🌀 17: Lighting Fires in the Theatres

It’s been a while.

The big anecdote I’ve been sharing these past few weeks is that myself and friend Jenna Schroder (who does excellent theatre reviews for ArtsHub) launched a community building initiative called No Drama Drama Club. We’re imagining it as a kind of book club but for theatre. We watch a show together, have a guided discussion about it afterwards, and go home with hearts full of friendship and minds ablaze. Plus, it’s the first event I’ve organised which is entirely mask mandatory—which I’m really glad to have started doing (thanks to Jen’s nudging).

Response to it has been so lovely! I think we posted about it on a Thursday and by Monday morning had 25 registrations for our first excursion to see Troy at Malthouse Theatre. Thank you TikTok! I had a whole email drafted to invite you to come but since we’ve hit our self-made rego limit I don’t need to sell you on it at all—I would love to have you at our next session after Troy though. We’ve got big plans for the rest of the year, and you can subscribe here for updates & invites.

So many shows, so little time to write about all of them. Here’s what stands out to me since the last time we spoke:

Super at Red Stitch was so phenomenally designed and had some real interesting ideas about superpowers; but for me it didn’t stick the landing; too many ideas too little dramaturgy.

Smokescreen at fortyfivedownstairs was so incredibly validating. A conversation between marketing executives for the oil industry and tobacco industry sounds incredibly dry and boring, but it reminded me that the horrors of the world are not created by some unknowable evil, but the emotionless and clinical detachment of pathetic money-hungry men—knowing that makes me feel like we can save the world a bit easier. A real lovely night of theatre.

Waterloo at Theatre Works!!! What a bonkers piece of theatre about a romance between a lefty theatre maker and a conservative military official. I have never been so terrified to be in a theatre as when I sat front row and performer and creator Bron Batten was blindfolded spearing balloons while on her knees. Out of the box and profoundly explosive theatre-making with a lot to say about how we overcome difference. I was prepared to dislike it based on the premise but I think found it an excellent examination of middle-ground-making. If all theatre was as bonkers as this I would be a very happy theatregoer.

Mother Play at MTC: I will cry at any show with a sick/dying mother and god I was weeping. Went in knowing nothing about the show and was delighted by its idiosyncrasies; and was so gagged to see Yael Stone live!!! You mean Lorna Morello from OINTB is just casually on stage in front of me? I died!

ECHO at Malthouse was definitely something. My take on Instagram.

Rumbleskin at fortyfivedownstairs had a whole lot of potential but was squandered by some clunky directorial choices and a metaphor which got very muddy (for me). Although there was something real exciting here—as crystallised by Guy Webster:

I crave more theatre like RUMBLESKIN – shows that transport us somewhere allegorical and in doing so gesture to something more expansive, more magical, more epic.

The Glass Menagerie at Meatmarket was a great time; my first time seeing The Glass Menagerie and I loved it; delighted to say I am as in love with Tennessee Williams as ever.

Miss Julie at fortyfivedownstairs was lovely to watch; but the adaptation of Strindberg’s classic into a the Melbourne hospitality sector was clunky, so too was the accent work on the two mains. But otherwise, a really passionately acted and lusciously designed work which I enjoyed as an introduction to the play.

I’ve also seen a lot of theatre which feels sooooo selfish. The way I think about making theatre and I guess the way I think you should think about making theatre is as if you’re creating a gift to give someone else; a gift of a story or an idea or an experience or a feeling in exchange for their time and presence and attention. I think there’s a lot of artists who haven’t figured this out; who make work which exists to stroke their own egos and ambitions without a care in the world for the audience who has to watch. And painfully, I’ve watched a fair bit of work like this in the past month or so.

Public and Private Purpose

Keeping our artist statements to ourselves.

Beautiful EccentricsBeautiful Eccentrics

I quite enjoyed this article which reflects on artist statements, their utility, and the decision we have to share or not share our objectives.

