Queensland Theatre has responded to criticisms over its 2021 program, with artistic director Lee Lewis acknowledging that having just one First Nations work in the season was “not ideal” – and that leaving it out of the season announcement was “a fail”.
The program, announced on Sunday, has been criticised by industry heavyweights including two former Queensland Theatre artistic directors: Sydney Festival director Wesley Enoch and theatre director Sam Strong.
Enoch told the Courier Mail on Wednesday he was “shocked and disappointed that all the work we’ve been doing over a decade seems to have disappeared. There will be lots of excuses but when push came to shove it seemed the thing to leave out was the blackfellas.”
On Facebook, Strong addressed the anger expressed by Enoch and other Indigenous artists, including Chenoa Deemal and Elaine Crombie. “Hopefully, this difficult moment is one in which anger can be heard and acknowledged, mistakes owned, and First Nations artists embraced and celebrated by the company,” he said.
In an apology and statement released on Thursday, the company acknowledged that the announcement of its 2021 program had cast doubt on its commitment to developing First Nations works. “Nothing could be further from the truth,” it said.
“While our 2021 Season in Brisbane does not include a First Nations work, we will be presenting Othello, adapted by Jason Klarwein and Jimi Bani, in Cairns in 2021 to coincide with the Cairns Indigenous Arts Fair (CIAF).
“We did not include this in the season launch as the date for CIAF in 2021 is yet to be finalised. This was a mistake.”
Lewis, who lamented the lack of racial diversity in Australian theatre in a Currency Press essay in 2007, said not including Othello in the program announcement was “not good enough … on a communications level, it was a fail”.
She said shutdowns caused by the global pandemic – coupled with Queensland Theatre’s prior lack of investment in local Indigenous artists – resulted in the 2021 season having just one First Nations work.
“It’s not an excuse, it’s not ideal … but there was simply no First Nations works ready,” she said.
Lewis said when she took up her position with the company in January, she consulted widely with the Indigenous arts community.
“It became clear we had to build a new pipeline for works by local First Nations artists, and not just buy in shows from other states,” she told the Guardian.
“But I knew it wasn’t going to happen overnight.
“Then when Covid hit, I made the decision [in consultation with the government] to commit all $650,000 of our commissioning and development funding to First Nations work.”
Two Indigenous works are now under way with another two on the drawing board, she said, pending additional funding from independent sources.
“But these are works in development for 2022, not 2021, and we can’t start waving them about before they are ready.”
On Thursday morning, Lewis met Queensland’s arts minister, Leeanne Enoch – Wesley’s sister – to apologise for “messing up” the company’s communications.
Lewis copped a further round of criticism on social media after announcing the Othello production would premiere in Cairns, not Brisbane, seemingly giving the production lesser status.
But Lewis told the Guardian the bilingual (Kala Lagaw Ya and English) production was being transported from its 16th century Venetian setting to the Torres Strait Islands during World War II, and would be its first production developed and embedded in the Torres Strait Islander community.
“And we are a state company, not a Brisbane company,” she said.
The controversy is just the latest in a renewed push for more racial diversity in the Australian arts industry, coming three months after the Rob Guest Endowment delivered a list of “uniformly white” semifinalists for its musical theatre award.
The criticisms resulted in the cancellation of the $50,000 scholarship, after the nominees expressed solidarity with their allegedly overlooked peers.
