An expensive snub to creative Queenslanders
In cancelling POTUS, the theatre company's board is disrespecting local talent.
It’s a crisis. That’s the verdict of an anonymous “authority on Brisbane’s cultural sector” who spoke to the Brisbane Times about Queensland Theatre’s decision to cancel its season of POTUS or Behind Every Great Dumbass are Seven Women Trying to Keep Him Alive.
Suggestions that the show was cancelled because of sensitivities around the subject of presidential assassination have been quashed.
Since my last missive on this topic, Queensland Theatre seems to have settled on cast sickness and injury as the real reason. As I’ve said elsewhere, and others in the industry have confirmed, that might necessitate cancelling some performances and rescheduling opening night but not axing an entire season.
As the Brisbane Times’ informant said, with the exception of COVID, this situation is unprecedented. And as others have said on social media, whatever happened to the maxim that “the show must go on”?
In a long career of theatre reviewing, and viewing for pleasure, I’ve known of a couple of individual performances being cancelled due to illness. In one case, an actor who is no longer with us, had gone on a bender.
I’ve even seen a performance where an actor went on carrying a script — and he did a great job, totally suspending disbelief.
To cancel an entire season — at enormous expense — is anathema to theatre professionals.
The board is essentially telling us that there are no actors in Brisbane, Queensland or Australia who could have stepped up at short notice. I simply don’t believe that.
If it were a purely commercial company, then they’d be accountable to angry owners or shareholders. But it’s a state company that receives funding from two levels of government, and the board has just written off tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars that ultimately comes from taxpayers.
It’s up to those of us who pay taxes and love theatre to demand answers.
This situation requires investigation. Arts Minister Leanne Enoch and Premier Steven Miles must act swiftly to get to the bottom of this — and be transparent with their findings.
The first question I’d be askng to each and every person involved in this decision is: “Do you have no faith in the depth of talent available to the company?”
If they answer is that they don’t, then at the very least it’s an admission of failure — that the state theatre company has done so little to foster and build acting talent that there is literally nobody who can step up.
That beggars belief.
More than likely, there something else is at play here. And we are entitled to know exactly what’s going on.
Ditto for the strange happenings at Queensland Ballet, where a newly appointed artistic director has parted ways with the company under what would seem to be foreseeable circumstances.
It’s no wonder many people see government investment in the arts as a waste of money. Because, unless we can be given evidence to the contrary, that’s exactly what has happened at two of our biggest funded companies: they just wasted huge amounts of money.
P.S. Here’s what InQueensland’s Phil Brown has to say on this matter.