Help Fund Arthur’s First Production: Dirtyland

We have a quick chat with the people behind new theatre company Arthur about their new play Dirtyland, and their novel approach to funding the project. If you want to score some tickets to the play, and support new Australian theatre in the future, head to their funding page, but be quick, there's only one day left!

Tell us a little about yourselves? We are Arthur and we are a brand new independent theatre company in Sydney. Our motto — well one of them —  is organised chaos.  This means, amongst other things, that we're pretty interested in having fun in making our work — and in delivering a fair amount of heart and a wallop of surprise to our audience.

To split Arthur into personalities, we are Paige Rattray (director), Elise Hearst (writer) and Belinda Kelly (producer).  You can meet Paige and Elise here, as they spruik for Arthur's first production, Dirtyland on the Pozible crowdfunding website.  The Arthur people have a common link with the mighty Griffin Theatre Co in Kings Cross.  Paige, a recent NIDA directing graduate, is a current resident director there.  Elise, who has had residencies further afield including at The Royal Court, was resident writer in 2009, and Belinda is the company's Artistic Associate.

Tell us a little about your project? We will be bringing the world premiere of Dirtyland to Sydney audiences in April as part of the inaugural Spare Room season at the New Theatre.  This eight-character play is set in an unspecified village following the massacre of one half of the residents by the other.  Nice.  However, it's not just your standard post-apocolyptic tale.

What should audiences expect? A play that is  rowdy, entertaining, and, for those who fear an interval, pretty short.  With live sound, epic atmospheres and striking visuals, the show is also pretty funny and very involving as you desperately barrack for our anti-heroes; willing them on to escape their dirty, dystopian world. Phew, that sounds full on, but fun no?

What's the inspiration behind Arthur? We are setting up a new company because we want to make work that wouldn't otherwise see the light of day.  Paige our director first came across Elise's writing while reading a stack of plays for a playwriting award. This was the beginning of Arthur. We didn't know it at the time, but we realized that this was the kind of work we needed to see and the only way it was going to happen was if we made it ourselves. Dirtyland is a cracking play that has generated a fair bit of industry interest, but the commercial reality is that a new play by a new writer with a cast of eight is never going to be a likely project to back for the main stage in Australia.

What are your ambitions for the company in the future? We would like to stage 2-3 plays per year, and work on the development of a further 2 plays for future production.  Arthur is very much interested in new Australian work, but also in creating devised work and text/performance/musical fusions.  We plan to stay true to the company's touchstones of serious fun and organised chaos.

Why have you taken the crowd-funding route? Because we only had three weeks' notice that we had secured a spot in the Spare Room season until rehearsals kicked off — yikes!  The short lead time  meant that we did not have access to more established forms of funding, such as government and foundation grants, nor the time to source company sponsorship.  We decided to think laterally. I think we were actually drinking some beers at the pub and thinking of different models and really very much talking about old subscription models for publishing of books and so forth.  The next day a few friends sent some links to crowdfunding websites, and we were off.  It feels very much of the zeitgeist.

How is it going? So far, so good. But — argh! We are 80% funded with a day left.  Our target is $8000, so we have $1600 to go.  Our target is high considering the amount of time until our project cuts off.  In this all-or-nothing model, if you don't reach the target, the project receives none of the pledged funds.  You also can't change the target or time limit once the project is away — so very nerve racking and we are obsessed with checking twenty times a day (give or take) to see if any more pledges have come in.  It's going down to the wire!