4 May 2015

Attachment 2
Theatre North Inc General Manager’s 2014 Acquittal Report to Arts Tasmania
The following, extracts from the 2014 Acquittal Report to Arts Tasmania, gives a detailed
report of TNAP’s 2014 Subscription Season and an assessment of the success or otherwise
of their activities in the last year.
The 2014 Subscription Season consisted of 16 offerings
1. Blitz! 7- 8 March, Earl Arts Centre, three performances. Tasmanian based former West
End actress Claire Dawson won the hearts of audiences who saw her as Jo Arnold the girl
from Liverpool who hit the big time in the West End when the London Blitz of WW2 interrupt
her career and personal life.
2. The Glover Concert: Grigoryan Brothers 9 March Falls Park Pavilion Evandale. In
2014 TNAP took over the curation of the Glover Concert, the main Sunday activity of the
Glover Prize weekend. Traditionally the TSO had provided the performances for this event at
the richest landscape-painting prize in Australia. With their withdrawal, a collaboration was
started between TNAP and the Glover Society.
3.
Spare Parts Puppet Theatre: The Deep 2 – 4 April Princess Theatre, four
performances. Based on a story by Tim Winton, this Spare Parts Puppet Theatre production
was able to fill the stage of the Princess Theatre to tell the magical story of a young girl who
is afraid of the water even though she and her family live by the sea.
4.
The Man in the Mirror 5 April Princess Theatre. This was a multi-media dance
production starring Paul Rizzo, Australia’s best known and internationally recognized
Michael Jackson tribute artist. The show was accompanied by a Michael Jackson look-alike
competition for children.
5. New Writing for Tasmanian Theatre 13 April & 12 October Earl Arts Centre. This longrunning series of play readings has allowed playwrights to have their work performed by
professional actor readers, while receiving feedback from a live audience, a very beneficial
part of the development of new work for theatre. Though this process, many new plays have
had the benefit of initial audience response and some have gone on to full productions,
several supported by Theatre North. The first reading in 2014 was of Caitlin Richardson’s
Disclosed a tryptich of one acters set at the Port Arthur Penitentiary. The second was Josh
Munro’s The Possum which will receive a full production by Mudlark Theatre in 2015.
6. Admission One Shilling 5 May Princess Theatre. Olivier and Tony award winning
actress Patricia Routledge starred alongside renowned classical pianist Piers Lane to tell the
inspiring story of one of Britain’s best-loved pianists Dame Myra Hess. Audiences were
transported back to the inspiring fund-raising recitals Dame Myra gave at London’s National
Gallery during WW II. This was a co-presentation with Andrew McKinnon and Phil Bathols.
7. Dust of Uruzgan 4 June Princess Theatre. During an 18-month tour of duty in
Afghanistan, Australian diplomat Fred Smith worked alongside Australian troops in Uruzgan
province. He produced a collection of songs, released as the album Dust of Uruzgan,
winning rave reviews and national attention including being the subject of Australian Story.
The stage show, combining film footage and live musicians, tells the story of 10,000
Australians who for the last eight years struggled to improve the conditions of on the poorest
provinces of a war ravaged country.
8. Christine Harris & Hit Productions: Managing Carmen 11 June Princess Theatre.
David Williamson delivered another hilarious football story. With its title character a
transvestite football hero, the play takes a satirical look at the characters behind the nation’s
favuorite sport: greedy sports managers, champion footballers, bimbo girlfriends and
notorious tabloid writers.
9. Terrapin Puppet Theatre: Big Baby Boss of the World 16 July Earl Arts Centre, two
performances. A new work by Terrapin’s new artistic director, Sam Routledge, this proved
to be a successful jointly presented family show.
10. The Australian Ballet Dancers Company: Classical Triple Bill 16 July Princess
Theatre. An evening of well known pieces – Swan Lake Act III, Rimbombo and Paquita –
attracted an enthusiastic audience. The performance was preceded by a talk by the artistic
director Danilo Radojevic for TNAP Friends and Subscribers.
