A question commonly asked of theatre makers, and often by peers
and collaborators is: why do you do it?
The assumption is that theatre cannot possibly compete with what
is available in digital media, at least in most countries. Easy
access to the Internet, TV, or DVDs has made live performance, if
not irrelevant, at least economically less viable.
When one considers this economy in relation to the film or TV
industry, we refer not so much to the human labour involved or even
the means of production utilised to create a traditional theatre
event, but rather it's dissemination. Theatre is generally far more
economical and less labour intensive than making an hour length
television drama or a feature film. The key advantages of theatre
are that it is accessible and can cost very little in material
terms. Yes, there are venues to furnish, maintain and hire,
rehearsals spaces to organise, people to contract at award rates or
in co-op arrangements, marketing and ticketing and so on, but the
reality is theatre can be done cheaply, quickly, and can be readily
mobilised. Its user-friendliness is precisely what makes it
attractive to artists. More money requires more compromise.
The question concerning theatre's economic viability is rarely
posited around methods of production, but rather its distribution
as an end product. A live event cannot be readily downloaded from
the Internet, or packaged and put in the post like a DVD (which is
not to say a theatre event can't take place over the internet or be
digitally recorded). Theatre defies ready commodification. Its
ephemeral nature, its lack of materiality, challenges our
understanding of the way consumption occurs.
How do we place a monetary value on it? You might say, I had a fun
night, and therefore I got my money's worth. Or perhaps, it was
seven hours long and bored me shitless, and so I might feel ripped
off. In theatre, there is no packaged product to be exchanged. The
reception of the theatrical event cannot be separated from what is
performed. The theatrical event is a live exchange between people,
and this exchange is not quantifiable or easily defined.
So why does this question of theatre's so-called lack of viability
persist? Is it because the malaise of corporatised language has
infiltrated and poisoned our cultural lexicon, requiring us to
justify arts subsidies accrued from government agencies and
therefore taxes? Is it even possible to measure the success or
health of cultural activities such as theatre? Recent studies on
cultural consumption, defined by ticket sales, suggest that we are
consuming more art in Australia than ever before. Ticket sales
cannot measure the influences and affects exerted by a particular
theatre event on culture more generally, or specifically on the
minds of those who witnessed it.
It is true that other, more efficient economies of performance,
such as television, can garner a mass audience share in ways that
theatre simply cannot, and can offer far more lucrative rewards to
artists. A mass market also offers fame; it can satisfy a latent
narcissistic need for recognition that many artists crave, and can
grossly exaggerate their cultural significance. If more people know
about the work of a particular artist, it therefore must be better
than something that floats about in obscurity. Would we hold up
those standards for literature? A book like Ulysses(and many other modernist
masterpieces), could not be ruled out as irrelevant simply because
it was printed in an original edition of one thousand. Theatre of
course differs from a book in that it is generally produced for a
short season, never to be seen again.
An important question to ask is: who decides what constitutes a
theatre event in the first place? Are we talking about, at one
extreme, a performance that takes place in a recognised theatre
venue, or a kind of theatre that takes place in the context of any
social interaction between one person and another, or an object?
Does the interaction in this latter instance need to be witnessed,
in order for it to be theatre? Can theatre come into being, not
through conscious creation, but rather as an occurrence within the
'psychopathology of everyday life'?
Raimondo Cortese is the current Patrick White Fellow at the Sydney
Theatre Company.
Feature: The cost of theatre
Date posted: 25 Oct 2011Author: STC