The largest producing company I have managed is the State Theatre Company of South Australia, resident in the Adelaide Festival Centre. This was my most complex job to date. For two years, 1980 and 1981, I managed the final six months season of artistic director Colin George, the one year artistic directorship of Kevin Palmer and Nick Enright, a six month interregnum under my direction, and planning for another short-lived era under artistic director Jim Sharman.
The Company had been founded (as the South Australian Theatre Company) in 1965, by theatremakers, but became a statutory body of the Government of South Australia in 1972, prior to the opening of the Festival Centre. Housed in the 620-seat Playhouse (built 1977) with integrated workshops, the production facilities were by far the best in Australia. This was the era of Premier Don Dunstan, who was also Minister for the Arts and who subsidised the performing arts with huge new sums, hoping to make Adelaide, a festival city of one million people, the 'Athens of the South'. However, in 1979 Dunstan fell ill and resigned; the Liberals took over and Murray Hill became Minister for the Arts. He appointed four out of six governors of the theatre company, which was chaired by the 36 year old Solicitor General, Malcolm Gray. We reported to the Minister and the State Director of Arts, Len Amadio, an expert arts-politician who was nervous about his new masters.
The productions for the first half of 1980 were King Stag (Carlo Gozzi, adapted by Nick Enright), The Mystery Plays of Wakefield (for the 1980 Adelaide Festival), The One Day of the Year (Alan Seymour) and Three Sisters (Colin George’s final production, in which he also played Vershinin). There were 8,400 subscribers to the season, an astonishingly high level. Over 35 actors were on contract for the season, so this was a large repertory company by any measure.
Alan Seymour returned to Australia as the resident playwright; the first production in the ‘new era’ was the premiere of his play, The Float, followed by On The Wallaby (a musical about the depression by Nick Enright), The Man From Mukinupin (a musical by Dorothy Hewett), What The Butler Saw (Joe Orton), Bent (Martin Sherman), A Month In The Country (Ivan Turgenev), The Ship's Whistle (Barry Oakley), A Hard God (Peter Kenna), Buckley's! (David Allen and Ariette Taylor), Wings (Arthur Kopit), Pygmalion (Bernard Shaw) and Lulu (Frank Wedekind, adapted by Louis Nowra prior to playing at Sydney Opera House). We also launched small-scale productions at Adelaide's Theatre 62 - Pericles (William Shakespeare), Traitors (Stephen Sewell), Scanlan (Barry Oakley), Upside Down at the Bottom of the World (David Allen), Farewell Brisbane Ladies (Doreen Clarke) and As You Like It (William Shakespeare).
When Kevin Palmer and Nick Enright decided to leave, I approached six guest directors and negotiated play choices and creative teams: for Squirts (a political revue directed by Neil Armfield, starring Max Gillies), The Revenger's Tragedy (Tourneur, director Richard Cottrell), No End of Blame (Howard Barker, director John Gaden), The Threepenny Opera (Bertolt Brecht and Kurt Weill, director George Whaley, music director Michael Morley), Fanshen (David Hare, director Ken Boucher) and The Sad Songs of Annie Sando (Doreen Clarke, director Margaret Davis). There were many top actors in my season; most were regulars signed for the six months, including Philip Quast, Daphne Grey, Simon Burke, Geoffrey Rush, Kevin Miles, Dennis Olsen, Heather Mitchell, Robert Menzies, Ivar Kants and John Turnbull.
Under the State Liberal government, theatre subsidies remained high. Where earned income from the box office and ancillaries reached $A 482,355 in the year ending 30 June 1980, State Government grants totalled $A 982,410, on top of which the Federal Government through the Australia Council granted $A 268,806. Thus the total grants were $A 1,244,074 – or 72 per cent of turnover. It was unsurprising that ‘alternative’ theatre companies were jealous of this largesse; the State Theatre Company was very privileged, funded at a level more familiar in German theatres at this time.
By 2008, the Company’s business anatomy had changed markedly. Now, only 24 people are employed for a much reduced programme of eight main stage productions. In the year ending 30 June 2008, State Government grants totalled $A 1,976,000, plus Australia Council assistance of $A 505,000. The total grants of $A 2,481,000 amount to a reduced 49 per cent of turnover. The Company sold 46,106 tickets, compared to 88,806 in 1980.
