David Read
‘Cabaret Porch Thoughts’
Twenty years ago, David Read and I teamed up to complete an assignment in our Public Relations university course. Our news story received high distinctions and our friendship cemented. Outside of class David was always doing something spectacular many of us considered to be quite bizarre. He was an avid swimmer and once swam 30 km’s in shark protective cages from Warrnambool to Port Fairy, making news headlines in his campaign to assist those less fortunate than himself.
With our Communications Degrees in hand, David and I have kept in touch and through David’s eight year ownership with his partner Neville Sice of the iconic and award-winning The Butterfly Club in South Melbourne, and through my reporting on Melbourne events, David and I have continued to team up to promote many performing artists and shows.
Again I caught up with David as on the eve of the opening of (where together with Neville), have produced their third annual Melbourne Cabaret Festival set to burst out across Melbourne from tomorrow until Saturday 21 July in nine venues throughout the city with 35 entertaining live shows.
You are no stranger to the cabaret scene, how do you think your time at The Butterfly Club inspired you to conceive the Melbourne Cabaret Festival with Neville?
As the name of The Butterfly Club gained a reputation, we increasingly found that high quality acts would perform in our intimate show room but there was no pathway to bigger and better things. We knew there was further potential for these shows; we just had to work out a way to provide a bigger stage to enable larger audiences to see them.
How many acts do you think performed at The Butterfly Club and to how many people?
We presented (and the venue still presents) around 150 different shows annually, most of them new works. So that’s probably about 1,200 during our time there – over 5,000 performances and in excess of 150,000 audience members.
Which Australian artists did you help launch their careers at The Butterfly Club?
Hundreds, but one stands out. One time Eddie Perfect came in with his accompanist. The accompanist turned out to be pretty good so we offered him the opportunity to perform his own show. We encouraged him over two years to treat our showroom as a space where he could experiment and develop new material. We also produced his first tour. He’s gone on to much bigger and better things. Late last year we caught up with him for lunch at his house in London, and he gave us the very first pressed CD of a musical he wrote the music for, called ‘Matilda’. He also gave us a plug to 5 million poms watching the BBC’s Jonathan Ross show. Yep, that man is Tim Minchin.
Being a not-for-profit festival, how is the Melbourne Cabaret Festival funded?
We’ve funded it ourselves, but that can’t last forever, so we’ve been expanding our funding base over time. The Ron and Margaret Dobell Foundation has been with us from the start to underpin our professional development program for performers. The City of Port Phillip has also been a terrific partner now for three years. City of Stonnington and City of Boroondara have joined us for the first time this year.
We also undertook a crowdfunding campaign earlier this year whereby we asked the community direct to support us. They did to such a degree that they donated more than what we asked for! We’re determined to repay this generosity by staging an ace festival this year.
What is the most challenging aspects of organising such a large scale event?
We deal with such diverse people and organisations to stage the event. Your brain needs to rapidly switch from being ‘artistic’ when working with performers, to ‘practical’ when dealing with Councils, sponsors, venues and our Board, to a hyped (not over-hyped) ‘promotional machine’ when dealing with media and audiences. Sometimes it’s challenging to switch from one mindset to the next!
A major challenge remains the lack of funding support from the State Government. There’s a lack of vision when it comes to supporting a niche festival which could in future years bring in bucket loads of tourists, revenue, profile and creativity to the State, just like our revered and established festivals do today.
Melbourne Cabaret Limited is Chaired by Ron Dobell who has served as a Director and Chair of several organisations including his own philanthropic arts foundation, the Ron & Margaret Dobell Foundation, how has his leadership and business expertise guided and shaped the success of the festival?
Ron’s always been a great supporter and someone who we can bounce ideas off, or comes to us with his own. It’s a relationship based on trust, whereby we bring him bad news as openly as we bring him good news. The added value though comes with his wife Marg – our number 1 member – who works tirelessly to support the arts in Melbourne. As a partnership they also have a fantastic knowledge of cabaret and music theatre on an international level – they see more shows in a week than I do!
News broke earlier in the year that that the Festival needed to raise $15,000 to make it happen. You exceeded that target through a crowdfunding event with the support of stars including Geoffrey Rush, Amanda Palmer and Paul Capsis. What is crowdfunding and what were the highlights of the campaign?
Crowdfunding is where like-minded people come together to financially support a project they believe in. Social media has made this process easy. The crowdfunding experience was amazing not just because of the money, but because of the unexpected benefits. It brought Melbourne’s disparate cabaret community together for the very first time. It validated us as a festival that the community wanted and were prepared to open their wallets to support. It created a ‘tribe’ of supporters around the festival. These benefits continue today.
How have you grown the Festival this year?
We’ve grown the Festival in two ways: by expanding to ten nights, and by expanding geographically across the city. We’re programming two hubs – one at Chapel Off Chapel and one at Kew Court House. The other seven venues are programming themselves, bringing greater diversity, accessibility and excitement to the Festival.
What are your top picks for this year’s Cabaret Festival?
Like other art forms, often cabaret performers hit it big time overseas but aren’t recognised in their home town. Performers like Wendy Lee Taylor, who’s returning home after a ten-year residency at the Lido Paris. Or Spanky, the cabaret sensation from London. Or The Fabulous Singlettes, who had their own TV special on the BBC and are invited to perform in Berlin’s major venues every year.
What is your Porch Thought of The Day?
"What good is sitting alone in your room?"