🌀 18: Your Feared Present, and Your Inevitable Future

Welcome back to In the Round.

I really should stop promising new newsletter drops on specific days because I invariably send later than planned, but thus is life. Apologies to those I edged with promises of thoughts on Pony Cam’s The Orchard, but it’s finally here, waiting in your inbox (and wow, it’s spicy).

This edition features whole lot of life updates, quite a few theatre reviews, and some excellent readings on how we make the world a better place.

This week’s title is stolen from a lovely bit of writing on disability justice which theorises that a deliberate practice of interconnectedness could be a way out of the polycrisis we’re in. I hope you enjoy reading that.

I also hope you’ve had an excellent & well-rested August (I have been so hecking busy). Can’t wait to chat to you soon. 💋

A whirlwind month of excellent theatre. How lucky I am to be in amongst it all.

The Bloomshed’s Pride and Prejudice was so vivacious and full of life. Many of Bloomshed’s past works haven’t fully clicked for me (the brilliant A Dodgeball Named Desire excepted)—I find at times they err perhaps too esoteric in their politics? But god, Pride & Prejudice was a complete hoot! I loved the weaving of the housing crisis into Austen’s world. I was obsessed with the final moment of the show where they invited the audience to ponder the role that stories with happy endings serve—what is the point of storytelling when it’s subsumed by capitalism, you know? Big messy thoughts presented in their addictive and explosive style. Fun!!!!

In the Heights at The Comedy Theatre was a really fun night out. I’m not a musical diva but I enjoyed myself. The design was perhaps not that exciting, but I was wowed with the dancing. There was something very lovely about seeing all the flags of Latin America get flown during the show; I hesitate to call a commercial musical politically prescient, but having all those flags waving definitely made me feel some kind of way given how the world is going.

I saw two shows at MTC’s Cybec Electric play readings, Mutual Obligations by Flick and Poems of a Transsexual Nature by Cinda Beare. I yapped about both of these on Instagram but the short of it is, they were both brilliant nights out. How lucky we are to have these excellent divas writing excellent words. Cinda’s show is on at Trades Hall during Fringe and you really really really should consider going.

I think part of the reason this newsletter was so delayed was because I was thinking about to write about Pony Cam’s The Orchard. I’m so glad I got to see it, but goddamn I have a lot to say.

I’ll start by saying this: Pony Cam make work that is really exciting—that’s the whole mood of their work. I’ve said upon walking out of their shows things like ‘You can just do that?!?’ and ‘That was just so cool!!’ But, I’ve found the politics of their work—the beating heart of the stories they tell—disappointingly facile. Their shows leave me asking ‘Yes, and…?’ Because for all their acerbic showmanship, it’s never saying much.

Let’s rewind to their last major work, Burnout Paradise. By all measures, a runaway success with countless global remounts of it. It was a show about how artists are constantly pushing themselves past the point of burn out to make a career in the arts. I’m willing to give them credit for concept, making a show about burnout on treadmills was a helluva visceral way to depict the ongoing precarity of independent artists.

At the time, I wrote in a review (which I never posted anywhere) that:

I’m more interested in whose careers can get shattered by burnout, an angle Burnout Paradise side steps entirely. What we see on stage is four thin, seemingly able-bodied theatre-makers toying with burnout, seeing if they can make it all work. And on the evening I went they came tantalisingly close to achieving everything.

They describe the show as an unraveling realisation that the systems we participate in are not designed for us—but what their almost success exposes is that the systems work just fine for those who it’s designed for. I certainly couldn’t perform Burnout Paradise, and I don’t think many with bodies like mine could either. Rather than a critique of burnout, what we see is a celebration of burnout, of pushing through it, and of how you literally can go further with a certain body. (emphasis added)

That Fringe I was performing Full Cream which certainly coloured my critique, but it’s one I stand by.

So, The Orchard. Obviously, it was exciting, bombastic, and fun—it’s Pony Cam. In the show they pull apart Chekhov’s The Cherry Orchard to tell a story about our failing cultural infrastructure, specifically their host venue, the Malthouse.

I really loved Diane Stubbings’ ★½ review which said a lot of what I thought (thank you Guy for sending it to me).

As an aside, I saw the show a couple days after that review went up and during a moment where Pony Cam mentioned reviewers they flashed those one and a half stars up on the screen. A quantifiably funny moment which also made me feel like they maybe just don’t know what to do with criticism.

There were moments which were fun: cut-away monologues about the Malthouse’s finances were enthralling, and some of the improvised scenes were really interesting in a voyeuristic sort of way. But ultimately, the work took us nowhere beyond Malthouse’s dire balance sheet.

