Don Mamouney

Thank you. Thank you, Lex. Thank you, Humphrey. Thank you, Andrea. Before I start, this is a picture entitled A Person Who Would Rather Not Be in Marrickville. It is by a photographer by the name of Angelinos who has dedicated his life as a photographer to Marrickville and in fact I saw him last week and Emmanuel does want to be in Marrickville even though the boy may not. I want to be in Marrickville and of course this is a total surprise. This is perhaps one of those moments, you know, life in theatre which is perhaps - it's obviously all too rare. It's not every day you get $40,000.

Working in theatre it's 98 per cent hard work and 2 per cent rare joy. The rare joys are when a work comes together in such a way that an audience, a whole group of people or a single individual, recognises something important about their relation to society. It's a moment of pure recognition, pure recognition that goes beyond politics. It goes beyond the social and in some sense it goes beyond community. Yet it's all of those things that combine to bring about that rare moment of pure recognition. The recognition for me in this Ros Bower Award I just can't estimate enough. I'm feeling somewhat tongue-tied and I have got to get out my glasses to see what else I was going to say.

I would like to thank Ros Bower, the memory of Ros Bower for making this award possible. I would like to thank of course my immediate family, my partner Memee who has not only been a partner at home but also a partner at work. My family and my community have been a constant source of inspiration. I would also like to thank my Bendigo family. I think Lex said that I was from a non-English speaking background. That's not quite true. I come from a family that migrated - several families really that migrated anything from the end of last century until more recently.

I'm Greek. I'm Swiss-Italian. I'm German-Swiss. I'm Irish and I'm English, and I come from Marrickville. I wasn't born in Marrickville. I was born in Bendigo in Victoria but I came to Marrickville some - I think 27 years ago. But coming to Marrickville it seems I was always coming to Marrickville because Marrickville is the place that continued to serve both as an inspiration to my art and as a place to live and a place to bring up a family.

I would like to thank the people of Marrickville who have made it possible for not only me but Side Track Theatre Company and Side Track Performance Group to exist for over 18 years. I would like to thank Graham Pitts who was the co-founder of Side Track Theatre and also the person who nominated me for this award.

I would like to thank especially my very close friend Professor Tom Burbell who has supported me through the times when I felt I had great need of support and didn't feel that I had very much out there and Tom kept it going. I would like to thank all of the performers that worked with me at Side Track, and walking through this door this morning it was extremely gratifying to see the number of people here that have worked with Side Track, people like Anne-Marie, people like Don Chapman, people like Barry Gamba.

I would like to mention Michelle Milner, Gino Tomasich, Ellen Chapell, Christian Manon, Stefo Nantsou whom I saw earlier on today; people from the more recent Side Track, Jay McKendry, Orlando Ramos, Regina Heilman; the administrators that I have worked with, people like Annie Hinchcliff, Sue Beale, John Hawks, Tania Gerstel and her mother and more recently Paul Cate.

There are many other people that have worked at Side Track; them I also thank. There are a couple of people that I would like to mention who have served as great inspiration, people outside the theatre who work in arts, people like Tom Dubrisky who was a film maker and has remained a close friend over many years. It has been a great inspiration to listen to and watch him struggle and succeed; the late Ian Burn who was someone that I didn't know extremely well but I sat on quite a few panels with him and met him at gatherings wherever community theatre and wherever art and working life were spoken about. Ian continued to be an inspiration with the depth of his intellectual concern and his concern for community.

In the early days of the Community Arts Board the Community Arts Board were the first people that funded our company at Side Track. The Community Arts Board was headed in those days when we first got our funding by Andrea Hull but she was also surrounded by some incredibly strong women. I look back on their encouragement and wonder, could we have even got off the ground without their support. So I thank you, Deb Mills, who I think is here today; Antigone Kefala, Maria Spizeri, Mavis Knight to mention a few of them.

A couple of people from the Addison Road Community Centre, since 1991 I took up the presidency of the Addison Road Community Centre. It is a strange organisation. It has something like 25 groups, 16 of those ethnic cultural groups, other groups like ethnic child care, a child care centre, Reverse Garbage, Radio Skid Row, not to mention three or four theatre companies and artists' spaces. To be the president of this place has on one hand been an act of labour and on the other hand an act of great privilege to be able to serve these people and in particular, the people who have helped me there, Theresa Feminias and Fahlia Jamal who is the manager of that centre.

When I came in as president the centre had lost most of its funding. Everyone was fighting. It was culturally bankrupt in many ways and with Fahlia's help and the rest of the committee's help we brought it back together so today it is flourishing and it is now in a state where I think we can look forward to, I hope, another 20 years of the Addison Road Community Centre.

I would just like to say a couple of things about the theatre more in terms of encouragement to people who continue to work in community arts, people who may be new to community arts. It seems to me that there have been difficult times, especially over the last few years. I think there was a wonderful growth period in the early eighties when there was a lot of vitality in community arts. I remember we had community theatre conferences for a number of years which were attended by similar numbers of people to what we have here today.

The debate raged and roared. The debate was often about the content of work. This is something that I lament today in so much work whether it be based in the community or whether it be based in more avant-garde circles. We live in a society in which taste seems to have overcome almost everything else. We live in a society where even theatre has become some kind of commodity form. Worst of all, I think the audience has been turned into a consumer.

By making the audience a consumer, by making the arts into something corporate, we diminish its real values. We make the label worth more than the materials. It's little wonder that today we have a Prime Minister who is able to devise a 10-point plan which, to put it blatantly, is an attack on the people who uphold the values of community, the people whose core values could be the inspiration for all of us.

When I first started to work in theatre - as I said, I came to community theatre - I came to community theatre because it was a place of meaning. Recently when I talk to younger artists, particularly in the areas of what might be called contemporary performance, I'm hearing a desire to go back to the community. I'm hearing from people who five or six years ago might not have wanted to work with communities who are now looking for opportunities. I believe they're looking for opportunities because they want their art to mean something.

Coming here today, listening to some of the speakers talk, I'm aware that there has been a lot of movement in the last 20 years. In one sense it is good to see the number of people from non-English speaking background here. It is good to see the Aboriginal people and the Islander people here. 15 years ago often you would go to conferences and the only faces were those of people from English-speaking backgrounds. This has changed.

There's obviously a change when it comes to matters of gender as Margie so eloquently spoke about. We are at a moment, I believe, which I would like to think of as a seminal moment. A seminal moment, a kind of between space. It's a space in which you can either fall down or you can get up. I would like to think that for community cultural development we are poised on a moment of renewal, a renewal of those core values that I have been hearing people talk about today, a renewal of the value of coming from somewhere, a renewal of the value of being able to speak from somewhere. To finish, I thank you all and I thank Marrickville for giving me a place to speak from. Thank you.

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