Signor Baffo is a hapless chef who juggles, rides a tricycle and frequently trips over his own feet.
He is also an Adelaide Fringe audience favourite, one of many intimate productions Melbourne’s Jared Harford tours across Australia, in addition to his work in London’s West End – an adaptation of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry this year earning Harford an Olivier award nomination for best new musical.
Typically, Harford’s travelling shows are lean operations requiring only a van filled with costumes and props and performer Joshua Burton by Harford’s side. But the lingering fuel crisis and its cascading effects have left producers such as Harford increasingly anxious and out of pocket, sparking industry calls for assistance to keep shows on the road.
“Many [producers] are considering cancelling regional shows because if they get stuck in a remote town, who’s going to help them?” Harford says. “[Federal arts agency] Creative Australia encourages us to visit the regions, but it’s a precarious situation, with no extra funding. If I were to cancel, I’d face hundreds of thousands of dollars in fees. There is no insurance for the work we do.”
The squeeze is industry-wide. Antonia Seymour, head of Sydney-based touring service organisation Arts on Tour, whose clients include major companies such as Bangarra Dance Theatre and Belvoir Street Theatre, last week notified companies of a 7 per cent hike in freight costs due to diesel prices. In regional touring, freight can swallow up to half of the budget. For Arts on Tour’s longer tours, this hike can mean a cost increase of up to $20,000.
“Our challenge is finding savings elsewhere to ensure these tours still reach regional audiences,” Seymour says. “It’s this uncertainty which is causing a huge amount of fear and anxiety for artists and the sector. How bad will it get? Will we be cancelling tours again, like we did during COVID? No one wants that.”
Seymour notes that global instability doesn’t just raise costs; it also shrinks audiences.
“We know from the cost-of-living crisis post-COVID that going to the theatre is a discretionary expense that can be one of the first to go, particularly now the cost of mortgages is being impacted by interest rate increases,” she says. “It feels relentless, working in an environment with constant upward pressures on costs and downward pressures on box office.”
On top of higher fuel costs, Live Performance Australia (LPA) said its members were also seeing a noticeable drop-off in ticket sales.
“Audiences are very price sensitive,” says LPA chief executive Eric Lassen. “Producers have very limited or no scope to pass on these higher costs, so they are having to absorb them. It’s an especially acute issue for regional venues, where audiences often have to travel further and petrol costs are a much bigger factor in decision-making.”
Looking ahead, LPA said some producers were contemplating delays to future projects until there was more clarity around the global outlook.
“We hope that federal, state and territory cultural ministers will look at putting in place some targeted assistance measures to support the industry through this difficult period, particularly in respect of touring costs,” Lassen said. “Additionally, a live performance production incentive would, over the longer term, help to reduce some of the financial risk and cost overheads involved in touring around Australia.”
On the round trip taking Signor Baffo to this year’s Adelaide Fringe festival, Harford said diesel hit $3.90 a litre. Distributors who hang advance posters heralding the arrival of shows have already passed on petrol pump price rises.
This July, Harford will take Signor Baffo from Melbourne to the Gold Coast before playing eight regional stops on the return leg. “I’ll likely walk away losing money or breaking even,” Harford says. “My money is just going into the tank. I’m actually scared of some regional routes – if we run out of fuel, how do we get home?”
A spokesperson for Creative Australia said the agency was aware of the pressures that rising costs are placing on artists and arts organisations, including those engaged in touring.
“Creative Australia is monitoring how these conditions are affecting the delivery of funded activity,” they said. “We will continue to talk to and engage with artists and arts organisations as the situation evolves.”
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