Entertainment Assist Launches

Entertainment Assist launched Aug. 31 to help Australian performers and backstage workers in music, theatre, circus and dance who have fallen on bad times financially and health-wise.

Chairman Larry Ponting, of DPJ Audio, told guests and benefactors that most people who enter the biz “do it for love, not the money” and hence run into problems in their later lives.

Mark “Trogg” Svendsen, director of Gig Power which supplies production crews, recalled when he started out, “The oldest person that I knew working in our industry was about 35 years old.”

Also on the charity’s board are artist manager Wally Bishop, event producers Ian B. Allen and Dennis Smith, accountant Michael Roseby, lawyer Phil Dwyer, publicist Julia Cavanagh, Showtech’s Robyn Ford and venue operator Susan Cooper.