Queensland Theatre's Sam Strong On Leading Australia's Theatre Industry From Brisbane

It's inevitable that every several years there will be a changing of the guard within the artistic leadership of the nation's top arts organisations. Sometimes, this passing of the baton is a seamless transition, preserving the curatorial continuity of that company's identity. Sometimes, there are unexpected vacancies that need to be hastily filled, as was the case last year when Andrew Upton's successor as artistic director of Sydney Theatre Company, Jonathan Church, unceremoniously walked out on the prestigious position leaving the company rudderless for a time, before the capable but untried Kip Williams stepped into the breach mid-season.

Occasionally, however, when the circumstances are just so, a change of leadership, when properly supported by a trusting board and galvanised by a glowing creative track-record, can signal a major paradigm shift —  one that blazes a trail for similar visionary thinking elsewhere within Australia's arts landscape. It was a rare alignment such as this that occurred when celebrated director Sam Strong arrived in Brisbane to take the reins of Queensland Theatre Company last year.

The appointment itself was hardly surprising. Strong already had a successful tenure as an artistic director under his belt, at Sydney's Griffin Theatre Company, and his work as a theatre-maker, most recently as Associate Director of Melbourne Theatre Company, had cemented his reputation as one of Australia's most relevant artists. However, few could have predicted just how bold and far-reaching Strong's shake up of QTC would be when he finally announced his debut season in September last year.

Rebranding QTC as Queensland Theatre - a change intended as both a visible demarcation between the company's past and its newly envisaged future, and as a way of broadening its remit beyond merely staging plays — Strong also announced the formation of a National Artistic Team. This crack squad featuring some of Australia's most outspoken and uncompromising theatre talent —  including playwright Nakkiah Lui, Brisbane theatre veteran Margi Brown Ash, and screen and stage director Wayne Blair — would spearhead an ambitious mission to "lead the nation from Brisbane." In addition to establishing this theatrical thinktank, Strong also pledged a set of nine key commitments, that through strategic advocacy would take aim at issues stunting the growth of Australian theatre.

"With my first season at QT, I wanted to make a statement through more than just the content of the program. I think good artistic leadership extends well beyond the plays we choose and making those plays the best versions that we can. There has to also be a commitment to nurturing culture and identity, and you do that by making the most supportive environment you can for artists and ideas," Strong shares.

Among the concerns Strong has promised to tackle are perhaps the stubbornest disparities in the theatre industry, namely gender and racial diversity. He's also made commitments to national touring and championing Queensland's best talents beyond the State's borders: "I think that to actually occupy an artistic directorship you need to do more than just program for a successful subscription season. You need to make statements through the voices you represent. You need to make statements about diversity in your casting. Most importantly, I think you need to send a message to your industry that you are thinking about the future of theatre on a national scale, not just with the interests of your own company in mind."

Noble as that sentiment is, it could be argued that such thinking is far from business minded. However, Strong takes a view that it is a responsibility of artistic directors of the largest - and most heavily subsidised - companies to take risks and brave economic dangers in the interests of fostering positive changes for the industry as a whole.

"You have to balance your ambitions on a local and national level I think. It's sometimes true of Australian theatre, and I can say this because I've been lucky enough to work in most of the major cities in the country, that companies can become very focused on their own patch. It's easy to be focused very much on your local audience and on your own box office revenue, and I worry that this creates a sort of vacuum in terms of the number of leaders willing to take a national view," Strong explains. "But I think those kinds of challenges can also be really inspiring. I mean - is it really a risk to think about a bigger picture? I don't necessarily think so. I believe it to be an absolutely necessary approach if we have any hope of changing the status quo. And I think if you program correctly, you can meet those priorities - on diversity, on local engagement, on increasing the company's national footprint - very succinctly. We're not attempting to reinvent the wheel - we're saying to our audience, this is all work that is of equal weight and importance and we've put together a deliberately eclectic series of experiences and we would encourage you to embrace all of it."

Of course, there are a number of complex variables to consider when attempting to make such reaching ambitions a reality. Cheif among them is devising an artistic offering that has a broad national appeal while protecting those idiosyncratic nuances and local details that attract home turf subscribers. Far from aiming for a one-size-fits-all solution, Strong has taken a psychological perspective on the problem. "It isn't necessarily about pursuing a kind of holistic national identity as much as it is about individual cities not becoming isolated. It would surely be to the enrichment of our national theatrical culture if there was more cross-fertilisation between the theatre scenes in different parts of the country. It definitely goes on and has of course gone on historically, but there is capacity to grow, and more than ever before, we have the means to overcome the tyranny of distance," he insists. "It's always problematic to generalise about an audience, but I think there are specific audience cultures that exist in different cities. Where those audiences share common ground though, is that they will always be brought together through high-quality work. They will always be unified by their appetite for really great theatre."

Indeed, Strong's inaugural program is as much about putting a spring in the synapses with an accessible, entertaining season as it is about ensuring long-term goals are being realised. The first production directed by Strong himself, a new staging of Michael Gow's Once In Royal David's City, has proven a particularly poignant moment for the director as his personal artistic passions and his philosophical vision for QT vividly intersect.

"For me personally, I've wanted to direct this play ever since I first read it in 2013. As far as the company is concerned, this is a new Australian story and presenting those narratives is incredibly important to what we do at Queensland Theatre," Strong adds. "I wanted to find a way to connect the company's past, present, and future, and what better way to that than to program a magnificent text by the previous artistic director, directed by its present artistic director, that tells a story that captures everything we're striving to achieve for the future of the company."

Queensland Theatre present Once In Royal David's City till May 14. Full details of the 2017 season and National Artistic Team can be found on the Queensland Theatre website.