Journal articles on the topic 'Theater audiences Australia'

As brochures for the January 1996 Sydney Festival blare out ‘Feel the Beat. Feel the Heat!’ to draw the crowds of summering Sydney folk to performances of the National Dance Company of Guinea (already appropriated and stamped with approval by reviewers in San Francisco and London, who are quoted on the same flyer), the chairman and former artistic director of Playbox Theatre in Melbourne, Carrillo Gartner, worries about the strength of popular Australian opposition to Australia's expanding links with Asia. In an article on the holding of the 14th annual Federation for Asian Cultural Promotion in Melbourne, Gartner fears that ‘there are people in this community […] thinking that […] it is the demise of all they believe in their British heritage’. The focus of the article, though, is not the promotion of Asian culture but how to overcome Asian indifference to Australia and the problem of bringing Australian artists to the notice of Asian impresarios and audiences. Australian cultural cringe wins out over Australian Asia-literate political correctness. In another corner of the continent the director and playwright Peter Copeman has been attempting to replace ‘the Euro-American hand-me-downs and imitations’ of mainstream Australian theatre with a theatre project which explores ‘attitudes of the dominant Anglo-Celtic and the Vietnamese minority cultures towards each other, using the intercultural dialectic as the basis of dramatic conflict’.

This article analyses Stories of Love & Hate, a headphone verbatim play produced in the aftermath of the Cronulla Riots in Sydney, Australia. While verbatim theatre typically invites audiences to listen therapeutically, Stories of Love & Hate enacts and enables two alternative forms of listening. First, it enacts the paradoxical mode of ‘ethical eavesdropping’; second, it enables the metatheatrical mode of ‘mediatized listening’. In doing so, the play asks spectators to reconsider whom they listen to and how. It also asks scholars to reconsider claims that verbatim theatre gives voice to those who go unheard by the media. Instead, the article argues that in the case of Stories of Love & Hate, headphone verbatim theatre enables the audience to listen to how the media listen.

The Dance Collection at Arts Centre Melbourne traces the history of dance in Australia from the late nineteenth century to today. The collection encompasses the work of many of Australia's major dance companies and individual performers whilst spanning a range of genres, from contemporary dance and ballet, to theatrical, modern, folk and social dance styles. The Dance Collection is part of the broader Australian Performing Arts Collection, which covers the five key areas of circus, dance, opera, music and theatre. In my overview of Arts Centre Melbourne's (ACM) Dance Collection, I will outline how the collection has grown and highlight the strengths and weaknesses associated with different methods of collecting. I will also identify major gaps in the archive and how we aim to fill these gaps and create a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history. Material relating to international touring artists and companies including Lola Montez, Adeline Genée, Anna Pavlova and the Ballet Russes de Monte Carlo provide an understanding of how early trends in dance performance have influenced our own traditions. Scrapbooks, photographs and items of costume provide glimpses into performances of some of the world's most famous dance performers and productions. As many of these scrapbooks were compiled by enthusiastic and appreciative audience members, they also record the emerging audience for dance, which placed Australia firmly on the touring schedule of many international performers in the early decades of the 20th century. The personal stories and early ambitions that led to the formation of our national companies are captured in collections relating to the history of the Borovansky Ballet, Ballet Guild, Bodenwieser Ballet, and the National Theatre Ballet. Costume and design are a predominant strength of these collections. Through them, we discover and appreciate the colour, texture and creative industry behind pivotal works that were among the first to explore Australian narratives through dance. These collections also tell stories of migration and reveal the diverse cultural roots that have helped shape the training of Australian dancers, choreographers and designers in both classical and contemporary dance styles. The development of an Australian repertoire and the role this has played in the growth of our dance culture is particularly well documented in collections assembled collaboratively with companies such as The Australian Ballet, Sydney Dance Company, and Chunky Move. These companies are at the forefront of dance in Australia and as they evolve and mature under respective artistic directors, we work closely with them to capture each era and the body of work that best illustrates their output through costumes, designs, photographs, programmes, posters and flyers. The stories that link these large, professional companies to a thriving local, contemporary dance community of small to medium professional artists here in Melbourne will also be told. In order to develop a well-balanced and dynamic view of Australian dance history, we are building the archive through meaningful collecting relationships with contemporary choreographers, dancers, designers, costume makers and audiences. I will conclude my overview with a discussion of the challenges of active collecting with limited physical storage and digital space and the difficulties we face when making this archive accessible through exhibitions and online in a dynamic, immersive and theatrical way.

One of the most unusual statistics in the study of performance and war is that aesthetic activity often increases in times of conflict. In this article Michael Balfour extends the consideration of performance and war to aesthetic projects that were located far removed from the centres of conflict, but that deeply connected with the affective impact of war. As an illustration of performative practice, the examples demonstrate the ways in which place making can play with documenting and representing war experiences in different ways. The two examples – This is Camp X-Ray in Manchester (a temporary installation) and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC – were designed in separate contexts for very different purposes; but contribute to understanding the kinds of choices that artists make in representing the affective ‘truths’ of war experience. In both cases, the artists were interested in creating spaces that would make the wars more visible for an audience, and provide a tangible place in which experiences of war could be re-conceived and an affective connection made. Michael Balfour is Professor of Applied Theatre, Griffith University, Brisbane, Australia. His research expertise is in the social applications of theatre, in particular theatre and war, prison theatre, and arts and health. Major Australian Research Council-funded projects include The Difficult Return, on approaches to artsbased work with returning military personnel, and Captive Audiences, on the impact of performing arts programmes in prisons. His books include Theatre and War 1933–1945 and, most recently, Performance in Place of War, co-authored with James Thompson and Jenny Hughes (Seagull Press, 2010).

In this article, Katya Johanson and Hilary Glow examine the ways in which performing arts companies and arts policy institutions perceive the needs of children as audiences. Historically, children have been promoted as arts audiences. Some of these represent an attempt to fashion the adults of the future – as audiences, citizens of a nation, or members of a specific community. Other rationales focus on the needs or rights of the child, such as educational goals or the provision of an antidote to the perceived corrupting effect of electronic entertainment. Drawing on interviews with performing arts practitioners, the authors explore some of these themes through case studies of three children's theatre companies, identifying the development of policy rationales for the support of practices directed at children which are primarily based on pedagogical principles. The case studies reveal a shift away from educational goals for children's theatre, and identify a new emphasis on the importance of valuing children's aesthetic choices, examining how these trends are enacted within the case-study organizations, and the implications of these trends for company programming. Hilary Glow is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Arts Management Program at Deakin University, Victoria. She has published articles on cultural policy and the audience experience in various journals, and in a monograph on Australian political theatre (2007). Katya Johanson lectures and researches in the School of Communication and Creative Arts at Deakin University. She has published on Australian cultural policy and on the relationship between art, politics and national identity. With Glow she is the author of a monograph on Australian indigenous performing arts (2009).

In May, I attended a one-day forum arranged by the Royal Zoological Society of New South Wales and The Australian Museum in Sydney, Australia. The purpose of the forum was to discuss proposals to use native fauna to assist in their own survival. The forum was titled A Zoological Revolution. The idea of a revolution in zoology, much less in biological conservation was novel, the proposals to be debated were controversial, and the Hallstrom Theatre was packed. The number of animal activists in the audience promised an enthusiastic exchange of ideas and I was not disappointed.

For two radical theatres formed in the 1930s, taking performances to their audiences was an important dimension of commitment to working-class politics and civic engagement. Separated by distance but joined ideologically, the New Theatre in Australia and Unity Theatre in the United Kingdom engaged in what they described as ‘mobile work’, as well as being ‘stage curtain’ companies. Based on archival research and drawing on mobility literature, Cathy Brigden and Lisa Milner examine in this article the rationale for mobile work, the range of spaces that were used both indoor (workplaces, halls, private homes) and outdoor (parks, street corners beaches), and its decline. Emerging from this analysis are parallels between the two theatres’ motivation for mobile work, their practice in these diverse performance spaces, and the factors leading to the decline. Cathy Brigden is an associate professor in the School of Management and Deputy Director, Centre for Sustainable Organizations and Work at RMIT University, Australia. Her current research interests include the historical experiences of women in trade unions, gender in performing arts industries, and union strategies and regulation. Lisa Milner is a lecturer in the School of Arts and Social Sciences at Southern Cross University, Coffs Harbour, Australia. Current research interests include a comparative study of workers’ theatre, representations of workers and trade unions on screen, and labour biography.

This article introduces the reader to the work of Australian verbatim theater artists Donna Jackson, Bindi Cole Chocka, and James Henry. It describes the artists’ remount of Vicki Reynolds’s verbatim play The Bridge, which tells the story of the collapse of the Melbourne West Gate Bridge in 1970. I discuss the remount of the play as an intergenerational verbatim theater project which not only tells an important story from Australian working-class history to new audiences who haven’t heard it before, but also deepens the story through additional research and music. I also discuss the play as a project that uses political truths from the past to do new political work in the present.

Almost each year, the pop-cultural world is buzzing with a “new” Nordic word that can bring a piece of Nordic life to every home. Lagom, fika, fredagsmys or hygge - they all refer to slowness, break, taking a moment to feel good and happy, being considerate. Those concepts are believed to be a Nordic approach to life - and a very desirable one.When I think of theatre in this context, one Nordic invention comes to my mind: theatre talks, which emerged as an audience reception research method in Sweden. They proved to be an effective audience development practice (even for non-theatregoers) in Australia (Scollen), Denmark (Hansen; Lindelof), and Poland (Rapior) because (among other things) they bring the element of pleasure, community building, and feeling safe into the theatre experience especially for non-attenders.In this article I will focus on looking at theatre as a possible “oasis of deceleration” in the constantly accelerating world, using Hartmut Rosa’s theory of social acceleration. By going through the development of theatre talks, I will demonstrate what theatres can gain from using this method - both in attendance and image. I will deliberate on how theatre can become a metaphorically “hyggelig” place for anybody during times when everybody ought to live faster and faster.

The ‘theatre of the world’, or Theatrum Mundi, offered a pervasive emblematic view of the relationship between God, as playwright and audience, and his terrestrial creation. Although this became peculiarly appropriate during the Renaissance period, views of the theatre as microcosmic of the larger world have persisted – whether in the consciously wrought imagery of modern sociology or the unconscious colloquial useage of theatrical terms to describe everyday behaviour. In the article which follows, David E. R. George suggests that the ‘view’ of the subatomic world presented by quantum theory makes for a paradigm which is no less compelling, according to which the sense of theatrical ‘potentiality’ which characterizen much contemporary experimental theatre is illuminated and paralleled by the refusal of scientific certainty that quantum theory confronts and accommodates. David George. whose ‘Letter to a Poor Actor’ appeared in NTQ 8 (1986), taught in the Universities of California at Berkeley, Gottingen, Malaysia, and Peking before taking up his present post at Murdoch University, Western Australia. His books include studies of Ibsen. German tragic theory, and Indian ritual dance–drama.

In the form of a visual essay, this reflection charts a course through eight specific moments in Australian performance design history. Selected by guest editor Tessa Rixon, this essay features contributions from Australia’s most established designers from sound, lighting and costume through to the latest in performance design practice and research. Specially curated for this special edition on Australian scenography, each contributor reflects on a personal experience of a pivotal performance design from their own practice or their experience as an audience member. The resulting contributions present a mix of design forms and focuses, across all forms of live performance ‐ mainstage theatre, independent site-specific performance, queer theatre, Indigenous theatre, Indigenous dance, scenography for performance beyond the stage frame, performance in response to the climate crisis and finally, a few pivotal stepping stones in our national scenographic identity ‐ from the very personal, to the very global. These exemplars of design practice shape what we now could call Australian scenography.

This article explores the conflict between the constructions of childhood and their political/legal implications in the context of the entertainment business, as related to the demands imposed upon children by parents and theatre managers in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Once children could move freely both within and between countries, these conflicts and concerns assumed a global dimension. Through a number of case studies, the authors offer some fresh observations about how legal and social imperatives affected the transmission of values about children employed as entertainers between Britain and Australasia during the period from 1870 to the start of the First World War – from the Education Acts of the 1870s to the legislation of 1910–1913 restricting the export of child entertainers. Gillian Arrighi is a Lecturer in Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia. She has recently published articles in Theatre Journal (Dec 2008), Australasian Drama Studies (April 2009 and Oct 2010), and in Impact of the Modern: Vernacular Modernities in Australia 1870s–1960s (Sydney, 2008). She is associate editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. Victor Emeljanow is Emeritus Professor of Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia, and General Editor of the e-journal Popular Entertainment Studies. He has published widely on subjects ranging from the reception of Chekhov in Britain and the career of Theodore Kommisarjevsky, to Victorian popular dramatists. He co-wrote with Jim Davis the award-winning Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing 1840–1880 in 2001, and his chapter on staging the pirate in the nineteenth century was included in Swashbucklers and Swindlers: Pirates and Mutineers in Nineteenth-Century Literature and Culture, edited by Grace Moore (2011).

The Australian career of the young American actor Minnie Tittell Brune exemplifies the complex cultural and economic forces operating on the institution of live theatre at the beginning of the twentieth century. Brune focalizes the contemporary processes which reconstituted the international institution of mass entertainment out of the traditional cultural practices of theatre. The theatrical star is seen as both engaging with and resisting the commodification of her labour power, image and talent resulting from her ambiguous industrial role as magnetic ‘star’ and as managerial commodity. However, the iconic and affective power of the actor evokes strong attachment from significant sections of the newly heterosocial popular audience, in particular from the gallery girls, the young female audience who idolized Brune as a performative personality enacting social self-realization and glamorous transformation. Through reading Brune's repertoire, her social persona as ‘star’ and her ‘emotional’ performative style, it is demonstrated how artistic retro-glamour, religious evangelicalism and discourses of sexuality and femininity serve to manage theatre's move into the mass-entertainment age.

Peter Brook's work has always figured in debates over ‘intercultural’ projects in the contemporary theatre. However, the controversy has most often centred on his engagement with Asian theatrical traditions, and in particular on his production of The Mahabharata. David Moody here examines Peter Brook's writings on Africa, as theatrical ‘discourse’ with its own theoretical half-life quite distinct from actual productions. This discourse, it is argued, can be described as ‘primitivist’, in that it constructs the African audience as, in Barthes's term, ‘degree zero’ – a ‘limit-text’ to universal theatrical communication. In doing so it presents a limiting version of African theatrical traditions themselves, and, as a result, reinforces a broader, more destructive global discourse of cultural primitivism concerning African and so-called ‘indigenous’ art and performance. David Moody, who currently lectures in Theatre and Drama Studies at Murdoch University, Perth, Australia, is a playwright, actor, and director who has written extensively on African, post-colonial, and popular theatre, and is now engaged in his own problematic intercultural projects.

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the work of Rosemary Benjamin’s Theatre for Children in Sydney as a compelling narrative of the New Education in Australia in the late 1930s, an historical moment when theatre for children emerged as a cultural experiment rich in educational ideas. Design/methodology/approach Contemporary sources and archival records are explored through several interpretive frames to develop a historical account of Benjamin’s Theatre for Children from 1937 to 1957. Findings Benjamin’s concept of children’s theatre was shaped by English progressive education as much as the Soviet model she extolled. She pursued her project in Sydney from 1937 because she found there a convivial European emigré community who encouraged her enterprise. They understood her Freudian ideas, which commended the use of the symbolic resources of myth and fairy tales to help children deal with difficult unconscious material. Benjamin also analysed audience reactions applying child study principles, evidence of the influence of Susan Isaacs and the New Education Fellowship. More successful as a Publicist than a Producer, Benjamin was able to mobilise support for her educational cause among performers, parents, cultural figures and educational authorities. Her contribution was to pave the way for those who would succeed with different models of theatre for children. Originality/value This is the first study to employ archival sources to document the history of the Theatre for Children, Sydney and address its neglect as a theatre project combining educational and theatrical values.

For two and a half months in the spring of 1989, China's student actors dominated the world stage of modern telecommunications. Their massive demonstrations, the hunger strike during Gorbachev's visit, and the dramatic appearance of the Goddess of Democracy captured the attention of an audience that spanned the globe. As we write in mid-1990, the movement and its bloody suppression have already produced an enormous body of literature—from eyewitness accounts by journalists (Morrison 1989; Zhaoqiang, Gejing and Siyuan 1989) and special issues of scholarly journals (Australian Journal of Chinese Affairs Nos. 23, 24; The Fletcher Forum of World Affairs 14.4), to pictorial histories (Turnley and Turnley 1989) and documentary collections (Han 1990; Wu 1989), and, most recently, textbook chapters (Spence 1990) and analytical works (Feigon 1990; Nathan 1990)—tracing the development of China's crisis. Despite a flood of material too massive to review in the present context, we still lack a convincing interpretive framework that places the events within the context of China's modern political evolution, and also provides a way to compare China's experience to that of Eastern Europe. Such an interpretation should help us to understand why massive public demonstrations spurred an evolution toward democratic governance in Eastern Europe, but in China led only to the massacre of June 3–4 and the present era of political repression.

In 1882, a critic of the journal Theatre noted that ‘the theatrical life of the present day might be described as a round of glorified strolling. The ‘circuits’ of Bristol, Norwich, and York of the last century are now replaced by those of the United States, South Africa, India, and Australia, and a modern actor thinks as little of a season in Melbourne or New York as his grandfather did of a week’s ‘starring’ in Edinburgh.’ Yet the story of how these Western theatre companies reached audiences in the faraway lands of the British Empire and Asia is still relatively untold. In this article Kaori Kobayashi explores in detail some itineraries around the turn of the twentieth century of these travelling companies, many of them relatively obscure, showing that the companies had a particular and significant impact on the development of Shakespearean performance and interpretation in the East. In essence, it is impossible to understand the rise of ‘Asian Shakespeare’ without also grasping how Western touring companies helped shape the East’s engagement with the West’s most canonical dramatist. Kaori Kobayashi is Professor of English at Nagoya City University, author of The Cultural History of The Taming of The Shrew (in Japanese, 2007), and editor of Shakespeare Performance Studies in Japan (in Japanese, 2010).

Literary scholars and linguists have argued extensively that language is not simply a purely representational vehicle of thought but its determining medium, whose ordering powers not only shape cognizance of reality but are also actively involved in processes of imperialism and cultural erasure. It is the determinative yet slippery quality of language, prompting the loss of meaning in attempts at translation, that colonial powers manipulated to violent effect and which, as enacted in the plays of Nyoongah Indigenous Australian playwright Jack Davis, continue to haunt history and the present. This article considers how a history and culture made unspeakable by colonialism through the erasure of Indigenous Australian oral traditions, languages, and historical perspectives is translated on to the Anglophone stage in the plays of Davis, one of the first Indigenous playwrights to be published and performed internationally, and how this was received by the witnessing audience. Davis achieves this theatrical translation not only through the negotiation and manipulation of colonial language and verbatim history alongside Indigenous languages, enacting a kind of linguistic double consciousness, but also through physical theatre and dance. The latter are the central means of communicating meaning and knowledge in Nyoongah culture. Jacqueline M. Brown is a graduate student at Worcester College, University of Oxford, studying for a Master of Studies in English (1900–present). This article received first prize in the 2022 TORCH Reimagining Performance Network Graduate Essay Prize competition run in collaboration between the University of Oxford and New Theatre Quarterly. For more information on the Reimagining Performance Network, see <https://torch.ox.ac.uk/reimagining-performance-network>.

Theatrical riots are usually dismissed as occasions during which aesthetic reactionaries battled reformers over stylistic issues of little relevance to pressing and immediate social concerns. Yet how true is this? What were the real issues which boiled over at such apparently confined and innocuous occasions as the Old Price Riots at Covent Garden in 1809, the Paris Ernani riot of 1830, the visit of a celebrated English actor which sparked the New York Astor Place riot in 1849, or the first night of a play which brought about the Playboy riots in Dublin in 1907? The complex social and cultural tensions on such occasions clearly operated during the two days of disturbance which came to be known as the Monte Cristo riots in London in 1848, and there are curious modern parallels. Victor Emeljanow is Professor of Drama at the University of Newcastle, Australia. His full length works include Anton Chekhov: the Critical Heritage, Victorian Popular Dramatists, and, with Jim Davis, Reflecting the Audience: London Theatregoing, 1840–1880 (University of Iowa Press, 2001), which was recently awarded the Society for Theatre Research's Book Prize for 2002.

In the verbatim theatre performanceThe Disappearances Project(2011–13), Australian company Version 1.0 explored the state of unresolved loss felt by those left behind by missing persons. Rather than relying on verbatim testimony to simply ‘tell’ the stories of the left-behind, directors Yana Taylor and David Williams sought to immerse the audience in an indeterminate world, characterized by pathologies of endless searching and waiting, and a sense of paralysing loss. In this article, I argue that the performance hinged on dramaturgical practices of stillness, slowed movement and friction to produce the disturbing sense of ‘sticky’ indeterminacy characteristic of the experience of the left-behind. To develop this interpretation, I turn to the post-disciplinary field of mobility studies, which highlights the movement (or otherwise) of people, objects, information and capital, as well as embodied experience and sensory and kinesthetic environments. This provides ways to identify and analyse mobility-as-dramaturgy as well as the co-production of affective atmospheres within Disappearances and the wider field of performance.

<p>Enrolments in higher education programs in the creative and performing arts are increasing in many countries. Yet graduates of these degrees, who enter the broad sector known as the creative industries, face particular challenges in terms of securing long-term and sustainable employment. In addition, creative and performing artists face a range of mental challenges, caused by such factors as: the solitary nature of much creative practice, critical feedback by audiences and gatekeepers, or the general pressures associated with maintaining artistic relevance or integrity. The concepts of resilience and professional wellbeing are therefore highly relevant to those who pursue a career in creative industries, and while there has been an emerging body of work in this area, to date it has focussed on the performing arts area (e.g. music, theatre). Hence, in order to expand knowledge relevant to resilience and artists, this paper sets out to explore the extent to which current educators in the Australian context specifically address these issues within higher visual arts curricula; specifically the areas of illustration, design, film and photography. This was achieved via interviews with seventeen current academics working in these areas. The findings propose that higher education providers of programs in the visual arts consider placing a stronger emphasis on the embedded development of resilience and professional wellbeing capacities.</p>

In 1897 audiences welcomed Johnston Forbes-Robertson's new interpretation of Hamlet to the London stage, and his sane, intelligent Prince was received as an exciting departure from tradition. Mrs Patrick Campbell's own experiments with the role of Ophelia in this production were not so warmly greeted, critics describing her playing as ‘curiously weak’ and ‘unconvincing and unimpressive’. Campbell had rejected the conventional model of the character as emblematic of the prettiness and pathos exemplified by Ellen Terry, and instead offered a vacant, depressive, ‘beaten’ Ophelia. In this article, Fiona Gregory examines the influences behind this choice, including the actress's own experience of mental illness and the notorious ‘rest cure’. The reception of the performance is read in terms of contemporary attitudes to Ophelia and mental illness, as well as of responses to Campbell and her celebrity identity in the visual arts. Ultimately, Campbell's performance of Ophelia can be read as a ‘witness account’ of neurasthenia and the ‘rest cure’, to stand alongside texts such as Charlotte Perkins Gilman's story ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’. Fiona Gregory lectures in the Centre for Theatre and Performance at Monash University, and has published work on the career of actress Judith Anderson, Australian cultural history, and Victorian and Edwardian writers. She is currently undertaking a wide-ranging study of actresses and mental illness from the nineteenth century to the present day, drawing on historical examples and literary and cultural representations to consider the intersections of ‘hysteria’ and the ‘histrionic’.

The article presents the context of modern scientific debates on the boundaries of interdisciplinarity. The subject of the study is the common procedure of the use of oral history practices in the mass media space. The oral history itself is changing rapidly under the pressure of digital platforms such as StoryCorps (USA), Listening Project (UK), The Story Project (Australia), and The Tale of a Town (Canada). Another key thing is the fact that the changes affected not only the technological process of archiving and dissemination of information but also the basic foundations of oral history, which is its methodology. The in-depth interview is replaced by the “rapid response collecting” method and historical storytelling. The purpose of the article is to outline the discussion field of the modern scientific discourse of the problem, to present the most significant interdisciplinary interaction using the example of world and Ukrainian media, namely: coverage of contradictory and ambiguous interpretations of historical facts; narrative; prolonged communication; multimedia and multiplatform. The research methods are traditional empirical methods of observation and description, as well as paradigmatic analysis of the functional features of oral history practices in journalism. Results of the research. Basic characterological directions proposed in the study allowed us to present the main points of discussion in various aspects: the use of oral historical materials, especially “hidden history” through the eyes of eyewitnesses, become an additional source of journalistic clarifications, investigations and expansion of the information agenda; addressing marginal themes of history, giving a voice to terrorist groups and participants in genocides poses extremely complex and ethically controversial questions to the audience; multimedia and multiplatform give new life to oral history information, while performance, theatre and participation are added to the usual practices of new media. The most expressive manifestation of changes in this interdisciplinary discourse is the practice of digital storytelling; its media use is illustrated by the BBC’s Capture Wales digital storytelling project. As part of the scientific discussion that has continued for the last few years, the issues of democratization of history, mass inclusion in digital archives, the creation of powerful social projects, and attempts to distance oral history as a separate discipline have been actualized. Moreover, it is recognized that, like any creative practice, interdisciplinarity remains a wide field for experimentation and creativity.

The gatekeepers for institutions of fine arts, classical music and theatre in Australia are traditionally white, upper middle-class people. Nakkiah Lui’s existence and success as an Indigenous playwright is a radical disturbance in this bubble of society as, by nature, stories and storytellers that challenge cultural hegemony will always be political, and Blak artists entering theatre demonstrate a fusion and adaptation of Indigenous oral traditions into Australia’s highbrow society. Aboriginal playwrights and performances have a complex history in terms of audience reception as they often deal with difficult and confronting topics that ‘regular’ theatre audiences may not engage with (Grehan 2010). Not only do they have the burden of representing ‘all’ Aboriginal people, but the stories they share are often those whose voices were historically silenced, erased or dismissed (Morris 1992).

Partaking of theatrical events is something that hearing and seeing members of the community can largely take for granted. In Australia, this is still not accessible to all. Crossbow Production’s 2009 staging of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker offered the opportunity not only to explore the issues of the play, but this issue of accessibility for whom the protagonist can be considered the exemplary role-model. Crossbow’s aim was to introduce a mainstream audience to some of the world experience of those living with disabilities. This was achieved through the exploration of objects apart from their contexts, emphasising the senses of touch, taste and smell, and through the discourse of marginalisation as an integral part of the staging of this theatrical event. Sign language interpreters were given centre-stage and techniques were used to, at times, marginalise the largely non-signing audience. Post-performance discussions were held which privileged the comments of the deaf and the blind audience members. This paper argues, through the example and evidence of this theatrical event that a way needs to be found to increase access to theatrical events for the deaf.“Accessibility for all” is one of the marketing phrases employed by major events companies. In contemporary society where wheelchair access, audio description and assistance dogs are advertised as part of accessibility, it is surprising how many Australian state theatre companies provide very little if any real access for the deaf. In the United States, it would be atypical to attend a large public event, be it a theatre production, a church service or a public event that was not sign language interpreted or open captioned for the deaf, at least in large cities. One of the few theatre companies in Australia that offers interpretation for the deaf is Sydney Theatre Company. Yet only one performance of four plays in a season of 13 plays is interpreted. In a progressive incentive, Melbourne Theatre Company invest $40 000 a year towards accessibility for those living with disabilities. Similar to Sydney Theatre Company, one performance in each production is open captioned for the deaf. Queensland Theatre Company provides access to one performance only in a yearly season of 255 performances. Access for the deaf to attend mainstream theatre productions in Australia is relatively restricted if not totally denied.Crossbow Productions is an independent, not-for-profit professional theatre company which presented a production that engaged with these issues. William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker was staged at the Brisbane Powerhouse in June 2009. The play explores issues of marginalisation, communication and empowerment. Helen Keller (1880 – 1968) was a deaf-blind author, activist and outspoken speaker who become a world famous inspirational presenter and author. She grew up in an influential family in post-civil war Alabama and was struck deaf and blind after contracting (likely) scarlet fever at eighteen months. Determined to find help, her mother appealed to many high-profile doctors and educators, including Alexander G. Bell. Annie Sullivan then became Helen’s governess, teacher and life-long companion. The Miracle Worker explores Annie’s beleaguered attempts to communicate with Helen and concludes with an epiphany for Helen as she learns the significance of words, and eventually how to speak. It asks the audience to confront the issues faced by the deaf and the blind and questions the audience’s perceptions of the sensory world. Crossbow’s production at the Powerhouse included elements to construct a sensory world for the audience. As a concession to hearing and seeing audience members, saturated colours were chosen for each scene and live music was a feature. The senses of smell, taste and touch, however, were particularly emphasised. This gave audience members a sense of Helen’s world and how rich it can be without reliance on sight and sound for information and experience. To introduce fragrance, large arrangements of live scented flowers were placed on the stage. Two hot meals were served. Food emerged as a language in itself: as both a communicative tool to pacify Helen and as a reward to access her latent intelligence. Touch was an integral part of the production with fabric textures, a variety of materials and objects’ shapes explored by Helen and was emphasised from the commencement of the rehearsal process. The actor playing Helen, Louise Brehmer, was blindfolded and wore earplugs for much of the rehearsal period. Immersed in a dark and soundless world she discovered how to read situations, people and objects by touch. This translated into the performances. The audience vicariously experienced discoveries of explored objects with Helen. As Helen explored found objects such as the contents of a suitcase, the audience was confronted with the Heideggerian question: what is a thing? In Helen’s predicament things could be examined apart from their function, accepted meaning or name. This was emphasised by Helen exploring the form and material of each new object and thinking less about their function or context. Annie Sullivan’s glasses became “that hard thing”, her scarf “that soft, light thing”, her suitcase “that cube-like thing.” People may often miss out on the richness of objects’ attributes because they are placed in a functional context quickly. Helen’s discovery of found objects asked the audience to consider their unexamined assumptions about what a suitcase or a flower was (Heidegger 49-50). It is interesting to note that Brehmer’s acclaimed performance was so convincing that many audience members thought that she was indeed deaf and blind. The sensory discourses of the play forced hearing audiences to question their perceptions. The following excerpt from a post-performance discussion illustrates this: I thought I would be thinking more about sight and hearing. But it was actually touch and smell that intrigued me. But even more than that, I found myself trying to conceive of the timeframe. What time must have meant: a totally different dimension of time. I was dwelling on that quite a bit through the play: Helen was floating in her own individual time.And to add to that gentleman’s comment: what stimulates the mind, in those blank times when there is no tactile, no communication with reality: what keeps the mind alive?The most important addition to the production of The Miracle Worker was the inclusion of “shadow-signing” a process in which a signer closely follows actors playing certain characters. Sign interpretation was not a part of Gibson’s play. The added signing exemplified a central issue of this production: sign interpreters are usually “marginalised” by being placed at the sides of the events they are interpreting. This becomes a metaphor for the continued marginalisation of those living with disabilities. In The Miracle Worker they were placed onstage and were part of the production’s narrative. Furthermore, the signers interpreted the emotional states of the characters they were shadowing through facial and body expression. At times they stood beside the characters and other times they sat together on the edge of the stage in conversation. The addition of interpreter/actors added new layers of meaning for the audience. In theatrical performances, layers of meaning are carried to the audience through various texts or public discourses (Knowles 91): the written text, music, lighting, staging, actors’ movements and characterisation and so forth. By being placed on stage, the signing became a text in itself rather than merely a means of interpreting a text unavailable to deaf people. Signers use their body and facial expression as signifiers of meaning. This was used artistically on stage. Signing is an expressive drama in itself, emphasising movement and expression. At times, for example, the signers were sitting close together on the edge of the stage, at others they were far apart at the back, and at other times they would offer a commentary on the action of the play through their body language and positioning. This was extended to the non-signing characters: each character had their own kinesics. The actor playing Annie was directed to use her hands a lot to express herself. Conversely, the actor playing Helen’s mother was directed to use her hands less and be “held together” when it came to non-verbal expression. This carried various meanings to the audience over and beyond the meaning of the words themselves. As the Australian version of the language of signing, Auslan, grew out of the work of Annie Sullivan and her attempts to communicate with Helen, this language of signing was integral to the core issues of the play.In addition to bringing deaf issues centre-stage, the sign interpretation was used to give the mainstream audience, unused to experiencing marginalisation in the theatre, an understanding of exclusion. The play opened and closed with the interpreters signing to the audience. As this was not underscored by any spoken dialogue the non-signers did not understand what was communicated. This gave some audience members a sense of displacement. An audience member commented: I thought how you started and finished the play with sign language was very powerful. It really raised my awareness of people that feel marginalised. Because I, as a hearing person, couldn’t understand the signing and felt left out. It just opened my eyes, just a little bit to what it must be like. (Heim 2)At one matinee performance, episodes occurred in which the entire hearing audience experienced exclusion. The number of deaf people came close to equalising the hearing. In this performance a number of elements worked to marginalise the hearing audience. The actors playing Helen and Annie were scripted to sign words to each other. During these moments, the words were signed before they were spoken or they were not spoken at all. Deaf audience members understood the meaning of the lines before, or to the exclusion of, the hearing audience. Some of these communications were humourous. The deaf audience would break into laugher while the hearing audience sat bewildered. One of the most significant aspects of this particular performance was the relative abandonment of accepted theatre etiquette strictures. In contemporary theatre, audience behaviour is regulated to laughter and applause in appropriate moments (Kershaw 140, 151). During this performance many deaf audience members, having never attended a theatre performance before, laughed in “inappropriate” places, applauded during the performance, wept out loud and spoke back to the actors on stage or to each other. This was a theatrical event enjoyed as if in the nineteenth century when audience members laughed, cried, stamped, sang and spoke (Blackadder 120) through performances. Not only enjoyed by the audience, the actors found this particular performance one of their most heightened experiences in the theatre. In a significant inversion, the hearing mainstream audience was marginalised and the deaf audience privileged. Interestingly, in a post-performance discussion, one audience member suggested a complete inversion: “Did you think of just having the main actors act and sign at the same time?” (Heim 3). Post-performance discussions also raised hearing audience member’s awareness of those living with disabilities. Discussions were held where the audience was given an opportunity to discuss their stories. A large variety of issues were discussed by the hearing and deaf participants such as the genuine struggles faced in a household with a deaf person, sibling rivalry and communication issues. Comments ranged from “I could relate to Helen’s family. It was like that in my family with me growing up deaf. The frustration is enormous. There were tantrums and fights. Families need to learn signing, after all, it is our first language” (Heim 2) to “I think everyone is still drying their eyes. Very moving. Very, very moving” (Heim 1). In one discussion Penny Harland, a blind and deaf educator was introduced and spoke to the audience. A question was asked by a hearing member that worked to further marginalise the mainstream audience: “What did you think of in those moments when you couldn’t understand or communicate anything of the world?” (Heim 4). Harland refused to answer the question and instead described a moment from the play where Helen was discovering a suitcase and explained how inaccurate the actor was in her “discovery.” Heidegger’s concept of the difference in “experiencing” objects was painfully exposed (49, 50). Comments from post-performance discussions emphasised the great need for more accessibility. As one participant commented: “I’m deaf and we should be able to go to anything, and you’ve done that for us” (Heim 1). Others complained that not every word was interpreted. Because of budget restrictions, Crossbow hired actors that could sign and were willing to perform and interpret for a small fee. The actors were not confident enough as interpreters to sign the whole production. Comments such as “We appreciated the signing, but we wanted more” (Heim 1) and “we were disappointed the whole thing wasn’t signed. There were words going on we didn’t understand” (Heim 4) were frequent. As there were also tactile tours of the set before each performance for the blind, one blind audience member commented: As a blind person, I got a great deal from it. I found it extremely moving and it has motivated me to read more about miraculous stories. The opportunity to have the tactile tour before the show did help me to visualise better what was going on, so that was a very welcome innovation as well. So I found the night thoroughly moving and worthwhile and I’ll certainly agree with the comment that there should be a thousand or so in the audience rather than a hundred so that everyone can experience it. (Heim 3)These comments and many more from both the discussions and emails to the Powerhouse after the production emphasised not only the gratefulness of the deaf community but more importantly the need for more accessibility to theatre events. The response to The Miracle Worker from the deaf community was significant. Over 250 deaf people attended and 70 of these had never been to a theatrical production before. Deaf Services Queensland and Vision Australia were both supportive offering in-kind assistance, promotion and assistance with signing. For its future plays, Crossbow Productions will continue to give tactile tours and, due to cost factors, will sign one performance only using Auslan sign language interpreters. The fee is significant for an independent theatre company: over $1000 to sign a single performance. The response to the staging by Crossbow Productions of William Gibson’s The Miracle Worker strongly suggests that there is significant demand for increased access for deaf audiences at theatrical events. Rather than merely reducing marginalisations, their stories and journeys can be presented and explored in such a way as to enrich the theatrical experience of the mainstream and the marginalised. Exploring objects, emphasising the senses of touch, taste and smell and including signing added to the richness of the theatrical experience. Significantly, the experience of marginalisation of the mainstream in this production also added to the meaning of the theatrical experience. It was hoped that this fostered the appreciation in audience members that the need to increased access for all can be more than worth the cost.ReferencesBlackadder, Neil. Performing Opposition: Modern Theatre and the Scandalised Audience. Westport: Praeger, 2003. Heidegger, Martin. What Is a Thing? Trans. W.B. Barton, Jr., and Vera Deutsch. Chicago: H. Regnery, 1967.Heim, Caroline. Transcript of Post-Performance Discussions of “The Miracle Worker.” By William Gibson, dir. Christian Heim. Visy Theatre, Brisbane Powerhouse, Brisbane, 7-17 June 2009. Kershaw, Baz. “Oh for Unruly Audiences! Or, Patterns of Participation in Twentieth Century Theatre.” Modern Drama 42.2 (2001): 133-54. Knowles, Ric. Reading the Material Theatre. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2004.