It’s all talk about how bad things are; and not much doing at all. Perhaps this makes The Orchard a brilliant adaptation of The Cherry Orchard’s central premise, but if it is, then I question why even bother adapting it.

Here you are, as one of the most successful emerging companies in our sector, finally having your main-stage moment, and all we get is a flaccid shrug of a show about how everything’s hopeless. Great. /s

It’s disappointing to see these folks repeat a story about how hard they have it, while refusing to consider ways of working which might not burn them out. It’s disappointing to see them criticise the system for only producing artists like them, and for their criticism to end at that acknowledgement.

Hiding behind a decorative audience participation framework, reused tropes from Burnout Paradise, and listless improvised scenes is a show which doesn’t have any clue about what we’re going to do. And maybe my hot take is this: if you don’t know what we’re gonna do about theatre and the arts in this country, give your platform to someone who could at least try to offer up an idea.

I don’t know, it just left a bad taste in my mouth.

Kimberley Akimbo at the Arts Centre was really fun—again. Casey Donovan is a complete standout, obsessed with her character work. The set design was sooo gorgeous and detailed. The plot? A little nonsensical (and what on earth was that finale) but you know what? I had a lovely night.

Will You Remember Me? by The Hinterlands is a show that I read about yonks ago and have been wanting to watch the recording of (which is available here). It’s a show which uses Appalachian folk songs and a re-enactment of a funeral to investigate whiteness and the loss of culture that comes with white supremacy. I finally sat down and watched the recording and oh… my… god…

It’s the sort of show that had I seen it live I would be telling everyone about for the next decade. A lot of excellent thoughts here about the need to tell stories about where we come from as one way of deconstructing white supremacy. I kind of touched on it in this Instagram post (but according to the engagement rate it’s not my best work lmao).

I strongly encourage you to save the link and watch it if you’re white and interested in dismantling white supremacy (which, you should be. If not, you can kindly unsubscribe at the bottom of this email x).

Other fun things I have seen include a test showing of Rawcus’ upcoming fringe show: Tattoo Show. Very good, very bonkers—I’m sure I will love the final version of this show.

Plus, I attended five movies at Melbourne International Film Festival. What an excellent festival that I have never attended before. I think those five shows are the only times I’ve seen movies in a cinema this year? I loved Cutting Through Rocks and Folktales the most. Films are cool y’all!

This is a gorgeous piece of writing from digital artist Eryk Salvaggio on both the death of the father, AI literacy, and the purpose of signals in our lives. It’s a weird combination but it works magically—absolutely stunning writing with lots of thoughts on how we approach AI text but also on how we read each other.

Pull quotes from it don’t do it sufficient justice, so I just encourage you to have a read if you feel any amount of discontent about AI. I’ve been drawn to Salvaggio’s work because he engages with AI with an incredibly critical lens—it’s exhilarating to see artists respond to and use AI in a highly knowledgeable and informed way, with deep concerns about what this technology means for us.

Human Literacy

Something I Can Tell Students Now That I Am Not Teaching You and I probably both keep hearing that students should be working toward AI literacy. That you should know what to type into prompt windows, because it will save you time. That will get you jobs in the economy

Cybernetic ForestsEryk Salvaggio

As an aside, I was meant to see Eryk perform at an event a couple months ago in Narrm but the day before that event his dad passed, so I found it poetic to read about his description of my home as “another city in another country on another continent.” Idk. I liked it.

My TikTok algorithm has recently been serving me a whole lot more content on disability justice which has been excellent—ended up ordering a copy of Care Work by Leah Lakshmi Piepznia-Samarasinha which I am very excited to read.

I also re-came across this excellent bit of writing about COVID, disability justice, and the way the crisis exposes the need for us to consciously practice interdependence.

You Are Not Entitled To Our Deaths: COVID, Abled Supremacy & Interdependence

[Image description: Photograph of a melting iceberg taken from above. White pieces of ice of varying sizes of all different shapes float over dark blue water. The ice is white, with shades of grey …

Leaving Evidence

Written closer to the beginning of the pandemic than now, it’s an incredibly prescient & angry essay on the cracks that COVID widened between disabled and abled folk:

Disabled people are not disposable. We are your feared present and your inevitable future. We are what age and time promise more than anything else, and this is one reason you fear us and why you have continually pushed us away and hidden us. You don’t want us too close, don’t want a daily reminder of difference and privilege; you don’t want to have to change your life for us. We are to be landfilled away, conveniently forgotten about so you can play pretend without interruption. 

