I was bemused recently to see an educational advertising campaign entitled “The Making of Leaders”. It reminded me of the way in which private schools are often regarded as the natural breeding ground for leadership, especially in business and politics. This suggests leadership as an individual enterprise, bolstered by influential networks, and personal confidence founded on sporting prowess. Whether stereotypical or not, this model of leadership persists, yet is so alien to my experience. Perhaps it is why I have been reluctant to accept the description of what I do as “cultural leadership” or even “arts leadership”, yet leadership is the crucial element that has allowed me to have an impact in the performing arts sector.
For the past decade or so, I have led an organisation called Performance 4a, now Contemporary Asian Australian Performance, a non-profit performing arts company based at Carriageworks in Sydney. It was established to address a perceived lack of representation of Asian Australian stories and artists on professional stages. Adopting the acronym CAAP (pronounced “carp”) it is a strange fish indeed: part producing company, part professional development platform and entirely an advocate for greater cultural diversity in Australian performing arts. There is nothing quite like it. If you subscribe to the idea that our culture tells the story of who we are – both to ourselves and to the world – then the narrative woven on stages around the nation have gaping holes where significant sections of the population have been left out.
CAAP’s Strategic plan in 2019 noted that based on the 2011 Census, an estimated 12% of Australia’s population is Asian Australian, and six of the top ten countries of origin of Australian residents born overseas were in Asia (China, India, the Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia and Sri Lanka.) CAAP conducted internal research in 2016 analysing cast and creatives employed on theatre productions that year by the Australian Major Performing Arts Group (AMPAG). This audit revealed only 2% of employed writers being of Asian Australian background and 4% of actors.
In addition, a Diversity Arts Australia report, Shifting the Balance: Cultural Diversity in the Leadership within the Arts, Screen and Creative Sectors (2019), found that the performing arts sector has the lowest representation of CALD leaders, with only 5% of leaders coming from a CALD background, less than an eighth of the rate that they present in the population.
Yet CAAP, a tiny organisation has driven remarkable change in its sector over the past decade and fostered a new generation of Asian Australian arts leadership.
Not long after taking on the role of Executive Producer around 2012, I received a request for a list of Asian Australian plays suitable to be included in the curriculum. A list! Struggling to conjure up titles I sought the advice of the peak body Playwriting Australia (PWA). They found there weren’t any published Asian Australian plays they could recommend for the curriculum, but could suggest three works with Asian themes by non-Asian writers. This disappointing result galvanised our intention to do something about it.
Pooling our networks and expertise and with philanthropic support from the Girgensohn Foundation, the LOTUS Playwriting Project was launched in Sydney, Brisbane and Melbourne in 2014. La Boite Theatre Company in Brisbane, Malthouse Theatre in Melbourne and Sydney Theatre Company all pitched in with workshop space and expertise. The initiative targeted Asian Australian theatre makers who hadn’t yet written a script, and writers who had not written for the stage. Over 70 budding writers would participate in the program over its first two years. In 2017 FOUR Lotus plays premiered on main stages in Brisbane, Melbourne and Sydney: Michelle Law’s debut Single Asian Female at La Boite Theatre, Merlynn Tong’s Blue Bones at Brisbane Powerhouse, Disapol Savetsila’s Australian Graffiti produced by Sydney Theatre Company and Chi Vu’s Coloured Aliens at La Mama in Melbourne. Other LOTUS participants would be offered places in theatre company writing programs.
With just one project a handful of significant companies and organisations had collaborated to nurture and develop a wave of new writers for the stage. And I had found a way to bring the sector along with me, in making meaningful change in what had seemed an intractable issue.
It seems obvious now, that theatre-making – a collaborative practice – would work best when the right team of partners is assembled to work together. Personally I had no qualifications to train playwrights. Rather my role was to create a situation where those with the resources and expertise did the work. Because these important players contributed their time and energy to the task, they now had a vested interest in seeing it through, and the results have ceded benefits throughout the sector. This was considerably more complex than simply brokering partnerships. It was about creating the conditions in which the desired change would happen. And by ensuring the various partners had a stake in its success, the change is more likely to be embedded long term.
