AUSTRALASIAN DRAMA STUDIES ASSOCIATION

 founded 1977

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 Crisis in Australasian Theatre & Drama Studies?

 Position paper for ADSA Conference, 

University of Tasmania, July 2002

I think many of us (on the eve of our 25th anniversary as an association!) have recently begun to come to the conclusion that ADSA as an association ? and, to an extent, theatre and drama studies in Australia as a discipline ? have reached a point of stasis, to put the problem at its mildest, or even some degree of crisis.  While Joanne's recent Treasurer's reports have assured us that actual ADSA memberships have been steady over recent years and that we still have a solid enough financial base, it is clear that what we perceived as ADSA's actual activity has declined in some ways in recent times.  

I cite, as reasons for this feeling, some or all of the following:

• declining attendances at recent conferences (especially among people who used to be 'regulars' and 'mainstays' of the organisation

• less visible effort towards the work of the Association from senior members (myself included; probably the likes of myself especially)

• a preference for many members (and formerly active members) to ally themselves with [more attractive? prestigious?] associations like FIRT

• there is not as much new blood coming into the association (or onto its executive) as there seemed to be through many of the years of the early to mid-1990s

• we seem to have had increasing trouble awarding our various prizes for scholastic effort over the past few years, after an initial flurry of energy....

I'd be interested to know several things before speculating further:

• what is the current distribution, among our membership base, between academic staff and postgraduate students?

• how many of the universities in the so-called 'national unified system' are now represented in the membership and at conferences?

• how many of the Universities whose staff used to be regulars at ADSA (and are no longer active) have cut drama & theatre studies disciplines or diminished them beyond a point of viability or representability [to coin a phrase]? 

(When I was working on the ADSA Research Register, for example, through the 1990s, I recall bags of people from the 'newer' and other regional universities ? such as CUQ, UCQ, Townsville, Bathurst etc etc ? being vigorously involved and wanting their research efforts noted.  Many of those people I have seen or heard of only spasmodically (if at all) over the past few years. 

Likewise, a number of our former stalwarts from older, established shops are either not with us at all nowadays or drop in for a moment from time to time.) 

Reasons for some of these problems are, all too often, not hard to find.

• We are an ageing group in a numerically declining discipline in a sector which is itself in decline and under stress and threat;

• Many of our older members are retiring or scaling down their work-levels (voluntarily or coercively as Arts/Humanities Faculties downsize.  La Trobe's Humanities Faculty, for example, is about to lose yet another 16 senior academics even as I write this ? including a further two from Theatre & Drama);

• Some of our older members are being promoted to more senior academic/ management positions (like Heads of increasingly huge and complex School structures, Faculty positions, Central committees etc etc) which preclude them from active participation in the Association;

• During the period of Arts/Humanities Faculty-restructurings over the past ten years or so, Theatre Studies has often been subsumed (or in some cases, resubsumed) into larger entities, with the result that disciplines/departments formerly called 'Drama' etc no longer exist ? and their former 'Heads' are no longer so recognised;

• Many of those of us older members who are left are forced to work harder and harder, with fewer resources and colleagues but more students! (and ever-more day-to-day crises) ... which in turn makes it harder for us to find the time to commit to Association activities.

• At the same time, there are singularly few new academic appointments being made in our discipline at any level, beyond the increasingly prevalent practice of casualising the profession.  (We should, in all conscience, encourage our postgrads to go into Hospitality & Tourism, Turf Management and Business, Law and ? above all ? Management, not to mention the growth discipines like Health Sciences.)

• Anecdotal evidence further suggests that it is becoming harder for people to get travel grants to go to conferences in our discipline in many institutions.  In some cases, it's easier to get a grant to go to Amsterdam than to Launceston!  (My Faculty Research Committee refused my application to come to this conference as it was for too little money; I would more easily have got money to go to Europe.) 

Then there is a (no doubt concomitant) question.  What is to be done with CHATTSI (the Council of heads of Australian tertiary theatre studies institutions)???  Adrian set this up in the mid-1990s with a great deal of energy, and considerable assistance from others, and with almost immediate effect, with the advocacy aim of representing the discipline at an industrial level (ADSA would thenceforward focus on academic and membership interests).  Presidency of that organisation (i.e., CHATTSI) later passed to another senior academic who promised much (for example, in the way of peer review of performance-as-research projects for the purposes of appointment and promotion ? something ADSA had worked very hard at for many years) but who has since become inactive.  There has been no CHATTSI report (or any other activity emanating from that body) since the ADSA conference at QUT three conferences ago, except for the now retired Treasurer's financial report, presented at the conference at UNSW in 2001, which showed a relatively solid financial position but virtually no expenditure on any of the body's supposed work.

Somehow or other, we need to revivify CHATTSI ? or to re-incorporate its activity-base/advocacy brief back into ADSA[?]   But as mentioned above, there are probably very few people left in the system who actually qualify as "Heads of ... Theatre Studies ...", since we've largely been dis-recognised in the various restructures and shorn of budgetary discretion, etc.  But it would be good to think that we could come up with some way to re-activate a CHATTSI entity...

I do not have any answers to any of these problems.  But it is clear that we must address them ? over the next few heady days at this Conference and in the months before we reconvene in warmer Brisbane climes in July 2003. 

Nonetheless, some aspects of the discipline's work have been maintained or indeed strengthened by recent initiatives.  One of these, of course, was the process by which editorship of the journal Australasian Drama Studies  has been transferred from Veronica Kelly and Richard Fotheringham to Mary Ann Hunter and Veronica Kelly (the latter to phase herself out over the next several years ... to be replaced by another associate editor to support Mary Ann?).  Another is seen in Delyse Ryan's willingness to take over the ADSA Website and Research Register from Geoffrey Milne.  

But how much more young blood is there to take over ? and re-invent, if necessary ? the Association's work over the next few crucial years?

Geoffrey Milne

President

1 July 2002