Drama at NIDA: former board member slams falling standards

A DRAMA of Shakespearean proportions has embroiled Australia's leading acting school, with arguments about strategic and artistic direction, mass departures of staff, unhappy students and a teaching reputation in tatters, according to a former board member.

In a coming essay, the former Liberal senator Chris Puplick criticises the National Institute of Dramatic Art's director and chief executive, Lynne Williams, who, he claims, has ''no appropriate experience'' to head the school.

Mr Puplick says she has ''a Thatcherite style honed after a quarter of a century in the UK''.

''Williams has never directed a significant theatre performance; taught acting students; supervised theatre training or auditioned students for placement in a training institution, or ever earned a living in the professional theatre,'' writes Mr Puplick in his essay Changing Times at NIDA.

Mr Puplick twice served on the board of NIDA, before falling out with Ms Williams and the chairman of its board, Malcolm Long, in 2010. The essay will be published in the October issue of Platform Papers, a quarterly series on arts and entertainment.

He says Ms Williams's appointment in 2008 and tenure split the board and, in his view, led to the departure of almost all senior artistic staff. Mr Puplick criticises new arrangements that place teachers on short-term contracts without secure tenure.

Link -
http://m.smh.com.au/entertainment/theatre/drama-at-nida-former-board-member-slams-falling-standards-20120917-2627j.html