NEWS: Adelaide arts organisations take their work online

When the first COVID-19 lockdowns hit last year, many vulnerable and marginalised communities became immediately more marginalised. In response, Adelaide’s artists and arts organisations took their work online as a way to keep showing up for people suddenly disconnected from their communities, and to make sure their diverse stories and experiences could be shared.

State Theatre Company South Australia and ActNow Theatre led the charge with DECAMERON 2.0, which provided digital storytelling platforms for South Australian artists (including those from communities of First Nations, culturally diverse, queer and disabled artists).

The project created 100 original works that were broadcast on YouTube in ten episodes over ten weeks. Each episode’s short plays or monologues were based on weekly provocations inspired by Giovanni Boccaccio’s 14th-century novellas set during the Black Death. Many used COVID-19 as a backdrop for their thematic concerns, which were also made using COVID-safe filming protocols.

Matcho Cassidy (he/him), who wrote a monologue for the project, was very aware of the resonances between Boccaccio’s work and what they were attempting to do. “Decameron 2.0 really allowed us to work through everything we were going through, almost in parallel to this book it was based on. Something about that process gave us strength, and allowed us to connect,” he says. “I felt like I was able to put the bulk of the confusion and the calamity that came from the COVID restrictions into my piece, I was regurgitating them in some way.” Critically, he says it was a welcome opportunity at a time when paid work had otherwise dried up.

Writing teams and community groups Theatre of the Global Majority and Queer 2.0 met via Zoom as well as in person, and the works were filmed at various locations around Adelaide, including the State Theatre Company South Australia workshop, ActNow Theatre offices and Holden St Theatre.

The digital-first theatre project employed 98 emerging and established writers, actors and directors (ranging from teenagers to octogenarians) and reached an audience of nearly 15,000 people. The project’s ten hours of digital content has since been given a second life through screenings at festivals and events and by soon to be published scripts for other Australian theatre-makers to use.

“With Decameron 2.0, we wanted to completely subvert expectations of what theatre can be and who it can reach,” says Yasmin Gurreeboo (she/they), Co-CEO and Artistic Director of ActNow Theatre. “In the middle of the pandemic, we were determined to remain accessible, tell important stories and continue to connect our audiences in profound ways.  We were forced to innovate, and we embraced that.”  

Vitalstatistix in Port Adelaide also broadened the scope of their 2020 Adhocracy residency and laboratory program to include online artist and audience involvement. This allowed the company to support three times more projects than usual, exceed onsite audience restrictions, and led to hybrid performances delivered by online and onsite artists to equal numbers of online and onsite audiences.

This sort of move to digital and hybrid working immediately made arts employment and engagement more accessible, flexible or even possible for many, but the issue of digital inequality was also brought into sharp focus by COVID-19.

Digital platforms may have made our work more accessible and affordable, but we can’t assume users have the devices, bandwidth or knowledge to access them. Many of us share devices or fight for bandwidth with other members of our households. Some use shared equipment in libraries and internet cafes we can’t access as easily anymore, or haven’t been provided with the new skills we need. Some can’t afford increased data plans – particularly if our work hours have been reduced. More than two million Australians aren’t online at all, and the ‘digital divide’ between those with the highest and lowest levels of income, education and employment is widening, not shrinking, over time.

As such, outdoor and socially-distanced programming also became a sudden and certain necessity during COVID-19. Programming art-at-a-distance not only helps to address this issue of digital inequality, but can expose artists’ and arts organisations’ work to non-traditional arts audiences.

The City of Adelaide, for example, rolled out a curated European art trail through North Adelaide in partnership with the Thomas Henry Museum in France. By pasting extraordinary artworks as wall posters, Musée Extérieur gave passers-by a safe artistic experience, increased access and equity, and extended a welcome to non-traditional arts audiences.

Taking a different approach, the Summer Sounds Festival in Adelaide’s Bonython Park corralled audiences into four-to-six-person ‘party pods’ (including private toilet blocks for those in the first five rows). Overwhelming feedback from the event heralded the model as the way all music festivals should be staged from now on, COVID or not.

Finally, Adelaide Fringe’s Double Your Applause ticket option gave Fringe-goers the opportunity to buy the empty seat next to theirs. Introduced to help artists recoup revenue lost from only being allowed to operate at 50% capacity due to COVID-19 and to provide reassurance for those audiences still nervous about returning to real-life interactions, over $52,000 worth of the ticket-type sold by the close of the 2021 festival.

However, just being more accessible didn’t make our sector accessible, flexible or inclusive enough, nor does it mean these changes will stay in place now that we have started to re-emerge. In many ways, our former work and delivery practices were less flexible, less accessible, less diverse, less productive, and certainly less compatible with other areas of our lives. Keeping and improving some of our new digital and hybrid practices simply makes good strategic and financial sense.

2020 also taught us that inclusion has never been more critical. Making our work more accessible means more (and more diverse) people can participate in all areas and at all levels of our work – be that as artists, arts workers or audiences.

However, full and equal inclusion doesn’t come from treating everybody equally. It comes from providing whatever is needed to make everyone equal. This includes not making work for or about groups or communities without their genuine, ongoing involvement and leadership (‘nothing about us, without us’).

"To create a truly authentic story it is important to engage diverse artists and communities and listen to what they have to say. We have to understand that marginalised communities are not monoliths but rather each member has a diverse lived experience. We must recognise the danger of a single story and engaging diverse artists changes this by introducing new perspectives,” says Chela Bett (she/her), who along with Gitonga Njeru (he/him) wrote and performed a monologue for Decameron 2.0 in the style of Kenyan oral narration that was delivered in a mix of English and Swahili.

 “It is not enough to tell the same type of story over and over and say you've done enough, these communities know their stories, they know what they want and they demand we do better. So continue to engage First Nations People, disabled artists, culturally diverse artists and provide streaming services so works are accessible to all - this is how we start the journey of achieving a balance of stories," adds Gitonga.

 Taking this sort of person-centred or community-led approach to ongoing digital delivery will go a long way to ensuring we reach and represent the experiences of all South Australian communities in more accessible and more meaningful ways.

Kate Larsen is an arts, non-profit and cultural consultant based in Adelaide. This article was adapted from Our Hybrid Future, her free guide to making art work onsite and online. You can download a copy here..