UPDATE: After the publication of this story, Victoria University of Wellington revised its plans. Theatre will continue as a standalone programme, teaching performance and production. The university highlighted the programme’s history, reputation and “significant contribution to the arts ecosystem in Wellington and beyond”.
Victoria University's theatre programme has produced many of New Zealand's best and brightest. But that history is now under threat. It's a crisis for the programme, the arts industry — and the nation as a whole.
Before Outrageous Fortune, Lord of the Rings and Shortland Street, Robyn Malcolm was a young aspiring actress — with a plan to make it big.
It began with enrolling at New Zealand drama school Toi Whakaari.
There was only one problem. She didn't get in.
"After a couple of days of sobbing and gnashing of teeth, I decided, 'well I'm gonna be an actor anyway,'" Malcolm told Sunday.
A funding crisis in the tertiary sector could see Victoria University's theatre programme disestablished.
Instead she enrolled in theatre at the Victoria University of Wellington.
"I then went to Toi Whakaari and sat down in front of the tutors there and said 'Look, I applied for drama school last year and you didn't take me. And you were wrong, and I'm gonna be an actor anyway and this is how I'm gonna do it instead.'"
What did she get from her time at Victoria?
"My career," she said. "The Vic theatre course was kind of a real launch pad for me."
Malcolm's not alone in her origin story. Victoria theatre graduates have won Emmies and Oscars. Taika Waititi, Brett McKenzie, Jemaine Clement and Robyn Malcolm are just some of the programme's famous names.
A number of others are behind the scenes, including top director Simon Bennett and the head of Creative New Zealand.
But Malcolm fears they could be the last.
"The space for that to happen won't exist anymore," she said.
The theatre programme would be unrecognisable if cuts proposed by Victoria University are confirmed later this month. Half the department's staff would be lost and the theatre programme would be merged with English.
It would focus on reading instead of acting — for theatre performance, it's a curtain call.
"That's not studying theatre," Malcolm said. "To study theatre you have to do it."
"You can read a Shakespeare play, but it was never meant to be read. It was meant to be performed," she said.
What happens at Victoria will impact an industry.
"That theatre programme contributes to every aspect, every area of the arts community in New Zealand," Malcolm said.
"Top television producers, writers, actors, stage managers, lighting people, directors — I mean, the list goes on."
Malcolm said the cuts put that at risk.
"It's so shortsighted, and it's insulting to the arts community of Aotearoa," she said.
It's only one department at one university, but it's a sign of something bigger. Our tertiary funding model is broken — and Victoria University is broke.
'It's a crisis'
There are no easy answers for vice-chancellor Nic Smith, the man in charge at Victoria University.
Since he took over the job in January, domestic enrolments have fallen drastically. The international student market fell away throughout Covid.
Victoria is months from running out of cash.
"We can't keep on doing everything that we do," he said.
Seventy-three staff have already taken voluntary redundancies — at least as many again could still lose their jobs.
"We're having to make really uncomfortable trade-offs. How do we balance the importance of teaching versus theatre? How do we balance the importance of music versus communication? These are things which aren't good for a university. They're also things which are not good for a country," Smith said.
Of the changes proposed at Victoria, the biggest cuts are to the arts. Forty-three of the humanities faculty are facing job losses, and languages, music, tourism and economics are all in line for dramatic cuts.
It's a problem repeated across the country.
At Massey University, 285 jobs could go. It is calling for voluntary redundancies.
The University of Otago has a $60 million deficit — the largest of all our tertiary institutions. A rolling wave of redundancies at Otago is expected to continue well into next year.
"I think it's a crisis not just for the university sector," Smith said. "I think it's a crisis for education more generally, and society beyond that."
'A pretty lean time'
The problem — like most — is also political. Government funding for universities has fallen behind inflation by 20% in the last 10 years.
Education Minister Jan Tinetti announced a review of the funding model in June — alongside $128m to support universities in the next two years.
"There's probably been an over reliance on our international students," Tinetti said.
"That funding system hasn't changed because we've been relying on all of those other factors for so long. Now it's time to look at that," she said.
The extra funds saved a third of the jobs at Victoria — but 150 others still face the axe.
"That review is two years away I think at best," Smith said. "And at the moment it's hard to have confidence as to what that review might produce."
That review may depend on next months' election — and either way, times will be tough.
National Party tertiary spokesperson Penny Simmonds said universities' path to prosperity lies with international students — not extra funding from the Government.
"We're not going to be in a position with the economy the way it is to be throwing a lot of money around anywhere. That's the reality. If we are in government, we're going to be facing a pretty lean time," Simmonds said.
All of which leaves universities — and the arts — in peril. It's a process of death by a thousand job cuts.
And for Malcolm, it raises a question — what does it mean for New Zealand society if arts are the first thing on the chopping block?
"I think humanity starts to go immediately," she said.
"When someone goes through something huge in their lives, when someone can't cope, when someone's having a breakdown — the first thing you do is that you go somewhere in the arts. You go to a bit of poetry, you go to a song, you go to a piece of music, a film."
"We need it," she said. "We need it. It's lifeblood stuff."
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