In association with Young People in the Arts Australia (YPAA), Centenary of Canberra and the Australia Council for the Arts, Canberra Youth Theatre is proud to welcome the brightest emerging artists from across Australia to our national capital this April, for the 2013 Emerging Artist event of the year, watershed : National Theatre Summit for Young and Emerging Artists.

The National Theatre Summit is a biennial event, providing an immersive 3 days of professional development for emerging theatre artists and theatre makers across the country. CYT is proud to have been chosen to host this auspicious event – providing an opportunity to bring artists from across Australia to Canberra, as it celebrates its centenary with an epic year-long festival.

If you have the capacity to spread the word of this event to any young & emerging artists in your networks, that would be fantastic. We particularly want to ensure our artists from regional and remote Australia know about the event and can access this great opportunity too!

Thank you in advance for your support of our nation's emerging artists.

Warm regards,

The Watershed Team!
Email: watershed@cytc.net
Web: watershed.cytc.net
Ph: 02 6248 5057

REGISTRATIONS CLOSE SOON!!
www.watershed.cytc.net

watershed: National Theatre Summit for Young and Emerging Artists

Australia is overflowing with resources and potential for Young and Emerging Theatre Artists. We are amid the birth of the new ‘Gen C’ Generation Connected – but are we harnessing all the possibilities that our connectedness allows?

watershed is an inspiring 3 days of master classes, panel discussions, workshops and performances with interstate and international guest artists, to unlock untapped ideas, exploring new possibilities to connect locally, nationally and globally and to inspire innovative pathways for the future of the Australian Theatre Industry.

watershed will showcase challenging new works, including an after-hours city-walk performance from Canberra’s You Are Here Festival, Centenary’s NO NEED TO BE TOLD and more! Participants in the summit will also be the first to experience the World Premiere of 35° 17 SOUTH – A Multi-Reality, Location-based Game at the National Gallery of Australia (play on any Android phone/tablet with rear camera).

watershed provides networking opportunities with inspiring professional artists from across Australia, as well as keynote, master classes and performance by international guest artist, Baba Israel. Baba is a director/hip hop/ spoken word artist and former Artistic Director of Contact Manchester and Contacting the World Theatre Festival, coming all the way from New York for watershed.

watershed responds to the needs of Young and Emerging Theatre Artists to make critical personal and industry connections which support refined artistic practice, shared resourcing, professional networking, out-of-the-box ideas and the presentation of evocative new works.

DON’T MISS OUT ON THE EMERGING ARTIST EVENT OF THE YEAR!

Dates: 11 – 13 April 2013
Age Group: 16 – 30 yrs (Emerging Artists)

Registrations Close: 5 April, 2013
Register @: www.watershed.cytc.net

Cost: $50 per participant (Includes 3 meals, ticket to 35ᵒ17South and You Are Here relaunch)
Venue: C Block Theatre | Gorman House Arts Centre | Braddon ACT
Enquiries: watershed@cytc.net

Accessibility: Please contact Canberra Youth Theatre to discuss your access needs on02 6248 5057

Background of The National Theatre Summit for Young and Emerging Artists:

The first National Theatre Summit for Young and Emerging Artists Totipotent, took place at St. Martins Youth Arts Centre, Melbourne in September of 2011.

Initiated by the Catapult team at St. Martins, and through the support of the Office for Youth and Young People And the Arts, the summit developed into a truly national event.

From the Pilbara to the ACT, Darwin to Tasmania, Adelaide to Townsville, Sydney to Toowoomba, and of course Melbourne – Over 60 young and emerging theatre artists from across Australia gathered to connect, share, debate the issues affecting them, develop ideas and create new networks that previously did not exist.

Against the backdrop of a national cultural policy discussion paper and the continued evolution of the Australian Theatre Forum, the National Theatre Summit for Young and Emerging Artists is now firmly established on the national arts calendar.

ARTS WATCH SPOTLIGHT 

Australia: Artists No Longer Mavericks at Society's Fringe
The Age, 9/14/09

"Shakespeare wrote in Measure for Measure that 'Truth is truth to the end of reckoning.' Shakespeare was a man who knew a thing or two. So what is the truth of Australian theater? It's in decline. It's been in steady decline for most of the past two decades and, for some reason, policymakers cannot see it, and the industry and its audience have chosen to ignore it. Theater in this country has, for too long, been trapped in a limited reality, a white middle-class sport both on stage and in the auditorium, comfortable in its homogeny, creatively self-referential and, it seems, almost determinedly culturally unrepresentative.

To fully understand the problems that surround the theater, you must first look at the historical record with respect to arts policy.

It is clear that governments do not know how to position the theater arts. We have to have them because…well, we have to! As a result, we are left with an almost obsessive desire to bureaucratize theatre arts. Since the early 1980s, theater has increasingly been viewed by government as a publicly funded commodity, and so policies have been formed seeking to mandate its meaning and focus cultural practice towards a largely economic agenda, while at the same time finding increasingly more sophisticated ways of trimming subsidy. With major subsidized theater companies now established on almost commercial footings, ticket prices have risen, cast sizes have shrunk, and programming has become inevitably less adventurous—affecting audience development and creative diversity. Mid-range companies have all but disappeared, leaving the development and staging of more audacious work largely to an under-resourced and often dramaturgically illiterate fringe. It's a program of fiscal strangling so dexterously handled that the Australia Council's most recent policy initiative 'Making it New' may truthfully be called 'Making it Cheap.'

With these changes has come a steady shift in the position of the performing artist. We are no longer the mavericks at the fringes of society. Subsidy has made us a part of the system. And whereas, in the clear light of day, performing artists should see their art form as a forum for ideas and social benefit, it seems we have become unwitting apologists for our governments' dysfunctional funding model, drunk on the lure of public acceptance and the false sense that a successful funding application means the work we are doing is creatively validated."

To read the rest of the article, please visit The Age website.