Of surgery and sleep deprivation

“When the surgeon hears my story, he will do my daughter’s rhinoplasty for free!”

By this point in the conversation my eyes are shut and I am imprinting my face repeatedly into the keyboard.

Lady, this is a surgeon whose specialty is reconstructive surgery post-cancer.  I have held the hands of three teary women in recent weeks.  Just two hours ago we learned that one of our ‘frequent flyers’ has died after years of battling skin cancers.   Think a mastectomy a week.  Think having to make someone a new anus or vagina because cancer has cored them to the centre of their being.  I have seen the photos.  Seen the very insides of their bodies.  Seen their exhausted faces and sat beside their white-haired mothers in the waiting  room.   ‘No mother should ever have to see their child suffer this.’  ’I know, I know.’

Lady, I promise you, the trauma your daughter suffers from having a slightly less than perfect nose (and I have seen your beautiful daughter and she is the type who turns head and intimidates little geeks like me) will never be as traumatic as what we see on a daily basis.

 

This is an answer I never give.

 

I am good at this job but, when I am sleep deprived, sometimes it gets hard to look after myself in the onslaught of sorrow.  They reach out and grab handfuls of me and then leave with ‘one for the road’, shoved into deep, linty pockets.

I spend evenings collapsed graceless on the couch.  Little wonder.

 

'Live On' 2008

Photographer: Me, Actor: Nick Bendall

 

 

The battle rages on

 

 I have incidents with ink.

At the end of the day I appear to be not so much a writer as one who wrestles with pens in darkened rooms; one who blindly fights back and one who almost always loses.

 

My skin maps the course of the battle and it is held across the most improbable of terrains: hands, arms, thighs, stomach, neck, face and knees have all been ravaged by this inky war.

But I am glad that I write by hand.  For those who fight at keyboards, the only scars they

 

leave with are red-rimmed eyes and aching backs.  Even when I lose the battle, I at least have a bruised, blackened body that tells me that I fought back.

Photographer: Shauna Phoon

Photography by the amazing Shauna Phoon.  Please go and browse her work as it is amazing and she’ll be shooting for Vogue in a few years time.  http://clandestine-wishes.deviantart.com/

On reviews, artistic debate and the art of not being and arse

Here is a review published in The Guardian on Tuesday August 16th, 2005 by journalist Phil Daoust:

Tim Minchin – winner of the Melbourne comedy festival’s director’s choice award – arrives in Edinburgh trailing cloudlets of glory. The Australian comedian/ musician is popular enough to pack out one of the festival’s biggest halls, and to be cheered after every gag and comic song.

It’s enough to make you believe in mass hypnosis. Strip away Minchin’s fretful porpentine hair, white piano and willingness to fall off the stage for a laugh, and you’re left with a bog-standard stand-up with a silly voice and a few good songs, most of whose material would have seemed dated in the last millennium. He must be the last person in the world to be surprised by the spread of mineral water. When he does address more topical subjects, such as smug environmentalists, what should be bite is all gum. And I don’t think I’ve ever heard a lamer attempt to change the subject than: “Hey, is anyone married?”

The self-satisfied gurning seems to last for centuries. Then Minchin makes the unilateral decision to give us an encore, the last thing you need in a festival where acts stack up in the wings like jets over an airport. He even congratulates himself for keeping the next performers waiting. Whatever happened to that fine old tradition of tarring and feathering?

Now, I believe in critique. I really do. As a theatre maker, I fight to get reviewers into my shows, as terrifying as this is, because we are reliant on them to bring us an audience. We pad our portfolios with our favourite quotes and years down the track we might even go back to a bad review and agree with the writer. ‘In retrospect, yes, that work did fall short in that regard. I hated you for saying it but yes.’

