Not just white any longer
In its 22 years, the Rob Guest Endowment (RGE) has become one of the backbones of musical theatre. The biennial endowment is the largest single musical theatre scholarship in Australia, with a $50,000 first prize, a $5,000 second prize and $1,500 each for four runners up.
This year, that reputation has been challenged. The award has been attacked for its semi-finalist selection, which was almost entirely Caucasian. Even some of the semi-finalists joined in the criticism, which was led by an open letter to the selection committee by musical theatre performer, Hayden Tee, which began, “As a proud Maori New Zealander (Rob’s home country) who presents as pakeha (white) and who has benefited from much white privilege in my life due to my (pakeha) appearance I feel it is my duty to stand up for those with less representation than I…”
The RGE has, therefore, cancelled the 2020 Rob Guest Endowment Competition and this year’s scholarship grant has been suspended until 2022. It has also issued a statement that outlines how it will address the issue in the future. Part of that statement reads, “Whilst the endowment is open to any emerging performer who is an Australian citizen between the age of 18 and 25, the 2020 endowment failed to attract many entries from Indigenous Australians, people of colour and other performers from diverse racial backgrounds.
"We accept unreservedly that the leadership committee should have done more to ensure that contestants in the competition were drawn from a much more diverse cross section of emerging musical theatre performers across Australia. We apologise for our omissions and failures in the 2020 competition. The RGE is determined to do better in the future.
"We have sought and will continue to seek the guidance of industry leaders and organisations on the actions that we can take to ensure that the endowment is inclusive, safe and welcoming for all who seek to apply including Indigenous Australians, people of colour and all ethnicities.”
The full statement is available here.
Some of the changes the RGE has promised to make are to include in its leadership committee “a minimum of 20% BIPOC and diverse participation drawn from leadership roles in the commercial musical theatre business in Australia”, to increase its judging panel from 12 to 15 members with a minimum 20% BIPOC and diverse representation, and to include a quota in the first round of the endowment that ensures a minimum of 20% of the semi-finalists are drawn from a diverse array of entrants including Indigenous Australians and people of colour.
These changes, it states, will be implemented by the leadership committee over the next six months, with some changes having been made already.
The full list of changes is available here.
– CANDIDE MCDONALD