I was particularly excited by the piece’s call to action of disability justice (and COVID precautions) as a way of practicing interdependence.

Interdependence is ultimately about “we,” instead of “me.” It understands that we are bound together, by virtue of existing on this planet. Interdependence is generative and grounded in care for one another. It doesn’t live in obligation or entitlement, but rather a loving willingness and a sacred giving. Interdependence cannot exist in scarcity, competition, comparison, domination or greed. It flourishes in abundance, appreciating and honoring difference, collective care and collective access. Interdependence can exist between two people or six billion and everything in between. 

And the final reading I’d like to share with you is about how leftist thinking about the world changing in a singular revolution mirrors the way Christians think about the rapture, leading to some insightful conclusions on how we actually make change in the world. Spoiler: it’s slow and methodical.

The Long View

(things are bad)

ProtopiaJon Jon Wesolowski

Gesturing at Queer Futurity, Wesolowski writes:

But progress is not about arrival. It is never finished, and that is not a flaw. There are meant to be moments of pride, rest, and enjoyment. Yet there is also a quiet advantage in the work being continuous.

Then the essay delves into some useful ways of conceptualising the work of making the world better, finishing on this banger of a paragraph:

I bring all of this up to say that the work is neither at its beginning nor anywhere near its end. It is infinite. You are not obligated to finish it, but you are obligated to take part. Progress is not a race we win. It is a game we keep alive.

• I have been reading a curated list of my favourite blogs (and now substacks) almost daily since I was 12 via a technology called RSS. Here is an excellent explainer on how to begin curating your own selection of RSS feeds.
• A fun little article about Minecraft’s role in this one writer’s trans awakening. Been nostalgically playing a bit more Minecraft recently so it was lovely to reflect on queerness in that blocky utopia.
• Excellent writing about the shortcomings of Australia’s recognition of Palestine.
• A lovely bit of autoethnography about someone cruising in central park. Very horny, very lovely.
• Smell art and politics—big thoughts.

Fun things that have happened in the past month:

1. Launched two fringe shows
2. Sold out one fringe show in four days (and confirmed by a friend at Fringe that we’re the first show to sell out!)
   1. Currently sorting out when we can fit in additional dates/how we can increase our capacity. I will let you know when I have more tickets to sell you (or, you can join our waitlist here)
   2. Truly this was so exhilarating. I love marketing theatre so much, and I firmly believe that it’s easy to do if you have the right mindset about your work and practice and audience.
   3. I would absolutely write more about this but I am not sure it would be of interest to you all so let me know x
3. Got elected to be Vice President of the Green Room Awards
   1. I have a lot of thoughts on how we can make these awards better and wow I am SO keen to get into it. Long boring ceremony which loses money? Out. Fun vibe-y ceremony which gives back to our sector? In.
4. I attended APHID’s Resilience Roundtables—‘twas an excellent day to chat about how to make our sector better.
   1. I don’t have many thoughts about it but I had an excellent time. Everyone in that room was so smart and so excellent; I was really battling my imposter syndrome there. I think I said some good things though and now I know some more excellent people—so all up, I had a great time.
   2. Despite how macabre half the conversations about the sector were, I left feeling so optimistic about our work and the arts. There are excellent people thinking excellent things and maybe everything will be ok if we do our bit. Or, maybe, it won’t be ok. But we‘ll all be helping each other when things aren’t ok, which makes not ok become… sort of ok, I guess.
5. Been doing lots of body doubling sessions with heaps of different friends to get everything I need to do done, and wow I love body doubling. Truly the single best ADHD accomodation in the world. Pop me in a library with a laptop and watch me move mountains fr.
   1. I am a long term fan of narrm ngarrgu but have recently been venturing out to Kathleen Syme and am obsessed with their little coffee shop/patio situation (from which I send this humble newsletter to you today). Other places I enjoy working are by that waterfall in RMIT, the Malthouse foyer, the VCA library, and for a wildcard, I recently tried the City Library and it was so excellent?

That’s all from me, for the most part.

I am beginning the process of interviewing some people (hey mom) for a show I want to develop later in the year after Fringe. Very excited to tell you how that goes next week-ish.

I finished writing this newsletter at 1AM after coming home from a very excellent night at Arts House seeing Crisis Actor. It closes in about three days and it’s very good: a phenomenal piece of participatory theatre which viscerally exposes the discomforting power dynamics of digital media. My review (just posted) on Instagram is here.

Go, go, go!