But what is so disgusting about Phil Daoust’s review of Tim Minchin is that it essentially says ‘I hated the show and Tim is a really bad person’. And Daoust isn’t the only reviewer who writes like this. Artists have to cope with this all the time. ‘I hated their art and therefore they are a shitty excuse for a human being. How dare they subject me to that!’  This particular review also includes a nice little punch in the face for any audience member who might have enjoyed the performance by suggesting that their tastes could only be the result of ‘mass hypnosis’.

 Anger is fun to read and I understand this but I wish vindictiveness could stay out of art critique. I read spite constantly in reviews (and I am talking mainstream theatre and art reviews, blogs and responses to photos, drawing and writing here on sites like deviantart and flicker). Fury that the artist dared to make art that was either a) not to my tastes b) too ambitious for this their limited skills or c) on a topic that I didn’t like.
And the thing that disgusts me most is how little justification reviewers need to condemn something. Buzz words like ‘self-indulgent’ really concern me. A reviewer can drop this little bombshell into a review and never have to say in what way the art was ‘self-indulgent’.

I am for critique. I truly am. Part of my post-graduate studies involved a weekly class on giving and receiving critique and I loved it. (This was at a very prestigious arts college and the fact that this was a compulsory part of the curriculum should tell you that the art world thinks critique is important also.)  I am for intelligent, well thought-out responses to art and I am for dialogue with the artist. I am not for malice within these responses. Not for dismissing art because it is over-ambitious or not to your tastes. Not for personal attacks.

 

Now reviewing and critiquing are a world apart.  I get this.  But I wish they weren’t.  The best critiques will never come in the form of a published review. They will come from the people you invite along to see your work and whom you shout to a coffee (or wine) later. They come peers and teachers and they come from a basic level of mutual respect. But wouldn’t it be wonderful if we could expect something like this conversation to appear in print?  

I completely understand that bad reviews are sometimes deserved but I would like to see reviewers, ‘critiquers’ and bloggers justify and support their opinions. I would like to see them encouraging art and furthering artistic discussion with artists but I would settle for them not being mean.

 

Now, a bit of pay back from Tim Minchin.  This is his response to Phil Daoust’s review.

(PS.  There are some amazing theatre bloggers out there who are starting to make a real difference and are starting to have a massive impact on art debate.  Here in Australia,  the most prominent of these is Alison Croggon and she almost always seems to hold the exact opposite opinion to every other reviewer, which is pretty entertaining.   I really hope that the internet continues to facilitate and change artistic response and debate.)

Sub-plots

The world is a very beautiful place when you have slept two nights in a row!  I haven’t been this happy in a while!  I went for a beautiful run in the park this morning, then to the Prahan Markets to stock up on lovely fresh vegetables, fruit and pasta and then shot happy, out-door self-portraits, much the the confusion of my neighbours.

This is another passage from the play which I wrote.  This piece is most likely going to be cut or only appear in part because it is too similar to the last section I posted and the ‘baked beans monologue’ (as I call it) works better on stage:

I don’t think I am the lead in this story. I think I’m more like the sub-plot. An aside. Mum and Dad now they are the real deal the ones that matter tune in next week to find out what Daphne and Robert did next.

Daphne tosses her hair back from her face she is planning what to accuse Robert of next what bombshell to drop on the kitchen table over the mashed potatos and roast lamb.

The click click click of her son typing away upstairs tried talking to him told him to get a job get outside get some exercise doesn’t work doesn’t want to help himself what’s a mother to do?

A split end. Daphne wonders if she should change her shampoo.

Daphne is a very important person. So is Robert. Everything in their lives is important and shiny, shiny and very, very interesting even Daphne’s split ends are fascinating. Terribly fascinating.

Robert enters.

He has had a very important very bad day and he is an Angry Robert. When Robert is angry he makes a point of never yelling but his face shows how deeply the world has injured him.

Robert opens his mouth to utter a string of fascinating glosssy words and click click clickclick click. Click. Click.

Robert raises his disappointed eyes to the ceiling.

A sub-plot lives up there.

