Plagiarism and the Sydney Theatre Company
Nicking the work of another person has always been a serious and humiliating offence in the world of the written word. In cinema it’s known as “homage”, in music as “sampling”, but pinching another’s writing is not on, despite valiant efforts by the bone idle or talentless to define the practice as post-modern and permissible. Its proper name is plagiarism.
Roget’s Thesaurus defines “plagiarism” as “appropriation, borrowing, counterfeiting, cribbing, falsification, fraud, infringement, lifting, literary theft, piracy, stealing, theft ... ”
In other words: it’s something to be avoided if you value your reputation. It’s not that we object to fair use of material, by the way. Far from it. Journalism and academe utilise, reference and quote the work of others all the time. But fair use is the way to go: acknowledge your sources and everyone is happy.
Curious then, that the show programs for the current Sydney Theatre Company productions The Bourgeois Gentleman and the double bill Reunion and A Kind of Alaska seem to be the work of an energetic homagist, sampling the work of the online source Wikipedia - without a mention of the volunteer-written site.
When asked about the word-for-word similarity between essay-ettes in the Bourgeois Gentleman program, an STC spokesperson expressed surprise and dismay and promised to look into it. Later, the answer came back that the company’s literary manager had been on holiday when the program was compiled and its content was out-sourced.
Fair enough. STC employees must enjoy enviably long holidays, however, as the program for the Blanchett-Upton debut, Reunion and A Kind of Alaska contains more material from Wikipedia. This nugget, for example, is lifted straight from Wikipedia:
“Tail gunner: A tail gunner is a crewman on a military aircraft who functions as a gunner defending against attacks from the rear, or “tail”, of the plane. The tail gunner position on an aircraft operates a fixed machine gun emplacement on the top or bottom of the aircraft with a generally unobstructed view toward the tail of the aircraft ...”
What comes next is purple by comparison with the factual Wiki style: “The tail gunner had the lowest survival rate of all crew positions. The tail gunner was first in line of defence against enemy fighters, and the first point of contact for their bullets. He was isolated from the rest of the crew and spent long cold hours alone searching the black sky.”
Wow! A celebratory bottle of something bubbly to the first reader to tell us the correct original source of that bit of poetry.
And perhaps the STC could see their way to direct some of their many $$$$ to Wikipedia which carries the plaintive slogan: “Your continued donations keep Wikipedia running!”