Leadership is often seen as some sort of elevated position, a position of power and influence. On the contrary, for me it is about being in the midst of everything – working alongside all the players, a shared peer-to-peer process of creating possibility, and enabling everyone to share in a common purpose. But this style of leadership does require vision, persistence, creativity and imagination to map the course.
The pathways carved out for playwrights were just the beginning. A play script is just the first part of the theatre-making process. An entire creative team comes together to craft what will eventually be realised on the stage: directors, dramaturgs, composers, designers, technicians and of course, the cast. I decided to start with the most powerful.
In 2017 CAAP asked “Where are the Asian Australian directors?” With only three Asian Australian directors identified as having been engaged by major theatre companies, we launched the CAAP Directors Initiative in which we partnered with the three biggest theatre companies in the country to identify, mentor and employ up to four directors of Asian background on their company productions.
Again, my role was to create the right conditions for the major theatre companies who had the expertise and resources to train and guide new directors. I helped them reach out to the Asian Australian performance community to encourage artists with skills and theatre experience – actors, filmmakers, playwrights and emerging devisors and directors – to apply. We selected a dozen exceptional artists nationally.
The partnership with Sydney Theatre Company (STC) was particularly fruitful. Over a two year period, the four CAAP artists in their program were trained, mentored and hired as assistant directors and dramaturgs on a number of major STC productions. STC welcomed them as resident artists and involved them in a range of activities across the company. The experience and professional relationships that ensued was invaluable. One of these participants, Courtney Stewart, would go on to be awarded the Richard Wherrett Fellowship, a 12 month part time engagement with STC leading to her mainstage directorial debut in 2022.
The LOTUS Playwriting Project and CAAP Directors Initiative were part of a suite of programs I developed at CAAP to provide ongoing opportunities for a growing community of artists to gain skills, knowledge, confidence and career pathways. Doors to major companies which not so long ago seemed shut, are now open and beckoning. The major companies themselves have been inspired to devise their own initiatives to continue building pathways
– such as STC’s Diversity Associates Program which provides training, mentorship and employment for artists of colour, and the companies are embracing a wider diversity of artists across their organisations.
As evidence of CAAP’s impact on the professional theatre sector, compare that sad situation barely a decade ago when we could not collate a list of plays for the curriculum, to 2022 when at least ten Asian Australian productions were staged by main stage theatre companies or major festivals. These works were not only written by Asian Australian artists, but many were also directed, designed and performed by artists of colour. It has finally become an expectation that major theatre companies include culturally diverse works in their programming, and employ cast and creatives from culturally diverse backgrounds as a matter of course. My initiatives through CAAP have been the catalyst for significant change in the mainstream theatre sector.
Of course we still have some way to go before we can confidently claim that Australian theatre reflects the cultural makeup of our population. Continued evolution is required, and that takes the same sustained and strategic effort that has gotten us this far. However it’s now apparent that the change we desire is possible. Industry players can no longer toss this into the “too hard” basket, because culturally diverse Australian work is not only achievable, but contributes complexity, richness and relevance to the canon. Best of all, artists of colour finally see a place for themselves, and that is a powerful force for continued momentum.
Integral to successful change is ensuring its continuation beyond its initial instigators. You might think of it as a succession plan. Let’s return, for a moment, to the four participants of the CAAP-STC Directors Initiative. When they were selected for this program in 2018, none of them had yet directed a major company production. Yet by 2022 Courtney Stewart was appointed Artistic Director of Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre Company. Tasnim Hossain was recruited as Resident Director at Melbourne Theatre Company. Jennifer Rani was delivering new dramaturgy and playwriting programs for First Nations and diverse artists in Tasmania, and was selected for Theatre Network Australia’s LEADERSHIFT program. And Kenneth Moraleda together with playwright Jordan Shea established their independent theatre company, kwento, led by principles of diversity and inclusion. In 2023 Kenneth was appointed Resident Director at Sydney Theatre Company.
The next generation of arts leaders is in the house, and what is more, they have absorbed the principles of change from within. Leadership that brings everyone along for the ride, and with an eye to the future, empowers each and every one to grasp the mantle for continued, collaborative change. For me, leadership is not an individual enterprise but a shared collective action. It constructive, creative and fuelled by a generosity of spirit. It is leadership of the possible.