Apart from being a statutory body of the State Government, there were other features of the State Theatre Company which were uncommon in the English-speaking theatre. Firstly, the staff – who were the best theatre craftspeople I have worked with– included a full-time photographer, David Wilson, complete with dark room and budget, and an archivist, Jo Peoples, who managed the Performing Arts Collection of South Australia which had been set up by Colin Ballantyne, the previous Chairman. The collection is now managed by the Company’s landlords, the Adelaide Festival Centre Trust. Secondly, the Company had its own library, a collection of 3,000 volumes managed by Maggie Day who had co-founded the Adelaide Theatre Group and who was a de facto dramaturg to the State Theatre Company, being secretary to the playreading panel and programme researcher. We bought ten new books each month; this was where I got the habit.
The State Theatre Company also had a theatre-in-education company, Magpie Theatre. This had been started by Roger Chapman, an English proponent of the form who had worked with the Belgrade Theatre in Coventry. A new director, Malcolm Moore, had recently been appointed. There were eight actor-teachers, writer-researcher John Lonie and a discrete stage management. Each year, six programmes (or ‘learning plays’) were devised and performed for primary and secondary schools throughout the state. In 1980, for instance, Magpie gave 204 performances to 11,844 children in 116 venues. Outback tours were sponsored by Australian National Railways who provided freight wagons and sleeping carriages, to take Magpie along the Indian-Pacific and Ghan railroads to isolated centres such as Cook on the Nullarbor Plain and Mangurai Siding in the Painted Desert. Often, an entire population of one hundred enjoyed the family show in these railway communities. Magpie was an integral part of the Company, and actors frequently performed in its main-stage productions.
There was hardly an area in the state which the Company did not visit. I was already familiar with the state capitals and some large regional centres, through organising tours by the Nimrod Theatre of Sydney, but working in Adelaide was exhilarating for a ‘theatric-tourist’, as shown by this map for a tour of the Australian modern classic, The One Day of The Year.
Adelaide theatre: a select bibliography
Peter Ward, A Singular Act: twenty five years of the State Theatre Company of South Australia, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1992.
Lance Campbell, By Popular Demand: the Adelaide Festival Centre Story, Adelaide, Wakefield Press, 1998.
Paul Iles, (ed.), The State Theatre Company 1977-1980, [on Colin George’s term as artistic director], Adelaide, State Theatre Company, 1980.
Harold Love, (ed.), The Australian Stage: a documentary history, Sydney, New South Wales University Press, 1984.
Thelma Afford, Dreamers and Visionaries: Adelaide's little theatres from the 1920s to the early 1940s, Sydney, Currency Press, 2004.
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RESIDENCY CARD Upon your arrival as General Manager of the State Theatre Company, 1980 Containing a cautionary ABC guide to the ADELAIDE ARTS
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Athens of the South |
Use this phrase with care – the locals have never been sure if it’s a compliment or you’re sending them up |
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Despoja/Destroyer |
The arts editor of The Advertiser, Shirl – the girl who likes to think she makes ‘em or breaks ‘em in the arts. If she misses out on an ‘exclusive’, just tell her you ‘whispered’ it to first |
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Evangelists |
Still need to tread warily in the ‘City of Churches’ |
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Lest we Forget |
There’s nothing wrong with large country towns – wait till you go on tour to Kangaroo Island |
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Alan Roberts |
The gnome in the Playhouse garden – the drama critic of The Advertiser, often see more of him than our own staff |
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In house eating |
Beware the lure of the Festival Theatre restaurant! |
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Dreariness |
Not necessarily an Adelaide invention |
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Establishment |
Large building housing greater part of Adelaide |
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Anti-Establishment |
Mr Tonkin’s Auntie who once said ‘Bugger’ at a tea party |
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Rarely seen |
Public displays of enthusiasm |
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Tiser |
Might be a fizzy drink in England but it’s something pretty flat here! |
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Subsidy |
The comforting feeling it’ll all come right in the end! |
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Good luck Mr Iles, from two well-wishers…. |
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