NIDA Neither

The recent saga with the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) had inevitably put the drama school back on to the radar for all the wrong reasons.

The public debacle was triggered by a soon to be published article from a former boarder member, Chris Puplick . In his paper he criticised the current director and board chairman Lynne Williams and Malcom Long without a single dose of hesitation. These include Lynne William’s qualification to lead the prestigious drama school and the new direction for the school. NIDA, lead by Malcom Long then hit back criticising Chris as disaffected. Both sides have no signs of backing down and both sides are ready to pounce. 

As a person who worked there and had partly studied there (as part of my Theatrical Studies course at UNSW), it is sad to see that it had come down to this.  I personally do not know Lynne Williams or Malcom Long. However, judging from what I noticed in recent NIDA productions, I do have some issues with the current direction of the curriculum. First most, the importance of voice work had been diminished in the curriculum. With the departure of some of the best voice teachers in the country at the school, there is a reduction in the importance of voice work in the curriculum. The result? Some pretty bad voices on the stage – there was a performance I went to late last year and I was third road from the stage but I couldn’t hear a clear word from the actors up stage. This how bad some of the voices have become. I don’t know whether it is Lynne William’s CV’s issue or she really does not like people having a voice, that the voice component of the training was so marginalised.

The other thing that I personally dislike is the slicing and dicing of the library space at the Institution. As an educational institution, and being a tertiary education librarian for so many years, the dismissive attitude of the current NIDA management to the library is appalling. More real estate were allocated to building study rooms and because of that the collection was sacrificed. The attitude of modernising the library by providing more computers for online resources and ignore the fact that a lot of materials, especially Australian materials, are not online or even published, NIDA as the leading drama school of the country does have the responsibility to keep a good archive of materials for their students. The attitude of “if any materials has low circulation, it is not worth getting or keeping” is totally against the principle of higher education librarianship that has the duty of “maintain records and archives of materials that helped shaped the society and culture”. And this role is particularly important when it comes to the NIDA library; that can be specialised for this function. Further really, not everything is on Google. Google is a search engine that serves its purpose as an entry to knowledge but Google has no obligation to provide inspiring documents, videos and scripts that help the Australian theatre landscape to further develop.

The current public saga with NIDA certainly did not paint a good image for the drama school. But the core here is whether NIDA still aims to be a drama school that provides great training for actors and prepare them for the rough road ahead; or is NIDA just going to be a soap opera actor factory that produces actors with bad voices and pretty face? If so, apart from a legacy that was created by previous teachers such as Tony Knight, Kevin Jackson, Bill Pepper, Julia Cotton, Jane Harders, Ken Healey etc. etc. and the likes of talented graduates such as Cate Blanchett, Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Colin Friels, Hugo Weaving, and Richard Roxburgh, what is going to distinguish the modern NIDA from just any other “acting school” in the streets? That is something whoever is serious about acting should think about.

I am sure Lynne Williams and Malcom Long will have things “in control” and will be in all out damage control for the school for this is what is needed for both them and the school.  No doubt no outsider can have a say on how the school uses its resources and budget, including that at one stage Lynne Williams used the school’s money to hire private detectives to investigate staff about a “potential life threat” against her in the school, which turned out to be just a prank played on her by someone. However, if dramas continue to unfold, it will no doubt cast shadows on the reputation and credibility of the once respectable drama school. Whether it would become a “War of the Roses” style ending with undesirable collateral damage is yet to be seen, but certainly no body wants to see that the students who went there to study ended up being the collateral damage from the politics above.