AT AGE 26, Abe Watson already has 12 years experience in theatre administration and management.
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Watson picked up an interest in the technical side of theatre as a 12-year-old after starting out as a performer when he was eight.
By 14 he was a junior committee member at Bendigo Theatre Company (BTC) and had begun working as a lighting tech at The Capital theatre.
After serving as vice-president and president of BTC, he moved to Melbourne to be a production manager with the Melbourne Theatre Company.
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This year he started as artistic operations manager at the Faculty of Fine Arts at the University of Melbourne, which encompasses the Victorian College of the Arts and the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music.
Watson said the journey through his theatre-based career traced back to a fascination for the arts.
"I was a very curious child and I just loved theatre," he said.
"I played in orchestras, I made costumes and built sets and wanted to know about lighting and sound. I just wanted to learn a bit of everything.
"BTC was my first home. It was where I developed my love of theatre and where I learnt, probably ostensibly, more than I've learnt anywhere else about theatre and how it's made. I just loved that community coming together behind a united cause and making something special happen."
Watson said BTC had raised its professionalism through the years, highlighted by Chicago in 2014 and Wicked in 2019.
He said the people power behind every BTC show was what made them incredible.
"Everyone (at BTC is) a volunteer," Watson said.
"But what is the dollar value of that volunteer labour? It's hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of volunteer labour that's free.
"People give their time and their expertise to build something really special like that. Hundreds of hours, thousands of hours, just because they love it."
Watson made the deliberate decision to take a gap year in 2015 to be a part of Ulumbarra as much as he could.
"Working in a brand new theatre that has just been built has its challenges. I'm sure no one minds me saying that ... (but) that was pretty amazing," he said.
"I mean, opening a new theatre, being there through the build phase, the fit-out, and the first year is an experience I will never forget. The positives and the negatives of that."
His stint with Melbourne Theatre Company was originally for one show at the end of 2019 before he took up a full-time role.
It gave him a steep learning curve in professional theatre as the COVID-19 pandemic closed in on the world and devastated the arts scene.
"I think I technically production-managed probably 12 shows and probably only four of them made it to the stage. So that's pretty, pretty hard," Watson said.
"What we've seen through the pandemic is some really experienced, skilled people, managers and makers, administrators on all sides of the business (leave) the industry because they've just gone 'I can't do this anymore'.
"Who knows if they will ever come back and it is such a loss to the industry."
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Watson said the industry was also struggling to stage the huge amount of postponed events and backed up programming.
"Lots of theatre companies are trying to get things up and running," he said.
"So that, combined with a lack of staff, combined with new graduates coming out of universities who have spent three years learning about technical production, but have some of them never actually set foot in a theatre or done a show. That's also challenging because you've now got this real gap in the skill base in the industry."
Going forward, Watson said there needed to be a national cultural or arts policy to help support the industry.
"I think you would start by convincing a government to appreciate the importance of arts and culture," he said.
"This country has not seen a national cultural policy or national arts policy since (Prime Minister Julia) Gillard, and before that, since (Paul) Keating."
Pursuing an arts career wasn't something that Watson was encouraged to do in school.
"Throughout my teen years, I was told by many people 'you can't pick a career in the arts'," he said.
"It can be hard to crack into this industry but it is worthwhile. It's fun."
Watson has performed since 2017 when he played Emmett in BTC's Legally Blonde.
He included his turns as Lincoln in Hairspray, Judas in Godspell, Gavroche in Les Misérables and Chip in Beauty and the Beast as his other highlights. But it was always making theatre that excited him.
"My love was the whole thing of making theatre," Watson said.
"We do some pretty cool, amazing stuff in theatre. Some that I've been involved in where we set part of the set on fire every night and extinguished every night in front of the audience."
Highlighted shows he has been part of the production team for include Wicked with BTC, Title of Show which was made independently with five friends and the MTC show Touching the Void.
Even in the decade since Watson was in secondary school, drama education and opportunities have increased for students.
"Bendigo does it quite well," he said. "It's probably down to some of the people that we have in some of those (education and drama) roles that are just really passionate people and good advocates of that work."
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Led by BTC's Tribe Youth Theatre, Nexus Bendigo Youth Theatre and Props Theatre, there is no shortage of youth-based theatre groups to work with as well as the drama programs in some Bendigo schools.
"What is unique and has developed over the last few years is a real collaboration and support between the theatre companies for each other's programs," Watson said.
"Because at the end of the day, water rises all boats. Everyone's trying to provide worthwhile, good opportunities for young people."
Watson said even if young people didn't aspire to take up a career in the arts, learning drama had many benefits for development in children.
"Not everyone going through a program like Tribe or Nexus are doing is going to come out and have a career in the arts and be a performer or a production manager or whatever," he said.
"But the skills you learn are very transferable. I've seen some amazing turnaround in some very shy young people or people that they didn't feel like had a community or people that they could relate to, who have gone through those programs and have come out just such a different person and so much more comfortable in themselves.
"One of the things you don't always focus on is sort of that emotional quotient, that emotional intelligence. That's incredibly important today, especially coming out of a pandemic."
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