Of dreams, facebook and baked beans

Every night this week I have dreamed of my play. Or my actors. In my sleep, they perch on my book shelves and cupboards like curious birds, watching me potter about my house and asking what is for tea. I carry it everywhere with me, my play. 13 year olds, 15 year olds, 20 year olds, dissatisfied, lonely, expressive, brilliant, witty, angry, frustrated, trapped, updating their facebooks, commenting on a blog, listening to their parent’s fighting. I carry it very literally, in a big folder full of words and pictures and dreamings and more words. I work with the theory that, if I have it with me as a physical manifestation, ready to be added to at any moment, then perhaps I will be able to leave it outside my bedroom door at night and thus keep my sleep to my self.

It is lovely being able to write for specific actors and see the words up on the floor a day after you have written them.  It is a new experience for me and I am loving it. 

And extract:

They are veterans of war. 15 years to perfect cruelty to an art these days they take turns to wound waiting with practiced indignation for their own sharp retaliation barely hearing the others litany of complaints planning all the while, he specialises in the preemptive strike, she in crying without her nose going red.

And you know what sux? Both sides win at Silent Warfare. I’ll think a treaty has been signed and its safe to creep out for toast and baked beans and suddenly I’ll find myself caught mid-living room in a cross-fire of staring.

She: Kevin, I’m afraid we are going to have to cancel that trip down the coast you were looking forward to your father has decided we can’t afford it.

He: Only because She spent $600 on seaweed facials in the last three weeks much good it did.

Me: I’m just here for the baked beans.

She (soulfully, tearfully, wetly): It was going to be our first family holiday in five years.

He (bluntly, darkly, snidely): Oh come off it, Woman! We all know we’d never last a full week in a hotel room together. Besides, what would the boy do without his damn machine?

She (sharply, dryly, efficiently): We would manage! Face it: it was only you who wouldn’t have cope.

She (off now, on a run now, winning this round now): And do you know why, Kevin? Why your father was scared to go away with us? He was scared that maybe, just maybe we’d all enjoy ourselves, that everything would work and he would have nothing to complain about. He needs to believe he’s the victim, your father, always has.

Me (backing out now, whimp now, weak now): Maybe I don’t need those baked beans after all.

I take them just the same. The Coward’s Retreat. Can, can-opener and spoon. I sit in front of my screen and wonder if I can stomach it. Cold beans, Lady Gaga and facebook? I can.

Kevin Donald hates parents, baked beans and writing Harvard-Style Bibliographies.

I wait.

Two people ‘like’ it.

One comment: Hahaha cool

Foot steps on the stair. A timid knock on the door.

She: Kevin?

I don’t answer. I hear her slide down the wall to sit on the carpet beside my bedroom door.

Two comments: Same dude same

She: Kevin? I know you’re awake.

Refresh the page.

She sobs.

Refresh.

She: Kevin? I’m sorry for dragging you into that before. It wasn’t fair on you.

Refresh.

She: Kev? Baby? I’m sorry I just- I need- Your father and I-

Sobs.

Three comments: lol i love baked beans

Then ‘likes’.

She: Kev?

Kevin Donald doesn’t need this.

PISS OFF MUM!

Three ‘likes’ instantly.

‘I could not put all this – in a low-ceilinged room.’

It amuses me how pathetic our money ‘system’ is. Our company’s entire budget is currently in a single envelope sitting on top of my computer with ‘$240′ written on it. Last night at work one of the girls asked me to count coinage for her. I was a bit confused by how all the different bags worked and she apologised saying ‘I forget that not everyone has worked with money like me’. I replied ‘I really can not say how much I have not worked with money.’ We don’t see a lot of it.

Last night I had one to fill out a sort of ‘getting to know your Fringe Artists’ form for the Fringe. It was a series of questions they wanted quirky answers for.

What in your life has brought you to the stage? For example, are you a brick-layer turned comic? Was there a major life event that pushed you to take this road?

When I was 16, a school teacher entered a truly terrible play of mine into the South Australian State Theatre Company’s Young Guns Playwright competition. The play involved having my script workshopped by the company for a week. I was utterly amazed by theatre as an art form. I had never realised how collaborative the creation of a work was. I have been in theatre ever since.