In recent years ecological thinking has been applied to a range of social, cultural, and aesthetic systems, including performing arts as a living system of policy makers, producers, organisations, artists, and audiences. Ecological thinking is systems-based thinking which allows us to see the performing arts as a complex and protean ecosystem; to explain how elements in this system act and interact; and to evaluate its effects on Australia’s social fabric over time. According to Gallasch, ecological thinking is “what we desperately need for the arts.” It enables us to “defeat the fragmentary and utilitarian view of the arts that dominates, to make connections, to establish overviews of the arts that can be shared and debated” (Gallasch NP). The ecological metaphor has featured in debates about the performing arts in Brisbane, Australia, in the last two or three years. A growing state capital on Australia’s eastern seaboard, Brisbane is proud of its performing arts culture. Its main theatre organisations include the state flagship Queensland Theatre Company; the second major presenter of adapted and new text-based performances La Boite Theatre Company; venues which support local and touring performances such as the Judith Wright Centre for Contemporary Arts and the Brisbane Powerhouse; emerging talent incubator Metro Arts; indigenous companies like Kooemba Jdarra; independent physical theatre and circus companies such as Zen Zen Zo and Circa; and contemporary play-producing company 23rd Productions (cf. Baylis 3). Brisbane aspires to be a cultural capital in Australia, Australasia, and the Asia Pacific (Gill). Compared to Australia’s southern capitals Sydney and Melbourne, however, Brisbane does have a relatively low level of performing arts activity across traditional and contemporary theatre, contemporary performance, musicals, circus, and other genres of performance. It has at times been cast as a piecemeal, potentially unsustainable arts centre prone to losing talent to other states. In 2009, John Baylis took up these issues in Mapping Queensland Theatre, an Arts Queensland-funded survey designed to map practices in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly, and to provide a platform to support future policy-making. This report excited debate amongst artists who, whilst accepting the tenor of Baylis’s criticisms, also lamented the lack of nuanced detail and contextualised relationships its map of Queensland theatre provided. In this paper we propose a new approach to mapping Brisbane’s and Queensland’s theatre that extends Baylis’s “value chain” into a “value ecology” that provides a more textured picture of players, patterns, relationships, and activity levels. A “value chain” approach emphasises linear relationships and gaps between production, distribution, and consumption in a specific sector of the economy. A “value ecology” approach goes further by examining a complex range of rhizomatic relationships between production, distribution, and consumption infrastructure and how they influence each other within a sector of the economy such as the performing arts. Our approach uses a “value ecology” model adapted from Hearn et al. and Cherbo et al. to map and interpret information from the AusStage performing arts database, the Australian Bureau of Statistics, and other sources such as previews, reviews, and an ongoing local blogosphere debate. Building upon Baylis’s work, our approach produces literal and conceptual maps of Queensland’s performing arts as they change over time, with analysis of support, infrastructure, and relationships amongst government, arts organisations, artists, and audiences. As debate on Mapping Queensland Theatre gives way to more considered reflection, and as Baylis develops a follow-up report, our approach captures snapshots of Queensland’s performing arts before, during, and after such policy interventions. It supports debate about how Queensland artists might manage their own sustainability, their own ability to balance artistic, cultural, and economic factors that influence their work in a way that allows them to survive long term, and allows policy makers, producers, and other players to better understand, articulate, assess, and address criticisms. The Ecological Metaphor In recent years a number of commentators have understood the performing arts as an “ecology,” a system characterised by interacting elements, engagements, flows, blockages, breaks, and breakthroughs whose “health” (synonymous in this context with sustainability) depends on relationships between players within and without the system. Traditionally, performing arts policies in Australia have concentrated on singular elements in a system. They have, as Hunt and Shaw argue, “concentrate[d] on individual companies or an individual artist’s practice rather than the sector as a whole” (5, cf. 43). The focus has been on how to structure, support, and measure the success—the aesthetic and social benefits—of individual training institutions, artists, administrators, and arts organisations. The “health” of singular elements has been taken as a sign of the “health” of the system. An ecologies approach, by contrast, concentrates on engagements, energies, and flows as signs of health, and thus sustainability, in a system. Ecological thinking enables policy makers, practitioners, and scholars to go beyond debate about the presence of activity, the volume of activity, and the fate of individual agents as signs of the health or non-health of a system. In an ecologies context, level of activity is not the only indicator of health, and low activity does not necessarily equate with instability or unsustainability. An ecological approach is critical in Brisbane, and in Queensland more broadly, where attempts to replicate the nature or level of activity in southern capitals are not necessarily the best way to shore up the “health” of our performing arts system in our own unique environment. As the locus of our study Queensland is unique. While Queensland has 20% of Australia’s population (OESR; ABS ‘ Population Projections’), and is regularly recognised as a rapidly growing “lifestyle superstate” which values innovation, creativity, and cultural infrastructure (Cunningham), it is still home to significantly less than 20% of Australia’s performing arts producers, and many talented people continue to migrate to the south to pursue career opportunities (Baylis 4, 28). An ecologies approach can break into oft-cited anxieties about artist, activity, and audience levels in Brisbane, and in Queensland, and create new ideas about what a “healthy” local performing arts sector might look like. This might start to infuse some of the social media commentary that currently tends to emphasise the gaps in the sector. Ecologies are complex systems. So, as Costanza says, when we consider ecosystem health, we must consider the overall performance of the system, including its ability to deal with “external stress” (240) from macro-level political, legal, social, cultural, economic, or technological currents that change the broader society this particular sector or ecosystem sits within. In Brisbane, there is a growing population and a desire to pursue a cultural capital tag, but the distinctive geographic, demographic, and behavioural characteristics of Brisbane’s population—and the associated ‘stresses’, conditions, or constraints—mean that striving to replicate patterns of activity seen in Sydney or Melbourne may not be the straightest path to a “healthy” or “sustainable” sector here. The attitudes of the players and the pressures influencing the system are different, so this may be like comparing rainforests with deserts (Costanza), and forgetting that different elements and engagements are in fact “healthy” in different ecosystems. From an ecologies point of view, policy makers and practitioners in Brisbane and in Queensland more broadly might be well advised to stop trying to match Sydney or Melbourne, and to instead acknowledge that a “healthy” ecosystem here may look different, and so generate policy, subsidy, and production systems to support this. An ecological approach can help determine how much activity is in fact necessary to ensure a healthy and sustainable local performing arts sector. It can, in other words, provide a fresh approach that inspires new ideas and strategies for sector sustainability. Brisbane, Baylis and the Blogosphere Debate The ecological metaphor has clearly captured the interest of policy makers as they consider how to make Queensland’s performing arts more sustainable and successful. For Arts Queensland: The view of the sector as a complex and interdependent ‘ecosystem’ is forging new thinking, new practices and new business models. Individual practitioners and organisations are rethinking where they sit within the broader ecology, and what they contribute to the health and vitality of the sector, and how they might address the gaps in services and skills (12). This view informed the commissioning of Mapping Queensland Theatre, an assessment of Queensland’s theatre sector which offers a framework for allocation of resources under the Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. It also offers a framework for negotiation with funded organisations to ensure “their activities and focus support a harmonious ecology” (Baylis 3) in which all types and levels of practice (emerging, established, touring, and so on) are functioning well and are well represented within the overall mix of activities. Utilising primary and secondary survey sources, Mapping Queensland Theatre seeks: to map individuals, institutions, and organisations who have a stake in developing Queensland’s professional theatre sector; and to apply a “value chain” model of production from supply (training, creation, presentation, and distribution) to demand (audiences) to identify problems and gaps in Queensland’s professional theatre sector and recommend actions to address them. The report is critical of the sector. Baylis argues that “the context for great theatre is not yet in place in Queensland … therefore works of outstandingly high quality will be rare” (28).Whilst acknowledging a lack of ready answers about how much activity is required in a vibrant theatre culture, Baylis argues that “comparisons are possible” (27) and he uses various data sets to compare numbers of new Australian productions in different states. He finds that “despite having 20% of the Australian population, [Queensland] generates a dramatically lower amount of theatre activity” (4, cf. 28). The reason, according to Baylis (20, 23, 25, 29, 32, 40-41, 44), is that there are gaps in the “value chain” of Queensland theatre, specifically in: Support for the current wave of emerging and independent artistsSpace for experimentation Connections between artists, companies, venues and festivals, between and within regional centres, and between Queensland companies and their (inter)national peers Professional development for producers to address the issue of market distributionAudience development “Queensland lacks a critical mass of theatre activity to develop a sustainable theatre culture” (48), and the main gap is in pathways for independent artists. Quality new work does not emerge, energy dissipates, and artists move on. The solution, for Baylis, is to increase support for independent companies (especially via co-productions with mainstage companies), to improve (inter)national touring, and to encourage investment in audience development. Naturally, Queensland’s theatre makers responded to this report. Responses were given, for example, in inaugural speeches by new Queensland Theatre Company director Wesley Enoch and new La Boite Theatre Company director David Berthold, in the media, and in blogosphere commentary on a range of articles on Brisbane performing arts in 2010. The blogosphere debate in particular raged for months and warrants more detailed analysis elsewhere. For the purposes of this paper, though, it is sufficient to note that blogosphere debate about the health of Queensland theatre culture acknowledged many of the deficits Baylis identified and called for: More leadershipMore government supportMore venuesMore diversityMore audience, especially for risky work, and better audience engagementMore jobs and retention of artists Whilst these responses endorse Baylis’s findings and companies have since conceived programs that address Baylis’s criticisms (QTC’s introduction of a Studio Season and La Boite’s introduction of an Indie program in 2010 for example) a sense of frustration also emerged. Some, like former QTC Chair Kate Foy, felt that “what’s really needed in the theatre is a discussion that breaks out from the old themes and encourages fresh ideas—approaches to solving whatever problems are perceived to exist in ‘the system’.” For commentators like Foy the blogosphere debate enacted a kind of ritual rehearsal of an all-too-familiar set of concerns: inadequate and ill-deployed funding, insufficient venues, talent drain, and an impoverished local culture of theatre going. “Value Chains” versus “Value Ecologies” Why did responses to this report demand more artists, more arts organisations, more venues, and more activities? Why did they repeat demands for more government-subsidised venues, platforms, and support rather than drive toward new seed- or non- subsidised initiatives? At one level, this is to do with the report’s claims: it is natural for artists who have been told quality work is “rare” amongst them to point to lack of support to achieve success. At another level, though, this is because—as useful as it has been for local theatre makers—Baylis’s map is premised on a linear chain from training, to first productions, to further developed productions (involving established writers, directors, designers and performers), to opportunities to tour (inter)nationally, etc. It provides a linear image of a local performing arts sector in which there are individuals and institutions with potential, but specific gaps in the production-distribution-consumption chain that make it difficult to deliver work to target markets. It emphasises gaps in the linear pathway towards “stability” of financial, venue, and audience support and thus “sustainability” over a whole career for independent artists and the audiences they attract. Accordingly, asking government to plug the gaps through elements added to the system (venues, co-production platforms, producer hubs, subsidy, and entrepreneurial endeavours) seems like a logical solution. Whilst this is true, it does not tell the whole story. To generate a wider story, we need to consider: What the expected elements in a “healthy” ecosystem would be (e.g. more versus alternative activity);What other aesthetic, cultural, or economic pressures affect the “health” of an ecosystem;Why practices might need to cycle, ebb, and flow over time in a “healthy” ecosystem. A look at the way La Boite works before, during, and after Baylis’s analysis of Brisbane theatre illustrates why attention to these elements is necessary. A long-running company which has made the transition from amateur to professional to being a primary developer of new Australian work in its distinctive in-the-round space, La Boite has recently shifted its strategic position. A focus on text-based Australian plays has given way to adapted, contemporary, and new work in a range of genres; regular co-productions with companies in Brisbane and beyond; and an “Indie” program that offers other companies a venue. This could be read as a response to Baylis’s recommendation: the production-distribution-consumption chain gap for Brisbane’s independents is plugged, the problem is solved, the recommendation has led to the desired result. Such a reading might, though, overlook the range of pressures beyond Brisbane, beyond Queensland, and beyond the Baylis report that drive—and thus help, hinder, or otherwise effect—the shift in La Boite’s program strategies. The fact that La Boite recently lost its Australia Council funding, or that La Boite like all theatre companies needs co-productions to keep its venue running as costs increase, or that La Boite has rebranded to appeal to younger audiences interested in postdramatic, do-it-your-self or junkyard style aesthetics. These factors all influence what La Boite might do to sustain itself, and more importantly, what its long-term impact on Brisbane’s theatre ecology will be. To grasp what is happening here, and get beyond repetitive responses to anxieties about Brisbane’s theatre ecology, detail is required not simply on whether programs like La Boite’s “plugged the gap” for independent artists, but on how they had both predicted and unpredicted effects, and how other factors influenced the effects. What is needed is to extend mapping from a “value chain” to a full ”value ecology”? This is something Hearn et al. have called for. A value chain suggests a “single linear process with one stage leading to the next” (5). It ignores the environment and other external enablers and disregards a product’s relationship to other systems or products. In response they prefer a “value creating ecology” in which the “constellation of firms are [sic] dynamic and value flow is multi-directional and works through clusters of networks” (6). Whilst Hearn et al. emphasise “firms” or companies in their value creating ecology, a range of elements—government, arts organisations, artists, audiences, and the media as well as the aesthetic, social, and economic forces that influence them—needs to be mapped in the value creating ecology of the performing arts. Cherbo et al. provide a system of elements or components which, adapted for a local context like Brisbane or Queensland, can better form the basis of a value ecology approach to the way a specific performing arts community works, adapts, changes, breaks down, or breaks through over time. Figure 1 – Performing Arts Sector Map (adapted from Cherbo et. al. 14) Here, the performing arts sector is understood in terms of core artistic workers, companies, a constellation of generic and sector specific support systems, and wider social contexts (Cherbo et al. 15). Together, the shift from “value chain” to “value ecology” that Hearn et al. advocate, and the constellation of ecology elements that Cherbo et al. emphasise, bring a more detailed, dynamic range of relations into play. These include “upstream” production infrastructure (education, suppliers, sponsors), “downstream” distribution infrastructure (venues, outlets, agents), and overall public infrastructure. As a framework for mapping “value ecology” this model offers a more nuanced perspective on production, distribution, and consumption elements in an ecology. It allows for analysis of impact of interventions in dozens of different areas, from dozens of perspectives, and thus provides a more detailed picture of players, relationships, and results to support both practice and policy making around practice. An Aus-e-Stage Value Ecology To provide the more detailed, dynamic image of local theatre culture that a value ecology approach demands—to show players, relations between players, and context in all their complexity—we use the Aus-e-Stage Mapping Service, an online application that maps data about artists, arts organisations, and audiences across cityscapes/landscapes. We use Aus-e-Stage with data drawn from three sources: the AusStage database of over 50,000 entries on Australian performing arts venues, productions, artists, and reviews; the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS) data on population; and the Local Government Area (LGA) maps the ABS uses to cluster populations. Figure 2 – Using AusStage Interface Figure 3 – AusStage data on theatre venues laid over ABS Local Government Area Map Figure 4 – Using Aus-e-Stage / AusStage to zoom in on Australia, Queensland, Brisbane and La Boite Theatre Company, and generate a list of productions, dates and details Aus-e-Stage produces not just single maps, but a sequential series of snapshots of production ecologies, which visually track who does what when, where, with whom, and for whom. Its sequences can show: The way artists, companies, venues, and audiences relate to each other;The way artists’ relationship to companies, venues, and audiences changes over time;The way “external stressors” changes such as policy, industrial, or population changes affect the elements, roles, and relationships in the ecology from that point forward. Though it can be used in combination with other data sources such as interviews, the advantage of AusStage data is that maps of moving ecologies of practice are based not on descriptions coloured by memory but clear, accurate program, preview, and review data. This allows it to show how factors in the environment—population, policy, infrastructure, or program shifts—effect the ecology, effect players in the ecology, and prompt players to adapt their type, level, or intensity of practice. It extends Baylis’s value chain into a full value ecology that shows the detail on how an ecology works, going beyond demands that government plug perceived gaps and moving towards data- and history- based decisions, ideas and innovation based on what works in Brisbane’s performing arts ecology. Our Aus-e-Stage mapping shows this approach can do a number of useful things. It can create sequences showing breaks, blockages, and absences in an individual or company’s effort to move from emerging to established (e.g. in a sudden burst of activity followed by nothing). It can create sequences showing an individual or company’s moves to other parts of Australia (e.g. to tour or to pursue more permanent work). It can show surprising spaces, relations, and sources of support artists use to further their career (e.g. use of an amateur theatre outside the city such as Brisbane Arts Theatre). It can capture data about venues, programs, or co-production networks that are more or less effective in opening up new opportunities for artists (e.g. moving small-scale experiments in Metro Arts’ “Independents” program to full scale independent productions in La Boite’s “Indie” program, its mainstage program, other mainstage programs, and beyond). It can link to program information, documentation, or commentary to compare anticipated and actual effects. It can lay the map dates and movements across significant policy, infrastructure, or production climate shifts. In the example below, for instance, Aus-e-Stage represents the tour of La Boite’s popular production of a new Australian work Zig Zag Street, based on the Brisbane-focused novel by Nick Earls about a single, twentysomething man’s struggles with life, love, and work. Figure 5 – Zig Zag Street Tour Map In the example below, Aus-e-Stage represents the movements not of a play but of a performer—in this case Christopher Sommers—who has been able to balance employment with new work incubator Metro Arts, mainstage and indie producer La Boite, and stage theatre company QTC with his role with independent theatre company 23rd Productions to create something more protean, more portfolio-based or boundary-less than a traditional linear career trajectory. Figure 6 – Christopher Sommers Network Map and Travel Map This value of this approach, and this technology, is clear. Which independents participate in La Boite Indie (or QTC’s “Studio” or “Greenroom” new work programs, or Metro’s emerging work programs, or others)? What benefits does it bring for artists, for independent companies, or for mainstage companies like La Boite? Is this a launching pad leading to ongoing, sustainable production practices? What do artists, audiences or others say about these launching pads in previews, programs, or reviews? Using Aus-e-Stage as part of a value ecology approach answers these questions. It provides a more detailed picture of what happens, what effect it has on local theatre ecology, and exactly which influences enabled this effect: precisely the data needed to generate informed debate, ideas, and decision making. Conclusion Our ecological approach provides images of a local performing arts ecology in action, drawing out filtered data on different players, relationships, and influencing factors, and thus extending examination of Brisbane’s and Queensland’s performing arts sector into useful new areas. It offers three main advances—first, it adopts a value ecology approach (Hearn et al.), second, it adapts this value ecology approach to include not just companies by all up- and down- stream players, supporters and infrastructure (Cherbo et. al.), and, thirdly, it uses the wealth of data available via Aus-e-Stage maps to fill out and filter images of local theatre ecology. It allows us to develop detailed, meaningful data to support discussion, debate, and development of ideas that is less likely to get bogged down in old, outdated, or inaccurate assumptions about how the sector works. Indeed, our data lends itself to additional analysis in a number of ways, from economic analysis of how shifts in policy influence productivity to sociological analysis of the way practitioners or practices acquire status and cultural capital (Bourdieu) in the field. Whilst descriptions offered here demonstrate the potential of this approach, this is by no means a finished exercise. Indeed, because this approach is about analysing how elements, roles, and relationships in an ecology shift over time, it is an ever-unfinished exercise. As Fortin and Dale argue, ecological studies of this sort are necessarily iterative, with each iteration providing new insights and raising further questions into processes and patterns (3). Given the number of local performing arts producers who have changed their practices significantly since Baylis’s Mapping Queensland Theatre report, and the fact that Baylis is producing a follow-up report, the next step will be to use this approach and the Aus-e-Stage technology that supports it to trace how ongoing shifts impact on Brisbane’s ambitions to become a cultural capital. This process is underway, and promises to open still more new perspectives by understanding anxieties about local theatre culture in terms of ecologies and exploring them cartographically. References Arts Queensland. Queensland Arts & Cultural Sector Plan 2010-2013. Brisbane: Arts Queensland, 2010. 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New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2008. 32-60. Costanza, Robert. “Toward an Operational Definition of Ecosystem Health”. Ecosystem Health: New Goals for Environmental Management. Eds. Robert Costanza, Bryan G. Norton and Benjamin D. Haskell. Washington: Island Press, 1992. 239-56. Cunningham, Stuart. “Keeping Artistic Tempers Balanced.” The Courier Mail, 4 August (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/opinion/keeping-artistic-tempers-balanced/story-e6frerc6-1225901295328›. Gallasch, Keith. “The ABC and the Arts: The Arts Ecologically.” RealTime 61 (2004). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.realtimearts.net/article/61/7436›. Gill, Raymond. “Is Brisbane Australia’s New Cultural Capital?” Sydney Morning Herald, 16 October (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/art-and-design/is-brisbane-australias-new-cultural-capital-20101015-16np5.html›. Fortin, Marie-Josée and Dale, Mark R.T. Spatial Analysis: A Guide for Ecologists. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005. Foy, Kate. “Is There Anything Right with the Theatre?” Groundling. 10 January (2010). 20 June 2011 ‹http://katefoy.com/2010/01/is-there-anything-right-with-the-theatre/›. Hearn, Gregory N., Simon C. Roodhouse, and Julie M. Blakey. ‘From Value Chain to Value Creating Ecology: Implications for Creative Industries Development Policy.’ International Journal of Cultural Policy 13 (2007). 20 June 2011 ‹http://eprints.qut.edu.au/15026/›. Hunt, Cathy and Phyllida Shaw. A Sustainable Arts Sector: What Will It Take? Strawberry Hills: Currency House, 2007. Knell, John. Theatre’s New Rules of Evolution. Available from Intelligence Agency, 2008. Office of Economic and Statistical Research. “Information Brief: Australian Demographic Statistics June Quarter 2009.” Canberra: OESR (2010). 20 June 2012 ‹http://www.oesr.qld.gov.au/queensland-by-theme/demography/briefs/aust-demographic-stats/aust-demographic-stats-200906.pdf›.

Stand-up is a global phenomenon. It is Australia’s most significant form of advocatorial theatre and a major platform for challenging stigma and prejudice. In the twenty-first century, Australian stand-up is transforming into a more culturally diverse form and extending the spectrum of material addressing human rights. Since the 1980s Australian stand-up routines have moved beyond the old colonial targets of England and America, and Indigenous comics such as Kevin Kopinyeri, Andy Saunders, and Shiralee Hood have gained an established following. Additionally, the turn to Asia is evident not just in trade agreements and the higher education market but also in cultural exchange and in the billing of emerging Asian stand-ups at mainstream events. The major cultural driver for stand-up is the Melbourne International Comedy Festival (MICF), Australia’s largest cultural event, now over 30 years old, and an important site for dissecting constructs of democracy and nationhood. As John McCallum has observed, popular humour in post-World War II Australia drew on widespread feelings of “displacement, migration and otherness—resonant topics in a country of transplanted people and a dispossessed indigenous population arguing over a distinct Australian identity” (205–06). This essay considers the traditional comic strategies of first and second generation immigrant stand-ups in Australia and compares them with the new wave of post 9/11 Asian-Australian and Middle-Eastern-Australian stand-ups whose personas and interrogations are shifting the paradigm. Self-identifying Muslim stand-ups challenge myths of dominant Australian identity in ways which many still find confronting. Furthermore, the theories of incongruity, superiority, and psychological release re-rehearsed in traditional humour studies, by figures such as Palmer (1994) and Morreall (2009), are predicated on models of humour which do not always serve live performance, especially stand-up with its relational dependence on audience interaction.Stand-ups who immigrated to Australia as children or whose parents immigrated and struggled against adversity are important symbols both of the Australian comedy industry and of a national self-understanding of migrant resilience and making good. Szubanski and Berger hail from earlier waves of European migrants in the 1950s and 1960s. Szubanski has written eloquently of her complex Irish-Polish heritage and documented how the “hand-me-down trinkets of family and trauma” and “the culture clash of competing responses to calamity” have been integral to the development of her comic success and the making of her Aussie characters (347). Rachel Berger, the child of Polish holocaust survivors, advertises and connects both identities on her LinkedIn page: “After 23 years as a stand-up comedian, growing up with Jewish guilt and refugee parents, Rachel Berger knows more about survival than any idiot attending tribal council on reality TV.”Anh Do, among Australia’s most famous immigrant stand-ups, identifies as one of the Vietnamese “boat people” and arrived as a toddler in 1976. Do’s tale of his family’s survival against the odds and his creation of a persona which constructs the grateful, happy immigrant clown is the staple of his very successful routine and increasingly problematic. It is a testament to the power of Do’s stand-up that many did not perceive the toll of the loss of his birth country; the grinding poverty; and the pain of his father’s alcoholism, violence, and survivor guilt until the publication of Do’s ironically titled memoir The Happiest Refugee. In fact, the memoir draws on many of the trauma narratives that are still part of his set. One of Do’s most legendary routines is the story of his family’s sea journey to Australia, told here on ABC1’s Talking Heads:There were forty of us on a nine metre fishing boat. On day four of the journey we spot another boat. As the boat gets closer we realise it’s a boatload of Thai pirates. Seven men with knives, machetes and guns get on our boat and they take everything. One of the pirates picks up the smallest child, he lifts up the baby and rips open the baby’s nappy and dollars fall out. And the pirate decides to spare the kid’s life. And that’s a good thing cos that’s my little brother Khoa Do who in 2005 became Young Australian of the Year. And we were saved on the fifth day by a big German merchant ship which took us to a refugee camp in Malaysia and we were there for around three months before Australia says, come to Australia. And we’re very glad that happened. So often we heard Mum and Dad say—what a great country. How good is this place? And the other thing—kids, as you grow up, do as much as you can to give back to this great country and to give back to others less fortunate.Do’s strategy is apparently one of genuflection and gratitude, an adoption of what McCallum refers to as an Australian post-war tradition of the comedy of inadequacy and embarrassment (210–14). Journalists certainly like to bill Do as the happy clown, framing articles about him with headlines like Rosemary Neill’s “Laughing through Adversity.” In fact, Do is direct about his gallows humour and his propensity to darkness: his humour, he says, is a means of countering racism, of “being able to win people over who might have been averse to being friends with an Asian bloke,” but Neill does not linger on this, nor on the revelation that Do felt stigmatised by his refugee origins and terrified and shamed by the crippling poverty of his childhood in Australia. In The Happiest Refugee, Do reveals that, for him, the credibility of his routines with predominantly white Australian audiences lies in the crafting of himself as an “Aussie comedian up there talking about his working-class childhood” (182). This is not the official narrative that is retold even if it is how Do has endeared himself to Australians, and ridding himself of the happy refugee label may yet prove difficult. Suren Jayemanne is well known for his subtle mockery of multiculturalist rhetoric. In his 2016 MICF show, Wu-Tang Clan Name Generator, Jayemanne played on the supposed contradiction of his Sri Lankan-Malaysian heritage against his teenage years in the wealthy suburb of Malvern in Melbourne, his private schooling, and his obsession with hip hop and black American culture. Jayemanne’s strategy is to gently confound his audiences, leading them slowly up a blind alley. He builds up a picture of how to identify Sri Lankan parents, supposedly Sri Lankan qualities such as an exceptional ability at maths, and Sri Lankan employment ambitions which he argues he fulfilled in becoming an accountant. He then undercuts his story by saying he has recently realised that his suburban background, his numerical abilities, his love of black music, and his rejection of accountancy in favour of comedy, in fact prove conclusively that he has, all along, been white. He also confesses that this is a bruising disappointment. Jayemanne exposes the emptiness of the conceits of white, brown, and black and of invented identity markers and plays on his audiences’ preconceptions through an old storyteller’s device, the shaggy dog story. The different constituencies in his audiences enjoy his trick equally, from quite different perspectives.Diana Nguyen, a second generation Vietnamese stand-up, was both traumatised and politicised by Pauline Hanson when she was a teenager. Hanson described Nguyen’s community in Dandenong as “yellow Asian people” (Filmer). Nguyen’s career as a community development worker combating racism relates directly to her activity as a stand-up: migrant stories are integral to Australian history and Nguyen hypothesises that the “Australian psyche of being invaded or taken over” has reignited over the question of Islamic fundamentalism and expresses her concern to Filmer about the Muslim youths under her care.Nguyen’s alarm about the elision of Islamic radicalism with Muslim culture drives an agenda that has led the new generation of self-identified Muslim stand-ups since 9/11. This post 9/11 world is described by Wajahat as gorged with “exaggerated fear, hatred, and hostility toward Islam and Muslim [. . . ] and perpetuated by negative discrimination and the marginalisation and exclusion of Muslims from social, political, and civic life in western societies.” In Australia, Aamer Rahman, Muhamed Elleissi, Khaled Khalafalla, and Nazeem Hussain typify this newer, more assertive form of second generation immigrant stand-up—they identify as Muslim (whether religious or not), as brown, and as Australian. They might be said to symbolise a logical response to Ghassan Hage’s famous White Nation (1998), which argues that a white supremacism underlies the mindset of the white elite in Australia. Their positioning is more nuanced than previous generations of stand-up. Nazeem Hussain’s routines mark a transformation in Australian stand-up, as Waleed Aly has argued: “ethnic comedy” has hitherto been about the parading of stereotypes for comfortable, mainstream consumption, about “minstrel characters” [. . .] but Hussain interrogates his audiences in every direction—and aggravates Muslims too. Hussain’s is the world of post 9/11 Australian Muslims. It’s about more than ethnic stereotyping. It’s about being a consistent target of political opportunism, where everyone from the Prime Minister to the Foreign Minister to an otherwise washed-up backbencher with a view on burqas has you in their sights, where bombs detonate in Western capitals and unrelated nations are invaded.Understandably, a prevalent theme among the new wave of Muslim comics, and not just in Australia, is the focus on the reading of Muslims as manifestly linked with Islamic State (IS). Jokes about mistaken identity, plane crashes, suicide bombing, and the Koran feature prominently. English-Pakistani Muslim, Shazia Mirza, gained comedy notoriety in the UK in the wake of 9/11 by introducing her routine with the words: “My name’s Shazia Mirza. At least that’s what it says on my pilot’s licence” (Bedell). Stand-ups Negin Farsad, Ahmed Ahmed, and Dean Obeidalla are all also activists challenging prevailing myths about Islam, skin colour and terrorism in America. Egyptian-American Ahmed Ahmed acquired prominence for telling audiences in the infamous Axis of Evil Comedy Tour about how his life had changed much for the worse since 9/11. Ahmed Ahmed was the alias used by one of Osama Bin Laden’s devotees and his life became on ongoing struggle with anti-terrorism officials doing security checks (he was once incarcerated) and with the FBI who were certain that the comedian was among their most wanted terrorists. Similarly, Obeidalla, an Italian-Palestinian-Muslim, notes in his TEDx talk that “If you have a Muslim name, you are probably immune to identity theft.” His narration of a very sudden experience of becoming an object of persecution and of others’ paranoia is symptomatic of a shared understanding of a post 9/11 world among many Muslim comics: “On September 10th 2001 I went to bed as a white American and I woke up an Arab,” says Obeidalla, still dazed from the seismic shift in his life.Hussain and Khalafalla demonstrate a new sophistication and directness in their stand-up, and tackle their majority white audiences head-on. There is no hint of the apologetic or deferential stance performed by Anh Do. Many of the jokes in their routines target controversial or taboo issues, which up until recently were shunned in Australian political debate, or are absent or misrepresented in mainstream media. An Egyptian-Australian born in Saudi Arabia, Khaled Khalafalla arrived on the comedy scene in 2011, was runner-up in RAW, Australia’s most prestigious open mic competition, and in 2013 won the best of the Melbourne International Comedy Festival for Devious. Khalafalla’s shows focus on racist stereotypes and identity and he uses a range of Middle Eastern and Indian accents to broach IS recruitment, Muslim cousin marriages, and plane crashes. His 2016 MICF show, Jerk, was a confident and abrasive routine exploring relationships, drug use, the extreme racism of Reclaim Australia rallies, controversial visa checks by Border Force’s Operation Fortitude, and Islamophobia. Within the first minute of his routine, he criticises white people in the audience for their woeful refusal to master Middle Eastern names, calling out to the “brown woman” in the audience for support, before lining up a series of jokes about the (mis)pronunciation of his name. Khalafalla derives his power on stage by what Oliver Double calls “uncovering.” Double contends that “one of the most subversive things stand-up can do is to uncover the unmentionable,” subjects which are difficult or impossible to discuss in everyday conversation or the broadcast media (292). For instance, in Jerk Khalafalla discusses the “whole hating halal movement” in Australia as a metaphor for exposing brutal prejudice: Let me break it down for you. Halal is not voodoo. It’s just a blessing that Muslims do for some things, food amongst other things. But, it’s also a magical spell that turns some people into fuckwits when they see it. Sometimes people think it’s a thing that can get stuck to your t-shirt . . . like ‘Oh fuck, I got halal on me’ [Australian accent]. I saw a guy the other day and he was like Fuck halal, it funds terrorism. And I was like, let me show you the true meaning of Islam. I took a lamb chop out of my pocket and threw it in his face. And, he was like Ah, what was that? A lamb chop. Oh, I fucking love lamb chops. And, I say you fool, it’s halal and he burst into flames.In effect, Khalafalla delivers a contemptuous attack on the white members of his audience, but at the same time his joke relies on those same audience members presuming that they are morally and intellectually superior to the individual who is the butt of the joke. Khalafalla’s considerable charm is a help in this tricky send-up. In 2015 the Australian Department of Defence recognised his symbolic power and invited him to join the Afghanistan Task Force to entertain the troops by providing what Doran describes as “home-grown Australian laughs” (7). On stage in Australia, Khalafalla constructs a persona which is an outsider to the dominant majority and challenges the persecution of Muslim communities. Ironically, on the NATO base, Khalafalla’s act was perceived as representing a diverse but united Australia. McCallum has pointed to such contradictions, moments where white Australia has shown itself to be a “culture which at first authenticates emigrant experience and later abrogates it in times of defiant nationalism” (207). Nazeem Hussain, born in Australia to Sri Lankan parents, is even more confrontational. His stand-up is born of his belief that “comedy protects us from the world around us” and is “an evolutionary defence mechanism” (8–9). His ground-breaking comedy career is embedded in his work as an anti-racism activist and asylum seeker supporter and shaped by his second-generation migrant experiences, law studies, community youth work, and early mentorship by American Muslim comic trio Allah Made Me Funny. He is well-known for his pioneering television successes Legally Brown and Salam Café. In his stand-up, Hussain often dwells witheringly on the failings and peculiarities of white people’s attempts to interact with him. Like all his routines, his sell-out show Fear of the Brown Planet, performed with Aamer Rahman from 2004–2008, explored casual, pathologised racism. Hussain deliberately over-uses the term “white people” in his routines as a provocation and deploys a reverse racism against his majority white audiences, knowing that many will be squirming. “White people ask me how can Muslims have fun if they don’t drink? Muslims have fun! Of course we have fun! You’ve seen us on the news.” For Hussain stand-up is “fundamentally an art of protest,” to be used as “a tool by communities and people with ideas that challenge and provoke the status quo with a spirit of counterculture” (Low 1–3). His larger project is to humanise Muslims to white Australians so that “they see us firstly as human beings” (1–3). Hussain’s 2016 MICF show, Hussain in the Membrane, both satirised media hype and hysterical racism and pushed for a better understanding of the complex problems Muslim communities face in Australia. His show also connected issues to older colonial traditions of racism. In a memorable and beautifully crafted tirade, Hussain inveighed against the 2015 Bendigo riots which occurred after local Muslims lodged an application to Bendigo council to build a mosque in the sleepy Victorian town. [YELLING in an exaggerated Australian accent] No we don’t want Muslims! NO we don’t want Muslims—to come invade Bendigo by application to the local council! That is the most bureaucratic invasion of all times. No place in history has been invaded by lodging an application to a local council. Can you see ISIS running around chasing town planners? Of course not, Muslims like to wait 6–8 months to invade! That’s a polite way to invade. What if white people invaded that way? What a better world we’d be living in. If white people invaded Australia that way, we’d be able to celebrate Australia Day on the same day without so much blood on our hands. What if Captain Cook came to Australia and said [in a British accent] Awe we would like to apply to invade this great land and here is our application. [In an Australian accent] Awe sorry, mate, rejected, but we’ll give you Bendigo.As Waleed Aly sees it, the Australian cultural majority is still “unused to hearing minorities speak with such assertiveness.” Hussain exposes “a binary world where there’s whiteness, and then otherness. Where white people are individuals and non-white people (a singular group) are not” (Aly). Hussain certainly speaks as an insider and goes so far as recognising his coloniser’s guilt in relation to indigenous Australians (Tan). Aly well remembers the hate mail he and Hussain received when they worked on Salam Café: “The message was clear. We were outsiders and should behave as such. We were not real Australians. We should know our place, as supplicants, celebrating the nation’s unblemished virtue.” Khalafalla, Rahman, Elleissi, and Hussain make clear that the new wave of comics identify as Muslim and Australian (which they would argue many in the audiences receive as a provocation). They have zero tolerance of racism, their comedy is intimately connected with their political activism, and they have an unapologetically Australian identity. No longer is it a question of whether the white cultural majority in Australia will anoint them as worthy and acceptable citizens, it is a question of whether the audiences can rise to the moral standards of the stand-ups. The power has been switched. For Hussain laughter is about connection: “that person laughs because they appreciate the point and whether or not they accept what was said was valid isn’t important. What matters is, they’ve understood” (Low 5). ReferencesAhmed, Ahmed. “When It Comes to Laughter, We Are All Alike.” TedXDoha (2010). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxDoha-Ahmed-Ahmed-When-it-Co>.Aly, Waleed. “Comment.” Sydney Morning Herald 24 Sep. 2013."Anh Do". Talking Heads with Peter Thompson. ABC1. 4 Oct. 2010. Radio.Bedell, Geraldine. “Veiled Humour.” The Guardian (2003). 8 Aug. 2016 <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2003/apr/20/comedy.artsfeatures?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other>.Berger, Rachel. LinkedIn [Profile page]. 14 June 2016 <http://www.linkedin.com/company/rachel-berger>.Do, Anh. The Happiest Refugee. Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 2010. Doran, Mark. "Service with a Smile: Entertainers Give Troops a Taste of Home.” Air Force 57.21 (2015). 12 June 2016 <http://www.defence.gov.au/Publications/NewsPapers/Raaf/editions/5721/5721.pdf>.Double, Oliver. Getting the Joke: The Inner Workings of Stand-Up Comedy. 2nd ed. London: Bloomsbury, 2014.Filmer, Natalie. "For Dandenong Comedian and Actress Diana Nguyen The Colour Yellow has a Strong Meaning.” The Herald Sun 3 Sep. 2013.Hage, Ghassan. White Nation: Fantasies of a White Supremacy in a Multicultural Age. Sydney: Pluto Press, 1998.Hussain, Nazeem. Hussain in the Membrane. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.———. "The Funny Side of 30.” Spectrum. The Age 12 Mar. 2016.Khalafalla, Khaled. Jerk. Melbourne International Comedy Festival, 2016.Low, Lian. "Fear of a Brown Planet: Fight the Power with Laughter.” Peril: Asian Australian Arts and Culture (2011). 12 June 2016 <http://peril.com.au/back-editions/edition10/fear-of-a-brown-planet-fight-the-power-with-laughter>. McCallum, John. "Cringe and Strut: Comedy and National Identity in Post-War Australia.” Because I Tell a Joke or Two: Comedy, Politics and Social Difference. Ed. Stephen Wagg. New York: Routledge, 1998. Morreall, John. Comic Relief. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2009.Neill, Rosemary. "Laughing through Adversity.” The Australian 28 Aug. 2010.Obeidalla, Dean. "Using Stand-Up to Counter Islamophobia.” TedXEast (2012). 16 June 2016 <http://tedxtalks.ted.com/video/TEDxEast-Dean-Obeidalla-Using-S;TEDxEast>.Palmer, Jerry. Taking Humour Seriously. London: Routledge, 1994. Szubanski, Magda. Reckoning. Melbourne: Text Publishing, 2015. Tan, Monica. "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie! Allahu Akbar! Nazeem Hussain's Bogan-Muslim Army.” The Guardian 29 Feb. 2016. "Uncle Sam.” Salam Café (2008). 11 June 2016 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SeQPAJt6caU>.Wajahat, Ali, et al. "Fear Inc.: The Roots of the Islamophobia Network in America.” Center for American Progress (2011). 11 June 2016 <https://www.americanprogress.org/issues/religion/report/2011/08/26/10165/fear-inc>.

Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. Lake, Marilyn. “White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project”. Australian Historical Studies 122 ( 2003): 346–63. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London: Routledge, 2002. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993. Moore, Richard K. “Democracy and Cyberspace”. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. Eds. Barry Hague and Brian D. Loader. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 39–59. Neville, Richard. “Crass, Corny, But Still a Woodstock Moment for a New Generation”. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 2004. Pittinger, Peach R. “The Cherry Sisters in Early Vaudeville: Performing a Failed Femininity”. Theatre History Studies 24 (2004): 73–97. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage, 2004. ———. “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids’, Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn’”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Bellanta, Melissa. "Voting for Pleasure, Or a View from a Victorian Theatre Gallery." M/C Journal 10.6/11.1 (2008). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/02-bellanta.php>. APA Style Bellanta, M. (Apr. 2008) "Voting for Pleasure, Or a View from a Victorian Theatre Gallery," M/C Journal, 10(6)/11(1). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0804/02-bellanta.php>.

Imagine this historical scene, if you will. It is 1892, and you are up in the gallery at Her Majesty’s Theatre in Sydney, taking in an English burlesque. The people around you have just found out that Alice Leamar will not be performing her famed turn in Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay tonight, a high-kicking Can-Canesque number, very much the dance du jour. Your fellow audience members are none too pleased about this – they are shouting, and stamping the heels of their boots so loudly the whole theatre resounds with the noise. Most people in the expensive seats below look up in the direction of the gallery with a familiar blend of fear and loathing. The rough ‘gods’ up there are nearly always restless, more this time than usual. The uproar fulfils its purpose, though, because tomorrow night, Leamar’s act will be reinstated: the ‘gods’ will have their way (Bulletin, 1 October 1892). Another scene now, this time at the Newtown Bridge Theatre in Sydney, shortly after the turn of the twentieth century. A comedian is trying a new routine for the crowd, but no one seems much impressed so far. A few discontented rumbles begin at first – ‘I want to go home’, says one wag, and then another – and soon these gain momentum, so that almost everyone is caught up in an ecstasy of roisterous abuse. A burly ‘chucker out’ appears, trying to eject some of the loudest hecklers, and a fully-fledged punch-up ensues (Djubal 19, 23; Cheshire 86). Eventually, one or two men are made to leave – but so too is the hapless comedian, evicted by derisive howls from the stage. The scenes I have just described show that audience interaction was a key feature in late-nineteenth century popular theatre, and in some cases even persisted into the following century. Obviously, there was no formal voting mechanism used during these performances à la contemporary shows like Idol. But rowdy practises amounted to a kind of audience ‘vote’ nonetheless, through which people decided those entertainers they wanted to see and those they emphatically did not. In this paper, I intend to use these bald parallels between Victorian audience practices and new-millennium viewer-voting to investigate claims about the links between democracy and plebiscitary entertainment. The rise of voting for pleasure in televised contests and online polls is widely attended by debate about democracy (e.g. Andrejevic; Coleman; Hartley, “Reality”). The most hyped commentary on this count evokes a teleological assumption – that western history is inexorably moving towards direct democracy. This view becomes hard to sustain when we consider the extent to which the direct expression of audience views was a feature of Victorian popular entertainment, and that these participatory practices were largely suppressed by the turn of the twentieth century. Old audience practices also allow us to question some of the uses of the term ‘direct democracy’ in new media commentary. Descriptions of voting for pleasure as part of a growth towards direct democracy are often made to celebrate rather than investigate plebiscitary forms. They elide the fact that direct democracy is a vexed political ideal. And they limit our discussion of voting for leisure and fun. Ultimately, arguing back and forth about whether viewer-voting is democratic stops us from more interesting explorations of this emerging cultural phenomenon. ‘To a degree that would be unimaginable to theatregoers today’, says historian Robert Allen, ‘early nineteenth-century audiences controlled what went on at the theatre’. The so-called ‘shirt-sleeve’ crowd in the cheapest seats of theatrical venues were habitually given to hissing, shouting, and even throwing objects in order to evict performers during the course of a show. The control exerted by the peanut-chomping gallery was certainly apparent in the mid-century burlesques Allen writes about (55). It was also apparent in minstrel, variety and music hall productions until around the turn of the century. Audience members in the galleries of variety theatres and music halls regularly engaged in the pleasure of voicing their aesthetic preferences. Sometimes comic interjectors from among them even drew more laughs than the performers on stage. ‘We went there not as spectators but as performers’, as an English music-hall habitué put it (Bailey 154). In more downmarket venues such as Sydney’s Newtown Bridge Theatre, these participatory practices continued into the early 1900s. Boisterous audience practices came under sustained attack in the late-Victorian era. A series of measures were taken by authorities, theatre managers and social commentators to wrest the control of popular performances from those in theatre pits and galleries. These included restricting the sale of alcohol in theatre venues, employing brawn in the form of ‘chuckers out’, and darkening auditoriums, so that only the stage was illuminated and the audience thus de-emphasised (Allen 51–61; Bailey 157–68; Waterhouse 127, 138–43). They also included a relentless public critique of those engaging in heckling behaviours, thus displaying their ‘littleness of mind’ (Age, 6 Sep. 1876). The intensity of attacks on rowdy audience participation suggests that symbolic factors were at play in late-Victorian attempts to enforce decorous conduct at the theatre. The last half of the century was, after all, an era of intense debate about the qualities necessary for democratic citizenship. The suffrage was being dramatically expanded during this time, so that it encompassed the vast majority of white men – and by the early twentieth century, many white women as well. In Australia, the prelude to federation also involved debate about the type of democracy to be adopted. Should it be republican? Should it enfranchise all men and women; all people, or only white ones? At stake in these debates were the characteristics and subjectivities one needed to possess before being deemed capable of enfranchisement. To be worthy of the vote, as of other democratic privileges, one needed to be what Toby Miller has called a ‘well-tempered’ subject at the turn of the twentieth century (Miller; Joyce 4). One needed to be carefully deliberative and self-watching, to avoid being ‘savage’, ‘uncivilised’, emotive – all qualities which riotous audience members (like black people and women) were thought not to possess (Lake). This is why the growing respectability of popular theatre is so often considered a key feature of the modernisation of popular culture. Civil and respectful audience behaviours went hand in hand with liberal-democratic concepts of the well-tempered citizen. Working-class culture in late nineteenth-century England has famously (and notoriously) been described as a ‘culture of consolation’: an escapist desire for fun based on a fatalistic acceptance of under-privilege and social discrimination (Jones). This idea does not do justice to the range of hopes and efforts to create a better society among workingpeople at the time. But it still captures the motivation behind most unruly audience behaviours: a gleeful kind of resistance or ‘culture jamming’ which viewed disruption and uproar as ends in themselves, without the hope that they would be productive of improved social conditions. Whether or not theatrical rowdiness served a solely consolatory purpose for the shirt-sleeve crowd, it certainly evoked a sharp fear of disorderly exuberance in mainstream society. Anxieties about violent working-class uprisings leading to the institution of mob rule were a characteristic of the late-nineteenth century, often making their way into fiction (Brantlinger). Roisterous behaviours in popular theatres resonated with the concerns expressed in works such as Caesar’s Column (Donnelly), feeding on a long association between the theatre and misrule. These fears obviously stand in stark contrast to the ebullient commentary surrounding interactive entertainment today. Over-oxygenated rhetoric about the democratic potential of cyberspace was of course a feature of new media commentary at the beginning of the 1990s (for a critique of such rhetoric see Meikle 33–42; Grossman). Current helium-giddy claims about digital technologies as ‘democratising’ reprise this cyberhype (Andrejevic 12–15, 23–8; Jenkins and Thornburn). One recent example of upbeat talk about plebiscitary formats as direct democracy is John Hartley’s contribution to the edited collection, Politicotainment (Hartley, “Reality”). There are now a range of TV shows and online formats, he says, which offer audiences the opportunity to directly express their views. The development of these entertainment forms are part of a movement towards a ‘direct open network’ in global media culture (3). They are also part of a macro historical shift: a movement ‘down the value chain of meaning’ which has taken place over the past few centuries (Hartley, “Value Chain”). Hartley’s notion of a ‘value chain of meaning’ is an application of business analysis to media and cultural studies. In business, a value chain is what links the producer/originator, via commodity/distribution, to the consumer. In the same way, Hartley says, one might speak of a symbolic value chain moving from an author/producer, via the text, to the audience/consumer. Much of western history may indeed be understood as a movement along this chain. In pre-modern times, meaning resided in the author. The Divine Author, God, was regarded as the source of all meaning. In the modern period, ‘after Milton and Johnson’, meaning was located in texts. Experts observed the properties of a text or other object, and by this means discovered its meaning. In ‘the contemporary period’, however – the period roughly following the Second World War – meaning has overwhelming come to be located with audiences or consumers (Hartley, “Value Chain” 131–35). It is in this context, Hartley tells us, that the plebiscite is coming to the fore. As a means of allowing audiences to directly represent their own choices, the plebiscite is part of a new paradigm taking shape, as global culture moves away from the modern epoch and its text-dominated paradigm (Hartley, “Reality” 1–3). Talk of a symbolic value chain is a self-conscious example of the logic of business/cultural partnership currently circulating in neo-liberal discourse. It is also an example of a teleological understanding of history, through which the past few centuries are presented as part of a linear progression towards direct democracy. This teleology works well with the up-tempo talk of television as ‘democratainment’ in Hartley’s earlier work (Hartley, Uses of Television). Western history is essentially a triumphant progression, he implies, from the Dark Ages, to representative democracy, to the enlightened and direct ‘consumer democracy’ unfolding around us today (Hartley, “Reality” 47). Teleological assumptions are always suspect from an historical point of view. For a start, casting the modern period as one in which meaning resided overwhelmingly in the text fails to consider the culture of popular performance flourishing before the twentieth century. Popular theatrical forms were far more significant to ordinary people of the nineteenth century than the notions of empirical or textual analysis cultivated in elite circles. Burlesques, minstrel-shows, music hall and variety productions all took a playful approach to their texts, altering their tone and content in line with audience expectations (Chevalier 40). Before the commercialisation of popular theatre in the late-nineteenth century, many theatricals also worked in a relatively open-ended way. At concert saloons or ‘free-and-easies’ (pubs where musical performances were offered), amateur singers volunteered their services, stepping out from the audience to perform an act or two and then disappearing into it again (Joyce 206). As a precursor to TV talent contests and ‘open mic’ comedy sessions today, many theatrical managers held amateur nights in which would-be professionals tried their luck before a restless crowd, with a contract awarded to performers drawing the loudest applause (Watson 5). Each of these considerations challenge the view that open participatory networks are the expression of an historical process through which meaning has only recently come to reside with audiences and consumers. Another reason for suspecting teleological notions about democracy is that it proceeds as if Foucauldian analysis did not exist. Characterising history as a process of democratisation tends to equate democracy with openness and freedom in an uncritical way. It glosses over the fact that representative democracy involved the repression of directly participatory practices and unruly social groups. More pertinently, it ignores critiques of direct democracy. Even if there are positive aspects to the re-emergence of participatory practices among audiences today, there are still real problems with direct democracy as a political ideal. It would be fairly easy to make the case that rowdy Victorian audiences engaged in ‘direct democratic’ practices during the course of a variety show or burlesque. The ‘gods’ in Victorian galleries exulted in expressing their preferences: evicting lack-lustre comics and demanding more of other performers. It would also be easy to valorise these practices as examples of the kind of culture-jamming I referred to earlier – as forms of resistance to the tyranny of well-tempered citizenship gaining sway at the time. Given the often hysterical attacks directed at unruly audiences, there is an obvious satisfaction to be had from observing the reinstatement of Ta-ra-ra-boom-de-ay at Her Majesty’s Theatre, or in the pleasure that working-class audiences derived from ‘calling the tune’. The same kind of satisfaction is not to be had, however, when observing direct democracy in action on YouTube, or during a season of Dancing with the Stars, or some other kind of plebiscitary TV. The expression of audience preferences in this context hardly carries the subversive connotations of informal evictions during a late-Victorian music-hall show. Viewer-voting today is indeed dominated by a rhetoric of partnership which centres on audience participation, rather than a notion of opposition between producers and audiences (Jenkins). The terrain of plebiscitary entertainment is very different now from the terrain of popular culture described by Stuart Hall in the 1980s – let alone as it stood in the 1890s, during Alice Leamar’s tour. Most commentary on plebiscitary TV avoids talk of ‘cultural struggle’ (Hall 235) and instead adopts a language of collaboration and of people ‘having a ball’ (Neville; Hartley, “Reality” 3). The extent to which contemporary plebiscites are managed by what Hartley calls the ‘plebiscitary industries’ evokes one of the most powerful criticisms made against direct democracy. That is, it evokes the view that direct democracy allows commercial interests to set the terms of public participation in decision-making, and thus to influence its outcomes (Barber 36; Moore 55–56). There is obviously big money to be made from plebiscitary TV. The advertising blitz which takes place during viewer-voting programs, and the vote-rigging scandals so often surrounding them make this clear. These considerations highlight the fact that public involvement in a plebiscitary process is not something to make a song and dance about unless broad involvement first takes place in deciding the issues open for determination by plebiscite, and the way in which these issues are framed. In the absence of this kind of broad participation, engagement in plebiscitary forms serves a solely consolatory function, offering the pleasures of viewer-voting as a substitute for substantive involvement in cultural creation and political change. Another critique sometimes made against direct democracy is that it makes an easy vehicle for prejudice (Barber 36–7). This was certainly the case in Victorian theatres, where it was common for Anglo gallery-members to heckle female and non-white performers in an intimidatory way. A group of American vaudeville performers called the Cherry Sisters certainly experienced this phenomenon in the early 1900s. The Cherry Sisters were defiantly unglamorous middle-aged women in a period when female performers were increasingly expected to display scantily-clad youthful figures on stage. As a consequence, they were embroiled in a number of near-riots in which male audience members hurled abuse and heavy objects from the galleries, and in some cases chased them into the street to physically assault them there (Pittinger 76–77). Such incidents give us a glimpse of the dark face of direct democracy. In some cases, the direct expression of popular views becomes an attack on diversity, leading to the kind of violent mêlée experienced either by the Cherry Sisters or the Middle Eastern people attacked on Sydney’s Cronulla Beach at the end of 2005. ‘Democracy’ is always an obviously politically loaded term when used in debates about new media. It is frequently used to imply that particular cultural or technological forms are inherently liberatory and inclusive. As Graeme Turner points out, reality TV has been celebrated as ‘democratic’ in this way. Only rarely, however, is there an attempt to argue why this is the case – to show how viewer-voting formats actually serve a democratic agenda. It was for this reason that Turner argued that the inclusion of ordinary people on reality TV should be understood as demotic rather than democratic (Turner, Understanding Celebrity 82–5; Turner, “Mass Production”). Ultimately, however, it is immaterial whether one uses the term ‘demotic’ or ‘direct democratic’ to describe the growth of plebiscitary entertainment. What is important is that we avoid making inflated claims about the direct expression of audience views, using the term ‘democratic’ to give an unduly celebratory spin to the political complexities involved. People may indeed be having a ball as they take part in online polls or choose what they want to watch on YouTube or shout at the TV during an episode of Idol. The ‘participatory enthusiasm’ that fans feel watching a show like Big Brother may also have lessons for those interested in making parliamentary process more responsive to people’s interests and needs (Coleman 458). But the development of plebiscitary forms is not inherently democratic in the sense that Turner suggests the term should be used – that is, it does not of itself serve a liberatory or socially inclusive agenda. Nor does it lead to substantive participation in cultural and political processes. In the end, it seems to me that we need to move beyond the discussion of plebiscitary entertainment in terms of democracy. The whole concept of democracy as the yardstick against which new media should be measured is highly problematic. Not only is direct democracy a vexed political ideal to start off with – it also leads commentators to take predictable positions when debating its relationship to new technologies and cultural forms. Some turn to hype, others to critique, and the result often appears as a mere restatement of the commentators’ political inclinations rather than a useful investigation of the developments at hand. Some of the most intriguing aspects of plebiscitary entertainments are left unexplored if we remain preoccupied with democracy. One might well investigate the re-introduction of studio audiences and participatory audience practices, for example, as a nostalgia for the interactivity experienced in live theatres such as the Newtown Bridge in the early twentieth century. It certainly seems to me that a retro impulse informs some of the developments in televised stand-up comedy in recent years. This was obviously the case for Paul McDermott’s The Side Show on Australian television in 2007, with its nod to the late-Victorian or early twentieth-century fairground and its live-theatrical vibe. More relevantly here, it also seems to be the case for American viewer-voting programs such as Last Comic Standing and the Comedy Channel’s Open Mic Fight. Further, reviews of programs such as Idol sometimes emphasise the emotional engagement arising out of their combination of viewer-voting and live performance as a harking-back to the good old days when entertainment was about being real (Neville). One misses this nostalgia associated with plebiscitary entertainments if bound to a teleological assumption that they form part of an ineluctable progression towards the New and the Free. Perhaps, then, it is time to pay more attention to the historical roots of viewer-voting formats, to think about the way that new media is sometimes about a re-invention of the old, trying to escape the recurrent back-and-forthing of debate about their relationship to progress and democracy. References Allen, Robert C. Horrible Prettiness: Burlesque and American Culture .Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1991. Andrejevic, Mark. Reality TV: The Work of Being Watched. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2004. Bailey, Peter. Leisure and Class in Victorian England: Rational Recreation and the Contest for Control, 1830–1885. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1978. Barber, Benjamin R. Strong Democracy: Participatory Politics for a New Age. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984. ———. “Which Technology and Which Democracy?” Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press, 2003. 33–48. Brantlinger, Patrick, Rule of Darkness: British Literature and Imperialism, 1830–1914. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1988. Cheshire, D. F. Music Hall in Britain. Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1974. Chevalier, Albert. Before I Forget: The Autobiography of a Chevalier d’Industrie. London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1901. Coleman, Stephen. “How the Other Half Votes: Big Brother Viewers and the 2005 General Election”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.4 (2006): 457–79. Djubal, Clay. “From Minstrel Tenor to Vaudeville Showman: Harry Clay, ‘A Friend of the Australian Performer’”. Australasian Drama Studies 34 (April 1999): 10–24. Donnelly, Ignatius. Caesar’s Column: A Story of the Twentieth Century. London: Sampson Low, Marston and Co., 1891. Grossman, Lawrence. The Electronic Republic: Reshaping Democracy in the Information Age. New York: Penguin, 1995. Hall, Stuart. “Notes on Deconstructing the ‘Popular’”. People’s History and Socialist Theory. Ed. Raphael Samuel. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1981. 227–49. Hartley, John, The Uses of Television. London: Routledge, 1999. ———. “‘Reality’ and the Plebiscite”. Politoctainment: Television’s Take on the Real. Ed. Kristina Riegert. New York: Peter Lang Publishing, 2006. http://www.cci.edu.au/hartley/downloads/Plebiscite%20(Riegert%20chapter) %20revised%20FINAL%20%5BFeb%2014%5D.pdf. ———. “The ‘Value-Chain of Meaning’ and the New Economy”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 129–41. Jenkins, Henry. “The Cultural Logic of Media Convergence”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 7.1 (2004): 33–43. ———, and David Thornburn. “Introduction: The Digital Revolution, the Informed Citizen, and the Culture of Democracy”. Democracy and New Media. Eds. Henry Jenkins and David Thorburn. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2003. 1–20. Jones, Gareth Stedman. ‘Working-Class Culture and Working-Class Politics in London, 1870-1900: Notes on the Remaking of a Working Class’. Languages of Class: Studies in English Working-Class History, 1832–1982. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983. 179–238. Joyce, Patrick. The Rule of Freedom: Liberalism and the Modern City. London: Verso, 2003. Lake, Marilyn. “White Man’s Country: The Trans-National History of a National Project”. Australian Historical Studies 122 ( 2003): 346–63. Meikle, Graham. Future Active: Media Activism and the Internet. London: Routledge, 2002. Miller, Toby. The Well-Tempered Self: Citizenship, Culture and the Postmodern Subject. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Press, 1993. Moore, Richard K. “Democracy and Cyberspace”. Digital Democracy: Discourse and Decision Making in the Information Age. Eds. Barry Hague and Brian D. Loader. London and New York: Routledge, 1999. 39–59. Neville, Richard. “Crass, Corny, But Still a Woodstock Moment for a New Generation”. Sydney Morning Herald, 23 November 2004. Pittinger, Peach R. “The Cherry Sisters in Early Vaudeville: Performing a Failed Femininity”. Theatre History Studies 24 (2004): 73–97. Turner, Graeme. Understanding Celebrity. London: Sage, 2004. ———. “The Mass Production of Celebrity: ‘Celetoids’, Reality TV and the ‘Demotic Turn’”. International Journal of Cultural Studies 9.2 (2006): 153–165. Waterhouse, Richard. From Minstrel Show to Vaudeville: The Australian Popular Stage, 1788–1914. Sydney: New South Wales University Press, 1990. Watson, Bobby. Fifty Years Behind the Scenes. Sydney: Slater, 1924.

This article offers a fresh analysis of Sydney-based version 1.0’s theatre production CMI (A Certain Maritime Incident, 2004), which engaged with asylum seekers arriving by boat in the context of the so-called ‘children overboard affair’ and the maritime disaster, in which over 300 people from the SIEV X, a brittle Indonesian fishing boat, perished. The performance invited audiences to see the unfamiliar in themselves rather than in those frequently rejected as ‘the other’. In doing so, it questioned common notions of the unfamiliar that is perceived by audiences as different, foreign or insufficiently known, and interrupted a long tradition of opposing the familiar culture(s) of Australians and the unfamiliar culture(s) of the ‘boat people’. The article explores how version 1.0 used effectively a destabilisation of meaning, a playful inversion of socio-political responsibilities and challenged common notions of the roles of fact and fiction in order to offer an alternative perspective on public events, thus making an important contribution to Australia’s communicative memory of issues that continue to be pertinent beyond Australian borders.

The way we tell stories shapes what we are: it articulates the way we position ourselves in relation to the world. This article explores how immersive practices, as used in virtual reality and intermedial performance, provoke novel dynamics between artist and audience that no longer fit within Western traditions of aesthetic exchange and furthermore challenge our understanding of narrative production and reception. It proposes that new ways of reasoning are needed to allow audience agency and the evolving role of the artist to be explored more fully than is currently possible in mainstream theatre scholarship. One source that can provide a model for considering the dynamics between audience and performer in immersive performance is the Indigenous story systems of Australia. There is a significant synergy between the structure and operation of First Nation songlines and contemporary immersive performance. This is explored with reference to the work of contemporary anthropologists and Indigenous scholars and to recent immersive work from the companies Kaleider and Theatre Conspiracy. The article considers how both ancient narratives and contemporary immersive practices require people to engage with data/ physical space in a specific manner in order for stories to be realised. Furthermore, both bestow creative responsibility and the role of custodian on the user, through whose actions narrative is manifested. Immersive performance challenges assumptions about how information is generated, processed, and passed on, and the power structures involved in such exchanges. This research explores how non-traditional narrative practices can assist the debate about the future of storytelling.

The Australian Curriculum mandates that Arts will be taught as part of the Foundation to Year 10 program in schools. My background as a Theatre-in-Education performer and as a Drama teacher has informed an approach to doing research with children, which involves making up plays about local stories. Firstly, local folk are interviewed and their anecdotes are recorded as data. The children then analyse and interpret the data, as a group, with the help of their teacher. It is then synthesised into a written play script. I have found this Theatre as Research approach to be a wonderful tool for integrating the teaching of local history with the Arts. It also has potential to strengthen community bonds and enhance inter-generational communication. Once the play has been created, the storytellers are invited as audience members to see their lives played out on stage.<br />The paper will relate examples of how I have performed ethnographic Drama with various secondary and tertiary students to facilitate and present research. It will then offer a step by step approach for doing Theatre as Education.

Summary Bystander interventions play an important contribution to efforts to prevent violence against women and arts-based interventions have been effective as part of a range of health promotion programmes. You the Man is a theatre-based programme, which contributes to violence prevention efforts in community settings. Requiring a single actor and minimal props, the programme consists of a 30–35 min play about intimate partner violence and sexual assault followed by a moderated post-performance panel discussion including staff from local support agencies. Although it has received positive feedback in a range of settings, the only previously published evaluation involved establishing short and long-term impacts on American high school students. This article examines the short-term impacts from attending You the Man events on a different audience, i.e. Australian adults. Anonymous online surveys conducted prior and 4 weeks after events were completed by 41 participants of whom 29 were female and 12 were male, three-quarters of whom were aged between 18 and 49, and who attended events at university campuses (46.3%), in workplaces (34.1%), at sporting clubs (12.2%) and community centres (7.3%). At follow up, participants regarded the severity of abusive and coercive behaviours as being higher than at baseline, their capacity to intervene as a bystander had increased, as had the number of sources of support they would recommend to someone experiencing gender-based violence. Hence, theatre-based programmes can positively affect attitudes in relation to gender-based violence, increase bystander knowledge about safe ways to intervene and positively affect intended bystander intervention.

