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In setting the scene, I profile the two groups (occupiers and foreigners) using a descriptive snapshot to help define the socio-cultural factors that are already at play in these partnerships when the two groups (school group and venue staff) first come together. The extract from my own reflective journal serves to highlight the potential of the empty space to take on the identity of the ‘characters’ that occupy it.

A group enters and the space is transformed into the character of these people. They arrange the space to suit them, each part containing fragments of their story— their desires—their contradictions. (Reflective Journal)

The Occupiers of the Space

The case study site (the professional theatre venue) in which these partnerships take place—enclosed within the broader arts-industry context—is occupiedby the four venue staff participants (illustrated in Figure 11).

68 The staff at the venue are split into two teams; the theatre management (which

includes the front of house staff), and the technical staff or backstage crew. Both departments interact with a variety of school personnel during, prior and beyond the venue hire period. However, the technical staff host the bulk of significant partnership interactions during the school’s ten day tenure in the venue.

The three technical staff, all of whom are casually employed, have maintained lengthy and sustained employment histories with the venue. As Mark conveys, “We here at the

(venue) are a crew that has worked together for a long time and we all have each other’s back.” Also, key was the collective years of experience that the venue (technical) team brought into this arts/education partnership context. This was supported by Bill:

Mark, the head of audio has been here for fifteen years as well. My Head Mech4 _has

been here for seven or eight years. Ronny, the head of lighting has been here a few years. My fly man5 _{at the moment who used to be here a few years ago has been back}

many times with other shows and now he’s back working with us again. So, you can clock up five years of experience for him on day one. (Bill)

The venue, provided these ‘industry veterans’with the stability of a home base or docking port in-between negotiating careers on the road, providing technical and production support for national and international touring acts. As Mark articulates “in this industry there’s no such thing as a full-time job”.

In addition to the continuity and collective experience that the technical staff brought into the school production, they also exhibited high levels of professional pride in their work. This was described by Bill:

Well you definitely find in our industry that it is ego driven and I don’t mean that in a negative way, I mean that people do want to do a good job – they don’t want to fail. The lighting people do not want their lights to look average, they want it to look fantastic. The sound people want it to sound fantastic – they don’t want it to sound average. The Mechs don’t want to miss out on a cue – they want that cue to be bang on. And the industry is full of those people … (and) most of them care. (Bill)

4 _{A theatre technician.}

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The Foreigners

The education context, labelled as The Foreigners is illustrated in Figure 12. At the center of this ‘world’ are the three school group participants (including myself) who are members of the school’s performing arts department and have all been involved in the majority of past musicals staged in the venue. The rest of the school community (‘other’ performing arts staff, students, non-performing arts staff, parents and past students) are represented in the diagram but are enclosed within the broader educational context.

Figure 11:The Foreigners

The school—an independent school for girls founded in 1907—had a tradition of staging its annual musical productions in their school hall. However, because of the need for a larger venue, the school moved the production into a local professional theatre:

The first musical production to be staged outside of the school would play four performances in late March 2010. The venue had been hired for a period of ten days, with two set aside for the set up and set down, six days for technical rehearsals and three performance days. Little did we know at the time we would be embarking on a partnership that would span seven musical productions in as many years. (Reflective Journal, Day 4)

The Performing Arts Department at the school is made up of two drama staff, two dance teaching staff, and three part-time support staff (administration, technical and costume):

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We (the staff) have been together for a long time. This is Brian’s (Props Manager) eleventh show with the school. Sally (Costume Manager) has worked on nine shows and this will be my eighth. (Reflective Journal, Day 9)

The school’s consistency of staging the musical in a professional theatre since 2010 was viewed by the venue staff as giving them a “distinct advantage because the only one with the

consistency of doing it has been (the school)” (Ronny).

The school group participants exhibited pride in the quality of the productions they staged at the venue. Sally expressed that it was a shared aspiration for the show to “rise

above the stereotypical kind of high school musical” and that working in a professional venue was an opportunity to “raise the bar” and “bring up that whole standard”.

The descriptive snapshots of the venue and the school group involved in this study provide a backdrop to view these experiences of partnerships. Furthermore, profiling the characteristics of both groups in isolation deepens our understanding of the ways

social/cultural factors enable and/or constrain the possibility of mutually beneficial

partnerships in this site-specific context. The labelling of the two configured groups as The Occupiers (venue staff) and The Foreigners (school staff) highlights the unique and distinctly different position of each group within this research context and foreshadows the start of the inter-sectorial partnership journey.