📈Upskill or Perish

Wayfinding: Conclusion > The Other Side of the Argument > Upskill or Perish

There is another potential financial problem arising from this wider access to charitable support. that ‘Artists without an online audience have almost no capacity to perform – paid or unpaid. This may have flow-on effects when arts organisations are required to demonstrate their value’. For theatre makers and theatre companies that chose to simply postpone their stage work in 2020 and 2021, there are two blank years with little to no income and no ‘innovation’ to report, which can make them appear less competitive in a post-pandemic world. , Jennifer Jackson says: ‘I also remember the first slew of online work that seemed to come from every angle, and the overwhelming pressure to deliver digital content’. During a time of such high stress, the capitalist push to continue being productive likely served to harm the mental health of several theatre practitioners, regardless of the audience reception to the work.

Artists are increasingly pressured to upskill into a digital format even when they do not wish to. Carmel Clavin echoed this sentiment in our interview, saying: ‘I think that being honest about what you want to do versus what you can do – and I mean that in the negative way of like, “well, I can't go anywhere, so, I guess I'm a digital artist now” – No, you aren't. You're an analogue artist who has been sentenced to a prison, the prison of digital, it's not the same thing’. that 'performing online had resulted in some improvement in their financial situation' for some, but that payment systems like 'a virtual tip jar' were only 'extremely or very successful' among 10% of the participants and 51% of artists believed these systems were completely unsuccessful. Clavin noted this problem, too, telling me that audiences feel ‘micro-charged to death’ with other digital subscriptions like Spotify or Netflix. During an ongoing cost of living crisis, acceptable of microcharges dwindles.

By 2021, government and charitable support programs ended despite theatre buildings’ inability to reopen at capacity. For smaller organisations and individual theatre makers who still faced tight attendance restrictions, financial struggles felt much harder than before the pandemic. Grant Dodwell said to me:

Today there are a lot of actors and producers and creatives that left the business. Because those two years just stonewalled them. I think there is a degree of unknown and risk – “I'll stick to where I am. I'll stick to what I know”. And I think with the funding bodies there's a considerable amount of that as well ... I think they want to promote live theatre, which is exactly what we want to do, interestingly.

Australian Theatre Live also, though noteworthy in providing access to theatre, continues to fall through funding cracks post-pandemic. Clemence Debaig said, in the same vein, that she had an issue with explaining the tools she needs in performance: ‘There's no institutional support for that at the right level, and [me] trying to do a lot of DIY in a corner’. For second wave digital theatre to truly innovate, funding models must catch up to artist and audience preferences.