Interview With Back To Back Theatre Company
Back to Back Theatre is contemporary theatre company based in the regional Victorian centre of Geelong, just outside Melbourne. In its 21-year history, Back to Back has forged its own unique relationship to theatre, developing an original, distinctive artistic voice and a working process that supports its ensemble of actors with intellectual disabilities as its creative core. Back to Back produce new work in Geelong over extended timeframes and tour the work in Australia and internationally. Back to Back work with community members (predominantly with disabilities) both locally and internationally. The Company offers ongoing programs and develops one-off workshops and residencies. In October 2009, Back to Back performed their production “small metal objects” at the Kennedy Centre, Washington USA.
You can find more information about Back to Back at www.backtobacktheatre.com
Below is Jane Trengove’s interview with Artistic Director Bruce Gladwin and Back to Back actor Scott Price, at their rehearsal space in Geelong Victoria, in 2009.
Bruce, can you tell me a little about the evolution of the company?
Bruce: Well, the Company started in 1987, at the time of de-institutionalisation of people with an intellectual disability here in Australia. There were resources around for engaging people with disabilities in the community and a number of local artists took up the opportunity, working in music, theatre and visual arts.
From its beginning, the Company created professional employment conditions for the actors with disabilities, we have pursued arts funding through agencies such as the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria, and we make every effort to create really great art – that is the fundamental principle of what we do.
We maintain an ensemble of seven actors with disability. Part of my job as Director, is to [mentor] their professional development to maintain their interest in the company and their creative work. Their overwhelming response to this was that they wanted to tour overseas. So we went about that in a strategic way, by creating a scale of work that will allow us to tour internationally.
How do you structure the Company to provide employment for the actors?
Bruce: The Company operates as an employment service and always did with some core funding from The Federal Department for Family and Community Services and Indigenous Affairs.
Does this cover the wages for the seven actors?
No… we can’t use that money to pay the actors. All the projects are funded as initiatives of the Australia Council for the Arts or Arts Victoria, plus philanthropic or whatever. When the actors are engaged during a season of performances, we pay them an above-the-award rate. And then during the ‘in-between’ times, the actors go back onto their disability support pensions and we pay a retainer on top of their pension, which is not equivalent to an award rate.
Will Back to Back Theatre ever have an artistic director with a disability?
Bruce: When I joined the company one of the actors, Sonia (Back to Back actor), was working as an artistic associate with the Company. I see her as an associate director in a lot of ways…
The process of appointing someone a new is one where the actors audition the prospective director. It is a fairly open process and there would be a distinct advantage if the candidate had an association with the company previously and was known to the actors. But in my head I can’t imagine who will be the next artistic director because I think I have such an investment in staying here myself (laughs).
And do Back to Back ensemble actors get employment opportunities to work outside of the company?
Scotty: Well, I would like to host my own TV show. And I have been in a TV program, City Homicide and I have just worked on a police training DVD.
Bruce: Also Simon had a role in the recent Australian movie Noise, and Brian does a lot of work as an “extra” in commercials and Sarah had a career before she joined Back to Back, working with WEAVE Movement Theare and La Mama Theatre. And Rita is a visual artist who shows and sells her work quite widely. Mark has done a bit of TV and has been asked to work in a theatre show next year with a small ensemble with some really great actors.
Bruce what about the Company’s outreach program?
Bruce: Well we do a number of projects with the immediate local community and at the moment we are working on a long-term project with fifteen young people who have disabilities. Different people come through the group for skills development and they stay with us for a year. We have just done a really beautiful adaptation of Frankenstein.
Scotty: I have been in some community works – I was in Pod Seven.
Is Pod Seven part of the outreach program for the company?
Bruce: Yes, it is like a residency. And we are running a new one at Nelsons Park, which is a school for prep to year twelve kids – a consolidated school. Scotty, how do you describe Nelson Park?
Scotty: It’s a school for kids with mild intellectual disabilities.
How does the residency work?
Bruce: We go in to the school once a week for two terms without a meta-objective of putting on a school production. Instead we will be the principle artists bringing in a range of artistic collaborators to ‘hang out’ at the school, to see what develops. We are trying to respond to the kids and the school in an instinctive way, developing the idea of small showings and using different spaces and locations in the school as places for performances.
You have placed a Director’s manifesto on your website?
Bruce: When I started working with Back to Back eleven years ago, I was struck by the fact that the Company had this ‘label’ of working with actors with an intellectual disability. The actors had that label, and it defined the company – but I found the work incredibly intelligent – and so it just never sat comfortably with me. So, really the Manifesto came out of me trying to find a definition of intelligence. It’s been a really useful Manifesto, we constantly go back to it and refer to it, and it’s stood the test of time.
Scotty what you think Back to Back is best known for?
Scotty: I guess, some funny work, and I guess some of the best international community work.