11. Monkey Baa: Pete the Sheep 12 – 13 August Earl Arts Centre, three performances.
This was a highly entertaining and slickly produced show based on the well-known childrens
picture book by award winning Jackie French and Bruce Whatley.
12. Tasdance: Threefold 21 – 23 August Earl Arts Centre, four performances. This was a
joint presentation with Tasdance of innovative new works made in collaboration between
Tasdance and Dance North. It celebrated the genius of three international choreographers:
Gavin Webber (Australia), Raewyn Hill (New Zealand) and Huang Yi (Taiwan).
13. Kate Miller Heidke Album Tour 30 August Princess Theatre. This was an addition to
the subscription eason, negotiated late with the commercial entrepreneur Jeremy Sharp,
The Harbour Agency, on a risk share basis. The outcome was positive: not only did it make
TNAP a small profit, but the artist, promoting her latest album O Vertigo!, was of the highest
standard and played to a demographic very different to TNAP’s regular audience.
14. Malthouse Theatre: White Rabbit, Red Rabbit 11 – 12 September Princess Theatre
stage, four performances. This theatrical experiment by Iranian writer Nassim Soleimanpour
was an exciting experience for performer and audiences alike. As the author’s instruction is
that the solo actor is not allowed to see the script until performance, four separate actors
participated in four performances. This ranged from Robert Jarman, arguably Tasmania’s
most accomplished theatre person through local professional actor Jane Johnson to local
community theatre personalities, Shane Mitchell and ABC Breakfast presenter Belinda King.
The event also marked the first full collaboration between TNAP and Junction Arts Festival.
15. Opera Australia: The Magic Flute 17 September Princess Theatre. This perennial
favourite by Mozart boasted a talented young cast and high production values. Making this a
special event were three public programs. The choral part, and those of the Three Boys
(Genie), were sung by a local children’s choir led by local choral conductor and voice
teacher Denise Sam, who attended an OzOpera workshop in Melbourne in preparing to do
this. This community participation was enjoyable and the young people’s performance was
of the highest standard. Denise also organised the auditions for an Oz Opera scholarship.
Finally there was a workshop for young people on singing as a career.
16. ACO2: Grieg & Sibelius 15 November Princess Theatre. A splendidly-performed
Scandinavian program was enjoyed by the audience. In the afternoon local string players
attended a string quartet workshop.
RE-INVENTING THEATRE NORTH INC
TNAP is at the beginning of re-inventing its position as a leading provider in the performing
arts in Northern Tasmania. The following paragraphs focus on how last year’s program
(2014) has advanced the organisation from a loss making major Tasmanian arts
organisation in 2012 to its current state of artistic, operational and financial health. The 2014
program demonstrates how the number and nature of events, the audiences and the ways of
delivering the program have all undergone dramatic change. Continuous review of the goals
and actions of our current Strategic Plan will further develop this new vision in the following
three years to 2017.
At the end of 2012, for the first time TNAP suffered a significant loss. Addressing this
situation, the 2013 TNAP Committee conducted a major strategic plan review, updating its
mission/vision. The result was a dramatic overhaul of its programming strategy. Instead of
concentrating on presenting mainly drama products, half of which were large scale, the
artistic concept of the 2014 season was widened to include smaller scale productions that
appealed to a wider market.
The 2014 program consisted of 16 events as compared with the traditional 7 to 8 previously
offered. The variety was designed to win new audiences from demographics different to its
traditional market. So the 2014 programs ranged from the type of shows that TNAP
traditionally offered (Hit Production's Managing Carmen by David Williamson, Patricia
Routledge in Admission One Shilling, and OzOpera's The Magic Flute) to shows that
wouldn't have been considered in the past such as Paul Rizzo's tribute to Michael Jackson
(as an experiment, it showed that a totally different audience could be attracted to the
theatre), Kate Miller-Heidke’s Album Tour and, of exceptional quality and moving relevance
for the times, Fred Smith's The Dust of Uruzgan.
