In the lead up to International Women’s Day, we sat down with NIDA Assistant Technical Manager,Bryte Cameron, to discuss what the day means to her and how she is helping our students find their artistic voice.
You can view more NIDA Women interviewshere.
In the lead up to International Women’s Day, we sat down with NIDA Assistant Technical Manager,Bryte Cameron, to discuss what the day means to her and how she is helping our students find their artistic voice.
You can view more NIDA Women interviewshere.
Transcript
Bryte Cameron:
Being, being a woman in my field is lonely; in my part of the Arts there’s not a lot women that do, what I was doing before I came to NIDA.
I came to NIDA after many years of touring and working in commercial theatre and I was looking for something a little bit different and something that was more challenging and maybe a way to give back to the industry that I’d worked in.
International Women’s Day, well, it means a lot to me in a lot of different ways. Having grown up in a very politicised family we’re equal rights were talking about a lot. A family where union was important. It was a recognised a in our family where you talked about the struggle for equality and once we started to gain a bit of equality in this country it was a recognition of that and it’s become a celebration, to a degree, but still a reminder that there’s roads to go yet.
As the Assistant Technical Manager here at NIDA I’d like to believe that I allow the students to live their dreams. So we ask them to dream big when they’re here. We want them to dream big when they’re here because it’s a safe environment for them to do that and I’d like to think that my role helps them to achieve those dreams, so they can actually find their voice, find what it is that they want to do and be able to speak it with confidence when they leave here.
Work hard, be strong, don’t let people put you down when we know that you’re right. That was a hard lesson for me to learn later as I started to move into more senior positions is to believe in my voice and that my opinion mattered because as I progressed you start to meet people who will just talk you down, without actually listening to you and that that is because of your gender, so try not to listen to them.
Try to listen to your own voice and believe in yourself. I think one of the biggest leap forward that we’ve had for women in the arts, in recent time, is the internet and the exposure that the internet has given women, in general, but also in the Arts communities because it allows women around the world to get what they’re creating and what they’re producing out into a broad market so their voice can be heard; so their stories can be told.
There are so many wonderful women out there just working every day that I think on a deeply personal level I would have to say that the women in my family have inspired me. I’m 5th generation Australian theatre and you know my grandmother has been a constant inspiration she’s a hundred and still is an inspiration.