In a culture obsessed with self-disclosure, articulating one’s purpose has become an act of public branding rather than private reckoning. But there is a quiet integrity in cultivating a sense of purpose that remains unspoken—a compass that guides without needing to be announced.

The ‘public branding’ note really hit me; I’ve recently changed my Insta bio to describe myself as “narrm’s fat/queer culture critic” which is hardly an accurate summation of all that I am, nor is it necessarily true (am I a critic?)—but it was a decision made in the context of social media, the way I’m enjoying using it and my intentions for developing a platform on there. I felt some sort of loss removing ‘theatremaker’ from my bio but as a label, in that place, it wasn’t serving me.

While interpretation is always subjective, we often sense—almost intuitively—when a work carries the weight of real experience, curiosity, and struggle, versus when it is a hollow imitation crafted for approval, trend, or opportunism. Authenticity in art reveals itself not by style or medium, but by the coherence between the artist’s questions and their way of working.

Just some beautiful writing. May we all aspire to this vision of authenticity.

Overtourism in Japan, and How it Hurts Small Businesses

Why being popular is not the goal of most small businesses

Craig ModCraig Mod

I am a big fan of Craig Mod, who makes a living publishing books about walking around Japan. This newsletter from him goes into the effects of over-tourism in the country, the algorithms that power it, and how it tears apart communities.

At risk of oversimplifying: Most “problems” in the world today boil down to scale and abstraction. As scale increases, individuals become more abstract, and humanity and empathy are lost. This happens acutely when the algorithm decides to laser-beam a small shop with a hundred-million views. If you cast a net to that many people, a vast chunk of them will not engage in good faith, let alone take a second to consider the feelings of residents or owners or why the place was built to begin with. Hence: The crush, the selfish crush.

Interesting to reflect on the destabilising effects of algorithmic social media. From my perspective this sort of ‘laser-beam’ has only ever been a useful skill to generate—to sell tickets and build audiences. But Craig offers a case study of how all that attention gets in the way of local community bonds.

Most of these owners have poured much of their life savings into opening these places, taken out loans, put months or years of work into designing and building out their spaces. Years building up regular clientele, forming relationships, knowing what people like, creating true community. It’s not like they can just up and move and hide elsewhere. And why should they have to respond, anyway? It’s tricky to the max, and it’s a problem that never really existed on this scale before social media.

brave new world ig

We Must Refuse a Forced Grieving

The powerful want us to move on. It is a political imperative we do not.

Mental HellthP.E. Moskowitz

Now, I quite enjoyed this article on the way that politicians use the performance of grief to move us on from resistance—a potent idea. The author however does seem to entirely miss that half of their writing is talking around Achille Mbembe’s necropolitics, that omission aside it’s a solid bit of writing about our inaction on Gaza:

By waiting until a tipping point of starvation was reached in Gaza, the powerful can now acknowledge the crisis as it is, because in doing so they can convince us that there was nothing to be done; that the hundreds of thousands of deaths are inevitable, or, indeed, that those deaths have already happened, even if they have not yet happened in material reality, but in the psyches of those in power, and, they hope, in our psyches too.

Made me think about Penny Wong, our Foreign Affairs Minister’s recent comments on Gaza: “there is a risk that there will be no Palestine left to recognise ” which is f*cking rich coming from someone who a year ago was chastising Senator Fatima Payman for voting with her conscience to recognise a Palestinian state.

In other words: the powerful are asking us to allow them to tie up this genocide in a bow so that they not only get away without consequence, but so that we do not recognize that many things can still be done (both to stop the continuing genocide, and to stop future ones—by ensuring those responsible for it never touch a lever of power again). They are not acknowledging death for accountability, but for forced closure.

It is so incredibly exhausting living through these surreal times, and the conclusions this essay draws are obvious and fundamental. Free Palestine.

