Outreach Strategy

Cate Blanchett’s speech following the screening of
In the Company of Actors
at Parliament House, Canberra, August 15 2007

In The Company Of Actors is a rare documentary because it offers the viewer a candid insight into the rehearsal process and eventual production of a play. For actors, allowing cameras into the rehearsal is as odious a prospect as it would be for you allowing them into a cabinet meeting.   What is at stake in the rehearsal room is not perhaps of an obvious, immediate national importance, but we do believe it is of significance.

Theatre is one of the oldest and greatest cultural spaces that humanity has invented, to foster a dialogue about society and to explore the inevitable conflicts which arise, without harm.  Theatre’s potential for significance is limited only by the freedom afforded it to reflect and illuminate the here and now in all its fractious glory.

I propose you replace the noun “theatre” in those sentences with “parliamentary democracy” and we can begin to see how linked our pursuits are.

Making theatre, like good government, is an exhaustive, lengthy and collaborative process.  Politicians like actors do all the hard yards behind closed doors and save the best bits for the public.

Historically the flowering of theatre has strong links to the flowering of societies.  Most famously it is Athens, considered the first democracy, which was also the birthplace of western theatre. Skipping forward to Elizabethan England – a period which I am strangely drawn to, and which is considered a Golden Age in English social history - we of course find Shakespeare, Jonson, Marlowe… just to skim the cream. Closer to our own time, contemporaneous with the many social movements that have given rise to our modern form of democracy you also see the flourishing of theatre with the rise of Naturalism, one of the key proponents of which was Henrik Ibsen who wrote Hedda Gabler, the play we took to the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York.

A Society with an engaged and flourishing debate will produce and be marked historically by a strong theatrical legacy.

Why did we let the cameras in? Because theatre is live. Studying it is important of course, but association with exams and essays should not be the only thing a child is left with.

Because we felt there was chance to create a document with a unique educative power. We feel it allows audiences to experience the process, and by that, affording them an alternative way to understand more deeply and begin to make a lasting connection to the theatre.  We hope that it will grow into an appreciation of the form, which they will take with them into adulthood. With every production we hope to inspire audiences to take the time to listen and engage, to dissect ideas and to critique emotions. In these over-crowded and time-hungry times it is one of the last forms of entertainment without a fast forward button.

The DVD, and accompanying study guide will go out to every secondary school in Australia at the end of this week, and for this we thank The Caledonia Foundation.  It is just one way we are hoping to reach and inspire a new generation of potential creators and their audience.

When I was at school I was drawn to drama, I had no idea why really, I was just interested, there was no end point in sight. As I got to know the process better through student productions at Melbourne University and then my training at NIDA and even beyond that to my first jobs at the STC, I realised why I was drawn to it and developed a greater focus. Each of these stages of discovery is an important step that has allowed me to continue my development as an actress. But the first steps of any journey are the most significant.  I think I can safely say that my initial interest in drama at school has turned out OK for me. As it has for the thousands of others that work in the performing arts around Australia and for the hundreds of thousands of audience members who we illuminate and entertain each year. The performing arts is a significant presence in a significant number of people’s lives.

If this industry is to be all that it can be, it will need one thing above all else – interested young people.  And they are the reason and the audience for this documentary.

For a country with a relatively small population Australia is a significant player on the world stage.  This breadth of talent we display in Science, Sport, and the Arts is a reflection of the complexity and sophistication of our cultural life, which in turn speaks of a healthy democracy. Education and diversity of opportunity are the only ways to ensure that continues.

In The Company Of Actors represents an important moment for the STC, mounting a classic work in a very significant theatre in New York.  Australian companies have been taking work overseas for some time now and we hope to do it more and more. The experience for us as practitioners is invaluable and the more high quality and diverse work that we take overseas, the more we communicate the rich complexity of our cultural and democratic life here.

The final link to make between theatre and Government is perhaps the most significant.  We share a belief in debate and discussion. In engagement with ideas and ideals, we grapple with other people’s dilemmas - in our own ways - for a living.  And that takes empathy, empathy and compassion.  It is this belief in something so fundamental and vital to the human spirit that we, all of us, hope to pass on through our work.