Did you hear about the stand-up comedian? High-profile, well-known – and banned from several local venues because he touches up the female comedians. No one’s gonna talk about it – “not until he dies in an alcohol-fuelled car accident”, a friend from the scene has said. But the women don’t like him. They don’t feel safe when he’s around.

What about the young male theatre maker? Before he started getting main stage gigs he was still doing shows on the fringe, and became obsessed with a woman also working with one of the theatres. He got her number, would not stop calling her, told her that he was in love with her, and one night, when she was at work, he cornered her. She just started bellowing until someone heard and intervened. She told the artistic director what happened; the man agreed to stop calling her, and to stay away from her when his show was on. But that was it.

Then there’s that actor who hit his girlfriend at the party. Nobody saw exactly what happened but people intervened: someone bundled him into a car, while others looked after her. She didn’t want to press charges. She just wanted the abuse to stop.

In the wake of the Weinstein allegations and the cascade of similar claims it’s provoked in the United States and Britain, Australia’s performing arts community has been obliged to examine its shadowy corners – because everyone knows stories like the ones that I mention, including the industry’s most powerful.

Cast, the organisation which represents Australia’s high-profile, main-stage companies, has issued a statement condemning harassment and abuse, vowing to take action where it occurs. The actors’ union, MEAA, and the Screen Producers Association have launched a demand for sexual harassment policies to be included in a revamped Screen Safety Code, and Screen Australia has recirculated its own fact sheet on sexual harassment. The AFI/Aacta awards put out a slightly weird statement: they had never presented an award to Harvey Weinstein, they insisted – but, if they had, would be retracting it anyway.



But as name after name has come forward to denounce Weinstein and others overseas, in Australia the new era of what I’ve called “collective de-shaming” is yet to fell any considerable mass of offenders in the open.

It’s easy to imagine that it’s because Australia lacks a harassment culture; it’s also fanciful. The reaction of many male and female victims in Australia’s industry mirrors that of actor Sascha Horler. The ABC reported that when the Weinstein allegations broke, Horler first thought “that the Australian industry had left her relatively unscathed,” she told the ABC. “Then I went, ‘Oh hang on, I’ve normalised so much of this.”

‘Australia’s performing arts community has been obliged to examine its shadowy corners.’ Photograph: Sergio Azenha/Alamy

But now Tracey Spicer is discussing a list of 65 “media and entertainment” alleged offenders, which she has been collecting since her investigation launched last month. The ABC ran a feature detailing anonymous allegations in the theatre industry, and the Sydney Morning Herald did the same. On her new site Witness Performance, theatre critic Alison Croggon detailed “deeply distressing” stories she was sent in confidence, after a call-out, which implicated “well known names and unknown names, and every level of theatre”; and on Tuesday Fairfax revealed allegations of historic child sex offences against David Edward Lewis from Opera Australia.

With local rumours circulating regarding the likely “outings” of alleged harassers and abusers, it’s been interesting to consider just what has fostered normalisation of harassment in Australia – and what may have so far prevented disclosures on a more public scale.

Personally, it’s been confronting to realise that the few anonymous accusations that have been reported are easily identifiable. But while hearsay is plenty, direct witnesses – of course – are always few, and behind the scenes the women and young men abused are adamant that they don’t want to name names.



Exploring the reasons for their enduring silence is the first step to redress. In Australia, the industry is small, the walls between the worlds of comedy, screen, TV and the stage are very thin, and a tiny pool of shared talent shares stories about creeps and perpetrators with some rapidity.

But the industry’s small size perhaps also provides additional structural discouragement to expose harmful behaviour.

Long-term women-in-film activist and now director of the For Film’s Sake festival, Sophie Mathisen, believes the unwillingness of women subjected to harassment and abuse to speak out more openly comes down to “a very real and palpable sense of reprisal.” She’s been critical of Screen Australia’s response for failing to address the existing gendered barriers to entering the film industry which foreground unequal power dynamics and isolate women from the onset. The same could be said for women in comedy, theatre and television.

Given the limited opportunities for women in the Australian arts, it’s too risky for anyone to stick their neck out. Sophie Mathisen, For Film's Sake

“Given the limited opportunities for women in the Australian creative arts sector,” says Mathisen, “it’s too risky for anyone to stick their neck out.”

It’s a sense of risk that extends beyond the individual, to their collaborators, teams and communities. With intersections of influence concentrated amongst consistently small numbers of gatekeepers and practitioners, the disruption brought to systems by complaints and their ramifications is far more powerful – and personal – than in bigger, broader spheres.

In this country, arts and entertainment budgets are tight, jobs are few, opportunities precarious. The removal of key production and artistic personnel can collapse an entire project, if not a company, risking other people’s money; precious, always-threatened infrastructure; and the income streams of other colleagues. I’ve worked with female actors who’ve only disclosed harassment incidents at the end of a tour, explicit in their desire to protect the investment of others in the show.

Combine these material anxieties with the influences of broader societal sexism and the phenomenon of internalised shame – the window to abuse is wide and the disincentive to expose abusers even wider. Without proactive, pre-emptive intervention, abusive behaviour becomes a problem for the abused themselves to manage. I’m horrified at the fatalistic advice my own experience obliged me to share with my university students in a lecture 10 years ago: “Never meet a powerful person alone. Always meet them in a public place. If they put the hard word on you, pretend it’s a joke, pay them a compliment, leave immediately. If they want to hire you, they’ll call your agent. It’s only when they want to fuck you that they ask to meet you privately.”

It says much that an underground resistance movement of rumours, whispers and warnings is one of the few resources that the abused and their allies retain. Again, perhaps it’s the small size of the Australian industry that allows word, repeated often enough, to traduce the trajectories to power of many predators. That actor who’d assault women at parties is no longer working; the gross theatremaker did not become famous; and in the new post-Weinstein climate, one wonders that the comedian’s anonymity may not yet endure.

But to think the intimate nature of the industry has weeded out all predators would be naive. The lack of public disclosures in Australia to date does not mean the behaviour of individuals with power and stature is not being discussed. People are talking on sets, backstage, at pubs after work. Names and stories are being shared, phone calls are being made, and more abusers will be outed. And the old culture of normalisation may not yet be enough to weather the potential storm to come.