Doubling the number of presentations from 7 or 8 to 16 but reducing the overall number of
performances per major presentation had the effect of reducing crippling losses when
expensive programs previously had a run of two poorly attended performances. With the
funds thus saved, additional small scale but less expensive shows could be programmed.
The 7 productions in 2013 equated to 21 performances, whereas the 2014 season of 16
events totaled 31 performances, with roughly the same amount of Arts Tasmania funding
allocated to the season for both years.
This strategy also had the effect of increasing total audience figures. At the end of 2013, we
had sold 2,804 tickets for the Subscription Season. However at the end of last year, 6,072
tickets (for the original season) + 534 for Kate Miller Heidke – that is a total of 6,606 had
been sold.
One of TNAP's more important projects has long been to support the local development of
drama. This has happened in two ways: New Writing for Tasmanian Theatre is a play
reading series which twice a year sees the reading of new Tasmanian scripts as part of the
development of the work. For the first time in 2014, the series was open to all Tasmanian
writers rather than just people working in the north of the state. A second way of supporting
the development of local theatre practice is the established collaboration with local
professional theatre groups. This process is happening with the reading of Sean Monro's
The Possum last year, which this year is being produced by Mudlark as part of TNAP's 2015
season. TNAP also supports the development of future theatre practitioners by offering
technical and other secondments to university drama students, and taking an active part in
the University's summer school activities. Other interactions with the University include the
current GM's participation as an examiner for postgraduate submissions in both performing
and visual arts. Last year (2014) TNAP and the Tasmanian College of the Arts joined forces
to bring John Bell down for a public appearance An Evening with John Bell: A life in
Shakespeare. Already new ways of collaborating are being discussed for as far away as
2016.
Program development - fresh artistic approaches
The programming strategy has expanded considerably from the drama-oriented program of
the past. While maintaining a strong drama component, new ways of delivering a diverse
program have been implemented. TNAP is now in its second year as curator of the Glover
Concert for the John Glover Society's annual landscape prize at Evandale. Instead of the
traditional concert by the TSO, in 2014 we gave them The Grigoryan Brothers with a mainly
jazz program. TNAP has also begun programming visual arts projects. At the beginning of
2014, we collaborated with all our regular hirers both professional (Tasdance and Mudlark)
and community to put on an exhibition at the Earl Arts Centre celebrating the 21st year of the
Earl. The exhibition was not only sat but funded by Friends of Theatre North at the Princess.
These new ways of working with other arts organisations will continue to be explored.
TNAP's new program policy which apart from the expected mix now includes collaborations
with Tasmanian companies as a priority, and hence the inclusion of productions by
Tasdance (Threefold) and Terrapin (Big Baby). Apart from participating in theatre
development projects described above, TNAP also supports dance development projects,
including those by Tasdance, and in 2014 presented experimental work by Trisha Dunn in
her debut solo performance.
Another departure in programming procedure is collaboration with non-artform specific arts
organisations. In 2014, a very successful partnership was formed with Junction Arts Festival,
jointly presenting the experimental risk taking theatre piece, Nassim Soleimanpour's White
Rabbit Red Rabbit.
Mention must also be made of the participation in workshop and other programs (e.g. Opera
Australia's new public programs etc). Two important innovative developmental projects
remain: 1. KATS (Kids Accessing Theatre), sponsored by Bell Bay Aluminium and until
2014 matched by the Premier’s Partnership fund,, this scheme subsidised theatre visits for
children from the Tamar Valley and will continue to 2017 at least. 2. TasPAC North formed in
2014 is an innovative initiative which sees three northern venues (Launceston, Burnie and
Devonport) join together to offer mutual reciprocal subscriber benefits, thus supporting each
others programs and offering greater choice to the northern theatre going public.
In conclusion the many strategies described above have enabled us to deliver more and
more diverse quality arts experiences to the community. After two years of substantial losses
eroding our reserves, in 2014 we turned a corner and ended the year with a modest surplus,
testimony to not only hard work re-thought strategies and new achievable targets, but also to
the spirit that embraces change that will ensure that TNAP has a sustainable future.