Just four months after the devastating Australia Council funding chop, our persistent little company has grabbed hold of a 2017 lifeline. Slingsby has just secured a $100,000 Australia Council Project Grant to produce and premiere a new show in 2017, our lucky seventh production!
In a week when we celebrated our company’s ninth birthday, we can look forward to a good round decade, at least, of art making and touring. We are overjoyed. Relieved. Grateful. Very excited.
Add to this the fact that in the last few months we have received $71,000 in generous donations, a Helpmann Award nomination, an invitation to present The Young King at the prestigious IPAY showcase in Madison, Wisconsin, USA in January 2017 and tour this show to Riverside Theatres Parramatta at the end of this month… it has been a promising start to our new and less certain reality. We are making the most of a difficult situation. We see the horizon and more wonderful things waiting there.
But not everything happens as we would have liked or hoped. Conversations – generous and warm – about the possibility of collaborations and seasons and tours fill us with hope, but in our present situation, are difficult to nail down. It’s frustrating to see opportunities like touring demand for The Young King slip by although we are doing our best to explore every funding avenue. Still, it is uplifting to know that Slingsby is in the hearts and minds of the Australian and international performing arts establishment.
We are a plucky little company and yet we remain vulnerable, and will be for the foreseeable future. But for now we celebrate.
Words can’t describe how excited we are to once again gather a team of incredible artists to craft a new Slingsby theatre experience. It will be joyous, meaningful and will fill you with hope. We’ll keep you posted as we lock in all the pieces of this new theatrical puzzle.
It is not clear just how many of Slingsby’s nine lives we have used up, but for now at least, the path of adventures continues to unfurl before us.
See you down the track.
Andy Packer
Artistic Director