The Brisbane stage is his world

John Kotzas talks to Alex Stilianos about the highs and lows of heading up the Queensland Performing Arts Centre


Thousands of performing artists have walked through their doors over the years, but Queensland Performing
Arts Centre (QPAC) director John Kotzas is the one person who has remained there.

During the early 1960s there were a lot of Greek migrants travelling through and a lot of that music, dance and culture they brought impacted on me.

Mr Kotzas, who has been with QPAC for the past 20 years, began working in various creative and directing roles before he was appointed artistic director in 2003.

“I came here (QPAC) as the education officer and what it enabled me to do was combine my professional interest in the arts and also my professional interest
in teaching.”

Growing up in North Queensland, Mr Kotzas’ childhood was surrounded by family and relatives, like most first generation Greek Australians, and it was around this time he got his first taste of the arts.

“I grew up in North Queensland and I was always interested in the arts and there was always music happening around where I grew up.

“During the early 1960s there were a lot of Greek migrants travelling through and a lot of that music, dance and culture they brought impacted on me.”

Growing up in a performing arts environment, Mr Kotzas was surrounded by friends and relatives who were creatively inclined
and always active in the performing arts community.

Although he was unaware of this at the time, Mr Kotzas can now
look back at these people and appreciate the remarkable talent they each possessed.

“What I can say now is one of my aunts had a fantastic operatic voice and was a coloratura soprano and as a kid I didn’t know what that was, but I now know that she had a real remarkable skill.”

It wasn’t just his aunt who inspired him as a youngster, there were many other relatives who had a lot of creative input and some would eventually go on to carve out careers in their own right.

“There were a lot of other people, like my dad’s cousin who was a very motivated amateur theatre actor and gave me a passion and excitement for the performing arts.

“I had one cousin who went to NIDA and another one who is a music teacher, so all of these people I found to be quite inspirational and definitely influenced me in my decision making.”

As the year 2010 marks QPAC’s 25th Anniversary, Mr Kotzas is proud of how far the company has come since its early days when it was largely funded by money from government.

Twenty-five years and 14 million tickets later the company is down to 23 per cent of its revenue coming from government, down from a high of over 70 per cent, with the rest of the money coming from tickets sales and other forms of spending at QPAC by audience members.

When asked about what he envisages for QPAC in the forthcoming years, Mr Kotzas does not settle for anything less than grand.

“The challenge for me is how do you break the walls of this place down so that people feel it’s a big place to access, the access for me is the challenge.

“If we could have in excess of
1 million attendances a year, that would be fantastic and in terms of performances, I’d love to see seasons that were completely sold out year in and year out.”

As the list of performing acts for
QPAC gets bigger, so too does the momentum and competition between Brisbane and Australia’s other capital
cities.

With recent acts like ‘The Academy of St Martin in the Field with Joshua Bell’ and John Bell’s ‘King Lear’ performing to sell out audiences, it’s easy to see why Queensland is gaining a reputation as a thriving centre for the arts in Australia.

Mr Kotzas also agrees that when it comes to performers and audiences now as opposed to 20 years ago, there has been a noticeable improvement.

“It’s improved drastically, I mean the sophistication from our performers and audiences along with our attendances are just fantastic.”

With 1100 performances a year (three a day on average), Mr Kotzas makes it clear that attendance is one thing he’d like to see increase.

“Our average attendance is 65 per cent but I’d like to see that at 85 per cent and if we could have in excess of one million attendances a year, that would be fantastic”.
QPAC has always supported multiculturalism in the arts through its long association with the Brisbane Multicultural Arts Centre.

One of the more recent events, which was a joint venture of both companies, was the Havana Club, a festival that
is full of jazz and cocktails and is themed on the legendary music bars of old Havana.

When reflecting on how being a Greek Australian has impacted on his life, Mr Kotzas is quick to acknowledge that being a Greek Australian is the core of who he is as a person.

“I grew up speaking two languages and I cannot separate being Greek because I’ve lived here in West End since 1974. I am who I am.”