IntroductionMusicians and critics regard Australian jazz as vibrant and creative (Shand; Chessher; Rechniewski). From its tentative beginnings in the early twentieth century (Whiteoak), jazz has become a major aspect of Australia’s music and performance. Due to the large distances separating cities and towns, its development has been influenced by geographical isolation (Nikolsky; Chessher; Clare; Johnson; Stevens; McGuiness). While major cities have been the central hubs, it is increasingly acknowledged that regional centres also provide avenues for jazz performance (Curtis).This article discusses findings relating to transient musical populations shaped by geographical conditions, venue issues that are peculiar to the Northern region, and finally the challenges of cultural and parochial mindsets that North Queensland jazz musicians encounter in performance.Cairns and MackayCairns and Mackay are regional centres on the coast of Queensland, Australia. Cairns – population 156,901 in 2016 (ABS) – is a world famous tourist destination situated on the doorstep of the Great Barrier Reef (Thorp). Mackay – population 114,969 in 2016 (ABS) – is a lesser-known community with an economy largely underpinned by the sugar cane and coal mining industries (Rolfe et al. 138). Both communities lie North of the capital city Brisbane – Mackay in the heart of Central Queensland, and Cairns as the unofficial capital of Far North Queensland. Mackay and Cairns were selected for this study, not on representational grounds, but because they provide an opportunity to learn through case studies. Stake notes that “potential for learning is a different and sometimes superior criterion to representativeness,” adding, “that may mean taking the one most accessible or the one we can spend the most time with (451).”Musically, both regional centres have a number of venues that promote live music, however, only Cairns has a dedicated jazz club, the Cairns Jazz Club (CJC). Each has a community convention centre that brings high-calibre touring musicians to the region, including jazz musicians.Mackay is home to the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music (CQCM) a part of the Central Queensland University that has offered conservatoire-style degree programs in jazz, contemporary music and theatre for over twenty-five years. Cairns does not have any providers of tertiary jazz qualifications.MethodologySemi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with twenty-two significant individuals associated with the jazz communities in Mackay and Cairns over a twelve-month period from 2015 to 2016. Twelve of the interviewees were living in Cairns at the time, and ten were living in Mackay. The selection of interviewees was influenced by personal knowledge of key individuals, historical records located at the CQCM, and from a study by (Mitchell), who identified important figures in the Cairns jazz scene. The study participants included members of professional jazz ensembles, dedicated jazz audience members and jazz educators. None of the participants who were interviewed relied solely on the performance of jazz as their main occupation. All of the musicians combined teaching duties with music-making in several genres including rock, jazz, Latin and funk, as well as work in the recording and producing of recorded music. Combining the performance of jazz and commercial musical styles is a common and often crucial part of being a musician in a regional centre due to the low demand for any one specific genre (Luckman et al. 630). The interview data that was gathered during the study’s data collection phase was analysed for themes using the grounded theory research method (Charmaz). The following sections will discuss three areas of findings relating to some of the unique North Queensland influences that have impacted the development and sustainability of the two regional jazz communities.Transient Musical PopulationsThe prospect of living in North Queensland is an alluring proposition for many people. According to the participants in this study, the combination of work and a tropical lifestyle attracts people from all over the country to Cairns and Mackay, but this influx is matched by a high population turnover. Many musicians who move into the region soon move away again. High population turnover is a characteristic of several Northern regional centres such as the city of Darwin (Luckman, Gibson and Lea 12). The high growth and high population turnover in Cairns, in particular, was one of the highest in the country between 2006 and 2011 (ABS). The study participants in both regions believed that the transient nature of the local population is detrimental to the development and sustainability of the jazz communities. One participant described the situation in Cairns this way: “The tropics sort of lure them up there, tease them with all of the beauty and nature, and then spit them out when they realise it’s not what they imagined (interviewee 1, 24 Aug. 2016).” Looking more broadly to other coastal regional areas of Australia, there is evidence of the counter-urban flow of professionals and artists seeking out a region’s “natural and cultural environment” (Gibson 339). On the far North coast of New South Wales, Gibson examined how the climate, natural surroundings and cultural charms attracted city dwellers to that region (337). Similarly, most of the participants in this study mentioned lifestyle choices such as raising a family and living in the tropics as reasons to move to Cairns or Mackay. The prospect of working in the tourism and hospitality industry was found to be another common reason for musicians to move to Cairns in particular. In contrast to some studies (Salazar; Conradson and Latham) where it was found that the middle- to upper-classes formed the majority of lifestyle migrants, the migrating musicians identified by this study were mostly low-income earners seeking a combination of music work and other types of employment outside the music industry. There have been studies that have explored and critically reviewed the theoretical frameworks behind lifestyle migration (Benson and Osbaldiston) including the examination of issues and the motivation to ‘lifestyle migrate’. What is interesting in this current study is the focus of discussion on the post-migration effects. Study participants believe that most of the musicians who move into their region leave soon afterwards because of their disillusionment with the local music industry. Despite the lure of musical jobs through the tourism and hospitality industry, local musicians in Cairns tend to believe there is less work than imagined. Pub rock duos and DJs have taken most of the performance opportunities, which makes it hard for new musicians to compete.The study also reveals that Cairns jazz musicians consider it more difficult to find and collaborate with quality newcomers. This may be attributed to the smaller jazz communities’ demand for players of specific instruments. One participant explained, “There’s another bass player that just moved here, but he only plays by ear, so when people want to play charts and new songs, he can’t do it so it's hard finding the right guys up here at times (interviewee 2, 23 Aug. 2016).” Cairns and Mackay participants agreed that the difficulty of finding and retaining quality musicians in the region impacted on the ability of certain groups to be sustainable. One participant added, “It’s such a small pool of musicians, at the moment, I've got a new project ready to go and I've got two percussionists, but I need a bass player, but there is no bass player that I'm willing to work with (interviewee 3, 24 Aug. 2016).” The same participant has been fortunate over the years, performing with a different local group whose members have permanently stayed in the Cairns region, however, forging new musical pathways and new groups seemed challenging due to the lack of musical skills in some of the potential musicians.In Mackay, the study revealed a smaller influx of new musicians to the region, and study participants experienced the same difficulties forming groups and retaining members as their Cairns counterparts. One participant, who found it difficult to run a Big Band as well as a smaller jazz ensemble because of the transient population, claimed that many local musicians were lured to metropolitan centres for university or work.Study participants in both Northern centres appeared to have developed a tolerance and adaptability for their regional challenges. While this article does not aim to suggest a solution to the issues they described, one interesting finding that emerged in both Cairns and Mackay was the musicians’ ability to minimise some of the effects of the transient population. Some musicians found that it was more manageable to sustain a band by forming smaller groups such as duos, trios and quartets. An example was observed in Mackay, where one participant’s Big Band was a standard seventeen-piece group. The loss of players was a constant source of anxiety for the performers. Changing to a smaller ensemble produced a sense of sustainability that satisfied the group. In Cairns, one participant found that if the core musicians in the group (bass, drums and vocals) were permanent local residents, they could manage to use musicians passing through the region, which had minimal impact on the running of the group. For example, the Latin band will have different horn players sit in from time to time. When those performers leave, the impact on the group is minimal because the rhythm section is comprised of long-term Cairns residents.Venue Conditions Heat UpAt the Cape York Hotel in Cairns, musicians and audience members claimed that it was uncomfortable to perform or attend Sunday afternoon jazz gigs during the Cairns summer due to the high temperatures and non air-conditioned venues. This impact of the physical environment on the service process in a venue was first modelled and coined the ‘Servicescape’ by Bitner (57). The framework, which includes physical dimensions like temperature, noise, space/function and signage, has also been further investigated in other literature (Minor et al.; Kubacki; Turley and Fugate). This model is relevant to this study because it clearly affects the musician’s ability to perform music in the Northern climate and attract audiences. One of the regular musicians at the Cape York Hotel commented: So you’re thinking, ‘Well, I’m starting to create something here, people are starting to show up’, but then you see it just dwindling away and then you get two or three weeks of hideously hot weather, and then like last Sunday, by the time I went on in the first set, my shirt was sticking to me like tissue paper… I set up a gig, a three-hour gig with my trio, and if it’s air conditioned you’re likely to get people but if it’s like the Cape York, which is not air conditioned, and you’re out in the beer garden with a tin roof over the top with big fans, it’s hideous‘. (Interviewee 4, 24 Aug. 2016)The availability of venues that offer live jazz is limited in both regions. The issue was twofold: firstly, the limited availability of a larger venue to cater for the ensembles was deemed problematic; and secondly, the venue manager needed to pay for the services of the club, which contributed to its running costs. In Cairns, the Cape York Hotel has provided the local CJC with an outdoor beer garden as a venue for their regular Sunday performances since 2015. The president of the CJC commented on the struggle for the club to find a suitable venue for their musicians and patrons. The club has had residencies in multiple venues over the last thirty years with varying success. It appears that the club has had to endure these conditions in order to provide their musicians and audiences an outlet for jazz performance. This dedication to their art form and sense of resilience appears to be a regular theme for these Northern jazz musicians.Minor et al. (7) recommended that live music organisers needed to consider offering different physical environments for different events (7). For example, a venue that caters for a swing band might include a dance floor for potential dancers or if a venue catered for a sit down jazz show, the venue might like to choose the best acoustic environment to best support the sound of the ensemble. The research showed that customers have different reasons for attending events, and in relation to the Cape York Hotel, the majority of the customers were the CJC members who simply wanted to enjoy their jazz club performances in an air conditioned environment with optimal acoustics as the priority. Although not ideal, the majority of the CJC members still attended during the summer months and endured the high temperatures due to a lack of venue suitability.Parochial MindsetsOne of the challenging issues faced by many of the participants in both regions was the perceived cultural divide between jazz aficionados and general patrons at many venues. While larger centres in Australia have enjoyed an international reputation as creative hubs for jazz such as Melbourne and Sydney (Shand), the majority of participants in this study believed that a significant portion of the general public is quite parochial in their views on various musical styles including jazz. Coined the ‘bogan factor’, one participant explained, “I call it the bogan factor. Do you think that's an academic term? It is now” (interviewee 5, 17 Feb. 2016). They also commented on dominant cultural choices of residents in these regions: “It's North Queensland, it's a sport orientated, 4WD dominated place. Culturally they are the main things that people are attracted to” (interviewee 5, 17 Feb. 2016). These cultural preferences appear to affect the performance opportunities for the participants in Cairns and Mackay.Waitt and Gibson explored how the Wollongong region was chosen as an area for investigation to see if city size mattered for creativity and creativity-led regeneration (1224). With the ‘Creative Class’ framework in mind (Florida), the researchers found that Wollongong’s primarily blue-collar industrial identity was a complex mixture of cultural pursuits including the arts, sport and working class ideals (Waitt and Gibson 1241). This finding is consistent with the comments of study participants from Cairns and Mackay who believed that the identities of their regions were strongly influenced by sport and industries like mining and farming. One Mackay participant added, “I think our culture, in itself, would need to change to turn more people to jazz. I can’t see that happening. That’s Australia. You’re fighting against 200 years of sport” (interviewee 6, 12 Feb. 2016). Performing in Mackay or Cairns in venues that attract various demographics can make it difficult for musicians playing jazz. A Cairns participant added, “As Ingrid James once told me, ‘It's North Queensland, you’ve got an audience of tradesman, they don't get it’. It's silly to think it's going to ever change” (interviewee 7, 26 Aug. 2016). One Mackay participant believed that the lack of appreciation for jazz in regional areas was largely due to a lack of exposure to the art form. Most people grow up listening to other styles of music in their households.Another participant made the point that regardless of the region’s cultural and leisure-time preferences, if a jazz band is playing in a football club, you must expect it to be unpopular. Many of the research participants emphasised that playing in a suitable venue is paramount for developing a consistent and attentive audience. Choosing a venue that values and promotes the style of jazz music that the musicians are performing could help to attract more jazz fans and therefore build a sustainable jazz community.Refreshingly, this study revealed that musicians in both regions showed considerable resilience in dealing with the issue of parochial mindsets, and they have implemented methods to help educate their audiences. The audience plays a significant part in the development and future of a jazz community (Becker; Martin). For the Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music in Mackay, part of the ethos of the institution is to provide music performance and educational opportunities to the region. One of the lecturers who made a significant contribution to the design of the ensemble program had a clear vision to combine jazz and popular music styles in order to connect with a regional audience. He explained, “The popular music strand of the jazz program and what we called the commercial ensembles was very much birthed out of that concept of creating a connection with the community and making us more accessible in the shortest amount of time, which then enabled us to expose people to jazz” (interviewee 8, 20 Mar. 2016).In a similar vein, several Cairns musicians commented on how they engaged with their audiences through education. Some musicians attempted to converse with the patrons on the comparative elements of jazz and non-jazz styles, which helped to instil some appreciation in patrons with little jazz knowledge. One participant cited that although not all patrons were interested in an education at a pub, some became regular attendees and showed greater appreciation for the different jazz styles. These findings align with other studies (Radbourne and Arthurs; Kubacki; Kubacki et al.), who found that audiences tend to return to arts organizations or events more regularly if they feel connected to the experience (Kubacki et al. 409).ConclusionThe Cairns and Mackay jazz musicians who were interviewed in this study revealed some innovative approaches for sustaining their art form in North Queensland. The participants discussed creative solutions for minimising the influence of a transient musician population as well as overcoming some of the parochial mindsets in the community through education. The North Queensland summer months proved to be a struggle for musicians and audience members alike in Cairns in particular, but resilience and commitment to the music and the social network of jazz performers seemed to override this obstacle. Although this article presents just a subset of the findings from a study of the development and sustainability of the jazz communities in Mackay and Cairns, it opens the way for further investigation into the unique issues faced. Deeper understanding of these issues could contribute to the ongoing development and sustainability of jazz communities in regional Australia.ReferencesAustralian Bureau of Statistics. "Mackay (Statistical Area 2), Cairns (R) (Statistical Local Area), Census 2016." Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.———. "Perspectives on Regional Australia: Population Growth and Turnover in Local Government Areas (Lgas), 2006-2011." Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics.Becker, H. Art Worlds. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1982.Benson, Michaela, and Nick Osbaldiston. "Toward a Critical Sociology of Lifestyle Migration: Reconceptualizing Migration and the Search for a Better Way of Life." The Sociological Review 64.3 (2016): 407-23.Bitner, Mary Jo. "Servicescapes: The Impact of Physical Surroundings on Customers and Employees." The Journal of Marketing (1992): 57-71. Charmaz, K. Constructing Grounded Theory. 2nd ed. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage, 2014. Chessher, A. "Australian Jazz Musician-Educators: An Exploration of Experts' Approaches to Teaching Jazz." Sydney: University of Sydney, 2009. Clare, J. Bodgie Dada and the Cult of Cool: Jazz in Australia since the 1940s. Sydney: University of New South Wales Press, 1995. Conradson, David, and Alan Latham. "Transnational Urbanism: Attending to Everyday Practices and Mobilities." Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 31.2 (2005): 227-33. Curtis, Rebecca Anne. "Australia's Capital of Jazz? The (Re)creation of Place, Music and Community at the Wangaratta Jazz Festival." Australian Geographer 41.1 (2010): 101-16. Florida, Richard. The Rise of the Creative Class: And How It’s Transforming Work, Leisure, Community and Everyday Life. Melbourne, Victoria: Pluto Press Australia, 2003. Gibson, Chris. "Migration, Music and Social Relations on the NSW Far North Coast." Transformations 2 (2002): 1-15. ———. "Rural Transformation and Cultural Industries: Popular Music on the New South Wales Far North Coast." Australian Geographical Studies 40.3 (2002): 337-56. Johnson, Bruce. The Inaudible Music: Jazz, Gender and Australian Modernity. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency Press, 2000. Kubacki, Krzysztof. "Jazz Musicians: Creating Service Experience in Live Performance." International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 20.4 (2008): 401- 13. ———, et al. "Comparing Nightclub Customers’ Preferences in Existing and Emerging Markets." International Journal of Hospitality Management 26.4 (2007): 957-73. Luckman, S., et al. "Life in a Northern (Australian) Town: Darwin's Mercurial Music Scene." Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies 22.5 (2008): 623-37. ———, Chris Gibson, and Tess Lea. "Mosquitoes in the Mix: How Transferable Is Creative City Thinking?" Singapore Journal of Tropical Geography 30.1 (2009): 70-85. Martin, Peter J. "The Jazz Community as an Art World: A Sociological Perspective." Jazz Research Journal 2.1 (2005): 5-13. McGuiness, Lucian. "A Case for Ethnographic Enquiry in Australian Jazz." Sydney: University of Sydney, 2010.Minor, Michael S., et al. "Rock On! An Elementary Model of Customer Satisfaction with Musical Performances." Journal of Services Marketing 18.1 (2004): 7-18. Mitchell, A. "Jazz on the Far North Queensland Resort Circuit: A Musician's Perspective." Proceedings of the History & Future of Jazz in the Asia-Pacific Region. Eds. P. Hayward and G. Hodges. Vol. 1. Hamilton Island, Australia: Central Queensland Conservatorium of Music, 2004. Nikolsky, T. "The Development of the Australian Jazz Real Book." Melbourne: RMIT University, 2012. Radbourne, Jennifer, and Andy Arthurs. "Adapting Musicology for Commercial Outcomes." 9th International Conference on Arts and Cultural Management (AIMAC 2007), 2007.Rechniewski, Peter. The Permanent Underground: Australian Contemporary Jazz in the New Millennium. Platform Papers 16. Redfern, NSW: Currency House, 2008. Rolfe, John, et al. "Lessons from the Social and Economic Impacts of the Mining Boom in the Bowen Basin 2004-2006." Australasian Journal of Regional Studies 13.2 (2007): 134-53. Salazar, Noel B. "Migrating Imaginaries of a Better Life … until Paradise Finds You." Understanding Lifestyle Migration. Springer, 2014. 119-38. Shand, J. Jazz: The Australian Accent. Sydney: UNSW Press, 2009.Stake, Robert E. "Qualitative Case Studies." The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research. Eds. Norman K. Denzin and Yvonna S. Lincoln. 3rd ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage, 2005. 443-66. Stevens, Timothy. "The Red Onion Jazz Band at the 1963 Australian Jazz Convention." Musicology Australia 24.1 (2001): 35-61. Thorp, Justine. 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Sticky, messy and nauseatingly saccharine, the sensory properties of jam may be a long way from the stylized corporate polish of Australia’s multi-billion dollar film exhibition industry, yet the history of Australian cinema space will be forever indebted to the Victoria Preserving Company; one-time producer of the humblest of sweet treats. Through an analysis of Melbourne’s Jam Factory cinema complex, this article explores the unusual intersection of jam, sensory gratification and contemporary Australian cinema-going at the dawn of the 21st century. Encompassing the historic architecture of the former Victoria Preserving Company, South Yarra’s Jam Factory complex provides a gentrified gloss to an inner suburban precinct historically renowned for the manufacturing of jam and preserves. Nestled in the heart of Chapel Street, less than two blocks down from Toorak road and a stone’s throw from the nightclub precinct of Commercial road, the Jam Factory occupies an important part of Melbourne’s cultural heritage; functioning as a quintessential signifier of the city’s traversal from wholesale manufacturing during the early 1900s into the service vectors of digital media technologies and mixed-use retail entertainment destinations at the start of the new millennium. Established in 1876, the Victoria Preserving Company, AKA the ‘Jam Factory’, hosts an array of diverse retail and leisure outlets. Included amongst its tenants are Borders Books, Villa & Hut, TGI Fridays, The Pancake Parlour, a Virgin Music Mega-store, an elaborate Village Cinema megaplex, and a range of ancillary restaurants, fashion stores and cafes. According to the venue’s promotional material, “The Jam Factory of today is, in short, ‘jam packed’ with entertainment” (Chapel St Precinct, n.pag.). With the original building’s façade and cooling store still intact, the architectural remnants of the Victoria Preserving Factory provide a culturally significant backdrop for what is ostensibly Australia’s most noteworthy cinema venture; Village Roadshow’s megaplex cinema flagship. Replete with fifteen large format screens, including two Gold Class cinemas, a Cinema Europa enclave and an interactive games alcove, The Village Jam Factory signifies Australia’s first foray into cinema-based retail entertainment destinations. In commenting on the opening of the Jam Factory megaplex in 1998, Village Roadshow’s general manager Mr. David Herman said, “The objective was to create Australia’s first non-gambling cinema and lifestyle complex” (Catalano 6). More than any other cinema venue, the Village Jam Factory played a key role in pushing Australian film exhibition standards into the new millennium. In an era marked by competing home theatre technologies and diversified sites of media consumption, the Jam Factory’s shift from suburban cinema to lifestyle complex dramatically altered both the business and social practice of movie-going in Australia. Central to this shift was a tripartite marketing strategy which sought to capitalize on: protracted movie-going experiences; sensory stimulation; and, venue promotion. Experiential Jam The promotion of a protracted movie-going experience has been essential to the continued success of the Village Jam Factory. As I have argued elsewhere, the Australian cinema industry of the mid 1990s faced a number of significant incentives for extending the movie going experience beyond the auditorium; not the least being the steady decline of box office takings that occurred during the late 1980s (Downing). In the face of new media technologies such as the internet, DVD and Pay TV, many cinema operators were forced to look beyond the box office as a primary source of profits. To this end Village Roadshow effectively used the Jam Factory as a testing ground for the generation of ancillary leisure and retail income streams. During the mid 1990s Village actively promoted the Jam Factory as a space in which audiences could not only see a film, but also engage in a series of expanded retail activities such as shopping, dining and video-game playing. Discussing the development of multi-use cinema venues during the 1990s, Charles Acland has commented that such spaces “…do not situate conditions of spectatorship alone; they also construct relations between public and cinematic practices” (Acland 119). Sensory Jam Far from being a traditional site of film consumption, the Jam Factory set an industry precedent by becoming the nation’s first cinema venue in which audiences were encouraged to engage in an entertainment experience that was, above all, aimed at stimulating the senses. In keeping with the ‘lifestyle destination’ mantra, the Village Jam Factory provided a new generation of Australians with a multi-sensory entertainment experience that could not be emulated by home theatre technologies. Wide sweeping foyers and elaborate ticket and merchandising counters greet the eye; ‘luxury’ stadium seating with wide aisles and broad armrests offer the ‘ultimate’ in tactile comfort; digital surround sound facilities pleasure the ears and a plethora of food and beverage novelties work to gratify the senses of taste and smell. More than any other Village cinema outlet, the Jam Factory venue smacks of sugar-coated commerce. With a revenue contribution of over 18%, the Village Roadshow candy bar is the undisputed cash-cow of the enterprise (Australian Film Commission 143). Colloquially known as ‘Lollywood’, the Village confectionary counter is an over-priced explosion of colour and candy that sustains industry revenue through a deliberate appeal to the audience’s sense of taste. This sugar dependency synchronistically mirrors the former success of Henry Jones, the entrepreneur behind Australia’s IXL jam brand, who operated his famous preserving company on the site between 1895 and 1926 (Chapel St Precinct, n.pag.). Venue Jam Village Roadshow’s promotion of the Jam Factory venue over the actual films being screened is indicative of Australia’s primary shift towards retail entertainment based cinema complexes. Unlike the homogenous multiplex venues of the 1970s and 1980s, the Village Jam Factory Complex has been aggressively marketed as a Melbourne icon, capable of offering a unique entertainment experience. This agenda is clearly documented in the 1999 Village Roadshow annual report which, pointing towards a perceived threat of home theatre technologies, proclaimed: [In] broadening the cinema going experience … [Village] aims to create an environment of quality entertainment theming and ancillary lifestyle retailing, thus providing a consistently high level of incentive for people to leave their homes for cinema anchored destinations. (Village Roadshow 19) To this end, the Jam Factory became the physical embodiment of Village Cinemas’ corporate tagline “Where Movies Live” (Village Cinemas, n.pag.). Throughout the late 1990s, a number of similar sites proliferated across Europe, the United States and Canada. Two noteworthy examples of this trend are the Manchester Times building in the UK (initially managed by a short lived Village-Warner synergy) and the Sony Centre at Potsdamer Platz, Berlin; previous home to the Third Reich and later, the Berlin Wall. In both of these examples a similar venue-promotion agenda is clearly at work. In reflecting the cultural specificities of their host cities, each of these venues pays a semiotic homage to the previous occupants of their space. The Manchester Times building, for example, retains much of its former architecture and reflects the nocturnal vibrancy of 19th century printing plant. Similarly, the Sony Centre offers an architectural reflection on the complexities of Berlin history and German cinema. In Melbourne, the Jam Factory’s history of jam and jam making are equally preserved. Drawing heavily on postmodern architectural styles, the Jam Factory’s interior uses South Yarra’s local history as a backdrop for a schizophrenic collage of seemingly incommensurate time/place references. From the distinctive red-brick cooling tower (located in the centre of the building) one encounters a hybrid fusion of Mediterranean pasta courts, European coffee lounges, Romanesque artwork and columns (complete with weathered-look paint and ‘crumbling’ tops), statues of Hollywood stars, as well as a dazzling gaming alcove and a series of subdued ‘luxury’ (Gold Class) cinemas. Such eclectic displays of visual hyperbole have been prefigured by Umberto Eco, whose discussion on hyperreality addresses an imagination which “… demands the real thing, and in order to attain it, must fabricate the absolute fake” (Eco 8). As a relatively recent contributor to Australian cinema history, the Village Jam Factory has achieved little sustained academic attention, yet its significance must not be undervalued. As Australia’s first cinema-oriented retail entertainment destination, the Village Jam Factory has been crucial in placing Australia into the global film exhibition arena. While the pungent aromas of ripened fruit, vinegar and boiling sugar have long since been replaced by the scent of popcorn and recycled air, the legacy and architecture of jam-making has played a key role in propelling Australian film exhibition into the new millennium. References Acland, Charles. Screen Traffic: Movies, Multiplexes and Global Culture. Durham: Duke UP, 2003. Australian Film Commission. Get the Picture. Sydney: Australian Film Commission, 2001. Catalano, Anthony. “Village to Extend Jam Factory to 14 Cinemas.” The Age 5 Aug. 1998. Chapel St Precinct. General History of Chapel Street & Surrounds. 2006. 30 Dec. 2006 http://www.chapelstreet.com.au/default.asp?mode=history>. Downing, Leanne. “More than Meets the Eye: The Suburban Cinema Megaplex as Sensory Heterotopia.” Refractory: Journal of Media and Culture 8 (2005). http://www.refractory.unimelb.edu.au/journalissues/vol8/downing.html>. Eco, Umberto. Travels in Hyper Reality. Orlando Florida: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1986. Village Cinemas. 2006. 30 Dec. 2006. http://www.villagecinemas.com.au/>. Village Roadshow. Annual Report. Melbourne: Village Roadshow, 1999. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Downing, Leanne. "Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium." M/C Journal 9.6 (2006). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/05-downing.php>. APA Style Downing, L. (Dec. 2006) "Sensory Jam: How the Victoria Preserving Company Pushed Australian Cinema Space into the New Millennium," M/C Journal, 9(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0612/05-downing.php>.

Since September 11, Muslims in Australia have experienced a heightened level of religiously and racially motivated vilification (Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission). These fears were poignantly expressed in a letter to the Editor of The West Australian newspaper from a Muslim woman shortly after the London terror attacks: All I want to say is that for those out there who might have kamikaze ideas of doing such an act here in Australia, please think of others (us) in your own community. The ones who will get hurt are your own, especially we the women who are an obvious target in the public and have to succumb to verbal abuse most of the time. Dealing with abuse and hatred from some due to 9/11 and Bali is not something I want to go through again. (21) The atmosfear of terror finds many expressions among the Muslim communities in Australia: the fear of backlash from some sectors of the wider community; the fear of subversion of Islamic identity in meeting the requirements of a politically defined “moderate” Islam; the fear of being identified as a potential terrorist or “person of interest” and the fear of potentially losing the rights bestowed on all other citizens. This fear or fears are grounded in the political and the media response to terrorism that perpetuates a popular belief that Muslims, as a culturally and religiously incompatible “other”, pose a threat to the Australian collective identity and, ostensibly, to Australia’s security. At the time of publication, for example, there was mob violence involving 5,000 young people converging on Sydney’s Cronulla beach draped in Australian flags singing Waltzing Matilda and Advance Australia Fair as well as chanting “kill the Lebs”, “no more Lebs” (Lebanese). The mob was itself brought together by a series of SMS messages, appealing to participants to “help support Leb and Wog bashing day” and to “show solidarity” against a government-identified “threat to Aussie identity” (The West Australian). Since September 11 and the ensuing war on terror, a new discourse of terrorism has emerged as a way of expressing how the world has changed and defining a state of constant alert (Altheide). “The war on terror” refers as much to a perpetual state of alertness as it does to a range of strategic operations, border control policies, internal security measures and public awareness campaigns such as “be alert, not alarmed”. According to a poll published in The Sydney Morning Herald in April 2004, 68 per cent of Australians believed that Australia was at threat of an imminent terrorist attack (Michaelsen). In a major survey in Australia immediately after the September 11 attacks Dunn & Mahtani found that more than any other cultural or ethnic group, Muslims and people from the Middle East were thought to be unable to fit into Australia. Two thirds of those surveyed believed that humanity could be sorted into natural categories of race, with the majority feeling that Australia was weakened by people of different ethnic origins. Fifty-four per cent of those surveyed, mainly women, said they would be concerned if a relative of theirs married a Muslim. The majority of the Muslim population, not surprisingly, has gone into a “siege mentality” (Hanna). The atmosfear of terror in the Western world is a product of the media and political construction of the West as perpetually at threat of a terrorist attack from a foreign, alien, politically defined “other”, where “insecurity…is the new normal” (Massumi 31). Framed in a rhetoric that portrays it as a battle for the Western values of democracy and freedom, the “war on terror” becomes not just an event in space and time but a metonym for a new world order, drawing on distinctions between “us” and “them” and “the West” and “others” (Osuri and Banerjee) and motivating collective identity based on a construction of “us” as victims and “them” as the objects of fear, concern and suspicion. The political response to the war on terror has inculcated an atmosfear of terror where Australian Muslims are identified as the objects of this fear. The fear of terrorism is being modulated through government and the popular media to perpetuate a state of anxiety that finds expression in the heightened levels of concern and suspicion over a perceived threat. In the case of the war on terror, this threat is typically denoted as radical Islam and, by inference, Australian Muslims. In his exposition of political fear, Corey Robin notes that a central element of political fear is that it is often not read as such – rendering it alien to analysis, critical debate and understanding. Nowhere is this more salient than in the rhetoric on the war on terror characterised by the familiar invocation of terms like democracy and freedom to make distinctions between “the West and the rest” and to legitimise references to civilised and uncivilised worlds. In his speech delivered at the United Nations Security Council Ministerial Session on Terrorism on 20 January 2003, Colin Powell invoked the rhetoric of a clash of civilisations and urged, “we must rid the civilised world of this cancer … We must rise to the challenge with actions that will ride the globe of terrorism and create a world in which all God’s children can live without fear”. It is this construction of the war on terror as a global battle between “the West and the rest” that enables and facilitates the affective response to political fear – a reaffirmation of identity and membership of a collective. As Robin states: Understanding the objects of our fear as less than political allows us to treat them as intractable foes. Nothing can be done to accommodate them: they can only be killed or contained. Understanding the objects of our fear as not political also renews us as a collective. Afraid, we are like the audience in a crowded theatre confronting a man falsely shouting fire: united, not because we share similar beliefs of aspiration but because we are equally threatened. (6) This response has found expression in the perception of Muslims as an alien, culturally incompatible and utterly threatening other, creating a state of social tension where the public’s anxiety has been and continues to be directed at Australian Muslims who visibly represent the objects of the fear of terror. The Australian Government’s response to the war on terror exemplifies what Brian Massumi terms “affective modulation” whereby the human response to the fear of terror, that of a reinforcement and renewal of collective identity, has been modulated and transformed from an affective response to an affective state of anxiety – what the authors term the atmosfear of terror. Affect for Massumi can be inscribed in the flesh as “traces of experience” – an accumulation of affects. It is in this way that Massumi views affect as “autonomous” (Megan Watkins also makes this argument, and has further translated Massumi's notions into the idea of pedagogic affect/effect). In the Australian context, after more than four years of collected traces of experiences of images of threat, responses to terrorism have become almost reflexive – even automated. Affective modulation in the Australian context relies on the regenerative capacity of fear, in Massumi’s terms its “ontogenetic powers” (45) to create an ever-present threat and maintain fear as a way of life. The introduction of a range of counter-terrorism strategies, internal-security measures, legislative amendments and policies, often without public consultation and timed to coincide with “new” terror alerts is testimony to the affective machinations of the Australian government in its response to the war on terror. Virilio and Lotringer called “pure war” the psychological state that happens when people know that they live in a world where the potential for sudden and absolute destruction exists. It is not the capacity for destruction so much as the continual threat of sudden destruction that creates this psychology. Keith Spence has stated that in times of crisis the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalised. The counter-terrorism legislation introduced in response to the war on terror is, arguably, the most drastic anti-libertarian measures Australia has witnessed and constitutes a disproportionate response to Australia’s overall risk profile (Michaelsen). Some of these measures would once have seemed an unthinkable assault on civil liberties and unreasonably authoritarian. Yet in the war on terror, notes Jessica Stern, framed as a global war of good versus evil, policies and strategies that once seemed impossible suddenly become constructed as rationale, if not prudent. Since September 11, the Australian government has progressively introduced a range of counter-terrorism measures including over 30 legislative amendments and, more recently, increased powers for the police to detain persons of interest suspected of sedition. In the wake of the London bombings, the Prime Minister called a summit with Muslim representatives from around the nation. In the two hours that they met, the summit developed a Statement of Principles committing members of Muslim communities to combat radicalisation and pursue “moderate” Islam. As an affective machination, the summit presents as a useful political tool for modulating the existing anxieties in the Australian populace. The very need for a summit of this nature and for the development of a Statement of Principles (later endorsed by the Council of Australian Governments or COAG) sends a lucid message to the Australian public. Not only are Australian Muslims responsible for terrorism but they also have the capacity to prevent or minimise the threat of an attack in Australia. Already the focus of at least a decade of negative stereotyping in the popular Australia media (Brasted), Australian Muslims all too quickly and easily became agents in the Government’s affective tactics. The policy response to the war on terror has given little consideration to the social implications of sustaining a fear of terrorism, placing much emphasis on security- focused counter-terrorism measures rather than education and dialogue. What governments and communities need to address is the affective aspects of the atmosfear of terror. Policy makers can begin by becoming self-reflexive and developing an understanding of the real impact of fear and the affective modulation of this fear. Communities can start by developing an understanding of how policy induced fear is affecting them. To begin this process of reflection, governments and communities need to recognise fear of terrorism as a political tool. Psychological explanations for fear or trauma are important, especially if we are to plan policy responses to them. However, if we are to fight against policy-induced fear, we need to better understand and recognise affective modulation as a process that is not reducible to individual psychology. Viewed from the perspective of affect, the atmosfear of terror reveals an attempt to modulate public anxiety and sustain a sense of Australia as perpetually at threat from a culturally incompatible and irreconcilable “other”. References Altheide, David. L. “Consuming Terrorism.” Symbolic Interaction 27.3 (2004): 289–308. Brasted, Howard, V. “Contested Representations in Historical Perspective: Images of Islam and the Australian Press 1950-2000”. In A. Saeed & S. Akbarzadeh, Muslim Communities in Australia. Sydney: U of NSW P, 2001. Dunn, K.M., and M. Mahtani. “Media Representations of Ethnic Minorities.” Progress in Planning 55.3 (2001): 63–72. Dunn, K.M. “The Cultural Geographies of Citizenship in Australia.” Geography Bulletin 33.1 (2001): 4–8. “Genesis of Cronulla’s Ugly Sunday Began Years Ago.” The West Australian 2005: 11. Green, Lelia. “Did the World Really Change on 9/11?” Australian Journal of Communication 29.2 (2002): 1–14. Hanna, D. 2003. “Siege Mentality: Current Australian Response.” Salam July-Aug. (2003): 12–4. Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission. Ismaa – Listen: National Consultations on Eliminating Prejudice against Arab and Muslim Australians. Sydney: Human Rights and Equal Opportunity Commission, 2004. Kerbaj, Richard. “Clerics Still Preaching Hatred of West.” The Australian 3 Nov. 2005. Kinnvall, Catarina. “Globalization and Religious Nationalism: Self, Identity, and the Search for Ontological Security.” Political Psychology 25.5 (2004): 741. “Letters to the Editor.” The West Australian 25 July 2005: 21. Massumi, Brian. “Fear (The Spectrum Said).” Positions 13.1 (2005): 31–48. Massumi, Brian. “The Autonomy of Affect.” In P. Patton, ed., Deleuze: A Critical Reader. Cambridge, Mass.: Blackwell, 1996. “Meeting with Islamic Community Leaders, Statement of Principles.” 23 Aug. 2005. http://www.pm.gov.au/news/media_releases/media_Release1524.html> Michaelsen, Christopher. “Antiterrorism Legislation in Australia: A Proportionate Response to the Terrorist Threat?” Studies in Conflict and Terrorism 28.4 (2005): 321–40. Osuri, Goldie, and Subhabrata Bobby Banerjee. “White Diasporas: Media Representations of September 11 and the Unbearable Whiteness of Being in Australia.” Social Semiotics 14.2 (2004): 151–71. Powell, Colin. “Ridding the World of Global Terrorism: No Countries or Citizens are Safe.” Vital Speeches of the Day 69.8 (2003): 230–3. Robin, Corey. Fear: The History of a Political Idea. New York: Oxford UP, 2004. Spence, Keith. “World Risk Society and War against Terror.” Political Studies 53.2 (2005): 284–304. Stern, Jessica. “Fearing Evil.” Social Research 71.4 (2004): 1111–7. “Terrorism Chronology.” Parliament of Australia Parliamentary Library. http://www.aph.gov.au/library/intguide/law/terrorism.htm> Tomkins, Silvan. Affect, Imagery and Consciousness. New York: Springer Publishing, 1962. Virilio, Paul, and Sylvere Lotringer. Pure War. New York: Semio-text(e), 1997. Watkins, Megan. “Pedagogic Affect/Effect: Teaching Writing in the Primary Years of School.” Presented at Redesigning Pedagogy: Research, Policy, Practice Conference. Singapore: National Institute of Education, 31 May 2005. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Aly, Anne, and Mark Balnaves. "The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror." M/C Journal 8.6 (2005). echo date('d M. Y'); ?> <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php>. APA Style Aly, A., and M. Balnaves. (Dec. 2005) "The Atmosfear of Terror: Affective Modulation and the War on Terror," M/C Journal, 8(6). Retrieved echo date('d M. Y'); ?> from <http://journal.media-culture.org.au/0512/04-alybalnaves.php>.

