NO concert hall. No ensemble theatre. A famous drama school sinking under the weight of "managerialism".

The pleasure Emeritus Professor Michael Morley feels at becoming the 2011 recipient of the Premier's Lifetime Achievement Award is tinged with a sense of triste that the arts to which he has devoted his life have left their heyday far behind.

Michael Morley, not only distinguished as a drama academic but also as a musical director, accompanist, authority, critic and collaborator, moved from New Zealand in the mid-70s when South Australia was renown for the vibrancy of its arts.

He had come via education in Auckland, Zurich and Oxford (Christchurch). As a translator of and expert in Bertold Brecht, he began collaborating with then singer Robyn Archer in 1977 - and has continued working with and accompanying her ever since.

But his day job always has been as a teacher and lecturer. Across the decades, and from 1984-2012 as chair of drama at Flinders University, he has witnessed the changes - the disappointments and the slow erosion of the city's status in the arts.

Hence his lamentations that, after decades of hope, Adelaide "is still without a designated function-driven concert hall".

Then there is the state of theatre.

"It's hard to turn the clock back but many years ago there were a number of subsidised theatres operating in Adelaide and the biggest loss to the theatre culture has been the loss of a permanent ensemble," he said.

"The best and liveliest work happens when you have an ensemble. There is still an ensemble in the Actors Company at Sydney Theatre Company but we have not seen an ensemble since Lighthouse and when Simon Phillips had a corps of actors."

Experimentation and risk-taking in the theatre had become a victim of cultural toe-cutting. "There is some adventurous theatre in the Bakehouse but done on the smell of an oily rag," says Morley.

"People must be given the opportunity to fail in the arts. Samuel Beckett said: `Try again. Fail again. Fail better'. That's the way theatre gets made."

Morley has written on theatre and music for the country's leading papers and periodicals. He's been a professional pianist and dramaturg and worked on and behind the stage from here to San Francisco and Ljubljana.

And, amid the creative joys of the collaborative process, he also has noticed how arts funding was vanishing in the direction of administration, marketing and focus groups.

He'd rather have seen it in the hands of directors and casts - with the thrill and risk of new creations.

"That's theatre," he asserts.

"As Brecht said, `the proof of the pudding is in the eating'. What he was saying was that a recipe is useless unless it tastes good."

The same skewing of funding priorities exists in academia where, Morley says, "managerialism" has eclipsed teaching.

Academics, he jokes sadly, now are burdened with "workload equalisation schemes, strategic plans for the next 200 years, marginalisation accountability ranking ... "

"Collegialism has gone altogether. Structure has gone. The college of academics is gone. Students are known as `clients'," he says.

"I have lost patience with it. What students want is more time, more one-on-one teaching, a tutoring system.

"Instead, academics are being asked for more large lectures, powerpoint presentations and `put them online'.

"The golden days when a lot of money was put into productions has vanished down some managerial plughole."

The irony, adds Morley, is that students arriving at the once-leading professional actor training program have much higher expectations than in those early days - since in many cases, the secondary schools whence they came had up-to-date-theatres and well-funded productions.

Originally published as State of arts slowly fading