For the love of the Arts

CBC alumnus David Malacari (1974) has an extensive track record in directing some of the nation’s most popular and prestigious festivals, and has held senior positions in many more both in Australia and around the globe. His passion for the Arts is central to his life, and has guided him to make courageous career moves that have contributed to his success. David shares a little about his extraordinary career and leaves us with a poignant message.

Very little thought was given to the Arts at CBC in 1974. There was music until Year 7, and that was it. No Drama, no Visual Art, and following school, there were no performing Arts colleges in WA at the time. As a result, it never occurred to me that working in the Arts was a career option; I rather just fell in to it. Circumstance and serendipity and quite a bit of luck really.

I began acting in university dramatic society productions and working casually at the Hole in the Wall Theatre and the WA Ballet as my tertiary studies languished. I also toured Melbourne, Sydney and Newcastle with a children’s show produced by Channel 7, but I had no idea of what my life would become when I began working as a theatre electrician at the Sydney Opera House on a production The Merry Widow with Joan Sutherland in the title role and Richard Bonynge conducting. Quite a thing for a 22-year-old boy from Freo to be part of.

Over the next 10 years I was a Stage Manager, Production Manager and Lighting Designer with Sydney Dance Company, Sydney Theatre Company, Nimrod Theatre, Queensland Theatre Company and the TN Company. I wrote the script for the Sydney Dance Company’s first foray into dance/cabaret at Kinsellas. For a while I dabbled in the film world as a Locations Manager, but I was always going to be drawn back to live theatre. I toured Australia with the African National Congress Cultural Ensemble (before the end of apartheid) and internationally with the then Aboriginal and Islander Dance Theatre, before moving to Adelaide for the 1990 Adelaide Festival of Arts.

I was lucky to find a career path through the Adelaide Festival – from Production Coordinator to Festival Producer. In that time, I was Production Manager of six Adelaide festivals, three Come-Out Festivals and the first three WOMADelaide festivals. A life-changing opportunity came in 1996 when the Australia Council asked the Festival to manage an Arts event simultaneously in five Indian cities. I was subcontracted to be its Director. It was a challenge to do this in the days before widespread mobile phones and internet connectivity, especially in India. But it was a seminal experience that helped pave the way for my later career as a Festival Artistic Director. Following this, I was asked to produce a festival in London to celebrate Australia’s Centenary of Federation in 2000. This was another milestone. I was now directing festival programmes myself. But the path to becoming a Festival Director was still not yet clear.

I became the founding General Manager for Windmill Performing Arts in Adelaide, to produce work for children and families. When the task of building this new company from the ground up was complete, the most exciting door yet opened – to be Artistic Director of the fledgeling Auckland Arts Festival. This was more than I could ever have imagined. I moved to Auckland and directed four programmes there, commissioning new works, finding a focus for Maori and Pacific Arts and reaching out to the contemporary Arts in the Asia-Pacific region.

I look back on my career in the Performing Arts and feel privileged to have been able to see the most incredible artists as part of my job.

It was hard to leave Aotearoa but in 2013 I was appointed director of Parramasala Festival in Parramatta, which featured work from the South Asian diaspora, and included work representing the many other homelands of western Sydney’s rich and diverse populations. This was again programming that I loved, exploring the incredible cultural wealth of Australia’s newer communities.

My last major festival appointment was as Artistic Director of Tasmania’s Arts Festival, Ten Days on the Island, which developed new work from local artists and brought the creative work of international artists to theatres and halls in almost every Tasmanian town. Ten Days is a wonderful little festival that sometimes struggles for recognition against the marketing chutzpah of David Walsh’s MONA, but in taking the arts to, and exploring the creativity of, every corner of the island state, this festival has reached into the lives of countless Tasmanians over its 20 year history.

Since returning to Adelaide, I have written a novel, and started a second. I have also begun a memoir of my time in Arts festivals. COVID-19 made it an easy choice to move away from the Performing Arts, given the declining support over the last 10 years that was finally exposed in the government’s response to the pandemic in which the Arts barely scored a mention. But writing, like Visual Arts, is mostly a solitary activity, and harder than directing a festival. I do miss the social nature of the Performing Arts and the coming together of creation with communal experience.

I look back on my career in the Performing Arts and feel privileged to have been able to see the most incredible artists as part of my job. It wasn’t just a job; it was my life. Some of those artists gave me transformative experiences, and many contributed to me seeing the world and issues in a different way. All of those nights in the theatre, hundreds and hundreds of plays, concerts, films, exhibitions and experiences, represented the attempt by someone, or a group of people, to provide a compelling experience for an audience – they wanted to tell a story, or make a point, or even just to provide pleasure. The Arts aren’t entertainment, although they can be entertaining. The Arts are far more important than that. The Arts are central to our lives, even if we never really think about them. A career in the Arts – whether as a creator or as someone who works there because they love the creativity of others – contributes to the way the world works. The Arts aren’t just something to consider when all of the rest is sorted out – economy, jobs, climate, social cohesion – the Arts are inextricably tied into all of those things.

Creativity affects everything in the world. If we don’t have arts and creativity, we are a poorer society, and doomed to languish.

David Malacari (third row seven from left) pictured in Grade 7 1969.