrod Theatre in Sydney, drawing connections between practitioners and policy-makers in the heyday of the 1970s.
‘I decided to try and generalise this knowledge and throw it back onto cultural policy to illustrate the thinking of governments about art,’ Dr Meyrick says.
‘Australia sometimes has difficulties understanding historical processes and extrapolating lessons from the past. Out of such an approach comes a concern for balancing the past with the needs of the present. It’s a matter of seeing lines of continuity as well as change,’ he says.
‘Policy-makers in Australia tend to lurch from one extreme to another, from “do-nothingism” to a perpetual restructure. This is not an effective use of history, to put it mildly. Every good idea becomes a bad idea if the time-line is wrong. If you implement it too quickly the bad consequences overwhelm the good.’
And it’s not just a matter of making decisions about subsidies. The broadening of culture needs to be managed before resources are pumped into it, he says.
‘We need to know the shape of our culture. It is part of the government’s brief to re-order priorities. Policy, unlike art, is all about balance and perspective.’
The grain of history values the empirical referent, he says — or to put it in lay terms — ‘look before you leap’.
Dr Meyrick will direct Pinter’s The Birthday Party with an Indigenous cast for the Melbourne Theatre Company in June.