◆ JOB-READY GRADUATES A 2019 production of 'Forgiveness'. Sarah Walker
Curtains for Theatre & Performance I’m standing in the garden thinking about a plan for my last class. I always tell my students.'Don’t think you’re starting from zero because you have a blank page. Thinking is writing.' Today, I’m holding my own words as I contemplate a plan for this last class in a job I don’t want to lose. Whilst I have a blank page, I also have five years of thinking non-stop about how to improve the lives, art, confidence and creativity of my students and fifteen years of practice as a professional playwright to draw on. My department at Monash, the Centre for Theatre and Performance, is being disestablished. The major is no more, leaving a minor, now delivered through Sir Zelman Cowen School of Music and Performance (without a major in ‘performance’, these last two words make for a hollow duo). In a zoom meeting with the Dean of Arts, my colleagues were informed that three of the four of them need to take a ‘voluntary’ redundancy.
Fleur Kilpatrick, Monash University Centre for Theatre and Performance
22
ADVOCATE VOL. 27 NO. 3 ◆ NOV 2020
My contract, up for renewal in November 2020, made me one of countless invisible casualties of the Corona Cull. I received a stock Monash HR email saying my contract wouldn’t be renewed. So, receiving glowing unit evaluations and a teaching award hasn't saved my job! I replied saying this isn’t the way to dismiss an employee of five years. They sent a stock reminder to acknowledge receipt of my non-renewal. I told them to call me. They sent a survey of my recent Monash HR experience. I wrote ‘very unsatisfied’.