Stage fright is some people’s biggest fear – what’s yours?

Bryce Courtenay.

What makes you laugh?

Leotards.

What is your most obscure talent? And what talent do you wish you had?

I have a talent for carrying things on my head and tend to forget that this isn’t socially acceptable in your average mall. I wish I could count.

Does your show talk about relationships? Do you fancy yourself as a relationship expert? What’s your best dating tip?

Our show is full of characters who can barely talk to other humans outside of cyberspace and, after months of forum-based research, our cast and crew are also heading in this direction. Right now, our best dating tip would be ‘get a decent webcam and clear potentially embarrassing posters from your bedroom wall. Also, remember to use emoticons to show if you are being sarcastic or sweetly comical.’

Yesterday I edited about 500 photos (production shots for a beautiful little piece called ‘Re-play’ and head shots for two actors) and re-arranged my bedroom which was akin to the world’s stupidest and heaviest game of tetris. My room is really quite, quite small.

Today I have a meeting with the associate director of the Melbourne Theatre Company. I’m assistant directing for him next year and I’m pretty petrified. I must re-read the script as soon as I’ve finished typing this.

I’ll leave you with a quote from the play I’m ADing: Dead Man’s Cell Phone by Sarah Ruhl.  This is one of my favourite parts.  The eulogy.

‘I’m not sure what to say.  There is, thank God, a vaulted celing here.  I am relieved to find that there is stained glass and the sensation of height.  Even though  I am not a religious woman I am glad there are still churches.  Thank God there are still people who build churches for the rest of us so that when someone dies or gets married we have a place to – I could not put all this – (she thinks the word ‘grief’) in a low-ceilinged room- no- it requires height.’

Also, I tried to post a photo and can’t work it out.  It is sitting in my ‘gallery’ but I don’t think its showing up in the journal.  What’s the next step, kids?

The Boy Who Went Forth To Learn What Fear Was

This is a script I’m working on.  It is an adaption of the fairy tale ‘The Boy Who Went Forth To Learn What Fear Was’.  It is for puppets (both shadow puppets and banraku) and is set in a haunted castle which would be specially constructed for it.  A bit ambitious, I know.

The audience is gathered infront of the ‘castle’.

Narrator I am going to tell you a story. Come this way.

They enter the first chamber. The room is dark but, as the narrator talks, the lights slowly rise.

Naturally, this story begins with ‘once upon a time’ so from this you may take it as given that our tale takes place in a land of forests, mountains, castles, snowy white horses, enchantments, princes, princess and tyrannical fathers.

The lights have risen enough to reveal the first landscape (shadow puppets) spread across two of the walls. It is a hamlet, peaceful and quiet. There is a forest to one side and rolling, gentle hills with scatted houses. A few men and women walk between the houses. A dog urinates on a cottage and a plump woman with a broom runs out and chases it away.

Speaking of fathers and parenthood, this is a land of favouritism. Every dad has a favourite son or daughter for the sake of whom they are willing to sacrifice everything except their own life. Other offspring are looked on as ‘spares’; fodder with which to cushion the life of the chosen one. This chosen one is usually the youngest. Wonderful and terrible things happen to youngest children.

The third wall lights up to reveal another house on a hill. Two boys run out and begin to play fight.

Well, in this particular family, there is no favourite and this is because the two boys are twins. No doubt they heard a whisper in the womb of the land of ‘Once Upon A Time’ and so they make a pact and conspired to cheat the fates by being born at exactly the same time. So effective was this ploy in fooling the large part of their father’s brain devoted to outrageous acts of favouritism that the entire family lived happily for many years.

To be fair, the boys were both called ‘Hans’ (but to avoid confusion they were known as ‘The Hans with Bigger Ears’ and ‘The Han with Smaller Ears’). Because they were very poor, they slept head to toe in one big bed. Every week they swapped ends to ensure that they were being treated as equals.