Should ethical standards be enforced on performers or their critics? Asking such a question may stimulate memories of personal or professional censorship and fearful imaginings of oppressive, fascist regimes. Indeed, many of us might immediately respond by arguing that personal expression should never be inhibited since a person's right to free expression is an essential tenet of a democratic society. Yet this question raises issues that are not easily dismissed and it may remind us that it is equally important to remember that a number of responsibilities and repercussions can accompany the public expression of personal experiences and opinions. A short time ago, I was told that this journal had to grapple with similar considerations when a performer decided to pursue legal action after reading a critical account of his/her performance in M/C Reviews. When I was first asked to comment on this situation, I initially found myself considering familiar arguments that defend the right to free speech. However, upon reflection, I think there is more to be said about the long term causes and effects of such an action and I wish to explore how this incident illustrates the friction that can be generated when traditional and emergent value systems are adopted indiscriminately. To me, the dispute between the performer and M/C illustrates what seems to be a growing confusion surrounding interpretations of what is right (what is legal or permissible?), what is true (whose opinion?), and what is good (the performance or an audience's response?). Although definitions of what is right, true, and good have always had to negotiate shifting boundaries, the increasingly blurry usages of these terms are reflecting a waxing disregard for how these distinctions impact upon our judgements. Jon McKenzie has offered some explanation of this new social attitude in his recently published text Perform or Else. Throughout this text, he argues that 'performance' is now widely recognised in commercial industries as a conceptual tool for assessing human and technological standards and that this concept is fast becoming the dominant social model of evaluation. According to McKenzie, traditional philosophical distinctions are becoming less influential, while performance 'effectiveness' and 'efficiency' are increasingly being viewed as the new measurements of what is right, true, and good (178-79). McKenzie's assessment of the social demand to perform echoes the comments of other twentieth-century theorists who have warned us of the growing objectification and alienation of human labour. However, his message is timely and provocative and it offers some explanation of the confusion surrounding critical appraisals of performances and performer's experiences. There is certainly evidence of a growing demand for efficient and effective appraisal of all human performance as individuals, companies, and governments produce reports, conduct market research, and continue to try and predict what results will be produced before any investment of personal or financial energy is committed. Yet as our society continues to develop a dependency on critical opinion, it unfortunately seems to be distancing audiences and performers, devaluing personal interpretations, and encouraging fewer exchanges between groups with varying values. Such distinctive separations can, in turn, isolate social groups and identities and invite exclusivity and intolerance for other evaluations. This kind of alienation seems to have governed the dispute between the performer and the critic from M/C. Although these trends may have made it socially 'permissible' to pursue legal action against critics, performers, or anyone else who expresses negative or unpalatable opinions, I think it is essential that we continue to ask whether is it right, or good to do so. Is it right or good to penalise someone for expressing a personal opinion? Is it right or good to object to an evaluation when someone offers a performance for appraisal? These are, of course, ethical questions that can only be hinted at here. However, I believe it is important to remember that live performing art forms can physically bring together varying social demographics and that they are therefore in a unique position to provide conceptual bridges between social groups with differing opinions. I wish to emphasise this fact and to ask readers to consider whether they wish opinions to become more and more polarised, or whether they wish to finds ways to enable us to appreciate and evaluate the diverse interpretations of performances more harmoniously. It is true that the 'objective' certainties associated with the basic principles of aesthetic appreciation are sagging under the weight of arguments from critical theory and postmodernism. It may also be true that the only certainty that will soon enjoy popular appeal may be one that suggests that pragmatic considerations should govern what we view as right, true, and good. All of these developments introduce challenges that need to be addressed. However, I do not believe they exclude the possibility that a shared theoretical perspective can be developed that can allow us to build bridges of understanding between varying opinions and social demands. Philosophers and social theorists such as Michael Stocker, Alessandro Ferrara, and Linda Zagzebski all agree that the development of such a perspective is possible. They have also suggested that finding this shared view may require us to embrace a more malleable and less certain way of knowing what is good about our opinions. Instead, they encourage individuals to reinvestigate ancient views of 'wisdom' and 'understanding' and to review personal emotional responses to what we believe is true and good. I believe such advice is valuable and that arguments like these offer theoretical tools for those involved in the criticism and practice of the performing arts still wanting to find bridges between disparate views. While 'critical' reviews can often alienate performers from those who are evaluating their performance, if we are to initiate understanding and tolerance, and celebrate and value difference, the beliefs and emotional responses that accompany and drive each of our opinions do require further reflection, articulation, and discussion. Some theatre critics already appear to recognise how important emotional responses are to the expression and reworking of personal and traditional beliefs. For example, some have suggested that a theatre performance can "make you stop breathing" (Christofis) or be "breathtaking" (McCallum) or "poignant and powerful" (Lambert). Other critics have suggested that performances contain "images of emotional power" (Kelly) with which an "audience can empathise, [and] sympathise" because the subject is close to their hearts" (Hinde). As these kinds of responses clearly embellish and entwine the experiences of performers and critics, perhaps we can eventually discover how powerful, passionate, and, sometimes, visceral experiences contribute benefits that can be objectively defined and defended. Alternatively, perhaps the inclusion of negative emotional responses in performances and critical reviews can provide some impetus for personal and professional development. Many might dismiss emotional responses as theoretical tools because individuals' emotional experiences reveal different qualities and/or intensities and seem to contain no shared causal indicator that can be objectively defined and graded. Yet if these kinds of experiences are really so subjective, so capricious and diverse, why do some theatre reviewers continue to describe and record them? If such reactions are peculiar to each individual and there is no guarantee that they can be replicated in other individuals, personal views of emotional and physical responses would only be viewed as useless, superfluous information. However, it seems that critics sharing their experiences are suggesting that something in the performance is powerful enough to evoke similar emotions in others. Furthermore, they seem to be indicating that these experiences are important and worth pursuing. So, instead of viewing powerful emotional responses as completely subjective, perhaps it is more accurate and fruitful to recognise how they signal the presence of beliefs and values that are formed inter-subjectively. A purely subjective appraisal of a performance would require a subject that is capable of receiving, processing and evaluating impressions in social isolation. A number of influential theorists like Bourdieu, Foucault, and Eagleton have argued that such a view is misleading since 'individuals' are developed from class and power relations and subjects cannot extricate themselves from social discourses of some kind. As a result of adopting perspectives like these, it is plausible to suggest that audiences may value or dismiss the ideas and experiences of the person recommending the performance as well as ideas about the performance itself. Furthermore, a person's experiences or ideas may seem to relate to our own, or be regarded as more valuable or significant than our own, and this may affect the way we assess any descriptions provided by others. Since emotional responses experienced by others can sometimes influence our own affective states, it seems theatres, critics, and performers that establish public social identities do need to become aware of how these experiences are stimulated. Some theatre scholars have suggested that analyses of the emotive element of audience reception must record and defend emotional responses according to an objective set of logical criteria that can be judged relevant by experts (Martin and Sauter 34; de Toro 120). However, the logical criteria that many performance scholars suggest should determine such evaluations are often purely empirical and I would suggest that the study of emotions and feelings must also incorporate the often forgotten epistemic values of personal understanding and wisdom. If these approaches are explored and integrated, I believe critics and performers may be reconciled through the recognition that personal opinions can change and that our responses should be discussed and defended rather than feared, attacked, or penalised. References Bourdieu, Pierre. Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste. Trans. Richard Nice. London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1986. Christofis, Lee. "Colour Amid Darkest Drama." Rev. of The Funniest Man in the World, by Daniel Keene. Keene/Taylor Theatre Project, Grant Street Theatre, Melbourne. The Australian. May 2000: F18 de Toro, Fernando. Theatre Semiotics: Text and Staging in Modern Theatre. Trans. John Lewis. Ed. Carole Hubbard. Toronto: U of Toronto P, 1995. Eagleton, Terry. The Ideology of the Aesthetic. Oxford: Blackwell, 1990. Ferrara, Alessandro. Reflective Authenticity: Rethinking the Project of Modernity. London: Routledge, 1998. Foucault, Michel. "What is an Author?" Aesthetics: The Big Questions. Ed. Carolyn Korsmeyer. Oxford: Blackwell, 1998. 270-87. Hinde, Suellen. "Play Oh So True." Rev. of Choking in the Comfort Zone, by Stephen Carleton. Darwin Theatre Company, Brown's Mart, Darwin. Northern Territory News 15 Sep. 2000: W26. Kelly, Veronica. "Pretty, But as Deep as a Shallow Puddle." Rev. of The Skin of Our Teeth, by Thornton Wilder. Queensland Theatre Company, Optus Playhouse, Brisbane. The Australian 21 Feb. 2000: F18. Lambert, Catherine. "Revival of a Classic." Rev. of Death of a Salesman, by Arthur Miller, Melbourne Theatre Company, Fairfax Theatre, Melbourne. Sunday Herald Sun, 23 July 2000: LH87. Martin, Jacqueline, and Willmar Sauter. Understanding Theatre. Stockholm: Almqvist and Wiksell International, 1995. McCallum, John. "Don't Keep it Quiet." Rev. of Hollow Ground, by Nick Parsons. The NIDA Company, Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney. The Australian 27 Mar. 2000: F15. McKenzie, Jon. Perform or Else: From Discipline to Performance. London: Routledge, 2001. Stocker, Michael. Valuing Emotions. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Zagzebski, Linda Trinkaus. Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and Ethical Foundations of Knowledge. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 1996. Citation reference for this article MLA Style Kehoul, Gillian. "Performing Feeling Without Fear" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.1 (2002). [your date of access] < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/perform.php>. Chicago Style Kehoul, Gillian, "Performing Feeling Without Fear" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5, no. 1 (2002), < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/perform.php> ([your date of access]). APA Style Kehoul, Gillian. (2002) Performing Feeling Without Fear. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5(1). < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0203/perform.php> ([your date of access]).

A backyard sprinkler ... flower-headed fools jumping through a mist of crystal drops ... the constant buzz of giggling beneath a familiar tune, sung with pavlova-coated breath. Sound like an Australian childhood memory? Perhaps, but not quite. This was the final scene in the recent Belvoir St production of As You Like It, and was quite possibly the most enjoyable moment of theatrical magic I have experienced in a long time. Apart from being suitably impressed by the set -- a stage carpeted with real grass and fallen leaves, a working sprinkler and a brilliant midnight-blue tarpaulin sky filled with golden stars -- the cross-cultural consummation of desire between Rosalind (Deborah Mailman) and Orlando (Aaron Blabey), as they leapt through the sprinkler arm in arm, would surely have warmed even the hardest heart of a One Nation supporter. Yet perhaps it's all just wishful thinking, you know "dream on white boy, dream on black girl" as the INXS tune goes ... except that theatre companies around the country appear to be determined to make this dream a reality. On the stage at least. The following discussion is inspired by a current trend in contemporary Australian theatre of pro-active racial casting, and will focus specifically on two performances. The term 'desire' is in itself terribly slippery and the following banter positions the term in two quite different contexts. Firstly I look at desire in terms of a post-colonial concept of 'desire for the other' and how erotic desire in the performance text can problematise some tenets of post-colonial theory. Secondly, I look at the political desires of theatre companies who engage in this pro-diversity casting practise. Finally, I see these various desires intersecting with a larger community desire for reconciliation. In the space of one month on the east-coast of Australia there have been three productions by major theatre companies of Shakespearean texts in which indigenous actors have constituted at least half the cast: Romeo and Juliet produced by La Boîte and Kooemba Jdarra in Brisbane; As You Like It produced by Company B Belvoir; and Romeo and Juliet in Black and White produced by the Bell Shakespeare Company. My critical probe was left twitching by the observation of this shared element, spanning three different companies and in such a short period of time; I began to muse at what was fuelling this wonderful trend. I started to wonder about the implications of having 'racially marked' actors performing texts which have erotic desire as their central theme. The temptation to draw on the cultural currency of Benetton iconography, of black and white lips meeting in the perfect display of reciprocal desire is impossible to resist. Yet as Ebony and Ivory-esque as these productions may appear, one needs to consider whether this trend perpetuates an infatuation with a cultural 'other', thus maintaining the much touted, and arguably damaging, fetishistic approach to difference. Or alternatively, does this trend signal a genuine desire, a practical attempt at racial reconciliation? The following will discuss two of the three performances: Romeo and Juliet (La Boîte/Kooemba Jdarra) and As You Like It. Desire for the 'Cultural Other' or simply a yearning between lovers? A great deal of post-colonial theory refers to an intense desire for a cultural 'other'. Robert Young goes so far as to say that being "sick with desire for the other" is a condition which actually defines 'Englishness' (2). It would seem that in both As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet, being sick with desire for another is a core activity for the major characters. Does this mean, then, that casting the desiring couple with one black actor and one white actor in fact fits the model suggested by Young? Perhaps. Yet there is something different in the desires between Rosalind and Orlando and Romeo and Juliet. The condition Young outlines assumes a one-sided desire where the look at the other is through a one-way mirror. However, desire between these couples in question (Romeo/Juliet, Rosalind/Orlando) is evenly matched, the glass is most certainly two-way. Romeo is as infatuated with Juliet and she is with him, Rosalind is as mad about Orlando as he is about her. In fact for both plays to reach their climax it is absolutely crucial that desire between these couples does strike an equilibrium. For Rosalind and Orlando their equally overwhelming desires unite them forever in marriage; for Romeo and Juliet, their reciprocally insatiable desires leave them united forever in death. For both plot-lines to reach fruition, it is imperative that each side of the couple is as 'sick with desire' as their lover is. Certainly, a white Romeo spies on a black Juliet, but his gaze is ultimately returned. A white Orlando is lost in the eyes of a black Rosalind, but her eyes are wide open, similarly glazed with desire. The idea of being sick with desire for a cultural 'other' would thus seem to be made redundant by the mutual mirroring of desire in these cross-cultural performances. To be sick with desire for a cultural other also infers an even balance of 'other' and 'non-other'. Productions of Shakespearean plays often analysed in a post-colonial context like The Tempest or Othello, in which individual characters are set as 'other' against a "notional singularity" (Young 4), would certainly sustain an unequal balance of 'different' and 'normal'. Again though, there is something different about these two productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. As opposed to setting a single 'other' against many, both of these productions set up an indigenous family. I would suggest that by casting entire families with indigenous actors in these shows, the identity-forming structure suggested by Young is irrevocably confused; the 'notional singularity' is made redundant by the presence of more than one actor of colour on the stage. As opposed to setting a single 'other' as an object of desire to be fetishised by a majority of 'non-other', both of these productions cast almost equal numbers of indigenous and non-indigenous actors. Political desires: to be seen or not to be seen, that is the question. Having noted some of the theoretical and performative implications of desire in these two productions, I will turn now to the question of political desires and the desire for racial reconciliation. How does the political desire of a theatre company who might cast a show in this way intersect with desire in the text itself? In her introduction to Erotic Politics, Susan Zimmerman asks, "what is the relationship between politics and desire [?]" (1). The most important part of her response for my purposes here is that "the inter-subjective realm of desire connects to the public, political domain" (1). As noted above, the theatre performance itself embodies this connection through its very public display of a character's personal desires. However, the public display of the theatre company's political desire in these productions is also worth discussion. La Boîte/Kooemba Jdarra and Company B Belvoir differ in their public articulation of the politics behind the casting decision. In a statement which reinforces the desire to create a symbiotic link between politics and text, La Boîte director Sue Rider says, "as they [the Montagues and Capulets] reach towards the first tentative expression of true reconciliation, we know this is not the end. It is just the beginning" (Rider, Romeo and Juliet Programme). In keeping with the collaborative effort between the two companies, it is noteworthy also that the Chair of Kooemba Jdarra, Glenis Charlton, offers on the same page of the programme a brief statement including that "our hope is that the themes of prejudice, misunderstanding and the need for reconciliation within the play strike a resonant chord with today's audience". The desire of both companies to publicly announce their political aims was part and parcel of the production, a mirror for reconciliation in the text itself. In contrast to the publicly clear political desires of La Boîte and Kooemba Jdarra, Neil Armfield makes no reference whatsoever to race or reconciliation in his "Director's Note". However, the impact of such casting, regardless of whether it is publicly articulated by the company, does not pass by unobserved. In his review for The Australian of As You Like It, John McCallum notes that "the father, the exiled Duke, is played by another Aboriginal actor, Bob Maza, which gives the play's theme of reconciliation a contemporary focus. There is a multiplication of sexual as well as racial complications" (12). Indeed extra-textual discussions, those conversations which take place in newspaper reviews, in the foyer at intermission, over inner-city coffee tables, in kitchens, offices and on share-house verandahs are critical sites of cultural negotiation. That McCallum makes public the political implications of such casting in relation to the text is significant. Although the political desire of Company B Belvoir may have been made consciously ambiguous, the desire by the public to interpret the casting decision in relation to current political climates is inevitable. As is the disclaimer for most discussions which merely touch on a subject of much greater magnitude, this brief essay has overlooked a number of crucial elements which demand further investigation. Of special importance is how gender might impact upon desire in this context; both Rosalind and Juliet are played by indigenous actors (although the situation is reversed in the Bell Shakespeare Company's Romeo and Juliet in Black and White). Also, the question of funding bodies and their desire to fund projects which address race-based issues should necessarily be considered in any discussion which conjoins political and textual desires. Instead I will finish by reminding the reader of the visual beauty of a mixed cast, of the image of a distinguished Aboriginal Bob Maza jumping the backyard sprinkler, of how our desires for racial reconciliation can be realised in a moment of theatrical magic. Productions such as those discussed here are progressive and instrumental elements in the journey towards reconciliation. Furthermore, the conversations these plays provoke about race in Australia are absolutely essential in counteracting the racist sentiments appearing all too often in our national and local public arena. Performances As You Like It. By William Shakespeare. Performed at Belvoir St Theatre, Sydney. Produced by Company B Belvoir. Featuring Deborah Mailman, Aaron Blabey, Jacek Koman and Bob Maza. Romeo and Juliet. By William Shakespeare. Performed at La Boîte Theatre, Brisbane. Produced by La Boîte and Kooemba Jdarra. Featuring Maria Tusa, Christopher Morris, Roxanne McDonald and Damien Garvey. McCallum, John. Rev. of As You Like It, by William Shakespeare. Company B Belvoir. Belvoir Street Theatre, Sydney. The Australian 8 May 1999: 12. Rider, Sue. "Director's Note." Romeo and Juliet Programme. Brisbane: La Boite Theatre, 1999. Young, Robert J.C. Colonial Desire: Hybridity in Theory, Culture and Race. London: Routledge, 1995. Zimmerman, Susan, ed. Introduction. Erotic Politics: Desire on the Renaissance Stage. New York: Routledge, 1992. 1-11. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Melissa Western. "Can't We Talk It Over in Bed?: Desiring Reconciliation in Recent Australian Theatre Productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/theatre.php>. Chicago style: Melissa Western, "Can't We Talk It Over in Bed?: Desiring Reconciliation in Recent Australian Theatre Productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/theatre.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Melissa Western. (1999) Can't we talk it over in bed?: desiring reconciliation in recent Australian theatre productions of As You Like It and Romeo and Juliet. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/theatre.php> ([your date of access]).