• One of my dear friends wrote about the experience of attending the funeral for a friend of theirs, a lovely and tender piece about queer community.
• Maybe frustrating customer service is the whole modus operandi of the thing.
• A beautiful bit of memoir about falling in love in the wrong place: “Neither of us have the heart to acknowledge the valley of agency between us, that he is staying here because he has to, that I am leaving because I never did.”
• An interesting piece on how Raygun’s qualification in the Olympics exposes Australia’s lack of care towards the arts
• Lovely essay about labour extraction in night clubs, care, and what makes a space queer.

So much has happened! Lots of crying on the couch with friends reflecting on how AuDHD has affected my life, and a whole lot more crying thinking about how much I do not want to seek diagnosis—that would simply be too much work that I don’t want to do, energy I would much rather save for art.

Melbourne Fringe’s program launches on the 22nd of August and I have been a busy busy bee prepping marketing materials for my two shows—I’ll send you all the details later in the month but in the meantime: One is an experimental sound installation documenting climate change through binaural recordings of the Port Phillip bay (we’re building a beach in Abbotsford Convent!). The other, an hour long drama about a house party gone wild, set only in the bathroom and staged in a carpark (don’t you love fringe?).

I have smashed out our media releases, a massive media list, like 45 pre-edited TikToks about the shows, and have attended some very excellent fringe workshops. The 22nd is simultaneously too close but also so far away. I adamantly believe this‘ll be my best fringe yet and I am just soooo keen y’all.

My bestie & main collaborator—Georgie—and I have booked in a space for a November showing of a new work. We’ve been talking about how we miss making work that feels low-stakes to make, so we’re setting ourselves up to be able to experiment. The pitch with this one is what if we use the structure of my childhood (moving countries every two to four years) for a show exploring what home means while also making it as participatory as possible. Very keen for this but first, we have to make it.

I posted a TikTok about how much I love Melbourne and it kind of did numbers? No real thoughts here but I did think it was hilarious when someone at The Motley Bauhaus walked up to me and said ‘you’re the person who likes Melbourne right?’ which felt somewhat surreal—because of course I love Melbourne how could that be a remotely controversial opinion???

Had a couple rejections for things I was very keen for, but I am trying to remember that embarrassment and rejections are the downpayment on success (corny but you gotta have your mantras).

I have joined a reading group reading an introduction to Discard Studies which is the study of waste and how we choose what we’re wasting and also what/who we choose to discard. It is VERY fascinating reading and the weekly reading groups have been a lovely time, hearing from some very smart people yap about what they’re taking from the book. I feel so profoundly unintellectual in these Zoom meetings and like I have nothing of value to say; but I also think it is probably quite healthy to be the dumbest person in the room (I’m manifesting a sort of intellectual osmosis might occur).

I have also been trying to convince my housemate—Chelsea—to direct Sarah Kane’s 4.48 Psychosis in an intimate site-specific staging in our apartment. A wild pitch perhaps, but it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve produced theatre in my living room. We have loosely locked in dates for that, and I’m quite keen to see what comes of it—could be a beautifully bonkers summertime project.

I am desperate to see more theatre which is angry.

Real f*cking fiery and abrasive and brash. I’m sick of joy and optimism and hope. (If you’ve not yet already you simply have to read Chelsea Watego’s brilliant Another Day in the Colony which destroys hope in an electrifying way. You’re welcome to borrow my copy if you’d like! Reply to this and we can organise a handover time x)

Joy, as a motive for making art, feels so facile now. I think it felt important right in the depths of 2020 and 2021 but now, four years on from a pandemic which turned into an ongoing eugenicist project and it’s frustrating to see so many people cling to their ‘right’ to joy as the world crumbles.

I was chatting to a friend about the way the world is going and it’s just… I can’t see a way out except by kicking and screaming and dragging this world into the next. I’m so angry at everything, the genocides, the eugenics, the exploitation—all of it. We just need to do something.

We need theatre that lights fires in our hearts and gets us out onto the streets; and if it doesn’t do that, then maybe we should light fires in our theatres and run out to the streets ourselves. Let’s burn this (gestures at endless cruelty and horror) world to the ground and build something f*cking better.