The New Platform Papers Vol 1, What future for the arts in a post-pandemic world?

About the Book

The arts are valued most when life is most perplexing. After two years of disruption Platform Papers, the industry journal for the performing arts in Australia, returns under new editors. The New Platform Papers are essays at the intersection of culture, politics and satire, commissioned by Currency House.

In the first issue of this volume, Imagination, the Arts and Economics, philosopher Richard Bronk, economist John Quiggin, satirist Jonathan Biggins and Pub Choir director, Astrid Jorgensen, explore the unique role the arts can play in shaping the future as Australia reopens after a turbulent global pandemic. This volume also includes Platform Paper no. 63, the final essay in the original series, by our founder and patron, Katharine Brisbane. On the Lessons of History looks back over the last twenty years through the work of all our essay authors, to explore why the arts have been marginalised in government policy and the media. The times demand a radical change in our way of thinking about what 'the economy' and 'creativity' mean in the plan for national recovery. What Future for the Arts in a post-Pandemic World? draws urgent attention to the opportunity the creative arts present for cultural and social transformation beyond Covid-19.

About the Author :
JULIAN MEYRICK is the Strategic Professor of Creative Arts at Flinders University, and until recently Associate Director and Literary Advisor at Melbourne Theatre Company. He has directed many award-winning productions for MTC, STC, SASTC, the Griffin, MWT and his own Kickhouse Theatre. His work for MTC includes Blue Orange (nominated for three 2002 Green Room Awards), Frozen, Memory of Water (nominated for two Green Room Awards), Dinner (nominated for four Green Room Awards and a Helpmann Award), Cruel and Tender, A Single Act, The Ghost Writer, Enlightenment, Thom Pain, The Birthday Party, and Tribes. For STC, he has directed The Snow Queen, Doubt (nominated for four 2006 Green Room Awards) and The Vertical Hour. For Griffin, Julian directed October, Lady Grey and Angela's Kitchen. Other credits include many new Australian works such as Luke Devenish's Grace Among the Christians, St. Rose of Lima, Fun and Games with the Oresteia and Jane Bodie's Hinterland. He directed Fever and the inaugural production of Who's Afraid of the Working Class? for the Melbourne Workers Theatre and won the 1998 Green Room Award for Best Director on the Fringe. In 2017 he also directed The Realistic Joneses by Will Eno at Red Stitch to glowing reviews. He was responsible for expanding the Affiliate Writers Scheme at MTC and for initiating the Hard Lines new play program. He is Deputy Chair of Play Writing Australia, a member of the Federal Government's Creative Australia Advisory Group, and an Honorary Fellow at Deakin University. As a theatre historian, he has published an account of Nimrod Theatre, See How It Runs (2003), a history of MTC, The Drama Continues, a Currency House Platform Paper, Trapped by the Past, and academic articles on post-War Australian theatre, the theory-practice nexus, and contemporary dramaturgy. IAN MAXWELL is a trained theatre director, academic and teacher. He has published extensively on a range of topics related to Performance Studies. He trained at the VCA and worked with Rex Cramphorn in 1991, shortly before Cramphorn's death. He has read the archive in its entirety, and recently published an essay on Cramphorn's work in the collection Fifty Key Theatre Directors (published by Routledge). Katharine Brisbane AM, Hon.Ph.D (UNSW, UWA) was co-founder in 1971 of Currency Press Pty Ltd, the performing arts publishers and its publisher for 30 years. In 2001 she founded Currency House Inc. as a non-profit association to assert the value of the performing arts in public life. She was a theatre critic for 21 years, notably national critic of the Australian 1967–74 during a time of radical change; and has published extensively on the history of Australian theatre, including Not Wrong, Just Different: Observations on the Rise of Contemporary Australian Theatre (2005) and on drama in The Cambridge History of Australian Literature (ed Peter Pierce, 2009). Over 40 years she has received many awards for service to the performing arts.