IntroductionIn March 2015, I visited the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (established 1967) in the “cherry capital of Australia”, the town of Young, New South Wales, in preparation for a student excursion. Like other Australian folk museums, this museum focuses on the ordinary and the everyday of rural life, and is heavily reliant on local history, local historians, volunteers, and donated objects for the collection. It may not sound as though the Lambing Flat Folk Museum (LFFM) holds much potential for a fashion curator, as fashion exhibitions have become high points of innovation in exhibition design. It is quite a jolt to return to old style folk museums, when travelling shows such as Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty (Metropolitan Museum of Art 2011 – V&A Museum 2015) or The Fashion World of Jean Paul Gaultier (V&A Museum 2011­ – NGV 2014) are popping up around the globe. The contrast stimulated this author to think on the role and the power of curators. This paper will show that the potential for fashion as a vehicle for demonstrating ideas other than through rubrics of design or history has been growing. We all wear dress. We express identity, politics, status, age, gender, social values, and mental state through the way we dress each and every day. These key issues are also explored in many museum exhibitions.Small museums often have an abundance of clothing. For them, it is a case of not only managing and caring for growing collections but also curating objects in a way that communicates regional and often national identity, as well as narrating stories in meaningful ways to audiences. This paper argues that the way in which dress is curated can greatly enhance temporary and permanent exhibitions. Fashion curation is on the rise (Riegels Melchior). This paper looks at why this is so, the potential for this specialisation in curation, the research required, and the sensitivity needed in communicating ideas in exhibitions. It also suggests how fashion curation skills may facilitate an increasing demand.Caring for the AudienceThe paper draws on a case study of how Chinese people at the LFFM are portrayed. The Chinese came to the Young district during the 1860s gold rush. While many people often think the Chinese were sojourners (Rolls), that is, they found gold and returned to China, many actually settled in regional Australia (McGowan; Couchman; Frost). At Young there were riots against the Chinese miners, and this narrative is illustrated at the museum.In examining the LFFM, this paper points to the importance of caring for the audience as well as objects, knowing and acknowledging the current and potential audiences. Caring for how the objects are received and perceived is vital to the work of curators. At this museum, the stereotypic portrayal of Chinese people, through a “coolie” hat, a fan, and two dolls dressed in costume, reminds us of the increased professionalisation of the museum sector in the last 20 years. It also reminds us of the need for good communication through both the objects and texts. Audiences have become more sophisticated, and their expectations have increased. Displays and accompanying texts that do not reflect in depth research, knowledge, and sensitivities can result in viewers losing interest quickly. Not long into my visit I began thinking of the potential reaction by the Chinese graduate students. In a tripartite model called the “museum experience”, Falk and Dierking argue that the social context, personal context, and physical context affect the visitor’s experience (5). The social context of who we visit with influences enjoyment. Placing myself in the students’ shoes sharpened reactions to some of the displays. Curators need to be mindful of a wide range of audiences. The excursion was to be not so much a history learning activity, but a way for students to develop a personal interest in museology and to learn the role museums can play in society in general, as well as in small communities. In this case the personal context was also a professional context. What message would they get?Communication in MuseumsStudies by Falk et al. indicate that museum visitors only view an exhibition for 30 minutes before “museum fatigue” sets in (249–257). The physicality of being in a museum can affect the museum experience. Hence, many institutions responded to these studies by placing the key information and objects in the introductory areas of an exhibition, before the visitor gets bored. As Stephen Bitgood argues, this can become self-fulfilling, as the reaction by the exhibition designers can then be to place all the most interesting material early in the path of the audience, leaving the remainder as mundane displays (196). Bitgood argues there is no museum fatigue. He suggests that there are other things at play which curators need to heed, such as giving visitors choice and opportunities for interaction, and avoiding overloading the audience with information and designing poorly laid-out exhibitions that have no breaks or resting points. All these factors contribute to viewers becoming both mentally and physically tired. Rather than placing the onus on the visitor, he contends there are controllable factors the museum can attend to. One of his recommendations is to be provocative in communication. Stimulating exhibitions are more likely to engage the visitor, minimising boredom and tiredness (197). Xerxes Mazda recommends treating an exhibition like a good story, with a beginning, a dark moment, a climax, and an ending. The LFFM certainly has those elements, but they are not translated into curation that gives a compelling narration that holds the visitors’ attention. Object labels give only rudimentary information, such as: “Wooden Horse collar/very rare/donated by Mr Allan Gordon.” Without accompanying context and engaging language, many visitors could find it difficult to relate to, and actively reflect on, the social narrative that the museum’s objects could reflect.Text plays an important role in museums, particularly this museum. Communication skills of the label writers are vital to enhancing the museum visit. Louise Ravelli, in writing on museum texts, states that “communication needs to be more explicit and more reflexive—to bring implicit assumptions to the surface” (3). This is particularly so for the LFFM. Posing questions and using an active voice can provoke the viewer. The power of text can be seen in one particular museum object. In the first gallery is a banner that contains blatant racist text. Bringing racism to the surface through reflexive labelling can be powerful. So for this museum communication needs to be sensitive and informative, as well as pragmatic. It is not just a case of being reminded that Australia has a long history of racism towards non-Anglo Saxon migrants. A sensitive approach in label-writing could ask visitors to reflect on Australia’s long and continued history of racism and relate it to the contemporary migration debate, thereby connecting the present day to dark historical events. A question such as, “How does Australia deal with racism towards migrants today?” brings issues to the surface. Or, more provocatively, “How would I deal with such racism?” takes the issue to a personal level, rather than using language to distance the issue of racism to a national issue. Museums are more than repositories of objects. Even a small underfunded museum can have great impact on the viewer through the language they use to make meaning of their display. The Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner at the LFFMThe “destination” object of the museum in Young is the Lambing Flat Roll-up Banner. Those with a keen interest in Australian history and politics come to view this large sheet of canvas that elicits part of the narrative of the Lambing Flat Riots, which are claimed to be germane to the White Australia Policy (one of the very first pieces of legislation after the Federation of Australia was The Immigration Restriction Act 1901).On 30 June 1861 a violent anti-Chinese riot occurred on the goldfields of Lambing Flat (now known as Young). It was the culmination of eight months of growing conflict between European and Chinese miners. Between 1,500 and 2,000 Europeans lived and worked in these goldfields, with little government authority overseeing the mining regulations. Earlier, in November 1860, a group of disgruntled European miners marched behind a German brass band, chasing off 500 Chinese from the field and destroying their tents. Tensions rose and fell until the following June, when the large banner was painted and paraded to gather up supporters: “…two of their leaders carrying in advance a magnificent flag, on which was written in gold letters – NO CHINESE! ROLL UP! ROLL UP! ...” (qtd. in Coates 40). Terrified, over 1,270 Chinese took refuge 20 kilometres away on James Roberts’s property, “Currawong”. The National Museum of Australia commissioned an animation of the event, The Harvest of Endurance. It may seem obvious, but the animators indicated the difference between the Chinese and the Europeans through dress, regardless that the Chinese wore western dress on the goldfields once the clothing they brought with them wore out (McGregor and McGregor 32). Nonetheless, Chinese expressions of masculinity differed. Their pigtails, their shoes, and their hats were used as shorthand in cartoons of the day to express the anxiety felt by many European settlers. A more active demonstration was reported in The Argus: “ … one man … returned with eight pigtails attached to a flag, glorifying in the work that had been done” (6). We can only imagine this trophy and the de-masculinisation it caused.The 1,200 x 1,200 mm banner now lays flat in a purpose-built display unit. Viewers can see that it was not a hastily constructed work. The careful drafting of original pencil marks can be seen around the circus styled font: red and blue, with the now yellow shadowing. The banner was tied with red and green ribbon of which small remnants remain attached.The McCarthy family had held the banner for 100 years, from the riots until it was loaned to the Royal Australian Historical Society in November 1961. It was given to the LFFM when it opened six years later. The banner is given key positioning in the museum, indicating its importance to the community and its place in the region’s memory. Just whose memory is narrated becomes apparent in the displays. The voice of the Chinese is missing.Memory and Museums Museums are interested in memory. When visitors come to museums, the work they do is to claim, discover, and sometimes rekindle memory (Smith; Crane; Williams)—-and even to reshape memory (Davidson). Fashion constantly plays with memory: styles, themes, textiles, and colours are repeated and recycled. “Cutting and pasting” presents a new context from one season to the next. What better avenue to arouse memory in museums than fashion curation? This paper argues that fashion exhibitions fit within the museum as a “theatre of memory”, where social memory, commemoration, heritage, myth, fantasy, and desire are played out (Samuels). In the past, institutions and fashion curators often had to construct academic frameworks of “history” or “design” in order to legitimise fashion exhibitions as a serious pursuit. Exhibitions such as Fashion and Politics (New York 2009), Fashion India: Spectacular Capitalism (Oslo 2014) and Fashion as Social Energy (Milan 2015) show that fashion can explore deeper social concerns and political issues.The Rise of Fashion CuratorsThe fashion curator is a relative newcomer. What would become the modern fashion curator made inroads into museums through ethnographic and anthropological collections early in the 20th century. Fashion as “history” soon followed into history and social museums. Until the 1990s, the fashion curator in a museum was seen as, and closely associated with, the fashion historian or craft curator. It could be said that James Laver (1899–1975) or Stella Mary Newton (1901–2001) were the earliest modern fashion curators in museums. They were also fashion historians. However, the role of fashion curator as we now know it came into its own right in the 1970s. Nadia Buick asserts that the first fashion exhibition, Fashion: An Anthology by Cecil Beaton, was held at the Victoria and Albert Museum, curated by the famous fashion photographer Cecil Beaton. He was not a museum employee, a trained curator, or even a historian (15). The museum did not even collect contemporary fashion—it was a new idea put forward by Beaton. He amassed hundreds of pieces of fashion items from his friends of elite society to complement his work.Radical changes in museums since the 1970s have been driven by social change, new expectations and new technologies. Political and economic pressures have forced museum professionals to shift their attention from their collections towards their visitors. There has been not only a growing number of diverse museums but also a wider range of exhibitions, fashion exhibitions included. However, as museums and the exhibitions they mount have become more socially inclusive, this has been somewhat slow to filter through to the fashion exhibitions. I assert that the shift in fashion exhibitions came as an outcome of new writing on fashion as a social and political entity through Jennifer Craik’s The Face of Fashion. This book has had an influence, beyond academic fashion theorists, on the way in which fashion exhibitions are curated. Since 1997, Judith Clark has curated landmark exhibitions, such as Malign Muses: When Fashion Turns Back (Antwerp 2004), which examine the idea of what fashion is rather than documenting fashion’s historical evolution. Dress is recognised as a vehicle for complex issues. It is even used to communicate a city’s cultural capital and its metropolitan modernity as “fashion capitals” (Breward and Gilbert). Hence the reluctant but growing willingness for dress to be used in museums to critically interrogate, beyond the celebratory designer retrospectives. Fashion CurationFashion curators need to be “brilliant scavengers” (Peoples). Curators such as Clark pick over what others consider as remains—the neglected, the dissonant—bringing to the fore what is forgotten, where items retrieved from all kinds of spheres are used to fashion exhibitions that reflect the complex mix of the tangible and intangible that is present in fashion. Allowing the brilliant scavengers to pick over the flotsam and jetsam of everyday life can make for exciting exhibitions. Clothing of the everyday can be used to narrate complex stories. We only need think of the black layette worn by Baby Azaria Chamberlain—or the shoe left on the tarmac at Darwin Airport, having fallen off the foot of Mrs Petrov, wife of the Russian diplomat, as she was forced onto a plane. The ordinary remnants of the Chinese miners do not appear to have been kept. Often, objects can be transformed by subsequent significant events.Museums can be sites of transformation for its audiences. Since the late 1980s, through the concept of the New Museum (Vergo), fashion as an exhibition theme has been used to draw in wider museum audiences and to increase visitor numbers. The clothing of Vivienne Westwood, (34 Years in Fashion 2005, NGA) Kylie Minogue (Kylie: An Exhibition 2004­–2005, Powerhouse Museum), or Princess Grace (Princess Grace: Style Icon 2012, Bendigo Art Gallery) drew in the crowds, quantifying the relevance of museums to funding bodies. As Marie Riegels Melchior notes, fashion is fashionable in museums. What is interesting is that the New Museum’s refrain of social inclusion (Sandell) has yet to be wholly embraced by art museums. There is tension between the fashion and museum worlds: a “collision of the fashion and art worlds” (Batersby). Exhibitions of elite designer clothing worn by celebrities have been seen as very commercial operations, tainting the intellectual and academic reputations of cultural institutions. What does fashion curation have to do with the banner mentioned previously? It would be miraculous for authentic clothing worn by Chinese miners to surface now. In revising the history of Lambing Flat, fashion curators need to employ methodologies of absence. As Clynk and Peoples have shown, by examining archives, newspaper advertisements, merchants’ account books, and other material that incidentally describes the business of clothing, absence can become present. While the later technology of photography often shows “Sunday best” fashions, it also illustrates the ordinary and everyday dress of Chinese men carrying out business transactions (MacGowan; Couchman). The images of these men bring to mind the question: were these the children of men, or indeed the men themselves, who had their pigtails violently cut off years earlier? The banner was also used to show that there are quite detailed accounts of events from local and national newspapers of the day. These are accessible online. Accounts of the Chinese experience may have been written up in Chinese newspapers of the day. Access to these would be limited, if they still exist. Historian Karen Schamberger reminds us of the truism: “history is written by the victors” in her observations of a re-enactment of the riots at the Lambing Flat Festival in 2014. The Chinese actors did not have speaking parts. She notes: The brutal actions of the European miners were not explained which made it easier for audience members to distance themselves from [the Chinese] and be comforted by the actions of a ‘white hero’ James Roberts who… sheltered the Chinese miners at the end of the re-enactment. (9)Elsewhere, just out of town at the Chinese Tribute Garden (created in 1996), there is evidence of presence. Plaques indicating donors to the garden carry names such as Judy Chan, Mrs King Chou, and Mr and Mrs King Lam. The musically illustrious five siblings of the Wong family, who live near Young, were photographed in the Discover Central NSW tourist newspaper in 2015 as a drawcard for the Lambing Flat Festival. There is “endurance”, as the title of NMA animation scroll highlights. Conclusion Absence can be turned around to indicate presence. The “presence of absence” (Meyer and Woodthorpe) can be a powerful tool. Seeing is the pre-eminent sense used in museums, and objects are given priority; there are ways of representing evidence and narratives, and describing relationships, other than fashion presence. This is why I argue that dress has an important role to play in museums. Dress is so specific to time and location. It marks specific occasions, particularly at times of social transitions: christening gowns, bar mitzvah shawls, graduation gowns, wedding dresses, funerary shrouds. Dress can also demonstrate the physicality of a specific body: in the extreme, jeans show the physicality of presence when the body is removed. The fashion displays in the museum tell part of the region’s history, but the distraction of the poor display of the dressed mannequins in the LFFM gets in the way of a “good story”.While rioting against the Chinese miners may cause shame and embarrassment, in Australia we need to accept that this was not an isolated event. More formal, less violent, and regulated mechanisms of entry to Australia were put in place, and continue to this day. It may be that a fashion curator, a brilliant scavenger, may unpick the prey for viewers, placing and spacing objects and the visitor, designing in a way to enchant or horrify the audience, and keeping interest alive throughout the exhibition, allowing spaces for thinking and memories. Drawing in those who have not been the audience, working on the absence through participatory modes of activities, can be powerful for a community. Fashion curators—working with the body, stimulating ethical and conscious behaviours, and constructing dialogues—can undoubtedly act as a vehicle for dynamism, for both the museum and its audiences. 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IntroductionBallarat’s Theatre Royal was the first permanent theatre built in inland Australia. Upon opening in 1858, it was acclaimed as having “the handsomest theatrical exterior in the colony” (Star, “Editorial” 7 Dec. 1889) and later acknowledged as “the grandest playhouse in all Australia” (Spielvogel, Papers Vol. 1 160). Born of Gold Rush optimism, the Royal was loved by many, yet the over-arching story of its ill-fated existence has failed to surface, in any coherent fashion, in official history. This article takes some first steps toward retrieving lost knowledge from fragmented archival records, and piecing together the story of why this purpose-built theatre ceased operation within a twenty-year period. A short history of the venue will be provided, to develop context. It will be argued that while a combination of factors, most of which were symptomatic of unfortunate timing, destroyed the longevity of the Royal, the principal problem was one of stigmatisation. This was an era in which the societal pressure to visibly conform to conservative values was intense and competition in the pursuit of profits was fierce.The cultural silence that befell the story of the Royal, after its demise, is explicable in relation to history being written by the victors and a loss of spokespeople since that time. As theatre arts historiographer McConachie (131) highlights, “Theatres, like places for worship and spectator sports, hold memories of the past in addition to providing a practical and cognitive framework for performance events in the present.” When that place, “a bounded area denoted by human agency and memory” (131), is lost in time, so too may be the socio-cultural lessons from the period, if not actively recalled and reconsidered. The purpose of this article is to present the beginning of an investigation into the disjointed narrative of Ballarat’s Theatre Royal. Its ultimate failure demonstrates how dominant community based entertainment became in Ballarat from the 1860s onwards, effectively crushing prospects for mid-range professional theatre. There is value in considering the evolution of the theatre’s lifespan and its possible legacy effects. The connection between historical consciousness and the performing arts culture of by-gone days offers potential to reveal specks of cross-relevance for regional Australian theatrical offerings today.In the BeginningThe proliferation of entertainment venues in Ballarat East during the 1850s was a consequence of the initial discovery of surface alluvial gold and the ongoing success of deep-lead mining activities in the immediate area. This attracted extraordinary numbers of people from all over the world who hoped to strike it rich. Given the tough nature of life on the early gold diggings, most disposable income was spent on evening entertainment. As a result, numerous venues sprang into operation to cater for demand. All were either canvas tents or makeshift wooden structures: vibrant in socio-cultural activity, however humble the presentation values. It is widely agreed (Withers, Bate and Brereton) that noteworthy improvements occurred from 1856 onwards in the artistry of the performers, audience tastes, the quality of theatrical structures and living standards in general. Residents began to make their exit from flood and fire prone Ballarat East, moving to Ballarat West. The Royal was the first substantial entertainment venture to be established in this new, affluent, government surveyed township area. Although the initial idea was to draw in some of the patronage which had flourished in Ballarat East, Brereton (14) believed “There can be no doubt that it was [primarily] intended to attract those with good taste and culture”. This article will contend that how society defined ‘good taste’ turned out to be problematic for the Royal.The tumultuous mid-1850s have attracted extensive academic and popular attention, primarily because they were colourful and politically significant times. The period thereafter has attracted little scholarly interest, unless tied to the history of surviving organisations. Four significant structures designed to incorporate theatrical entertainment were erected and opened in Ballarat from 1858 onwards: The Royal was swiftly followed by the Mechanics Institute 1859, Alfred Hall 1867 and Academy of Music 1874-75. As philosopher Albert Borgmann (41) highlighted, the erection of “magnificent settings in which the public could gather and enjoy itself” was the dominant urban aspiration for cultural consumption in the nineteenth century. Men of influence in Victorian cities believed strongly in progress and grand investments as a conscious demonstration of power, combined with Puritan vales, teetotalism and aggressive self-assertiveness (Briggs 287-88). At the ceremonial laying of the foundation stone for the Royal on 20 January 1858, eminent tragedian, Gustavos Brooke, announced “… may there be raised a superstructure perfect in all its parts, and honourable to the builder.” He proclaimed the memorial bottle to be “a lasting memento of the greatness of Ballarat in erecting such a theatre” and philosophised that “the stage not only refines the manners, but it is the best teacher of morals, for it is the truest and most intelligible picture of life. It stamps the image of virtue on the mind …” (Star, “Laying” 21 Jan. 1858). These initial aspirations seem somewhat ambitious when viewed with the benefit of hindsight. Ballarat’s Theatre Royal opened in December 1858, ironically with Jerrold’s comedy ‘Time Works Wonders’. The large auditorium holding around 1500 people “was crowded to overflowing and was considered altogether brilliant in its newness and beauty” by all in attendance (Star, “Local and General” 30 Dec. 1858). Generous descriptions abound of how splendid it was, in architectural terms, but also in relation to scenery, decorations and all appointments. Underneath the theatre were two shops, four bars, elegant dining rooms, a kitchen and 24 bedrooms. A large saloon was planned to be attached soon-after. The overall cost of the build was estimated at a substantial 10,000 pounds.The First Act: 1858-1864In the early years, the Royal was deemed a success. The pleasure-seeking public of Ballarat came en masse and the glory days seemed like they might continue unabated. By the early 1860s, Ballarat was known as a great theatrical centre for performing arts, its population was famous both nationally and internationally for an appreciation of good acting, and the Royal was considered the home of the best dramatic art in Ballarat (Withers 260). Like other theatres of the 1850s diggings, it had its own resident company of actors, musicians, scenic artists and backstage crew. Numerous acclaimed performers came to visit and these were prosperous and happy times for the Royal’s lively theatrical community. As early as 1859, however, there was evident rivalry between the Royal and the Mechanics Institute, as suggested on numerous occasions in the Ballarat Star. As a multi-purpose venue for education and the betterment of the working classes, the latter venue had the distinct advantage of holding the moral high ground. Over time this competition increased as audiences decreased. As people shifted to family-focussed entertainments, these absorbed their time and attention. The transformation of a transient population into a township of families ultimately suffocated prospects for professional entertainment in Ballarat. Consumer interest turned to the growth of strong amateur societies with the establishment of the Welsh Eisteddfod 1863; Harmonic Society 1864; Bell Ringers’ Club 1866 and Glee and Madrigal Union 1867 (Brereton 38). By 1863, the Royal was reported to have “scanty patronage” and Proprietor Symonds was in financial trouble (Star, “News and Notes” 15 Sep. 1864). It was announced that the theatre would open for the last time on Saturday, 29 October 1864 (Australasian). On that same date, the Royal was purchased by Rowlands & Lewis, the cordial makers. They promptly on-sold it to the Ballarat Temperance League, who soon discovered that there was a contract in place with Bouchier, the previous owner, who still held the hotel next door, stating that “all proprietors … were bound to keep it open as a theatre” (Withers 260-61). Having invested immense energy into the quest to purchase it, the Temperance League backed out of the deal. Prominent Hotelier Walter Craig bought it for less than 3,000 pounds. It is possible that this stymied effort to quell the distribution of liquor in the heart of the city evoked the ire of the Protestant community, who were on a dedicated mission “to attack widespread drunkenness, profligacy, licentiousness and agnosticism,” and forming an interdenominational Bible and Tract Society in 1866 (Bate 176). This caused a segment of the population to consider the Royal a ‘lost cause’ and steer clear of it, advising ‘respectable’ families to do the same, and so the stigma grew. Social solidarity of this type had significant impact in an era in which people openly demonstrated their morality by way of unified public actions.The Second Act: 1865-1868The Royal closed for renovations until May 1865. Of the various alterations made to the interior and its fittings, the most telling was the effort to separate the ladies from the ‘town women’, presumably to reassure ‘respectable’ female patrons. To this end, a ladies’ retiring room was added, in a position convenient to the dress circle. The architectural rejuvenation of the Royal was cited as an illustration of great progress in Sturt Street (Ballarat Star, “News and Notes” 27 May 1865). Soon after, the Royal hosted the Italian Opera Company.However, by 1866 there was speculation that the Royal may be converted into a dry goods store. References to what sort of impression the failing of theatre would convey to the “old folks at home” in relation to “progress in civilisation'' and "social habits" indicated the distress of loyal theatre-goers. Impassioned pleas were written to the press to help preserve the “Temple of Thespus” for the legitimate use for which it was intended (Ballarat Star, “Messenger” and “Letters to the Editor” 30 Aug. 1866). By late 1867, a third venue materialised. The Alfred Hall was built for the reception of Ballarat’s first Royal visitor, the Duke of Edinburgh. On the night prior to the grand day at the Alfred, following a private dinner at Craig’s Hotel, Prince Alfred was led by an escorted torchlight procession to a gala performance at Craig’s very own Theatre Royal. The Prince’s arrival caused a sensation that completely disrupted the show (Spielvogel, Papers Vol. 1 165). While visiting Ballarat, the Prince laid the stone for the new Temperance Hall (Bate 159). This would not have been required had the League secured the Royal for their use three years earlier.Thereafter, the Royal was unable to reach the heights of what Brereton (15) calls the “Golden Age of Ballarat Theatre” from 1855 to 1865. Notably, the Mechanics Institute also experienced financial constraints during the 1860s and these challenges were magnified during the 1870s (Hazelwood 89). The late sixties saw the Royal reduced to the ‘ordinary’ in terms of the calibre of productions (Brereton 15). Having done his best to improve the physical attributes and prestige of the venue, Craig may have realised he was up against a growing stigma and considerable competition. He sold the Royal to R.S. Mitchell for 5,500 pounds in 1868.Another New Owner: 1869-1873For the Saturday performance of Richard III in 1869, under the new Proprietor, it was reported that “From pit to gallery every seat was full” and for many it was standing room only (Ballarat Star, “Theatre Royal” 1 Feb. 1869). Later that year, Othello attracted people with “a critical appreciation of histrionic matters” (Ballarat Star, “News and Notes” 19 July 1869). The situation appeared briefly promising. Unfortunately, larger economic factors were soon at play. During 1869, Ballarat went ‘mad’ with mine share gambling. In 1870 the economic bubble burst, and hundreds of people in Ballarat were financially ruined. Over the next ten years the population fell from 60,000 to less than 40,000 (Spielvogel, Papers Vol. 3 39). The last surviving theatre in Ballarat East, the much-loved Charles Napier, put on its final show in September 1869 (Brereton 15). By 1870 the Royal was referred to as a “second-class theatre” and was said to be such bad repute that “it would be most difficult to draw respectable classes” (Ballarat Star, “News and Notes” 17 Jan. 1870). It seems the remaining theatre patrons from the East swung over to support the Royal, which wasn’t necessarily in the best interests of its reputation. During this same period, family-oriented crowds of “the pleasure-seeking public of Ballarat” were attending events at the newly fashionable Alfred Hall (Ballarat Courier, “Theatre Royal” June 1870). There were occasional high points still to come for the Royal. In 1872, opera drew a crowded house “even to the last night of the season” which according to the press, “gave proof, if proof were wanting, that the people of Ballarat not only appreciate, but are willing to patronise to the full any high-class entertainment” (Ballarat Courier, “Theatre Royal” 26 Aug. 1872). The difficulty, however, lay in the deterioration of the Royal’s reputation. It had developed negative connotations among local temperance and morality movements, along with their extensive family, friendship and business networks. Regarding collective consumption, sociologist John Urry wrote “for those engaged in the collective tourist gaze … congregation is paramount” (140). Applying this socio-cultural principle to the behaviour of Victorian theatre-going audiences of the 1870s, it was compelling for audiences to move with the masses and support popular events at the fresh Alfred Hall rather than the fading Royal. Large crowds jostling for elbow room was perceived as the hallmark of a successful event back then, as is most often the case now.The Third Act: 1874-1878An additional complication faced by the Royal was the long-term effect of the application of straw across the ceiling. Acoustics were initially poor, and straw was intended to rectify the problem. This caused the venue to develop a reputation for being stuffy and led to the further indignity of the Royal suffering an infestation of fleas (Jenkins 22); a misfortune which caused some to label it “The Royal Bug House” (Reid 117). Considering how much food was thrown at the stage in this era, it is not surprising that rotten debris attracted insects. In 1873, the Royal closed for another round of renovations. The interior was redesigned, and the front demolished and rebuilt. This was primarily to create retail store frontage to supplement income (Reid 117). It was reported that the best theatrical frontage in Australasia was lost, and in its place was “a modestly handsome elevation” for which all play-goers of Ballarat should be thankful, as the miracle required of the rebuild was that of “exorcising the foul smells from the old theatre and making it bright and pretty and sweet” (Ballarat Star, “News and Notes” 26 Jan. 1874). The effort at rejuvenation seemed effective for a period. A “large and respectable audience” turned out to see the Fakir of Oolu, master of the weird, mystical, and strange. The magician’s show “was received with cheers from all parts of the house, and is certainly a very attractive novelty” (Ballarat Courier, “Theatre Royal” 29 Mar. 1875). That same day, the Combination Star Company gave a concert at the Mechanics Institute. Indicating the competitive tussle, the press stated: “The attendance, however, doubtless owing to attractions elsewhere, was only moderately large” (Courier, “Concert at the Mechanics’” 29 Mar. 1875). In the early 1870s, there had been calls from sectors of society for a new venue to be built in Ballarat, consistent with its status. The developer and proprietor, Sir William Clarke, intended to offer a “higher class” of entertainment for up to 1700 people, superior to the “broad farces” at the Royal (Freund n.p.) In 1875, the Academy of Music opened, at a cost of twelve thousand pounds, just one block away from the Royal.As the decade of decreasing population wore on, it is intriguing to consider an unprecedented “riotous” incident in 1877. Levity's Original Royal Marionettes opened at the Royal with ‘Beauty and the Beast’ to calamitous response. The Company Managers, Wittington & Lovell made clear that the performance had scarcely commenced when the “storm” arose and they believed “the assault to be premeditated” (Wittington and Lovell in Argus, “The Riot” 6 Apr. 1877). Paid thuggery, with the intent of spooking regular patrons, was the implication. They pointed out that “It is evident that the ringleaders of the riot came into the theatre ready armed with every variety of missiles calculated to get a good hit at the figures and scenery, and thereby create a disturbance.” The mob assaulted the stage with “head-breaking” lemonade bottles, causing costly damage, then chased the frightened puppeteers down Sturt Street (Mount Alexander Mail, “Items of News” 4 Apr. 1877). The following night’s performance, by contrast, was perfectly calm (Ballarat Star, “News and Notes” 7 Apr. 1877). Just three months later, Webb’s Royal Marionette pantomimes appeared at the Mechanics’ Institute. The press wrote “this is not to be confounded, with the exhibition which created something like a riot at the Theatre Royal last Easter” (Ballarat Star, “News and Notes” 5 July 1877).The final performance at the Royal was the American Rockerfellers’ Minstrel Company. The last newspaper references to the Royal were placed in the context of other “treats in store” at The Academy of Music, and forthcoming offerings at the Mechanics Institute (Star, “Advertising” 3 July 1878). The Royal had experienced three re-openings and a series of short-term managements, often ending in loss or even bankruptcy. When it wound up, investors were left to cover the losses, while the owner was forced to find more profitable uses for the building (Freund n.p.). At face value, it seemed that four performing arts venues was one too many for Ballarat audiences to support. By August 1878 the Royal’s two shop fronts were up for lease. Thereafter, the building was given over entirely to retail drapery sales (Withers 260). ReflectionsThe Royal was erected, at enormous expense, in a moment of unbridled optimism, after several popular theatres in Ballarat East had burned to the ground. Ultimately the timing for such a lavish investment was poor. It suffered an inflexible old-fashioned structure, high overheads, ongoing staffing costs, changing demographics, economic crisis, increased competition, decreased population, the growth of local community-based theatre, temperance agitation and the impact of negative rumour and hear-say.The struggles endured by the various owners and managers of, and investors in, the Royal reflected broader changes within the larger community. The tension between the fixed nature of the place and the fluid needs of the public was problematic. Shifting demographics meant the Royal was negatively affected by conservative values, altered tastes and competing entertainment options. Built in the 1850s, it was sound, but structurally rigid, dated and polluted with the bacterial irritations of the times. “Resident professional companies could not compete with those touring from Melbourne” by whom it was considered “… hard to use and did not satisfy the needs of touring companies who required facilities equivalent to those in the metropolitan theatres” (Freund n.p.). Meanwhile, the prevalence of fund-raising concerts, created by charitable groups and member based community organisations, detracted from people’s interest in supporting professional performances. After-all, amateur concerts enabled families to “embrace the values of British middle class morality” (Doggett 295) at a safe distance from grog shops and saloons. Children aged 5-14 constituted only ten percent of the Ballarat population in 1857, but by 1871 settler families had created a population in which school aged children comprised twenty-five of the whole (Bate 146). This had significant ramifications for the type of theatrical entertainments required. By the late sixties, as many as 2000 children would perform at a time, and therefore entrance fees were able to be kept at affordable levels for extended family members. Just one year after the demise of the Royal, a new secular improvement society became active, holding amateur events and expanding over time to become what we now know as the Royal South Street Society. This showed that the appetite for home-grown entertainment was indeed sizeable. It was a function that the Royal was unable to service, despite several ardent attempts. Conclusion The greatest misfortune of the Royal was that it became stigmatised, from the mid 1860s onwards. In an era when people were either attempting to be pure of manners or were considered socially undesirable, it was hard for a cultural venue to survive which occupied the commercial middle ground, as the Royal did. It is also conceivable that the Royal was ‘framed’, by one or two of its competitor venues, or their allies, just one year before its closure. The Theatre Royal’s negative stigma as a venue for rough and intemperate human remnants of early Ballarat East had proven insurmountable. The Royal’s awkward position between high-class entrepreneurial culture and wholesome family-based community values, both of which were considered tasteful, left it out-of-step with the times and vulnerable to the judgement of those with either vested interests or social commitments elsewhere. This had long-term resonance for the subsequent development of entertainment options within Ballarat, placing the pendulum of favour either on elite theatre or accessible community based entertainments. The cultural middle-ground was sparse. The eventual loss of the building, the physical place of so much dramatic energy and emotion, as fondly recalled by Withers (260), inevitably contributed to the Royal fading from intergenerational memory. The telling of the ‘real story’ behind the rise and fall of the Ballarat Theatre Royal requires further exploration. If contemporary cultural industries are genuinely concerned “with the re-presentation of the supposed history and culture of a place”, as Urry believed (154), then untold stories such as that of Ballarat’s Theatre Royal require scholarly attention. This article represents the first attempt to examine its troubled history in a holistic fashion and locate it within a context ripe for cultural analysis.ReferencesBate, Weston. Lucky City: The First Generation at Ballarat 1851–1901. Carlton South: Melbourne UP, 1978.Brereton, Roslyn. Entertainment and Recreation on the Victorian Goldfields in the 1850s. BA (Honours) Thesis. Melbourne: University of Melbourne, 1967.Borgmann, Albert. Crossing the Postmodern Divide. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992. Briggs, Asa. Victorian Cities: Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, Middlesbrough, Melbourne. London: Penguin, 1968.Doggett, Anne. “And for Harmony Most Ardently We Long”: Musical Life in Ballarat, 1851-187. PhD Thesis. Ballarat: Ballarat University, 2006.Freund, Peter. Her Maj: A History of Her Majesty's Theatre. Ballarat: Currency Press, 2007.Hazelwood, Jennifer. A Public Want and a Public Duty: The Role of the Mechanics Institute in the Cultural, Social and Educational Development of Ballarat from 1851 to 1880. PhD Thesis. Ballarat: University of Ballarat 2007.Jenkins, Lloyd. Another Five Ballarat Cameos. Ballarat: Lloyd Jenkins, 1989.McConachie, Bruce. Engaging Audiences: A Cognitive Approach to Spectating in the Theatre. New York: Palgrave MacMillan, 2008.Reide, John, and John Chisholm. Ballarat Golden City: A Pictorial History. 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Introduction Fashion has long been associated with resistance movements across Asia and Australia, from the hand-spun cotton Khadi of Mahatma Gandhi’s freedom struggle to the traditional ankle length robe worn by Tibetans in the ‘White Wednesday Movement’ (Singh et al.; Yangzom). There are many reasons why fashion and activism have been interlinked. Fashion can serve as a form of nonverbal communication (Crane), which can convey activists’ grievances and concerns while symbolising solidarity (Doerr). It can provide an avenue to enact individual agency against repressive, authoritarian regimes (Yangzom; Doerr et al.). Fashion can codify a degree of uniformity within groups and thereby signal social identity (Craik), while also providing a means of building community (Barry and Drak). Fashion, therefore, offers activists the opportunity to develop the three characteristics which unite a social or environmental movement: a shared concern about an issue, a sense of social identity, and connections between individuals and groups. But while these fashion functions map onto movement characteristics, it remains unclear whether activists across the world deliberately include fashion into their protest action repertoires. This uncertainty exists partly because of a research and media focus on large scale, mass protests (Lester and Hutchins), where fashion characteristics are immediately visible and amenable to retrospective interpretation. This focus helps explain the rich volume of research examining the manifestation of fashion in past protests, such as the black, red, and yellow colours worn during the 1988 Aboriginal Long March of Freedom, Justice, and Hope (Maynard Dress; Coghlan), and the pink anti-Trump ‘pussyhats’ (Thompson). However, the protest events used to identify these fashion characteristics are a relatively small proportion of actions used by environmental activists (Dalton et al.; Gulliver et al.), which include not only rallies and marches, but also information evenings, letter writing sessions, and eco-activities such as tree plantings. This article aims to respond to Barnard’s (Looking) call for more empirical work on what contemporary cultural groups visually do with what they wear (see also Gerbaudo and Treré) via a content analysis of 36,676 events promoted on Facebook by 728 Australian environmental groups between 2010 and 2019. The article firstly reports findings from an analysis of this dataset to identify how fashion manifests in environmental activism, building on research demonstrating the role of protest-related nonverbal communications, such as protest signage (Bloomfield and Doolin), images (Kim), and icons, slogans, and logos (Goodnow). The article then considers what activists may seek to achieve through incorporating fashion into their action repertoire, and whether this suggests solidarity with activists seeking to effect environmental change across the wider Asian region. Fashion Activism Fashion is created through a particular assemblage of clothes, accessories, and hairstyles (Barry and Drak), which in turn forms a prevailing custom or style of dress (Craik). It is a cultural practice, providing ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) for an individual to express their social roles (Craik) and political identity (Behnke). Some scholars argue that fashion became overtly political during the 1960s and 70s, as social movements politicised appearance (Edwards). This has only increased in relevance with the rise of far right, populist, and authoritarian regimes, whose sub-cultures enact politicised identities through their distinct fashion characteristics (Gaugele and Titton; Gaugele). Fashion can therefore play an important role in protest movements, as “political subjectivities, political authority, political power and discipline are rendered visible, and thereby real, by the way fashion co-establishes them” (Behnke 3). Across the literature scholars have identified two primary avenues by which fashion and activism are connected. The first of these relates to activism targeting the fashion industry. This type of activism is found in both Asia and Australia, and promotes sustainable consumption choices such as buying used goods and transforming existing items (Chung and Yim), as well as highlighting garment worker exploitation within the fashion industry (Khan and Richards). The second avenue is called ‘fashion activism’: the use of fashion to intentionally signal a message seeking to evoke social and/or political change (Thompson). In this conceptualisation, clothing is used to signify a particular message (Crane). An example of this type of fashion activism is the ‘SlutWalk’, a protest where participants deliberately wore outfits described as slutty or revealing as a response to victim-blaming of women who had experienced sexual assault (Thompson). A key element of fashion activism thus appears to be its message intentionality. Clothes are specifically utilised to convey a message, such as a grievance about victim-blaming, which can then be incorporated into design features displayed on t-shirts, pins, and signs both on the runway and in protest events (Titton). However, while this ‘sender/receiver’ model of fashion communication (Barnard, Fashion as) can be compelling for activists, it is complex in practice. A message receiver can never have full knowledge of what message the sender seeks to signify through a particular clothing item, nor can the message sender predict how a receiver will interpret that message. Particular arrangements of clothing only hold communicative power when they are easily interpreted and related to the movement and its message, usually only intelligible to a specific culture or subculture (Goodnow). Even within that subculture it remains problematic to infer a message from a particular style of dress, as demonstrated in examples where dress is used to imply sexual consent; for example, in rape and assault cases (Lennon et al.). Given the challenges of interpreting fashion, do activists appear to use the ‘real estate’ (Benda 7) afforded by it as a protest tool? To investigate this question a pre-existing dataset of 36,676 events was analysed to ascertain if, and how, environmental activism engages with fashion (a detailed methodology is available on the OSF). Across this dataset, event categories, titles, and descriptions were reviewed to collate events connecting environmental activism to fashion. Three categories of events were found and are discussed in the next section: street theatre, sustainable fashion practices, and disruptive protest. Street Theatre Street theatre is a form of entertainment which uses public performance to raise awareness of injustices and build support for collective action (Houston and Pulido). It uses costumes as a vehicle for conveying messages about political issues and for making demands visible, and has been utilised by protesters across Australia and Asia (Roces). Many examples of street theatre were found in the dataset. For example, Extinction Rebellion (XR) consistently promoted street theatre events via sub-groups such as the ‘Red Rebels’ – a dedicated team of volunteers specialising in costumed street theatre – as well as by inviting supporters to participate in open street theatre events, such as in the ‘Halloween Dead Things Disco’. Dressed as spooky skeletons (doot, doot) and ghosts, we'll slide and shimmy down Sydney's streets in a supernatural style, as we bring attention to all the species claimed by the Sixth Mass Extinction. These street theatre events appeared to prioritise spectacle rather than disruption as a means to attract attention to their message. The Cairns and Far North Environment Centre ‘Climate Action Float’, for example, requested that attendees: Wear blue and gold or dress as your favourite reef animal, solar panel, maybe even the sun itself!? Reef & Solar // Blue & Gold is the guiding theme but we want your creativity take it from there. Most groups used street theatre as one of a range of different actions organised across a period of time. However, Climacts, a performance collective which uses ‘spectacle and satire to communicate the urgency of the climate and biodiversity crisis’ (Climacts), utilised this tactic exclusively. Their Climate Guardians collective used distinctive angel costumes to perform at the Climate Conference of Parties 26, and in various places around Australia (see images on their Website). Fig. 1: Costumed protest against Downer EDI's proposed work on the Adani coalmine; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). Sustainable Fashion Practices The second most common type of event which connected fashion with activism were those promoting sustainable fashion practices. While much research has highlighted the role of activism in raising awareness of problems related to the fashion industry (e.g. Hirscher), groups in the dataset were primarily focussed on organising activities where supporters communally created their own fashion items. The most common of these was the ‘crafternoon’, with over 260 separate crafternoon events identified in the dataset. These events brought activists together to create protest-related kit such as banners, signs, and costumes from recycled or repurposed materials, as demonstrated by Hume Climate Action Now’s ‘Crafternoon for Climate’ event: Come along on Sunday arvo for a relaxed arvo making posters and banners for upcoming Hume Climate Action Now events… Bring: Paints, textas, cardboard, fabric – whatever you’ve got lying around. Don’t have anything? That’s cool, just bring yourself. Events highlighting fashion industry problems were less frequent and tended to prioritise sharing of information about the fashion industry rather than promoting protests. For example, Transition Town Vincent held a ‘Slowing Down Fast Fashion – Transition Town Vincent Movie Night’ while the Green Embassy promoted the ‘Eco Fashion Week’. This event, held in 2017, was described as Australia’s only eco-fashion week, and included runway shows, music, and public talks. Other events also focussed on public talks, such as a Conservation Council of ACT event called ‘Green Drinks Canberra October 2017: Summer Edwards on the fashion industry’ and a panel discussion organised by a group called SEE-Change entitled ‘The Sustainable Wardrobe’. Disruptive Protest and T-Shirts Few events in the dataset mentioned elements of fashion outside of street theatre or sustainable fashion practices, with only one organisation explicitly connecting fashion with activism in its event details. This group – Australian Youth Climate Coalition – organised an event called ‘Activism in Fashion: Tote Bags, T-shirts and Poster Painting!’, which asked: How can we consistently be involved in campaigning while life can be so busy? Can we still be loud and get a message across without saying a word? The iconic 21st century activist "t-shirt and tote-bag" combination is hard to miss these days! Unlike street theatre and sustainable fashion practices, fashion appeared to be a consideration for only a small number of disruptive protests promoted by environmental groups in Australia. XR Brisbane sought to organise a fashion parade during the 2019 Rebellion Week, while XR protesters in Melbourne stripped down to underwear for a march through Melbourne city arcades (see also Turbet). Few common fashion elements appeared consistently on individual activists participating in events, and these were limited to accessories, such as ‘Stop Adani’ earrings, or t-shirts sold for fundraising and promotional purposes. Indeed, t-shirts appeared to be the most promoted clothing item in the dataset, continuing a long tradition of their use in protests (e.g. Maynard, Blankets). Easy to create, suitable for displaying both text and imagery, t-shirts sharing anti-coal messages featured predominantly in the Stop Adani campaign, while yellow t-shirts were a common item in Knitting Nanna’s anti-coal seam gas mining protests. Fig. 2: Stop Adani earrings and t-shirts; Image by John Englart (CC BY-SA 2.0). The Role of Fashion in Environmental Activism As these findings demonstrate, fashion appears to be deliberately utilised in environmental activism primarily through street theatre and the promotion of sustainable fashion practices. While fewer examples of fashion in disruptive protest were found and no consistent fashion assemblage was identified, accessories and t-shirts were utilised by many groups. What may activists be seeking to achieve through incorporating fashion via street theatre and sustainable fashion practices? Some scholars have argued that incorporating fashion into protest allows activists to signal political dissent against authoritarian control. For example, Yanzoom noted that by utilising fashion as a means of communication, Tibetan activists were able to embody their political goals despite repression of speech and movement by political powerholders. However, a consistent fashion repertoire across protests in this Australian dataset was not found. The opportunities afforded by protected protest rights in Australia and absence of violent police repression of disruptive protests may be one explanation why distinctive dress such as the masks and black attire of Hong Kong pro-democracy protesters did not manifest in the dataset. Other scholars have observed that fashion sub-cultures also developed partly to express anti-establishment politics, such as the punk movement in the 1970s. Radical clothing accessorised by symbols, bright hair colours, body piercings, and heavy-duty books signalled opposition to the dominant political ideology (Craik). However, none of these purposes appeared to play a role in Australian environmental activism either. Instead, it appears that Maynard’s contention that Australian protest fashion barely deviates from everyday dress remains true today. Fashion within the events promoted in this large empirical dataset retained the ‘prevalence of everyday clothing’ (Maynard, Dress 111). The lack of a clearly discernible single protest fashion style within the dataset may be related to the shortcomings of the sender/receiver model of fashion communication. As Barnard (Fashion Statements) argued, fashion is not always used as a vehicle for conveying messages, but also as a platform for constructing and reproducing identity. Indeed, a multiplicity of researchers have noted how fashion acts as a signal of what social groups individuals belong to (see Roach-Higgins and Eicher). Activist groups have a variety of goals, which not only include promoting environmental change but also mobilising more people to join their cause (Gulliver et al., Understanding). Stereotyping can hinder achievement of these goals. It has been demonstrated, for example, that individuals who hold negative stereotypes of ‘typical’ activists are less likely to want to associate with them, and less likely to adopt their behaviours (Bashir et al.). Accordingly, some activist groups have been shown to actively promote dress associated with other identity groups, specifically to challenge cultural constructions of environmental activist stereotypes (see also Roces). For example, Bloomfield and Doolins’s study of the NZ anti-GE group MAdGE (Mothers against Genetic Engineering in Food and the Environment) demonstrated how visual protest artifacts conveyed the protesters’ social identity as mothers and customers rather than environmental activists, claiming an alternative cultural mandate for challenging the authority of science (see also Einwohner et al.). The data suggest that Australian activists are seeking to avoid this stereotype as well. The absence of a consistent fashion promoted within the dataset may reflect awareness of problematic stereotypes that activists may be then deliberately seeking to avoid. Maynard (Dress), for example, has noted how the everyday dress of Australian protesters serves to deflect stereotypical labelling of participants. This strategy is also mirrored by the changing nature of groups within the Australian environmental movement. The event database demonstrates that an increasing number of environmental groups are emerging with names highlighting non-stereotypical environmental identities: groups such as ‘Engineers Declare’ and ‘Bushfire Survivors for Climate Action’. Beyond these identity processes, the frequent use of costumed street theatre protest suggests that activists recognise the value of using fashion as a vehicle for communicating messages, despite the challenges of interpretation described above. Much of the language used to promote street theatre in the Facebook event listings suggests that these costumes were deliberately designed to signify a particular meaning, with individuals encouraged to dress up to be ‘a vehicle for myth and symbol’ (Lavender 11). It may be that costumes are also utilised in protest due to their suitability as an image event, convenient for dissemination by mass media seeking colourful and engaging imagery (Delicath and Deluca; Doerr). Furthermore, costumes, as with text or colours presented on t-shirts, may offer activists an avenue to clearly convey a visual message which is more resistant to stereotyping. This is especially relevant given that fashion can be re-interpreted and misinterpreted by audiences, as well as reframed and reinterpreted by the media (Maynard, Dress). While the prevalence of costumed performance and infrequent mentions of fashion in the dataset may be explained by stereotype avoidance and messaging clarity, sustainable fashion practices were more straightforward in intent. Groups used multiple approaches to educate audiences about sustainable fashion, whether through fostering sustainable fashion practices or raising awareness of fashion industry problems. In this regard, fashion in protest in Australia closely resembles Asian sustainable fashion activism (see e.g. Chon et al. regarding the Singaporean context). In particular, the large number of ‘crafternoons’ suggests their importance as sites of activism and community building. Craftivism – acts such as quilting banners, yarn bombing, and cross stitching feminist slogans – are used by many groups to draw attention to social, political and environmental issues (McGovern and Barnes). This type of ‘creative activism’ (Filippello) has been used to challenge aesthetic and political norms across a variety of contested socio-political landscapes. These activities not only develop activism skills, but also foster community (Barry and Drak). For environmental groups, these community building events can play a critical role in sustaining and supporting ongoing environmental activism (Gulliver et al., Understanding) as well as demonstrating solidarity with workers across Asia experiencing labour injustices linked to the fashion industry (Chung and Yim). Conclusion Studies examining protest fashion demonstrate that clothing provides a canvas for sharing protest messages and identities in both Asia and Australia (Benda; Yangzom; Craik). However, despite the fashion’s utility as communication tool for social and environmental movements, empirical studies of how fashion is used by activists in these contexts remain rare. This analysis demonstrates that Australian environmental activists use fashion in their action repertoire primarily through costumed street theatre performances and promoting sustainable fashion practices. By doing so they may be seeking to use fashion as a means of conveying messages, while avoiding stereotypes that can demobilise supporters and reduce support for their cause. Furthermore, sustainable fashion activism offers opportunities for activists to achieve multiple goals: to subvert the fast fashion industry, to provide participation avenues for new activists, to help build activist communities, and to express solidarity with those experiencing fast fashion-related labour injustices. These findings suggest that the use of fashion in protest actions can move beyond identity messaging to also enact sustainable practices while co-opting and resisting hegemonic ideas of consumerism. By integrating fashion into the vibrant and diverse actions promoted by environmental movements across Australia and Asia, activists can construct and perform identities while fostering the community bonds and networks from which movements demanding environmental change derive their strength. Ethics Approval Statement This study was approved by the Research Ethics Committee of the University of Queensland (2018000963). 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The Coming of Coffee Before World War II, Australians followed British tradition and largely drank tea. When coffee challenged the tea drinking habit in post-war Australia, the tea industry fought back using the most up-to-date marketing techniques imported from America. The shift to coffee drinking in post-war Australia is, therefore, explored through a focus on both the challenges faced by the tea industry and how that industry tackled the trend towards coffee. By focusing on the Australian Tea Council’s marketing campaign promoting tea as a fashionable drink and preferable to coffee, this article explores Australia’s cultural shift from tea drinking to coffee drinking. This complex and multi-layered transition, often simply explained by post-war migration, provides an opportunity to investigate other causal aspects of this shift. In doing so, it draws on oral histories—including of central figures working in the tea and coffee industries—as well as reports in newspapers and popular magazines, during this period of culinary transition. Australians always drank coffee but it was expensive, difficult and inconsistent to brew, and was regarded as a drink “for the better class of person” (P. Bennett). At the start of World War II, Australia was second only to Britain in terms of its tea consumption and maintaining Australia’s supply of tea was a significant issue for the government (NAA, “Agency Notes”). To guarantee a steady supply, tea was rationed, as were many other staples. Between 1941 and 1955, the tea supply was under government control with the Commonwealth-appointed Tea Control Board responsible for its purchase and distribution nationwide (Adams, “From Instant” 16). The influence of the USA on Australia’s shift from tea-drinking has been underplayed in narratives of the origins of Australia’s coffee culture, but the presence of American servicemen, either stationed in Australia or passing through during the war in the Pacific, had a considerable impact on what Australians ate and drank. In 2007, the late John Button noted that:It is when the countries share a cause that the two peoples have got to know each other best. Between 1942 and 1945, when Australia’s population was seven million, one million US service personnel came to Australia. They were made welcome, and strange things happened. American sporting results and recipes were published in the newspapers; ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ was played at the start of theatre and concert performances. Australians were introduced to the hot dog; Americans, reluctantly, to the dim sim. 10 or 15 years after the war, there were stories of New York cab drivers who knew Australia well and spoke warmly of their wartime visits. For years, letters between Australia and the US went back and forth between pen friends […] following up friendships developed during the war. Supplying the daily ration of coffee to American servicemen was another concern for the Australian government as Australia had insufficient roasting capacity to supply this coffee—and so three roasting machines were shipped to Australia to help meet this new demand (NAA, MP5/45 a). To ensure a steady supply, coffee too came under the control of the Tea Controller and the Tea Control Board became the Tea and Coffee Control Board. At this time, civilians became more aware of coffee as newspapers raised its profile and Australian families invited American servicemen in their homes. Differences in food preferences between American servicemen and Australians were noticed, with coffee the most notable of these. The Argus reported that: “The main point of issue in these rival culinary fancies is the longstanding question of coffee” (“Yanks Differ” 8). It concluded that Australians and Americans ate the same foods, only prepared in different ways, but the most significant difference between them was the American “preference for coffee” (8). When Australian families invited hosted servicemen in their homes, housewives needed advice on how to make prepare coffee, and were told:One of the golden rules for hostesses entertaining American troops should be not to serve them coffee unless they know how to make it in the American fashion [...] To make coffee in the proper American fashion requires a special kind of percolating. Good results may be obtained by making coffee with strong freshly ground beans and the coffee should be served black with cream to be added if required (“Coffee for Americans” 5). Australian civilians also read reports of coffee, rather than tea, being served to Australian servicemen overseas, and the following report in The Argus in 1942 shows: “At Milne Bay 100 gallons of coffee were served to the men after pictures had been shown each night. Coffee was not the only comfort to be supplied. There were also chocolate, tobacco, toothpaste, and other articles appreciated by the troops” (“Untitled” 5). Due largely to tea rationing and the presence of American servicemen, Australia’s coffee consumption increased to 500 grams per person per annum between 1941 and 1944, but it also continued to rise in the immediate post-war period when the troops had departed (ABS). In May 1947, the Tea (and Coffee) Controller reported an increased consumption of 54 per cent in the two years after the war ended (NAA, MP5/45 b). Tea Loses Its Way Australian tea company and coffee roaster, Bushells, had an excellent roast and ground coffee—Bushells Pure Coffee—according to Bill Bennett who worked for the company from 1948 to 1950 (B. Bennett). It was sold freshly roasted in screw-top jars that could be re-used for storage in the kitchen or pantry. In 1945, in a series of cartoon-style advertisements, Bushells showed consumers how easy it was to make coffee using this ground beans, but the most significant challenge to tea’s dominance came not with this form of coffee, but in 1948 with the introduction of Nestlé instant coffee. Susie Khamis argues that “of all the coffee brands that vied for Australians’ attention, Nestlé was by far the most salient, by virtue of its frequency, timeliness and resonance” (218). With Nestlé instant coffee, “you use just the quantity you need for each cup and there are no grounds or sediment. Nescafé made perfect full-flavoured coffee in a matter of seconds” (Canberra Times). Figure 1. Advertisement for Nestlé Coffee. The Canberra Times 5 Aug. 1949: 2. Figure 2. Advertisement for Bushells Coffee. The Argus 22 Aug. 1945: 11. Instant coffee, as well as being relatively cheap, solved the “problem” of its brewing and was marketed as convenient, economical, and consistent. It also was introduced at a time when the price of tea was increasing and the American lifestyle had great appeal to Australians. Khamis argues that the discovery of instant coffee “spoke to changes in Australia’s lifestyle options”, noting that the “tea habit was tied to Australia’s development as a far-flung colonial outpost, a daily reminder that many still looked to London as the nation’s cultural capital; the growing appeal of instant coffee reflected a widening and more nuanced cultural palate” (218). Instant coffee, modernity, America, and glamour became thus entwined in a period when Australia’s cultural identity “was informed less by the staid conservatism of Britain than the heady flux of the new world glamour” (Khamis 219). In the 1950s, Australians were seduced by espresso coffee presented to them in imaginatively laid out coffee lounges featuring ultra modern décor and streamlined fittings. Customers were reportedly “seduced by the novelty of the impressive-looking espresso machines, all shining chrome and knobs and pressure gauges” (Australasian Confectioner and Restaurant Journal 61). At its best, espresso coffee is a sublime drink with a rich thick body and a strong flavour. It is a pleasure to look at and has about it an air of European sophistication. These early coffee lounges were the precursors of the change from American-style percolated coffee (Adams, “Barista” vi). According to the Australasian Confectioner and Restaurant Journal, in 1956 espresso coffee was changing the way people drank coffee “on the continent, in London and in other parts of the world,” which means that as well as starting a new trend in Australia, this new way of brewing coffee was making coffee even more popular elsewhere (61). The Connoisseurship of Coffee Despite the popularities of cafés, the Australian consumer needed to be educated to become a connoisseur, and this instruction was provided in magazine and newspaper articles. Rene Dalgleish, writing for Australian Home Beautiful in 1964, took “a look around the shops” to report on “a growing range of glamorous and complicated equipment designed for the once-simple job of brewing a cup of tea, or more particularly, coffee” (21). Although she included teapots, her main focus was coffee brewing equipment—what it looked like and how it worked. She also discussed how to best appreciate coffee, and described a range of home grinding and brewing coffee equipment from Turkish to percolation and vacuum coffee makers. As there was only one way of making tea, Dalgleish pays little attention to its method of brewing (21) and concludes the piece by referring only to coffee: “There are two kinds of coffee drinkers—those who drink it because it is a drink and coffee lovers. The sincere coffee lover is one who usually knows about coffee and at the drop of a hat will talk with passionate enthusiasm on the only way to make real coffee” (21). In its first issue in 1966, Australasian Gourmet Magazine reflected on the increased consumption and appreciation of coffee in a five-page feature. “More and more people are serving fine coffee in their homes,” it stated, “while coffee lounges and espresso bars are attracting the public in the city, suburbs and country towns” (Repin and Dressler 36). The article also noted that there was growing interest in the history and production of coffee as well as roasting, blending, grinding, and correct preparation methods. In the same year, The Australian Women’s Weekly acknowledged a growing interest in both brewing, and cooking with, coffee in a lift-out recipe booklet titled “Cooking with Coffee.” This, according to the Weekly, presented “directions that tell you how to make excellent coffee by seven different methods” as well as “a variety of wonderful recipes for cakes, biscuits, desserts, confectionary and drinks, all with the rich flavor of coffee” (AWW). By 1969, the topic was so well established that Keith Dunstan could write an article lampooning coffee snobbery in Australian Gourmet Magazine. He describes his brother’s attention to detail when brewing coffee and his disdain for the general public who were all drinking what he called “muck”. Coffee to the “coffee-olics” like his brother was, Dunstan suggested, like wine to the gourmand (5). In the early 1960s, trouble was brewing in the tea business. Tea imports were not keeping pace with population growth and, in 1963, the Tea Bureau conducted a national survey into the habits of Australian tea drinkers (McMullen). This found that although tea was the most popular beverage at the breakfast table for all socio-economic groups, 30 per cent of Australian housewives did not realise that tea was cheaper than coffee. 52 per cent of coffee consumed was instant and one reason given for coffee drinking between meals was that it was easier to make one cup (Broadcasting and Television “Tea Gains”). Marketing Tea against a Turning Tide Coffee enjoyed an advantage that tea was unlikely to ever have, as the margin between raw bean and landed product was much wider than tea. Tea was also traditionally subject to price-cutting by grocery chains who used it as a loss leader “to bring the housewife into the store” (Broadcasting and Television “Tea Battles”) and, with such a fine profit margin, the individual tea packer had little to allocate for marketing expenses. In response, a group of tea merchants, traders and members of tea growing countries formed The Tea Council of Australia in 1963 to pool their marketing funds to collectively market their product. With more funds, the Council hoped to achieve what individual companies could not (Adams “From Instant” 1-19). The chairman of the Tea Council, Mr. G. McMullan, noted that tea was “competing in the supermarkets with all beverages that are sold […]. All the beverages are backed by expensive marketing campaigns. And this is the market that tea must continue to hold its share” (McMullen 6). The Tea Council employed the services of Jackson Wain and Company for its marketing and public relations campaign. Australian social historian Warren Fahey worked for the company in the 1960s and described it in an interview. He recalled: Jackson Wain was quite a big advertising agency. Like a lot of these big agencies of the time it was Australian owned by Barry Wain and John Jackson. Jackson Wain employed some illustrious creative directors at that time and its clients were indeed big: they had Qantas, Rothmans, the Tea Council, White Wings—which was a massive client—and Sunbeam. And they are just some of the ones they had. Over the following eleven years, the Tea Council sought innovative ways to identify target markets and promote tea drinking. Much of this marketing was directed at women. Since women were responsible for most of the household shopping, and housewives were consuming “incidental” beverages during the day (that is, not with meals), a series of advertisements were placed in women’s magazines. Showing how tea could be enjoyed at work, play, in the home, and while shopping, these kick-started the Tea Council’s advertising campaign in 1964. Fahey remembers that: tea was seen as old-fashioned so they started to talk about different aspects of drinking tea. I remember the images of several campaigns that came through Jackson Wain of the Tea Board. The Women’s Weekly ones were a montage of images where they were trying to convince people that tea was refreshing […] invigorating […] [and] friendly. Figure 3. Tea Council Advertisement. The Australian Women’s Weekly 29 Jan. 1964, 57. Radio was the Tea Council’s “cup of tea”. Transistor and portable radio arrived in Australia in the 1950s and this much listened to medium was especially suited to the Tea Council’s advertising (Tea Council Annual Report 1964). Radio advertising was relatively low-cost and the Council believed that people thought aurally and could picture their cup of tea as soon as they heard the word “tea”. Fahey explains that although radio was losing some ground to the newly introduced television, it was still the premier media, largely because it was personality driven. Many advertisers were still wary of television, as were the agencies. Radio advertisements, read live to air by the presenter, would tell the audience that it was time for a cuppa—“Right now is the right time to taste the lively taste of tea” (Tea Council Annual Report 1964)—and a jingle created for the advertisement completed the sequence. Fahey explained that agencies “were very much tuned into the fact even in those days that women were a dominant fact in the marketing of tea. Women were listening to radio at home while they were doing their work or entertaining their friends and those reminders to have a cup of tea would have been quite useful triggers in terms of the marketing”. The radio jingle, “The taste of tea makes a lively you” (Jackson Wain, “Tea Council”) aired 21,000 times on 85 radio stations throughout Australia in 1964 (Tea Council of Australia Annual Report). In these advertisements, tea was depicted as an interesting, exciting and modern beverage, suitable for consumption at home as outside it, and equally, if not more, refreshing than other beverages. People were also encouraged to use more tea when they brewed a pot by adding “one [spoonful] for the pot” (Jackson Wain, “Tea Council”). These advertisements were designed to appeal to both housewives and working women. For the thrifty housewife, they emphasised value for money in a catchy radio jingle that contained the phrase “and when you drink tea the second cup’s free” (Jackson Wain “Tea Council”). For the fashionable, tea could be consumed with ice and lemon in the American fashion, and glamorous fashion designer Prue Acton and model Liz Holmes both gave their voices to tea in a series of radio advertisements (Tea Council of Australia, “Annual Reports”). This was supported with a number of other initiatives. With the number of coffee lounges increasing in cities, the Tea Council devised a poster “Tea is Served Here” that was issued to all cafes that served tea. This was strategically placed to remind people to order the beverage. Other print tea advertisements targeted young women in the workforce as well as women taking time out for a hot drink while shopping. Figure 4. “Tea Is Served Here.” Tea Council of Australia. Coll. of Andy Mac. Photo: Andy Mac. White Wings Bake-off The cookery competition known as the White Wings Bake-Off was a significant event for many housewives during this period, and the Tea Council capitalised on it. Run by the Australian Dairy Board and White Wings, a popular Australian flour milling company, the Bake-Off became a “national institution […] and tangible proof of the great and growing interest in good food and cooking in Australia” (Wilson). Starting in 1963, this competition sought original recipes from home cooks who used White Wings flour and dairy produce. Winners were feted with a gala event, national publicity and generous prizes presented by international food experts and celebrity chefs such as Graham Kerr. Prizes in 1968 were awarded at a banquet at the Southern Cross Hotel and the grand champion won A$4,750 and a Metters’ cooking range. Section winners received A$750 and the stove. In 1968, the average weekly wage in Australia was A$45 and the average weekly spend on food was $3.60, which makes these significant prizes (Talkfinancenet). In a 1963 television advertisement for White Wings, the camera pans across a table laden with cakes and scones. It is accompanied by the jingle, “White Wings is the Bake Off flour—silk sifted, silk sifted” (Jackson Wain, “Bake-Off”). Prominent on the table is a teapot and cup. Fahey noted the close “simpatico” relationship between White Wings and the Tea Council:especially when it came down to […] the White Wings Bake Off [...]. Tea always featured prominently because of the fact that people were still in those days baking once a week [...] having that home baking along side a cup of tea and a teapot was something that both sides were trying to capitalise on. Conclusion Despite these efforts, throughout the 1960s tea consumption continued to fall and coffee to rise. By 1969, the consumption of coffee was over a kilogram per person per annum and tea had fallen to just over two kilograms per person per year (ABS). In 1973, due to internal disputes and a continued decline in tea sales, the Tea Council disbanded. As Australians increasingly associated coffee with glamour, convenience, and gourmet connoisseurship, these trajectories continued until coffee overtook tea in 1979 (Khamis 230) and, by the 1990s, coffee consumption was double that of tea. Australia’s cultural shift from tea drinking to coffee drinking—easily, but too simplistically, explained by post-war migration—is in itself a complex and multi layered transition, but the response and marketing campaign by the Tea Council provides an opportunity to investigate other factors at play during this time of change. Fahey sums the situation up appropriately and I will conclude with his remarks: “Advertising is never going to change the world. It can certainly persuade a market place or a large percentage of a market place to do something but one has to take into account there were so many other social reasons why people switched over to coffee.” References Adams, Jillian. Barista: A Guide to Espresso Coffee. Frenchs Forest NSW: Pearson Education Australia, 2006. -----. “From Instant Coffee to Italian Espresso: How the Cuppa Lost its Way.” Masters Thesis in Oral History and Historical Memory. Melbourne: Monash University, 2009. Advertisement for Bushells Coffee. The Argus 22 Aug. (1945): 11. Australian Bureau of Statistics [ABS]. “4307.0 Apparent Consumption of Tea and Coffee, Australia 1969-1970.” Canberra: Australian Bureau of Statistics, 2000. Australasian Confectioner and Restaurant Journal. “Espresso Comes to Town.” Australian Confectioner and Restaurant Journal Feb. (1956): 61. Bennett, Bill. Interview. 22 Jun. 2007. Bennett, Peter. Interview. 10 Mar. 2010. Broadcasting and Television. “Tea Gains 98% Market Acceptance.” Broadcasting and Television 6 Jun. (1963): 16. -----. “Tea Battles Big Coffee Budgets.” Broadcasting and Television News 14 Oct. (1965): 16. Button, John. “America’s Australia: Instructions for a Generation.” The Monthly Feb. (2007) 28 Mar. 2012 ‹http://www.themonthly.com.au/monthly-essays-john-button-americas-australia-instructions-generation-456›. Canberra Times, The. Advertisement for Nestle Coffee. The Canberra Times 5 Aug. (1949): 2. “Coffee for Americans.” The Argus 20 Apr. (1942): 5.Dalgleish, Rene. “Better Tea and Coffee.” Australian Home Beautiful Jun. (1964): 21–5. Dunstan, Keith. “The Making of a Coffee-olic.” The Australian Gourmet Magazine Sep./Oct. (1969): 5. Fahey, Warren. Interview. 19 Aug. 2010. Howard, Leila. ‘Cooking with Coffee.” The Australian Women’s Weekly 6 Jul. (1966): 1–15. Jackson Wain. “The Bake-off Flour!” TV Commercial, 30 secs. Australia: Fontana Films for Jackson Wain, 1963. 1 Feb. 2012 ‹www.youtube.com/watch?v=1X50sCwbUnw›. -----. “Tea Council of Australia.” TV commercials, 30 secs. National Film and Sound Archive, 1964–1966. Khamis, Susie. “ It Only Takes a Jiffy to Make.” Food Culture and Society 12.2 (2009): 218–33. McMullen, G. F. The Tea Council of Australia Annual Report. Sydney, 1969. National Archives of Australia [NAA]. Agency Notes CP629/1. “History of the Tea Control and Tea Importation Board, January 1942–December 1956.” -----. Series MP5/45 a. Minutes of the Tea Control Board. 17 Aug. 1942. -----. Series MP5/45 b. Minutes of the Tea Control Board. 29 May 1947. Repin, J. D., and H. Dressler. “The Story of Coffee.” Australian Gourmet Magazine 1.1 (1966): 36–40. Talkfinance.net. “Cost of Living: Today vs. 1960.” 1 May 2012 ‹http://www.talkfinance.net/f32/cost-living-today-vs-1960-a-3941› Tea Council of Australia. Annual Reports Tea Council of Australia 1964–1973. ----- Advertisement. The Australian Women’s Weekly 3 Jul. (1968): 22.“Untitled.” The Argus 20 Apr. (1942): 5. Wilson, Trevor. The Best of the Bake-Off. Sydney: Ure Smith, 1969.“Yanks and Aussies Differ on ‘Eats’.” The Argus 4 Jul. (1942): 8.

