Creative Collide: Aotearoa Arts

Philip Patston blogs about his Comedy Festival experience so far. From the highs of sharing the stage with ten fellow Billy T Award recipients, to the lows of media coverage and negotiating venue access. He also asks for your views of diversity in the arts sector.

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The arts in Aotearoa – all a little common?

On Monday night I ended a week of performing my show in Auckland by sharing the Sky City Theatre stage with ten of my fellow Billy T Award recipients in a celebration of the last ten years of NZ comedy leaders. It was a heady experience, being acknowledged as one of the leading lights in Aotearoa/NZ's comedy history. Usually, I forget. But even more notable for me was the fact that two of us, Mike Loder and myself, use wheelchairs.

That's some odds - in fact it's statistically accurate, given that officially one in five NZers experience disability. Or, as I prefer to reframe it, we live with a unique experience of life, instead of the boring old common experience had by most people who have been led to believe they are "normal".

I came on after Mike so, although I slipped into commonness by being second, I was able to steal a laugh by referring to the unusual phenomenon: the audience had had their own little unique experience by seeing two comedians using wheelchairs in the space of twenty minutes. I blamed it on the small gene pool. (Which, by the way, is utter nonsense, because I was born in the UK, but they didn't need to know that.)

But I was more unique than Mike that night because I'm also gay, which means I neither have to endure the mundanity of having a common sexual preference, which seems, at times, even more banal than being able to walk proficiently. Yet, in the gender stakes, my uniqueness evaporated in a sea of testosterone, with Jan Maree and Justine Smith being the only women to have made the grade in ten years.

So, where am I going with this? Well, it's been five or six years since I did a show in the NZ International Comedy Festival and I'd forgotten why I stopped. Now I remember. The Comedy Festival is part of what I think is an extremely common mainstream arts scene here in this country. I'd forgotten how few disabled people, homos (my new preferred term for gay, lesbian, queer etc), Maori and Pacific people, and even women are involved in the generic cultural landscape. Sure there's a homo niche (I think we call it drag), Maori and Pacific scenes particularly in music, and groups like WIFT.

But it all still seems a little separated - dare I say segregated - to me.

The media exacerbates this. I sent over a hundred media packs out to reporters in Auckland and Wellington. I got two requests for interviews - one from the National Radio disability programme "One in Five" and one from the gay rag "express".  So not one mainstream media outlet was interested in promoting my show.  Sour grapes?  Maybe. But take a look at the NZ Herald's comedy section and the only non-male review you'll find is of the (homo) Topp Twins doco, which isn't part of the festival. TV3's Nightline comedy coverage features men. Of 19 TVNZ reviews, two are of women's shows and one's a homo (me). In fact, one third of comedy shows offered in the festival are by women.

The only review site to come close to representing any kind of diversity has been Theatreview. I'd trumpet them more but they gave me an extremely ungenerous review on my second night, so I'm still feeling churlish about it. I have views on reviewers who set out to destroy artists' potential for good sales early in their season, but that's another blog.

My experience with venue management has been another nail in the coffin of respect for the arts sector, I'm afraid. I've had to lobby repeatedly for access to the Herald Theatre for myself and audience members. On the second night of my show, ramps were finally constructed for the two inch lip into the foyer. Alas, when I congratulated them and said I presumed they would stay permanently to facilitate access to all shows in the Herald, I was informed they would be kept behind the counter. Words cannot explain such thinking...actually, let's call it luddism, just to be ironic.

New Zealand is renowned for its creativity and diversity, producing fine examples of legends from the margins who excel in the mainstream, like the Topp Twins and Billy T James, to name a couple from my sphere of influence - of course there are others. But I'll venture to say that it hasn't been with the help of the mainstream arts sector - my experience would suggest it's been despite the mainstream and with a lot of hard work.

I've done the hard yards too and, to be candid, right now I'm questioning how many I have left in me.

I'd like to know what you think. Is your view of diversity in the arts sector different to mine? Leave a comment...