MIAF: The thrashing begins

Predictably, the guns are out already on the Melbourne Festival's decision to extend Kristy Edmunds' term as festival director. Of course, Andrew Bolt is spitting chips (google if you want to find his comments, linking there makes me tired). More seriously, in a swingeing attack in the opinion pages of the Age, Robin Usher claims that the festival has "lost touch":

Its decision to make her the first director in the festival's 21-year history to serve for four years is nothing if not brave, because it ignores widespread criticism of the festival's recent direction. Until this week, it also seemed to have cost significant patronage. Schwartz said only a month ago that this year's ticket sales were 34,000, up by 3000 on 2005. But Edmunds contradicted this at the media conference called to announce her extension - ticket sales are now put at 57,000, which she says is similar to last year. The final result is comparable with sales a decade ago, which varied from 60,000 to 80,000. At least there is no dispute about box-office returns, which reached $1.2 million this year. But this seems a paltry return on an investment of about $7 million, including a $5.5 million state subsidy. It is hard to know how a Melbourne festival could ever not be considered a success if this is regarded as satisfactory.

Do I detect a note of pique here that the MIAF Board has not bowed meekly to Usher's complaints? The "widespread criticism" was mostly (if not uniformly) expressed in the Age's opinion and arts pages, and mostly by Peter Craven, Robin Usher, Cameron Woodhead and Andrew Bolt. This is a rather narrow spread, strictly speaking, if vocal and prominent. MIAF has also attracted much interest and support, as its ticket sales show, and audiences for MIAF 2006 - as a wide-ranging survey of audience demographics and responses concluded - was very largely positive. According to Edmunds, the rising level of private sponsorship indicates that the moneyed class are also supportive of her programming vision.

Australia has a long and ignoble history of hounding out festival directors who demonstrate that good art costs money. If Usher has a close look at the investment in a show like I La Galigo, the Robert Wilson piece that won unanimous plaudits this year, he will notice it lists no less than 14 producers. And if he thinks for another couple of seconds, he will understand that the vast expense of staging a show like that - with 50 cast members on stage, vast sets, long development times and so on - will never be recuperated by ticket sales, no matter how booked out. Nobody hosting a show like that expects to make a profit.

According to Usher, such realised ambition should never appear on our stages. Not even if 57,000 people want to see it.

If MIAF is attracting growing audiences that are comparable with those of the mid-90s - when people had more money and there was safer programming - then Edmunds must be doing something right. Perhaps part of what she is doing right is making ticket prices cheaper, which would bring down those returns and might also explain those rising sales and changing demographics. Perhaps she is extending the reach of the festival to regional centres, which costs money.

Perhaps what she is really doing wrong, in the eyes of those who criticise her, is making the festival less elitist.

Usher wants the Melbourne Festival to be like other interstate arts festivals, not other international ones. Australia, it seems, has to remain outside the mainstream of international arts practice. His main comparison is with Leo Schofield's heyday, which offered an avowedly populist agenda of "hits".

Nothing wrong with that, but Edmunds' vision is vastly more interesting and offers something potentially much more profoundly lasting to Melbourne culture. The links she is forging between local companies and international touring networks will benefit Melbourne for years to come. And, as Usher ungenerously refuses to note, the festival is putting Melbourne on several international maps. I can vouch personally for the surprise and interest its programming elicits from overseas observers.

Usher talks a lot, too, about Edmunds' disregard for "festival traditions". John Truscott - festival director between 1989 and 1991 - has turned up more than once as a stick with which to beat Edmunds. I remember Truscott's festivals fondly, and it seems to me that in the boldness of her programming, Edmunds is absolutely in Truscott's tradition - perhaps more than any subsequent director, although we've had some fine ones. Let's not forget, for example, Robyn Archer; in many ways, Edmunds is extending what Archer was already doing.

I remember that, like Edmunds, Truscott put his faith in local artists. I remember he staged challenging, controversial and ambitious works. His free outdoor program has not been matched since, perhaps because it was untrackable - no ticket sales there. And far from being lauded as a great festival director, I remember very well that Truscott was "widely criticised" as an elitist who spent too much money. This seems to have vanished into the memory hole that afflicts Australian arts.

Melbourne burned Truscott out - he was a much sadder man at the end of his tenure than he was at the beginning. He found that he couldn't win against the parochial incuriosity of the incumbent powers. I hope that in this brave new century, Melbourne proves bigger than than it did then.

UPDATE: Richard Divall, formerly resident conductor at the Australian Opera and and music director at the VSO, has a letter in today's (Friday's) Age warmly congratulating Usher on an "excellent" article. He gets a gratuitous swipe in at Robyn Archer as well. "There is a widespread apprehension among Melbourne audiences that the program is too narrow, and much of the content not up to an appropriate standard," he claims. "... Three years are sufficient for Ms Edmunds' type of programming — or six years, if we also consider the many similarities of the previous artistic director's choices."

It's not hard to read the swirls of discontent here, and to see that they emanate from sources such as the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, the Victorian Arts Centre and other "major arts organisations" (to quote Usher). The "standard" - if by that one means aesthetic realisation, technical knowhow or performance - of most work at MIAF 2005 and 2006 is as high or higher than at any other festival, and one thing commented on by many people is the diversity of the programs, so "appropriate standard" is code for something else. In other words, by programming innovative work, Kristy Edmunds has, intentionally or not, got Melbourne's arts establishment off-side. Expect more of this as things heat up for MIAF 2007.

Check out the comments here too for David Williams' observations on Usher's comparisons with the Sydney Festival.