On Friday 15th March 2019, a white Australian man armed with assault weapons attacked Muslim worshippers at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand. Fifty-one people were murdered. Another 49 were injured. Families and their communities were devastated. Almost a year later, they are evermore deeply into the hard, impossibly sad process of recovery. The city of Christchurch, still reeling from the catastrophic earthquakes of 2010-2011, took the blow to its determinedly imperturbable façade hard, but is now moving on. Aotearoa New Zealand likewise. Staged as a series of performances, the attack and its aftermath were also acutely performative. The gunman transmitted the images and sounds of his white-supremacist-fuelled, assault-weaponized violence via livestream on Facebook: himself the protagonist, his victims the unwitting antagonists in a filmed performance for an unseen audience. In response, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern immediately took centre-stage: meeting the media, comforting the victims, commending the first responders, and leading two commemorative events on public platforms set up in the park across from Masjid Al Noor, the primary target. There were other, more ad hoc, performances, too, including haka (ritual chant/dance) by school groups, gang members and other odd individuals in front of Masjid Al Noor. Almost immediately after the mosque murders, plans for films, television specials and serials, and theatre performances began proliferating exponentially. This essay reflects on questions of performance and performativity in the wake of the mosque murders.

IntroductionThe Sydney Opera House is Australia’s, if not the world’s, most recognisable building. It is universally recognised as an architectural icon and as a masterpiece of the built environment, which has captured the imagination of many (Commonwealth of Australia 4). The construction of the Sydney Opera House, between 1959 and 1973, utilised many ground-breaking methods and materials which, together, pushed the boundaries of technical possibilities to the limits of human knowledge at the time (Commonwealth of Australia 36, 45). Typical investigations into the Sydney Opera House focus on its architects, the materials, construction, or the events that occur on its stages. The role of the illumination, in the perception and understanding of Australia’s most famous performing arts centre, is an under-investigated aspect of its construction and its use today (Dwyer Backstage Biography 1; Dwyer “Utzon’s Use” 131).This article examines the illumination of the Sydney Opera House from the perspective of light as a construction material, another element that is used to ‘build’ the structure on Bennelong Point. This article examines the illumination from an historical view as Jørn Utzon’s (1918-2008) concepts for the building, including the lighting design intentions, were not all realised as he did not complete the project. The task of finishing this structure was allocated to the architectural cooperative of Hall, Todd & Littlemore who replaced Utzon in 1966. The Danish-born Utzon was appointed in January 1957 having won an international competition, from a field of over 230 entries, to design a national opera house for Sydney. He quickly began the task of resolving his design, transforming the roughly-sketched concepts presented in his competition entry, into detailed drawings that articulated how the opera house would be realised. The iteration of these concepts can be most succinctly identified in Utzon’s formal design reports to the Opera House Committee which are often referred to based on the colour of their cover design. The first report, the ‘red book’ was issued in 1958 with further developments of the architectural and services designs outlined in the ‘yellow book’ which followed in 1962. The last of the original architects’ publications was the Utzon Design Principles (2002) which was created as part of the reengagement process—between the Government of New South Wales and the Sydney Opera House with the original architect—that commenced in 1999.As with many modern buildings (such as Eero Saarinen’s TWA Flight Center, Richard Meier’s Jubilee Church or Adrian D. Smith’ Burj Khalifa), concrete was selected to form the basic structural element of the Sydney Opera House. Working with the, now internationally-renowned, engineering firm Ove Arup and Partners, Utzon designed some of the most significant shapes and finishes that have become synonymous with the site. The concrete elements range from basic blade walls with lustrous finishes to the complex, shape-changing beams that rise from under the monumental stairs and climb to terminate in the southern foyers. Thus, demonstrating the use of concrete as both a structural element and a high quality architectural finish. Another product used throughout the Sydney Opera House is granite. As a hardwearing stone, it is used in a crushed form as part of the precast panels that line the walls and internal flooring and as setts on the forecourt. As with the concrete the use of the same material inside and out blurs the distinction between interior and exterior. The forecourt forms a wide-open plaza before the building rises like a headland as it meets the harbour. The final, and most recognisable element is that of the shell (or roof) tiles. After many years of research Utzon settled on a simple mix of gloss and matt tiles of approximately 120mm square that, carefully arranged, produced a chevron shaped ‘lid’ and results in an effect likened to snow and ice (Commonwealth of Australia 51).These construction elements would all remain invisible if not illuminated by light, natural or artificial. This paper posits that the illumination reinforces the architecture of the structure and extends the architectural and experiential narratives of the Sydney Opera House across time and space. That, light is—like concrete, granite and tiles—a critical component of the Opera House’s build.Building a Narrative with LightIn creating the Sydney Opera House, Utzon set about harnessing natural and artificial illumination that are intrinsic parts of the human condition. Light shapes every facet of our lives from defining working and leisure hours to providing the mechanism for high speed communications and is, therefore, an obvious choice to reinforce the structure of the building and to link the built environment with the natural world that enveloped his creation. Light was to play a major role in the narrative of the Sydney Opera House starting from a patron’s approach to the site.Utzon’s staged approach to a performance at the Sydney Opera House is well documented, from the opening passages of the Descriptive Narrative (Utzon 1-2) to the Lighting Master Plan (Steensen Varming). The role of artificial light in the preparation of the audience extends beyond the simple visibility necessary to navigate the site. Light provides a linking element that guides an audience member along their ‘journey’ through several phases of transformation from the physicality of the city on the forecourt to “another world–a make believe atmosphere, which will exclude all outside impressions and allow the patrons to be absorbed into the theatre mood, which the actors and the producers wish to create” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2) in the theatres. Utzon conceived of light as part of the storytelling process, expressing the building’s narrative in a way that allows illumination is to be so much more than signposts to points of activity such as cloaking areas, theatre entries and the like. The lighting was intended to delineate various stages on the ‘journey’ noted above, to reinforce the transition from one world to another such that the combination of light and architecture would provide a series of successive stimuli that would build until the crescendo of the performance itself. This supports the transition of the visitor from the world of the everyday into the narrative of the Sydney Opera House and a world of make believe. Yet, in providing a narrative between these two ‘worlds’ the lighting becomes an anchor—or an element held in suspension – a mediator in the tension between the city at the beginning of the ‘journey’ and the ‘other world’ of the performance at the end. There is a balance to be maintained between illuminating the Sydney Opera House so that it remains prominent in its harbour location, easily read as a distinct sculptural structure on the peninsular separate from, but still an essential part of, the city that lies beyond Circular Quay to the south. Utzon alludes to the challenges of crafting the illumination so that it meets these requirements, noting that the illumination of the broardwalks “must be compatible with the lighting on the approach roads” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 68) while maintaining that “the floodlit building will be the first and last impression for [… an audience] to receive” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1). These lighting requirements are also tempered by the desire that the “night time [...] view will be all lights and reflections, [that] stretch all along the harbour for many miles” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1) reinforcing the use of light as an anchor that provides both a point of reference and serves as a mediator of the Sydney Opera House’s place within the city.The narrative of the materials and elements that are combined to give the final, physical form its striking sensory presence is also told through light, in particular colour. Or, perhaps more precisely in an illumination sense, the accurate reproduction of colour and by extension accurate presentation of the construction materials used in the creation of the Sydney Opera House. Expression of the ‘truth’ in the materials he used was important for Utzon and the faithful representation of details such as the fine grains in timber and the smooth concrete finishes required careful lighting to enhance these features. When extended to the human occupants of the Sydney Opera House, there is a short, yet very descriptive instruction: the lighting is to give “life to the skin and hair on the human form in much the same way as the light from candles” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Thus, the narrative of the materials and their quality was as important as the final structure and those who would occupy it. It is the role of light to build upon the story of the materials to contribute to the overall narrative of the Sydney Opera House.Building an Experience through IlluminationUtzon envisaged that light would do much more than provide illumination or tell the narrative of the materials he had selected – light was also to build a unique architectural experience for a patron. The experience of light was to be subtle; the architecture was to retain a position of centre stage, reinforced by, rather than ever replaced by, the illumination. In this way, concealed lighting was proposed which would be “designed in close collaboration with the acoustical engineers as they will become an integral part of overall acoustic design” and “installed in carefully selected places based on knowledge gleaned from experimental work” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Through concealing the light source, the architecture did not become cluttered or over powered by a dazzling array of fixtures and fittings that detracted from the audience’s experiences. For instance, to illuminate the monumental steps, Utzon proposed that the fittings would be recessed into the handrails, while the bar and lounge areas would be lit from discreet fittings installed within the plywood ceiling panels (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 16) to create an experience of light that was unified across the site. In addition to the aesthetical improvements gained from the removal of the light sources from the field of view, unwanted glare is also reduced reinforcing the ‘whole’ of the architectural experience.During the time that Utzon was conceptualising the illumination of the Sydney Opera House, the Major Hall (what is now known as the Concert Hall) was envisaged as what might be considered as a modern multipurpose venue, one that could accommodate among other activities: symphonic concerts; opera; ballet and dance; choral concerts; pageants and mass meetings (NSW Department of Local Government 24). The Concert Hall was the terminus for the ‘journey’—where the actors and audience find themselves in the same space, the ‘other world’—“a make believe atmosphere, which will exclude all outside impressions and allow the patrons to be absorbed into the theatre mood, which the actors and the producers wish to create” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2). This other world was to sumptuously explode with rich colours “which uplift you in that festive mood, away from daily life, that you expect when you go to the theatre, a play, an opera or a concert” (Utzon Utzon Design Principles 34). These highly decorated and colourful finishes contrast with the white shells further highlighting the ‘journey’ that has taken place. Utzon proposed to use the illumination to reinforce this distance and provide the link between the natural colours of the raw materials used outside the theatre and highly decorated colours of the performance spaces.The lighting treatment of the theatres extended into the foyers and their public amenities to ensure that the lighting design contributed to the overall enhancement of a patron’s visit and delivered the experience of the ‘journey’ that was envisaged by Utzon (Dwyer “Utzon’s Use” 130-32). This standardised approach was in concert with Utzon’s architectural philosophy where repetitive systems of construction elements were utilised, for instance, in the construction of the shells. Utzon clearly articulated this approach in The Descriptive Narrative, noting that “standard light fittings will be chosen […] to suit each location” (67), however the standardisation would not compromise other considerations of the space such as the acoustical performance, with Utzon noting that the “fittings for auditoria and rehearsal rooms must be of necessity, designed in close collaboration with the acoustical engineers as they will become an integral part of over acoustic design” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). Another parallel between the architectural development of the Sydney Opera House and Utzon’s approach to the lighting concepts was, uncommon at the time, his preference for prototyping and experimentation with lighting effects and various fittings (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 67). A sharp contrast to the usual practices of the day which relied upon more straightforward procurement processes with generic rather than tailored solutions. Peter Hall, of Hall, Todd & Littlemore, discussed the typical method of lighting design which was prevalent during the construction of the Sydney Opera House, as a method which “amounted to the electrical engineers laying out on a plan sufficient off-the-shelf light fittings to achieve the desired illumination levels […] the resulting effects were dull even if brightly lit” (Hall 180). Thus, Utzon’s careful approach to ensure that light and architecture were in harmony as “nothing is introduced into the scheme, before it has been carefully investigated and has proved to be the right solution to the problem” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 2) was highly innovative for its time.The use of light to provide an experience was not necessarily new, for example RSL Clubs, theme parks and department stores all used light to attract attention to their products and services, however the scale and proposed execution of these concepts was pioneering for Australia in the 1950s and 1960s. Utzon’s concepts provided a highly experiential unified design to provide the patron with a unique architectural experience built through the careful use of light.Building the Scenery with LightArchitecture might be considered set design on a grand scale (for example see Raban, Rasmuseen and Read). Both architects and set designers are concerned with the relationship between the creative designs and the viewers and both set up opportunities for interactions between people (as actors or users) and structure. However, without light, the scene remains literally, in the dark, isolated from its surroundings and unperceetable to an audience.Utzon was acutely aware of the relationship between the Sydney Opera House and the city in which it stands. The positioning of the structure on the site is no accident and the interplay between the ‘sails’ and the sun is perhaps the most recognised lighting feature of the Sydney Opera House. By varying the angle of the shells, the reflections and the effects of the sunlight are constantly varying depending on the viewer’s position and focus. More importantly, these subtle variations in the light enhance the sculptural effect of the direct illumination and help create the effect of “matt snow and shining ice” (Commonwealth of Australia 51): the ‘shimmer of life’ so desired by Utzon as the sunlight strikes the ceramic tiles. This ‘shimmer’ is not the only natural lighting effect. The use of the different angles ensures variation in the light, clouds and resulting shadows to heighten interest and create an ever-changing scene that plays out on the shells as the sun moves across the sky, as Utzon notes, “something new goes on all the time and it is so important–this interplay is so important that together with the sun, the light and the clouds, it makes it a living thing” (Utzon Sydney Opera House 49). This scene is enhanced by the changing quality of the sunlight; the shells appear to be deep amber at first light their shadows long and faint before becoming shorter and stronger as the sun moves towards its midday position with the colour changing slowly to ‘pure’ white before the shadows change sides, the process reverses and they again disappear under the cover of darkness. Although the scene replays daily, the relative location of the sun and changing weather patterns ensure infinite variation in the effect.This changing scene, on a grand scale, with light as the central character is just as important as the theatrical performances taking place indoors on the stages. With a mobile audience, the detailing of the visual scene that is the structure becomes more important. The Sydney Opera House competes for attention with shipping movements in the harbour, the adjacent bridge with the ant-like procession of climbers and the activities of the city to the south. Utzon foresaw this noting that the “position on a peninsular, which is overlooked from all angles makes it important to maintain an all-round elevation. There can be no backsides to the building and nothing can be hidden from the view” (Utzon Descriptive Narrative 1). The use of natural light to enhance the sculptural form and reinforce isolation of the structure on the peninsular, centre stage on the harbour is therefore not a coincidence. Utzon has deliberately harnessed the natural light to ensure that the Sydney Opera House is just as vibrant a performer as its surroundings. In this way, Utzon has used light to anchor the Sydney Opera House both in the city it serves and for the performances it houses.It is not just the natural light that is used as such an anchor point. Utzon planned for artificial lighting of the sails and surrounding site to ensure that after dark the ‘shimmer’ of the white tiles would be maintained with an equivalent, if manufactured, effect. For Utzon, the sculptural qualities of structure were important and should be clearly ‘read’ at night, even against a dark harbour on one side and the brighter city on the other. Through the use of artificial lighting, Utzon set the scene on Bennelong Point with the structure clearly centred in the set that is the Sydney skyline. This reinforced the notion that a journey into the Sydney Opera House was something special, a transition from the everyday to the ‘other’ world.ConclusionFor Utzon light was just as essential as concrete and other building materials for the design of the Sydney Opera House. The traditional bright lights of the stage had no place in the architectural illumination, replaced instead by a much more subtle, understated use of light, and indeed its absence. Utzon planned for the lighting to envelope an audience but not to smother them. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete his project and in 1968 J.M. Waldram was eventually appointed to complete the lighting design. Waldram’s lighting solutions—many of which are still in place today—borrowed or significantly drew upon Utzon’s original illumination concepts, thus demonstrating their strength and timeless qualities. In this way light builds on the story of the structure, reinforcing the architecture of the building and extending the narratives of the construction elements used to build the Sydney Opera House.AcknowledgementsThe author acknowledges the assistance of Rachel Franks for her input on an early draft of this article and thanks the blind peer reviewers for their generous feedback and suggestions, of course any remain errors or omissions are my own. ReferencesCommonwealth of Australia. Sydney Opera House Nomination by the Government of Australia for Inscription on the World Heritage List. Canberra: Commonwealth of Australia, 2006.Cleaver, Jack. Surface and Textured Finishes for Concrete and Their Impact upon the Environment. Sydney: Steel Reinforcement Institute of Australia, 2005.Dwyer, Simon. A Backstage Biography of the Sydney Opera House. Proceedings of the 7th Annual Conference of the Popular Culture Association of Australia and New Zealand (PopCAANZ) 2016: 1-10.———. “Utzon’s Use of Light to Influence the Audience’s Perception of the Sydney Opera House”. Inhabiting the Meta Visual: Contemporary Performance Themes. Eds. Helene Gee Markstein and Arthur Maria Steijn. Oxford: Inter-Disciplinary P, 2016.Hall, Peter. Sydney Opera House: The Design Approach to the Building with Recommendations on Its Conservation. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 1990.NSW Department of Local Government. An International Competition for a National Opera House at Bennelong Point Sydney, New South Wales, Australia: Conditions and Program (“The ‘Brown’ Book”). Sydney: NSW Government Printer, 1957.Raban, Jonathan. Soft City. London: Picador, 2008.Rasmuseen, Steen. Experiencing Architecture. Cambridge: Massachusetts Institute of Technology P, 1964.Read, Gary. “Theater of Public Space: Architectural Experimentation in the Théâtre de l'Espace (Theater of Space), Paris 1937.” Journal of Architectural Education 58.4 (2005): 53-62.Steensen Varming. Lighting Master Plan. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 2007.Utzon, Jørn. Sydney Opera House: The Descriptive Narrative. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 1965.———. The Sydney Opera House. Zodiac, 1965. 48-93.———. Untitled. (The ‘Red’ Book). Unpublished, 1958.———. Untitled. (The ‘Yellow’ Book). Unpublished, 1962.———. Utzon Design Principles. Sydney: Sydney Opera House Trust, 2002.

