Clarification: Artistic Counsel

On the weekend, a few people asked me about my job at the Malthouse Theatre. This is because in an otherwise quite decent interview with Daniel Keene in the Age last week, Robin Usher - rather gratuitously, it seemed to me - mentioned that Keene's wife (me) was a member of the Malthouse's Artistic Counsel. So it seems necessary to explain precisely what that means.

As a member of the Artistic Counsel, which is part of the Malthouse Theatre's process of self-assessment, my job is simply to offer feedback and criticism at the end of each season. The Artistic Counsel is a voluntary group from a wide cross-section of Melbourne interests. Like everyone else on the Counsel, I am asked - nay, expected - to be critical: hence I see no conflict at all with my stated aims here, which have been from the beginning about honest and searching dialogue about theatre. And members of the Counsel, as is clear on the Malthouse website, have absolutely no influence on programming decisions.