The Australian War Memorial will inaugurate its new theatre with a production of 21 Hearts: Vivian Bullwinkel and the nurses of the Vyner Brooke (24 July to 3 August) — but local producer Lexi Sekuless has criticised the institution for ignoring her own venue, the Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, and its lauded production last year of an award-winning play on the same subject.

Ms Sekuless alleges that Canberra creatives are routinely overlooked, not because of merit but because of an internalised inferiority complex.

“Canberra’s cultural sector is being quietly undermined by an insidious bias — one that assumes anything created here, by locals, must be second-rate,” Ms Sekuless said. “This is not just disappointing. It is wrong and it is destructive.”

In 2024, the Mill staged The Shoe-Horn Sonata by John Misto, a play regarded as “a modern Australian classic”. It won the Australia Remembers National Play Competition (1995) and a NSW Premier’s Literary Award; was studied in schools for two decades; raised public awareness of the then-almost forgotten women POWs; and led to the AWM unveiling a memorial to Australian service nurses on Anzac Parade. The Mill’s production was the first time the play had been revived in Canberra since the 1990s.

Despite Sonata’s historical and cultural significance, Ms Sekuless said that the AWM showed little interest when she approached them for assistance in producing the play — unlike the Japanese Embassy, whose cultural attaché came to rehearsals and coached the cast in pronunciation.

“Memorial staff dismissed us,” Ms Sekuless said. “They did nothing.”

The AWM had circulated the Mill’s invitation to see the play on its staff intranet, AWM director Matt Anderson PSM said. But Ms Sekuless says she was not informed.

“The War Memorial didn’t tell me they had shared or done anything — I was essentially stonewalled,” Ms Sekuless said.

Meanwhile, 21 Hearts has been widely promoted, including coverage on ABC News Breakfast.

“When a company from outside Canberra presents the exact same topic, the response is markedly different: support, coverage and legitimacy,” Ms Sekuless said.

“I wish 21 Hearts all the best. It promises to be a beautiful production. But it is time to take the cultural cringe to task, to wake up and recognise that Canberra’s contributions are not inferior. It is time to stop the unjustified snobbery and the misguided view that if it comes from somewhere else it must be better. This city deserves more. Its creatives deserve respect.”

Nick Byrne, artistic director of ImproACT and founder of the Improvention Festival, Australia’s first and largest improvisational theatre event, echoed Ms Sekuless’s concerns, questioning why the AWM had chosen to bring an interstate company to the ACT.

“I was sure the production chosen was valid, but exactly why it was a better idea to import a production, which on the basis of the promo, could certainly have been matched at a high artistic level from within Canberra, and at a fraction of the cost, entirely escaped me,” he said.

The Canberra cultural cringe has long been a concern for Ms Sekuless. She established the Mill in 2022 to give local creatives an opportunity to develop and establish themselves. But she worries that continually bringing in outside productions could sap the vitality of the ACT’s arts scene.

“As the nation’s capital, it is one thing to ensure we are not overly Canberra-centric; it is another to ostracise creativity just because it comes out of Canberra,” Ms Sekuless said. “This is a painful statement to make, and I am aware I will be pilloried for it. And yet, if we don’t call these attitudes out a vicious cycle gets stuck in place. We begin to believe we are inferior. We leave the city. We play small.”

Mr Byrne surmised that local artists might be overlooked once they were ‘familiar’, despite international recognition.

“I think Canberra’s local cultural cringe might be a similar ailment to most regional areas or even major Australian cities when compared to external artists,” he said. “Once you’ve been seen, you’re filed, and it’s the new mail that gets opened.”

Mr Byrne has created one of the most important improvisation theatre events in the world, and performed, directed and taught in 40 countries — but said that work in Canberra had diminished.

“The opportunities afforded to me by my home city have been harder and harder work to get. I, like Lexi, instigate my own work, rather than being offered it by others so much.”

Mr Byrne criticised the long-term stagnation in leadership at some arts institutions: the same people had run a certain taxpayer-funded major facility for nearly 20 years, for instance. (Canberra Daily sought comment from the venue in question.) While its earlier period was “very diverse and supportive and publicly-minded in its choices”, Mr Byrne believed its programming focus had narrowed, and it had lost interest in artists to whom it had once provided opportunities.

“The sheer passage of time caused them to believe their personal whims (and understandable economic concerns, I should add), to seem to be of greater importance than their brief for administering public assets,” Mr Byrne said.

Nevertheless, he praised the Canberra Theatre Centre — “once the obvious example of external name-bookings only” — for how changing leadership led to “huge strides” in incorporating and supporting local artists.

“This is exactly what happens when you embrace reasonable tenures in management and artistic direction that allow the heads of organisations to have a red-hot go at how they think an organisation should progress, but introduce new leaders with new ideas to look at everything afresh after a reasonable period.”

Likewise, the Mill was “a fresh venue and a fresh company with genuine artistic merit”, Mr Byrne said.

“The arts in Canberra ought to hear from its artists, respect its artists, and have its institutions geared towards working with its artists, and with a genuine desire to meet the brief that comes with all the public funding.”

Arts minister Michael Pettersson MLA said the ACT Government remained committed to the local arts.

“We are incredibly lucky to have a sensational arts and cultural scene in Canberra that is filled to the brim with talented artists,” he said. “Canberrans can rightly be proud of the first-class work that is being produced in our city. The ACT Government will continue to support our arts and creative industries to thrive.”

Mr Anderson said that companies like the Mill would be able to use its new theatre.

“This theatre would be as available to them going forward as it is for any other company who seeks to hire it or to use it,” he said. “Mill Theatre is a wonderful venue; I’ve been to plays out there as well.”

But for Ms Sekuless, the issue is not performance spaces; it is about supporting local artists.

“Promotions, co-productions, collaborations and telling stories together is very different from hires,” Ms Sekuless said. “Cultural cringe is not about use or hires, it is about an internalised inferiority complex, and our National Cultural and Collecting Institutions can lead the way. Let’s hope this is the beginning of a new era for everyone in any part of the creative industries.”