Briefs and Hot Brown Honey are two Brisbane based companies producing genre-bending work combining different mixes of circus, burlesque, hiphop, dance, boylesque, performance art, rap and drag. The two companies produce provocative performance that is entertaining and draws critical acclaim. However, what is particularly distinctive about these two companies is that they are both founded and directed by performers from Samoan cultural backgrounds who have leap-frogged over the normative whiteness of much contemporary Australian performance. Both companies have a radical political agenda. This essay argues that through the presentation of diverse alternative bodies, not only through the performing bodies presented on stage but also in the corporate bodies of the companies they have set up, they profoundly challenge the structure of the Australian performance industry and contribute a radical re-envisaging of the potential of circus to act as a vital political force.Briefs was co-founded by Creative Director, Samoan, Fez Fa’anana with his brother Natano Fa’anana in 2008. An experienced dancer and physical theatre performer, Fa’anana describes the company’s performances as the “dysfunctional marriage of theatre, circus, dance, drag and burlesque with the simplicity of a variety show format” (“On the Couch”). As Fa’anana’s alter ego, “the beautiful bearded Samoan ringmistress Shivannah says, describing The Second Coming, the Briefs show at the Sydney Festival 2017, the show is ‘A little bit butch with a f*** load of camp’” (Lavers). The show involves “extreme costume changes, extravagant birdbath boylesque, too close for comfort yo-yo tricks and more than one highly inappropriate banana” (“Briefs: The Second Coming”).Briefs is an all-male company with gender-bending forming an integral part of the ethos. In The Second Coming the accepted sinuous image of the female performer entwining herself around the aerial hoop or lyra is subverted with the act featuring instead a male contortionist performing the same seductive moves with silky smooth sensuousness. Another example of gender bending in the show is the Dita Von Teese number performed by a male performer in a birdbath filled with water with a trapeze suspended over the top of it. Perhaps the most sensational example of alternative bodies in the show is “the moment when performer Dallas Dellaforce, wearing a nude body stocking with a female body drawn onto it, and an enormously long, curly white-blond wig blown by a wind machine, stands like a high camp Botticelli Venus rising up out of the stage” (Lavers). The highly visible body of Fez Fa’anana as the gender-bending Samoan ringmistress challenges the pervasive whiteness in contemporary circus. Although there has been some discourse on the issue of whiteness within the context of Australian theatre, for example Lee Lewis arguing for an aggressive approach to cross-racial casting to combat the whiteness of Australian theatre and TV (Lewis), there has however been very little discussion of this issue within Australian contemporary circus. Mark St Leon’s discussion of historical attitudes to Aboriginal performers in Australian circus is a notable exception (St Leon).This issue remains widely unacknowledged, an aspect of whiteness that social geographers Audrey Kobashi and Linda Peake identify in their writing, whiteness is indicated less by its explicit racism than by the fact that it ignores, or even denies, racist indications. It occupies central ground by deracializing and normalizing common events and beliefs, giving them legitimacy as part of a moral system depicted as natural and universal. (Kobayashi and Peake 394)As film studies scholar, Richard Dyer writes,the invisibility of whiteness as a racial position in white (which is to say dominant) discourse is of a piece with its ubiquity … In fact for most of the time white people speak about nothing but white people, it’s just that we couch it in terms of ‘people’ in general. Research – into books, museums, the press, advertising, films, television, software – repeatedly shows that in Western representation whites are overwhelmingly and disproportionately predominant, have the central and elaborated roles, and above all, are placed as the norm, the ordinary, the standard. Whites are everywhere in representation … At the level of racial representation, in other words, whites are not of a certain race, they’re just the human race. (3)Dyer writes in conclusion that “white people need to learn to see themselves as white, to see their particularity. In other words whiteness needs to be made strange” (541). This applies in particular to contemporary circus. In a recent interview with the authors, ex-Circus Oz Artistic Director and CEO, Mike Finch, commented, “You could make an all-round entertaining family circus show with [racial] diversity represented and I believe that would be a deeply subversive act in a way in contemporary Australia” (Finch).Today in contemporary Australian circus very few racially diverse bodies can be seen and almost no Indigenous performers and this fact goes largely unremarked upon. In spite of there being Indigenous cultures within Australia that celebrate physical achievement, clowning and performance, there seem to be few pathways into professional circus for Indigenous athletes or artists. Although a considerable spread of social circus programs exists across Australia working with Indigenous youth at risk, there seem to be few structures in place to facilitate the transitioning between these social circus classes and entry into circus training programs or professional companies. Since 2012 Circus Oz has set up the program Blakflip to mentor and support young Indigenous performers to try and redress this problem. This has led to two graduates of the program moving on to perform with the company, namely Dale Woodbridge Brown and Ghenoa Gella, and also led to the mentorship and support of several students in gaining entry into the National Institute of Circus Arts in Melbourne. Circus Oz has also now appointed an Aboriginal and Torres Straight Islander Program Officer, Davey Thomson, who is working to develop networks between past and present participants in the Blakflip program and to strengthen links with Indigenous Communities. However, it could be argued that Fez Fa’anana with Briefs has in fact leapfrogged over these programs aimed at addressing the whiteness in contemporary circus. As a Samoan Australian performer he has not only co-founded his own contemporary performance company in which he takes the central performing role, but has now also established another company called Briefs Factory, which is a creative production house that develops, presents, produces and manages artists and productions, and now at any one time employs around 20 people. In terms of his performative physical presence on stage, in an interview in 2015, Fa’anana described his performance alter ego, Shivannah, as the “love child of the bearded lady and ring master.” In the same interview he also described himself tellingly as “a Samoan (who is not a security guard, football player nor a KFC cashier),” and as “an Australian … a legal immigrant” (“On the Couch”). The radical racial difference that the alternative body of Shivannah the ringmistress presents in performance is also constantly reinforced by Fa’anana’s repartee. At the beginning of the show he urges the audience “to put their feet flat on the floor and acknowledge the earth and how lucky we are to be in this beautiful country that for 200 years now has been called Australia” (Fa’anana). Comments about his Samoan ancestry are sprinkled throughout the show and are delivered with a light touch, constantly making the audience laugh. At one point in the show resplendent in a sequined costume, Fa’anana stands downstage in front of two performers on their knees cleaning up the mess left on the stage from the act before, and he says, “Finally, I’ve made it! I’ve got a couple of white boys cleaning up after me” (Fa’anana). In another part of the show, alluding to white stereotypes of Indigenous performers, Fa’anana thanks the drag artist who taught him how to put his drag make-up on, saying “I used to put my make-up on with a burnt stick before he showed me how to do it” (Fa’anana).In his book on critical pedagogy, political activist and scholar Peter McLaren writes on approaches to developing the means to resist and subvert pervasive whiteness, saying, “To resist whiteness means developing a politics of difference […] we need to re-think difference and identity outside a set of binary oppositions. We need to view identity as coalitional, as collective, as processual, as grounded in the struggle for social justice” (213). One example of how identity outside binary oppositions was explored in The Second Coming was in an act by drag artist Dallas Dellaforce, who dressedin a sumptuous fifties evening dress with pink balloon breasts rising out of the top of his low cut evening dress and wearing a Marilyn Monroe blonde wig, camped it up as a fifties coquette, flipping from sultry into a totally scary horror tantrum, before returning to coquette mode with the husky phrase, ‘I love you.’ When at the end of the song, stripped naked, sporting a shaved bald head and wearing only a suggestive long thin pink balloon, the full potential of camp to reveal different layers of artifice and constructed identity was revealed. (Lavers)Fez Fa’anana comments at the end of the show that The Second Coming was not aimed at any particular group of people, but instead aimed to “celebrate being human.” However, if this is the case, Fa’anana is demanding an extended definition of being human that through the inclusion of diverse alternative bodies pushes for a new understandings of what constitutes being human and how human identity can be construed. His work demands an understanding that is not oppositional nor grounded in binary opposition to normative whiteness but instead forms part of a re-thinking of human identity through alternative bodies that are presented as processual, and deeply grounded in the struggle for the social justice issue of acceptance of difference and alternatives.Hot Brown Honey is another Brisbane based company working with circus in conjunction with other forms such as burlesque, hip hop, and cabaret. The all-female company was recently awarded the UK 2016 Total Theatre Award for Innovation, Experimentation and Playing with Form. The company was co-founded by dancer and choreographer Lisa Fa’alafi, who is from the same Samoan family as Fez and Natano Fa’anana, with sound designer Kim “Busty Beatz” Bowers, a successful hip hop artist, poet and record producer. From the beginning Hot Brown Honey was envisaged as providing a performance space for women of colour. Lisa Fa’alafi says the company was formed to address the lack of performance opportunities available, “It’s plain knowledge that there are limited roles for people of colour, let alone women of colour” (quoted in Northover).Lyn Gardner, arts critic for The Guardian in the UK, describing Hot Brown Honey’s performance, writes that the company fights “gender and racial stereotypes with a raucous glee, while giving a feminist makeover to circus, hip-hop and burlesque” (Gardner). The company includes women mainly “of Indigenous, Pacific Islander and Indonesian heritage taking on colonialism, sexism, gender stereotypes and racism through often confronting performance and humour; their tagline is ‘fighting the power never tasted so sweet’” (Northover).In their show Hot Brown Honey present a straps act. Straps is a physically demanding aerial circus act that requires great upper body strength and is usually performed by male aerialists. However, in the Hot Brown Honey show gender expectations are subverted with the straps act performed by a female aerialist. Gardner writes of the performance of this straps act at the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe as a “sequence that conjures the twisted moves of a woman trying to escape domestic violence,” and “One of the best circus sequences I’ve seen at this festival” (Gardner). Hula hoops, a traditionally female act, is also subverted and used to explore the stereotypes of the “exotic notion of Pacific culture” (Northover). Gardner writes of this act that the hoola hoops “are called into service to explore western tourists’ culture of entitlement”. Company co-founder Kim “Busty Beatz” Bowers, talks about the group’s approach to flipping perceptions of women of colour through investigating the power dynamics in gender relations, “We have a lot of flips around sexuality,” says Bowers. “Especially around the way people expect a black woman to be. We like to shift the exploitation and the power” (quoted in Northover).Another pressing issue that Hot Brown Honey address is a strange phenomenon apparent in much contemporary circus. In addition to the pervasive whiteness in contemporary circus, relatively few women are visible in many contemporary circus companies. Suzie Williams from Acrobatic Conundrum, the Seattle-based circus company, writes in her blog, “there are a lot of shows that feature many young, fit, exuberant guys and one flexible girl who performs a sensual/sentimental/romantic solo act” (Williams). Writing about Complètement Cirque, Montreal’s international circus festival which took place in July 2016, Williams says, “this year at the festival, my least favorite trend was … out of the 9 ticketed productions only one had more than one woman in it” (Williams, emphasis in original).Circus scholars have started to research this trend of lack of female representation both in contemporary circus schools and performance companies. “Gender in Circus Education: the institutionalization of stereotypes” was the title of a paper presented at the Circus and Its Others Conference in Montreal in July 2016 by Alisan Funk, a circus choreographer, teacher and director and an MA candidate at Concordia University in Montreal. Funk cited research from France showing that the educational programs and the industry are 70% male dominated. Although recreational programs in France have majority female populations, there appears to be a bottleneck at the level of entrance exams to superior schools. The few female students accepted to those schools are then frequently pushed towards solo aerial work (Funk). This push to solo aerial work means that the group floor work and acrobatics are often performed by men who create acrobatic groups that often then go on to form the basis for companies. (In this context the work of Circus Oz in this area needs to be acknowledged with the company having had a consistent policy over its 39 year existence of employing 50% female performers, however in the context of international contemporary circus this is increasingly rare).Williams writes in her blog about contemporary circus performance, “I want to see more women. I want to see women who look different from each other. I want to see so many women that no single women has to stand as a symbol of what all women can be” (Williams).Hot Brown Honey tackle the issue Williams raises head on, and they do it in the form of internationally award winning circus/cabaret that is all-female, where the bodies of the performers offer a radical alternative to the norms of contemporary circus and performance generally. The work shows women, a range of women performing circus-women of colour, with a wide range of bodies of varying shapes and sizes on stage. In Hot Brown Honey no single women in the show has to stand as a symbol of what all women can be. Briefs and Hot Brown Honey, through accessible yet political circus/cabaret, subvert the norms and institutionalized racial and gender-based biases inherent in contemporary circus both in Australia and internationally. By doing so these two companies have leap-frogged the normative presentation of performers in contemporary circus by speaking directly to a celebration of difference and diversity through the presentation of radical alternative bodies.ReferencesAlthusser, L. For Marx. Trans. Ben Brewster. London: Verso, 1965/2005.Beeby, J. “Briefs: The Second Coming – Jack Beeby Chats with Creative Director Fez Faanana.” Aussie Theatre 2015. <http://aussietheatre.com.au/features/briefs-the-second-coming-jack-beeby-chats-with-creative-director-fez-faanana>.“Briefs: The Second Coming.” Sydney Festival 2016. <http://www.sydneyfestival.org.au/2017/briefs>.Dyer, R. White: Essays on Race and Culture. New York: Routledge, 1997. Fa’anana, F. Repartee as Shivannah in The Second Coming by Briefs. Magic Mirrors Spiegeltent, Sydney Festival, 7 Jan. 2017. Performance.Finch, M. Personal communication. 13 Dec. 2016.Funk, A. “Gender in Circus Education: The Institutionalization of Stereotypes.” Paper presented at Circus and Its Others, July 2016.Gardner, L. “Shameless and Subversive: The Feminist Revolution Hits the Edinburgh Fringe.” The Guardian Theatre Blog 14 Aug. 2016. <https://www.theguardian.com/stage/theatreblog/2016/aug/14/feminist-revolution-edinburgh-stage-fringe-2016-burlesque>.Kyobashi A., and L. Peake. “Racism Out of Place: Thoughts on Whiteness and an Antiracist Geography in the New Millennium.” Annals of American Geographers 90.2 (2000): 392-403.Lavers, K. “Briefs: The Second Coming.” ArtsHub Reviews 2017. <http://performing.artshub.com.au/news-article/reviews/performing-arts/katie-lavers/briefs-the-second-coming-252936>.Lewis, L. Cross-Racial Casting: Changing the Face of Australian Theatre. Platform Papers No. 13. Strawberry Hills, NSW: Currency House, 2007. McLaren, P. Life in Schools: An Introduction to Critical Pedagogy in the Foundations of Education. 6th ed. New York: Routledge, 2016. McLaren, P., and R. Torres. “Racism and Multicultural Education: Rethinking ‘Race’ and ‘Whiteness’ in Late Capitalism.” Critical Multiculturalism: Rethinking Multicultural and Antiracist Education. Ed. S. May. Philadelphia, PA: Falmer Press, 1999. 42-76. Northover, K. “Melbourne International Comedy Festival: A Mix of Politically Infused Hip Hop and Cabaret.” Sydney Morning Herald 3 Apr. 2016. <http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/comedy/melbourne-international-comedy-festival-hot-brown-honey-a-mix-of-politicallyinfused-hiphop-and-cabaret-20160403-gnxazn.html>.“On the Couch with Fez Fa’anana.” Arts Review 2015. <http://artsreview.com.au/on-the-couch-with-fez-faanana/>.“Outrageous Boys’ Circus Briefs Is No Drag.” Daily Telegraph 2016. <http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/archive/specials/outrageous-boys-circus-briefs-is-no-drag/news-story/7d24aee1560666b4eca65af81ad19ff3>.St Leon, M. “Celebrated at First, Then Implied and Finally Denied.” The Routledge Circus Studies Reader. Eds. Katie Lavers and Peta Tait. London: Routledge, 2008/2016. 209-33. Williams, S. “Gender in Circus.” Acrobatic Conundrum 3 Aug. 2016. <http://www.acrobaticconundrum.com/blog/2016/8/3/gender-in-circus>.

This paper addresses that natural consort of love: sex. It particularly considers the absence of actual sex from mainstream popular culture and the marginalisation of 'fun' sex as porn, requiring its illicit circulation as ‘illegitimate’ videos. The absence of sex from films classified and screened in public venues (even to over-18s) prevents a discourse about actual sex informing the discourse of love and romance perpetuated through Hollywood movies. The value of a variety of representations of sexual practice in the context of a discussion of love, sex and romance in Western cinema was briefly illuminated for the few days that Baise-moi was legitimately screened in Australia. For all that love is one of the great universal themes, Western cinema tends to communicate this ‘finer feeling’ through recourse to romance narratives. Which is not to say that romantic representations of love are devoid of sex, just that that the cinematic convention is to indicate sex, without showing it. Indeed, without the actors 'doing it'. The peculiarity of this situation is not usually clear, however, because there is so little mainstream sex-cinema with which to compare the anodyne gyrations of romantic Hollywood. Which was where Baise-moi came in, briefly. Baise-moi is variously translated for English-speaking cinema audiences as 'Fuck me' (in Australia) and 'Rape me' (in the US, where, astonishingly, Rape me is seen as a less objectionable title than Fuck me.) Of the two titles, Fuck me is by far the cleverer and more authentically related to the meaning and content, whereas Rape me is a travesty, particularly given the shocking power of an extremely graphic and violent rape scene which initiates much of the succeeding violence. An early appeal by the Australian Attorney-General (to the Review Board) against the Office of Film and Literature Classification’s granting of an R rating meant that Baise-moi was hastily removed from Australian cinemas. The movie is, however, heavily reviewed on the web and readers are referred to commentaries such as those by Gary Morris and Frank Vigorito. The grounds on which Classification was refused were given as ‘strong depictions of violence’, ‘sexual violence’, ‘frequent, actual detailed sex scenes’ and ‘scenes which demean both women and men’. Violence, sexual violence and ‘scenes which demean’ are hardly uncommon in films (although it may be unusual that these demean even-handedly). If the amount of violence is nothing new, the sex was certainly different from the usual cinematic fare. Although this was not the first time that ‘unsimulated’ sex had been shown on the art-house big screen, the other major examples were not entirely similar. Romance was wordy, arguably feminist, and a long way from mindless sex-because-they-like-it. Intimacy 's ‘sex scenes are explicit but totally non pornographic, they’re painful, needy, unsatisfying except on an orgasmic level’, according to Margaret Pomeranz, who reviewed the film for SBS. Baise-moi is different because, as Vigorito says, ‘please make no mistake that the two main characters in this film, the so-called French Thelma and Louise, certainly do want to fuck’. (They also like to kill.) Baise-moi is often characterised as a quasi-feminist revenge movie where the two protagonists Manu (a porn star) and Nadine (a sex worker) seek revenge with (according to Morris) ‘ultimately more nihilism than party-hearty here, with the non-stop killings laid squarely at the doorstep of a society that’s dehumanized its citizens’. While the brutality depicted is mind-blowing (sometimes literally/visually) it is the sex that got the film banned, but not until after some 50,000 Australians had seen it. The elements that separate Baise-moi from Intimacy and Romance (apart from the extreme violence) is that the characters have (heterosexual) sex with a variety of partners, and sometimes do so just for fun. Further, although the Office of Film and Literature Classification ‘considers that the film has significant artistic and cultural merit’ (OFLC), one of the directors wrote the novel on which the film is based while the other director and the two stars are former porn industry workers. If Baise-moi had been accepted as cinema-worthy, where would the sex-on-the-screen factor have stopped for future classification of films? The popular culture approach to romance, love and sex moves comparatively smoothly from the first kiss to the rumpled sheets. Although the plot of a romantic film may consist in keeping the love and sex activities apart, the love is (almost invariably) requited. And, as films such as Notting Hill demonstrate, true love these days is communicated less frequently through the willingness of a couple to have sex (which generally goes without saying), and more often through commitment to the having and rearing of a shared child (whereas off-screen this may more usually be the commitment of a shared mortgage). Sex, in short, is popularly positioned as a precursor to love; as not entirely necessary (and certainly not sufficient) but very usually associated with the state of 'being in love'. It is comparatively rare to see any hesitation to engage in sex on the part of a film-portrayed loving couple, other than hurdles introduced through the intervention of outside forces. A rare example of thinking and talking before fucking is The Other Sister , but this means it rates as an R in the States because of ‘thematic elements involving sex-related material’. In contrast, the film Notting Hill, where the characters played by Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant hardly pause for breath once attraction is established, rates a PG-13 (‘for sexual content and brief strong language’). Thus it is all right for producers to have sex in a storyline, but any hesitation, or discussion, makes the film unsuited to younger audiences. Given that characters’ thinking about sex, and talking about sex, as part of (or preliminary to) having sex apparently increases the age at which the audience is allowed to see the film, perhaps it should not be surprising that actually showing sex about which the audience can then think and talk is almost entirely banned. Yet for a culture that associates sex so strongly with love, and celebrates love so thoroughly in film, television and literature (not to mention popular magazines such as Woman's Day, New Idea, New Weekly and Who), to be occasionally challenged by a film that includes actual sex acts seems not unreasonable, particularly when restricted to audiences of consenting adults. Ian McEwan's debut collection of short stories, First love, last rites explores this conundrum of 'the sex that shall only be acted, never performed' in a short story, 'Cocker at the theatre' (McEwan 57). The tale is about a theatrical production where the actors are new, and nude, and the theme of the play is copulation. It is a story of its time, mid-seventies, the resonating-hippie Age of Aquarius, when Hair still rocked. McEwan's naked couples are assembled by the play's director and then pressed together to begin the rhythmic moves required to complement the thumping musical score of GTC: ‘Grand Time Copulation’. The male and female actors are not near enough to each other, so they are spliced closer together: ‘When they began to move again their pubic hair rasped’ (57-8). The director is unimpressed by the result: ‘I know it's hard, but you have to look as if you're enjoying this thing.' (His voice rose.) 'Some people do, you know. It's a fuck, you understand, not a funeral.' (His voice sank.) 'Let's have it again, with some enthusiasm this time.' However, all is not entirely well, after a good second beginning. ‘Them on the end, they're going too fast, what do you think?' [says the director to the stage manager] They watched together. It was true, the two who had been moving well, they were a little out of time ... 'My God,' said [the director] 'They're fucking … It's disgusting and obscene … pull them apart.' (58-9). The issue raised here, as in the case of the removal of any classification from Baise-moi that effectively prevented further public screenings, is the double standard of a society that expends so much of its critical and cultural energies in exploring the nature of love, romance and sexual attraction but balks (horrified) at the representation of actual sex. Yet one of the values of a cinematic replay of 'unsimulated sex' is that it acts as a ‘reality check’ for all the mushy renditions of romance that form the mainstream representation of 'love' on-screen. So, if we want to see sex, should we not simply consume pornography? In modern-day Australia it is impossible to discuss depictions of live sex without conjuring up connotations of ‘porn’. Porn, however, is not usually consumed in a manner or place that allows it to interrogate media messages from mainstream production houses and distributors. Watching porn, for example at home on video, removes it from a context in which it could realistically prompt a re-evaluation of the visual diet of love and sex Hollywood-style, an opportunity that was provided by Baise-moi during its temporary season. The comparative absence of on-screen sexual activity means that there is an absence of texts through which we can interrogate mainstream representations of lovemaking. Whereas the Eros Foundation aims to promote debate leading to ‘logical perspectives on sex and rational law reform of the sex industry’, and avoids using the term 'pornography' on its home page, it is hard to find any representations of unsimulated sex that are not classified as porn and consequently easily pigeon-holed as 'not relevant' to cultural debate except in general terms regarding (say) 'censorship' or 'the portrayal of women'. It is hard to know what Baise-moi might have said to Australian audiences about the relationship between sex, authenticity (Morris uses the term ‘trashy integrity’) and popular culture since the film was screened for only the briefest of intervals, and throughout that time the ‘hype’ surrounding it distracted audiences from any discussion other than would it/wouldn't it, and should it/shouldn't it, be banned. Hopefully, a future Attorney-General will allow the adults in this country to enjoy the same range of popular cultural inputs available to citizens in more liberal nations, and back the initial (liberal) decision of the OFLC. And what has love got to do with all this? Not much it seems, although doesn't popular culture ‘teach’ that one of the main uses for a love theme is to provide an excuse for some gratuitous sex? Perhaps, after all, it is time to cut to the chase and allow sex to be screened as a popular culture genre in its own right, without needing the excuse of a gratuitous love story. Works Cited McEwan, Ian. First love, last rites. London: Picador, 1975. 56-60. Morris, Gary. “Baise-moi. Feminist screed or fetish-fuckathon? Best to flip a coin.” Lip Magazine 2001. http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revi... OFLC. Classification Review Board News release, 10 May 2002. http://www.oflc.gov.au/PDFs/RBBaiseMoi.pdf Pomeranz, Margaret. “Intimacy.” The Movie Show: Reviews. http://www.sbs.com.au/movieshow/reviews.... Vigorito, Frank. “Natural porn killers.” Offoffofffilm 2001. http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2001/baise... Filmography Baise-moi. Dirs. Virginie Despentes and CoRalie Trinh Thi. Dist. Film Fixx, 2000. Intimacy. Dir. Patrice Chereau. Dist. Palace Films, 2001. Notting Hill. Dir. Roger Michell. Dist. Universal Pictures, 1999. Romance. Dir. Catherine Breillat. Dist. Potential Films, 1999. The other sister. Dir. Gary Marshall. Dist. Touchstone Pictures, 1999. Links http://www.offoffoff.com/film/2001/baisemoi.php3 http://www.eros.com.au http://film.guardian.co.uk/censorship/news/0,11729,713540,00.html http://www.sbs.com.au/movieshow/reviews.php3?id=838 http://www.michaelbutler.com/hair http://www.oflc.gov.au/PDFs/RBBaiseMoi.pdf http://www.movie-source.com/no/othersister.shtml http://www.lipmagazine.org/articles/revimorris_128.shtml Citation reference for this article Substitute your date of access for Dn Month Year etc... MLA Style Green, Lelia. "Sex" M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 5.6 (2002). Dn Month Year < http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/sex.php>. APA Style Green, L., (2002, Nov 20). Sex. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture, 5,(6). Retrieved Month Dn, Year, from http://www.media-culture.org.au/0211/sex.html

The pop cultural moment that most typifies the social psychology of invasion for many of us is Orson Welles's 1938 coast to coast CBS radio broadcast of Invaders from Mars, a narration based on H.G. Wells's The War of the Worlds. News bulletins and scene broadcasts followed Welles's introduction, featuring, in contemporary journalistic style, reports of a "meteor" landing near Princeton, N.J., which "killed" 1500 people, and the discovery that it was in fact a "metal cylinder" containing strange creatures from Mars armed with "death rays" which would reduce all the inhabitants of the earth to space dust. Welles's broadcast caused thousands to believe that Martians were wreaking widespread havoc in New York and Jersey. New York streets were filled with families rushing to open spaces protecting their faces from the "gas raids", clutching sacred possessions and each other. Lines of communication were clogged, massive traffic jams ensued, and people evacuated their homes in a state of abject terror while armouries in neighbouring districts prepared to join in the "battle". Some felt it was a very cruel prank, especially after the recent war scare in Europe that featured constant interruption of regular radio programming. Many of the thousands of questions directed at police in the hours following the broadcast reflected the concerns of the residents of London and Paris during the tense days before the Munich agreement. The media had undergone that strange metamorphosis that occurs when people depend on it for information that affects themselves directly. But it was not a prank. Three separate announcements made during the broadcast stressed its fictional nature. The introduction to the program stated "the Columbia Broadcasting System and its affiliated stations present Orson Welles and the Mercury Theatre on the Air in The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells", as did the newspaper listing of the program "Today: 8:00-9:00 -- Play: H.G. Wells's 'War of the Worlds' -- WABC". Welles, rather innocently, wanted to play with the conventions of broadcasting and grant his audience a bit of legitimately unsettling, though obviously fictitious, verisimilitude. There are not too many instances in modern history where we can look objectively at such incredible reactions to media soundbytes. That evening is a prototype for the impact media culture can have on an audience whose minds are prepped for impending disaster. The interruption of scheduled radio invoked in the audience a knee-jerk response that dramatically illustrated the susceptibility of people to the discourse of invasion, as well as the depth of the relationship between the audience and media during tense times. These days, the media itself are often regarded as the invaders. The endless procession of information that grows alongside technology's ability to present it is feared as much as it is loved. In the current climate of information and technological overload, invasion has swum from the depths of our unconscious paranoia and lurks impatiently in the shallows. There is so much invasion and so much to feel invaded about: the war in Kosovo (one of over sixty being fought today) is getting worse with the benevolence and force of the UN dwindling in a cloud of bureaucracy and failed talks, Ethiopia and Eritrea are going at it again, the ideology of the Olympic Games in Sydney has gone from a positive celebration of the millennium to a revenue-generating boys club of back scratchers, Internet smut is still everywhere, and most horrifically, Baywatch came dangerously close to being shot on location on the East Coast of Australia. In this issue of M/C we take a look at literal and allegorical invasions from a variety of cleverly examined aspects of our culture. Firstly, Axel Bruns takes a look a subtle invasion that is occurring on the Web in "Invading the Ivory Tower: Hypertext and the New Dilettante Scholars". He points to the way the Internet's function as a research tool is changing the nature of academic writing due to its interactivity and potential to be manipulated in a way that conventional written material cannot. Axel investigates the web browser's ability to invade the text and the elite world of academic publishing via the format of hypertext itself rather than merely through ideas. Felicity Meakins's article Shooting Baywatch: Resisting Cultural Invasion examines media and community reactions to the threat of having the television series Baywatch shot on Australian beaches. Felicity looks at the cultural cringe that has surrounded the relationship between Australia and America over the years and is manifested by our response to American accents in the media. American cultural imperialism has come to signify a great deal in the dwindling face of Aussie institutions like mateship and egalitarianism. In a similarly driven piece called "A Decolonising Doctor? British SF Invasion Narratives", Nick Caldwell investigates some of the implications of the "Britishness" of the cult television series Doctor Who, where insularity and cultural authority are taken to extremes during the ubiquitous intergalactic invasions. Paul Mc Cormack's article "Screen II: The Invasion of the Attention Snatchers" turns from technologically superior invaders to an invasion by technology itself -- he considers how the television has irreversibly invaded our lives and claimed a dominant place in the domestic sphere. Recently, the (Internet-connected) personal computer has begun a similar invasion: what space will it eventually claim? Sandra Brunet's "Is Sustainable Tourism Really Sustainable? Protecting the Icon in the Commodity at Sites of Invasion" explores the often forgotten Kangaroo Island off the coast of South Australia. She looks at ways in which the image of the island is constructed by the government and media for eco-tourism and how faithful this representation is to the farmers, fishermen and other inhabitants of the island. Paul Starr's article "Special Effects and the Invasive Camera: Enemy of the State and The Conversation" rounds off the issue with a look at the troubled relationship between cutting-edge special effects in Hollywood action movies and the surveillance technologies that recent movies such as Enemy of the State show as tools in government conspiracies. The depiction of high-tech gadgetry as 'cool' and 'evil' at the same time, he writes, leads to a collapse of meaning. This issue of M/C succeeds in pointing out sites of invasion in unusual places, continuing the journal's tradition of perception in the face of new media culture. I hope you enjoy this second issue of the second volume: 'invasion'. Ben King 'Invasion' Issue Editor Citation reference for this article MLA style: Ben King. "Editorial: 'Invasion'." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.2 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php>. Chicago style: Ben King, "Editorial: 'Invasion'," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 2 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Ben King. (1999) Editorial: 'invasion'. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(2). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9903/edit.php> ([your date of access]).

'Shut up, Graeme; I want to see those two rooting.'-- Description by a spectator of her own thoughts during Bulldog Front, Underground Productions, Cement Box Theatre, Brisbane, June 1999. A split scene in a small theatre, with a transverse stage faced from both sides by audiences. On a raised platform, two co-workers from a recruitment firm hired to sell forced-labour camps for the unemployed to the Australian public extend their awkward flirtation to a slow, gentle sexual encounter. Separated by several metres and a small patch of light, their shaven-headed supervisor stares down a gun barrel wielded by a former employee who has sold the firm's secrets to a competitor, then returned to negotiate terms of blackmail regarding their new contract. The scenes, observed and reported on by two other employees (as characters and as actors) from the space of the audience, end simultaneously. As the sounds of heterosexual coitus reach a (relatively) subdued climax, the former employee, a young man utterly unprepared for the reaction his threat receives, falls through the window of the office as he writhes away from the supervisor's angry tirade. Is this exploitative? If so, of whom and in what way? From March to June of this year, my co-workers and I on the Bulldog Front project at the University of Queensland attempted to realise the political potential of a physically-oriented rehearsal style. The mode of operation of the show -- the way it was rehearsed and performed, as well as the mode of its reception (for the audience only sees the 'product', one of the thorns in the side of 'experimental' praxis the world over) -- concentrated almost entirely upon the labour of the actors to develop and realise the operation of political forces through physical action. The politicisation of bodily desire within this framework was not an avowed intention at the beginning on the process, neither textually nor in the conception of the action by the creative team. However, the role of discourses regarding desire asserted themselves repeatedly in the course of realising the action -- and the interesting aspect is how easily, in comparison to methods of work we had experienced previously, this process allowed us -- in fact, forced us -- to address the social implications of specifically sexual desire within a textual matrix which often actively marginalised it. The scene in question did not arise, for instance, because of some misguided wish on the part of the producers to include a 'sex scene'. Indeed, the scene took place in low light, with clothes remaining in place - the action was obviously mimed, although the actor's bodies were in full contact. The violence in the other part of the split scene, by way of comparison, took on several sexualised manifestations, including the obviously phallic weapon and the grabbing of the employee's crotch while he cowered on a table. Contextually, the play's action up to that point had attempted to diversify the largely homosocial contact of the office and street in question in terms of the manifestation of male sexuality. The male co-worker in the 'sex' scene, Anthony, was engaging in intercourse with the newly-employed daughter of the company's owner. Throughout the play, Anthony's sometimes overtly sexual attitude to his work -- 'straight to bed on both of 'em,' he claims of his ability to derive (non-sexual) favours from the employees of a prospective 'victim' -- engaged in a dialogue with his attitudes towards his own sexual relations. The character of Teara, his co-participant, was by contrast desexualised in the office context -- or so it might have seemed in the text. An examination of the play reveals that other factors -- notably the fact that it's her first day back after working in Europe for three years -- mediate this verbal marginalisation. But to what extent can her later sacrifice of the relationship that develops between them -- and, indeed, of Anthony's life -- be read into her actions with regard to the staged encounter, particularly because she plays pursuer far more than pursued (Anthony, it seems, being far from competent in this area)? Is she sublimating her father-murder (her wish to take over the company) into physical 'conquest' of Anthony, who seems the perfect candidate according to the arrayed forces within the company (or the society)? Does this masculinised reading of her actions rob her of female psycho-identity? Does the anecdotal evidence of female audience members saying they enjoyed this scene more than any of the others have any relevance to the question of exploitation? Do any of these questions matter? What place, it may be asked, does desire have in the creation of a theatre of politics? It has, I would argue, everything to do with it. The question of exploitation or misrepresentation is not only a real one, it is anything but a side issue. This is not a question derived from guilt, either male or Catholic in my case, but from a wish to challenge the mode of storytelling without compromising the story I wish to tell, which must involve an ongoing inquiry as to what exactly -- and where exactly -- that story is. 'Desire' in this context should be read as that contact between actors which can be sexualised in terms of the discourses of the body -- and the reason why I state that 'desire was not the point' is that there was less of that in this fairly passionate production than I, for one, had expected. However, no opportunity for inquiry into this sexualisation had to be avoided, simply because the methodology of rehearsal (for a reference point, look to Thomas Richards's At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions) allowed the physicalisation of impulses which did not have to necessarily engage directly with the social situation as experienced by the actor. Most productions of my experience, it must be noted, begin with the actor -- usually her or his 'mind', in the form of seated and abstracted discussion about the possiblity of the concrete event of the text. From such seeds, many stunted representations and discursive effects of erotic and thanotic desire have sprung -- it is not an accident that displays of passion in Hamlet, the tragedy most self-consciously elevated by theatre cognoscenti, are ones of frustation. This frustation is doubtless a familiar one to many Western actors, precisely because the terms of their theatre are not constructed from the inside to even acknowledge, much less codify or liberate, desire. The address of such issues in 'psychological' terms usually ends up translating various social codes which have been assimilated by the actor regarding her/his own sexuality into the action of the play -- or more often, into the process of rehearsal, where they are often challenged by the actor for 'personal reasons' or eliminated by the producers for the 'public safety'. This is not to say that all productions which do not include a cornucopia of sexual acts, or even suggestions thereof, are concessions of artistic dignity or political commitment. The subject of this article cannot, for reasons of space, be about even the barest generalities regarding the topic of realising sexual desire -- even simply heterosexual desire, as if there were anything simple about it -- on the stage or between actors. The question remains one, then, of: did we -- that is to say, as writer/director, did I -- exploit the performers as sexual beings, either deliberately or through failing to satisfactorily address the issues of desire's representation in the production? Did I, while juxtaposing consensual heterosexual intercourse with sadomasochistic homoeros, merely read the desire of the female character into a phallocentric mode of discourse? Or is the question that I would prefer to ask (and the answer to that is emphatically 'yes'): Was the scene staged simply in order to excite the desire of the paying customer to see heterosexual intercourse? I can claim, and to my mind rightly, that the answer is 'no', and I'm off the hook -- I can tell myself I am not a pornographer. But take the word 'simply' out of the sentence, and we're back to square one, because something else was obviously going on. The question of whether or not the contexual devices employed in this scene justified the staged manifestations of desire is one for the individual audience member. The point of this article is to explain my thinking about the scene; it is also to explain how, to my mind, the approach to the actor's craft is a vital and near-neglected area of contestation with regard to how desire begins to be staged, and how modifications of the performer's act by the director impact upon the physicalisation of -- among other things -- heterosexual desire. The performance which seeks to address social forces in its approach to the action, as well as the dramatic elements of the action itself, must continually ask such questions without forgetting that a performance is not a lecture (and if every fibre is infused with the spirit of inquiry, it doesn't have to be). This is the promise of a performance approach to political theatre that doesn't just base itself in intellectual analysis. References Thomas Richards. At Work with Grotowski on Physical Actions. London: Routledge, 1995. Citation reference for this article MLA style: Marcel Dorney. "Don't Lean on the Window: Desire's Presence and Representation in Political Drama." M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2.5 (1999). [your date of access] <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/window.php>. Chicago style: Marcel Dorney, "Don't Lean on the Window: Desire's Presence and Representation in Political Drama," M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2, no. 5 (1999), <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/window.php> ([your date of access]). APA style: Marcel Dorney. (1999) Don't lean on the window: desire's presence and representation in political drama. M/C: A Journal of Media and Culture 2(5). <http://www.uq.edu.au/mc/9907/window.php> ([your date of access]).