Little crosses and grave stones begin to appear on the hills and people begin to vanish.

One year, when the boys were almost 15, plague came to their village.

All day and all night wailing shattered the nerves and all wanted to whisper ‘who will be next’ but words caught on tongues and stayed within terrified throats.

One day, when their father was our burying the dead, The Hans with Bigger Ears went to check on his mother and found her crumpled and cold on the floor of her bedroom.

One of the boys enters the house.

Big Ears Mama? Mama? Why do you stare so? Why are your lips parched and blackened? Why does the room reek? Why am I trembling? I am shuddering! I am shuddering! I can not stop shuddering. I am frightened! Hans! Hans! Little Eared Hans! Help me!

The other boy enters the house. After a moment he re-emerges calmly.

Hans It smells in there. Open the windows.

The Hans With Bigger Ears continues to weep. He runs out of the house and calls down the hill:

Big Ears Father! Father, come quick!

He runs back into the house. A man runs up the hill and enters the house. The Hans with Smaller Ears stands calmly outside.

Hans

Image to black.

Narrator Their father cried also but you do not need to hear that. It was heart wrenching. He loved his wife dearly and yet he was angry at her for slipping away when he was there to hold her. He was angry at the plague for stealing her from him and he was angry with the rats for carrying his fate but most of all, he was angry with The Han with Smaller Ears because he did not feel these things.

The toilet wall, the director as voyeur and the actor as human.

If you were to sit on our toilet, you would quickly come to realise that the people who owned that toilet believed in theatre and safe sex. We collect post cards and they cover the walls of the smallest (and most useful) room in the house. Theatre and sexual health is heavily featured in this collect.

I have spent a lot of time recently talking to newly graduated actors. I would not be a theatre director if I did not love actors. I could happily spend all day watching and listening to them. Sometimes I forget to talk myself. I am the ultimate ‘director as voyeur’. I recently found some of my scribbled notes from my last week of study at the VCA:

‘Theatre is about being human and real. Even when we aim to mystify, even when the viewer doubts the humanity of the performer, we are humans and both the actor and director must be the most human of all humans in order to tell the tale. Does that make sense? It got me excited.’

These last few weeks have been a very voyeuristic look into the heads of young actors just emerging into the industry after three years of intense, regimented training. It has reminded me of this ‘most human of all humans’ concept. They are Experiencing life with a captial E, very much in tune with their emotions. They are all analysising themselves, their place in theatre and what it means to them and it is fascinating to watch them go through this. I have ‘done coffee’ with actors from three different Australian schools in the last week. (I say ‘done coffee’ in inverted commas because I am actually so un-hardcore that I can’t drink caffeine and have to stick to soy hot chocolates.) The myriad of emotions is incredible. One said that finding an agent has felt like a three week long job interview. One said they aren’t even sure if they like theatre but know that they ‘have to’ make it. Like destiny. I theatre therefore I am. I know that feeling. We are artists because we need more. We must subjugate ourselves to the art form because every fibre of our being needs it. Another (who has just moved to Melbourne because she’s been picked up by an agent) spoke about her father’s confusion: ‘so do you have work lined up in Melbourne?’ ‘No. I have an agent. I have the possibility of work.’ ‘And you are moving 800 kilometres for that?’ ‘Yes.’

I have had so many conversations with actors about their hair colour and weight. ‘Would you hire an actor with my body type, Fleur?’ My answer? ‘I make very physically demanding theatre. I hire actors who are strong and fit. You are both of these things and are stunningly gorgeous and talented to match so ‘yes’, you silly thing.’

I love actors. I really, really do. The most human of all humans.

‘The actor, the human medium by which the drama speaks to us … has a history that spans the whole gulf between priesthood and bawdry. Actors have been servants of gods, and mentors of manners, but again they have been panderers to men’s grossest appetites.’
-The Theatre: Three Thousand Years of Drama, Acting and Stagecraft
Sheldon Cheney