Beyond the bottom line

David Malacari

AK05, a two-week feast of performing and visual arts that gets under way in Auckland today, represents another move towards making a cultural festival a fixture on the city's events calendar.

As the finishing touches were being put to planning for this year's event, which involves more than 60 different performances at dozens of venues, chief executive David Malacari's mind was already on subsequent festivals.

"AK05 is the second step in cementing the festival into the fabric of our city. AK07 is going to take that further and AK09 even further still," says Malacari, festival chief for the past three months.

The Australian import, who had production and programme management roles at the Adelaide Festival for more than 12 years, envisages Auckland's festival becoming established as a showcase of Pacific culture.

"Even at this early stage of our festival - this is only our second one - it's starting to reflect what Auckland is, and my words for that are that it's at the cultural crossroads of the South Pacific."

As someone new to the place, Malacari says he has a powerful sense of Auckland being at the centre of the South Pacific, which could not be said of any Australian city.

"You only have to look at the diverse ethnic communities here, the great range of cultural things on offer, to know that. The Auckland Festival will really hit its straps when it can best take advantage of those riches."

Malacari took charge of AK05 in November, after the festival's programme had been set. The inaugural Auckland Festival, AK03, was run by actor Simon Prast, whose position became redundant when the director's role was split into that of a chief executive and artistic director.

While AK03 made a $300,000 loss, that doesn't mean all of Malacari's attention is on the bottom line.

"I don't think festivals can afford to be totally bottom-line-focused, although I'm not for one minute saying that's not very important. But when the first question you get asked at the end of a festival is whether you met your budget, you have to think that, possibly, there's something a bit skew-whiff there."

Even the Adelaide Festival, which has been going about 40 years and ranks alongside Edinburgh and Avignon in the handful of top international events, has had its financial ups and downs, says Malacari.

"People get very hung up about festivals meeting their financial targets - and they need to because they can't be bailed out all the time. But the truth is we're talking about culture, about art, and their benefits to our society, many of which are immeasurable and intangible."

The cost of AK05 - 2003's event ran up a bill of $2.27 million - is being met by Auckland City Council, numerous sponsors (the largest of which is ANZ, reportedly to the tune of $250,000) and ticket sales. It's billed as a family event and while some performances are distinctly not for family viewing (Cabaret Decadence, for instance, is "the ultimate puppet show for adults"), many are free and ticket prices for those that aren't have been kept low, Malacari says.

Jack and the Beanstalk, a one-hour 45-minute local production by Michael Hurst, for example, will cost $22 for adults and $15 for children, and $69 for family passes for two adults and two children. In contrast, Bugs Bunny on Broadway, featuring the Auckland Philharmonia playing along to Warner Bros cartoons projected on a big screen, is $199.80 for a family pass.

"Our job is to contribute to our city's cultural health, to be a resource for the community, so we have a completely different brief [from commercial enterprises]. And that's reflected in our ticket prices."

Modest ticket prices don't mean a meagre programme, however. About half the festival's performers are from overseas, and Malacari has the advantage of having seen some of them already.

He mentions Bush, by Bangarra Dance Theatre, and the Three Furies, both Australian. "Bangarra are an extraordinary company, and the Three Furies, which just opened at the Sydney festival, is a brand new world premier production. A premier is always a risk - that's part of the adventure of putting them into festival programmes. But it's an incredible piece, a great festival piece."

But based on the life of artist Francis Bacon, with "strong language and nudity", it's not a piece to take the kids along to.

The festival is not all performing arts - there are also short film screenings, exhibitions of photos, paintings, traditional Maori tattooing and weaving, and audiences can listen to artists talking about their work.

"At the moment we're putting together a really interesting and diverse programme of work that Aucklanders and visitors have never seen before. But over time that programme will more and more highlight the Pacific and Pacific rim cultures that really make Auckland that cultural crossroads," Malacari says.

"One of the things about festivals that I've found is that both audiences and artists get far more adventurous in a festival programme than they get during the rest of the [arts] calendar. Society can really use that to its advantage; it really pushes its arts practice.

"It really helps the community's cultural health to see a whole lot of different things - for people to expose themselves to different experiences and broaden their understanding of cultural experience."

He will gauge AK05's success by the reaction of audiences as they emerge from performances.

"If I can stand in a theatre foyer in the course of the festival and hear people come out really excited and thrilled and moved and stimulated by what they have seen ... then I'll count that as a success."

He will also be hoping performers and sponsors get what they want from the festival. "If we hit our box office targets, which we absolutely need to do to be in a strong financial position for AK07 - we don't want to be playing catch-up at the end of every festival in order to get our next programme budgeted - then that will also be a success."