Home - Caroline Lee

Stripped at La Mama

2012-03-15T07:29:40Z

We are now in the second and last week of the performances of Stripped at La Mama. It’s been really fantastic performing the work and I feel like I learn more each night about what the work is in this form. Both through the process of performing it and hearing and feeling the responses to the work as I do it…my own and those of the audience; and also through talking afterwards to various audience members, receiving emails, and reading reviews…although I tend not to look at the reviews until after the show has closed.

I guess it’s always like this when you do any show, that you find out what it is as you perform it, but it’s less obvious when it’s an existing text. Also, I probably thought I knew what the play version of Stripped would be, pretty much, because I had spent so many years in the world of the novel. But, of course, it is very different, and night after night I find out more, much more about what it is and how it is.

Again, it seems obvious, and I guess I knew this intellectually, but until we started having real audiences I didn’t really know how central the communal, collective experience of the work is in this form, especially when one compares it to the private, intimate, internal experience of reading the novel. People really feel like they have gone through the experience with others, and it seems that this is both affirming and confronting. On the opening night a few people spoke about feeling as if they had just been to a funeral, with that same mixture of love and grief, of collective and private sorrow. A writer and teacher I really admire and respect sent Laurence and me a fabulous email and in it she said,

“How to speak about something so raw, gripping, and painful…. yet often so beautiful. In fact I found the exploration of the edges and slippages between ideas of beauty and ugliness one of the most compelling elements of the work.

I am still struggling to find words for my experience of the show. It is so rare to encounter such truth-telling and such intensity in the theatre, especially around the big unspeakables…."

Not only is this very affirming feedback, but it’s also very helpful.

As with all adaptations there are some people who much prefer the book; some who prefer the play; some who haven’t read the book and really love the play; and some who love both, in their difference. I’m really grateful to have had the opportunity to take the work to this next place, to offer it to more people and to expand my understanding of the work, of theatre, and even, maybe, a little bit more, of life.

back on the floor

2012-01-26T08:46:26Z

As a holiday it was perfect…beginning at Mt. Kosciuszko: walking hard every day; swimming in icy-cold rivers and not-so-cold lakes; breathing in clear, cool air; gazing at horizons, blue mountains, massive skies, slopes with hundreds of shades of green and grey, and outrageous expanses of wildflowers; dodging snakes; and probably most importantly, feeling far, far away. Then beach: swimming, walking, sand-castles, swimming, ball-games, dolphins and more swimming. Then Hobart: art, art, art. All sorts: performance, sound, music, visual. II was ready, I soaked it up. I got inspired.

Now, remarkably refreshed, I’m back in Melbourne and already firmly in the grip of ‘Stripped’, my novel, which Laurence Strangio and I are adapting into a one-woman show. In March. Yes, it’s soon; yes, it’s intense; yes, it’s hard; yes it’s fun.

minotaur the island

2011-11-10T06:46:15Z

‘Minotaur is a place—the island of Minotaur. The music is tense—just out of reach—fracturing and breaking into bits—travelling through corridors. The objects are the island, and are moved around the space like flotsam from a shipwreck.’

Minotaur The Island, or The Lost Opera Act I

'you can't be what you can't see'

2011-09-15T22:18:04Z

I have the fortune to be attending the Australian Theatre Forum, which is being held in Brisbane at the Powerhouse. I had reasonably low expectations, not so much of the event, more of myself in relation to the event. Mostly because I am pretty tired from a very full year of work and also because I find the thought of being in an opening-night-foyer type of situation for three days pretty daunting. I worried about my own capacity to manage and engage. But it’s been fantastic.

Herewith follows some random thoughts, glimpses, moments.

one. I have renewed my determination to keep expanding this website, particularly in terms of archiving and recording my own work.

I mean, that was one of the reasons I set up this website in the first place. And I was reminded of this desire and need quite recently when I watched the fabulous documentary created by Amy Gebhart for Art Nation about Moira Finucane and Jackie Smith and the process of creating The Carnival of Mysteries. The documentary is really wonderful, but, for me, for someone who was involved in the process from pretty early on…like years before it happened… I found it quite painful to see it because it shows SO LITTLE of what happened, of how long the process was, of how many millions of hours of work it took, of how much Moira and Jackie put into it and how much all of the artists put into it, and what the artists got out of it, how it changed them, their work, their process, and also what the audience received, felt, took away. The documentary reminded me of the absolute ephemeral, and transient nature of my work…as it is, and as it should be, but that consequently there is a need to record, to document.

Documenting our own work is also a way for artists to have more control over what is said about our work. Deborah Hay speaks very passionately about this and changed my understanding of this issue forever. It is our responsibility to take control of the creating, recording and transmission of the SPECIFIC WORDS which are used to describe our work and process. Writing/documenting gives us practice in articulating, talking and thinking about the work we do, the processes that occur, and the discoveries, problems, issues, and ideas that occur. To document gives us and others a way of contextualising our practice. This can be good also for criticism of the work…if more information is available, more understanding is possible.

Failure can be reflected upon, drawn on, mulled over, contextualised and seen as a step between point A and point B, rather than the point at which everything stopped.

New solutions, new paradigms, new ideas, new working methods, new thoughts, new approaches should be documented. It helps them spread. ‘The new is understood in relation to what isn’t new.’ Alison Croggon

Documentation provides a way, if it is needed or wanted, to record some of the ways one’s art has impacted on the lives of people around us, audience or whoever. We don’t need to be statisticians, just to tell these stories.

It’s naming: naming heritage, lineage, connections, family in art, family not in art, influences, important people, important books, important ideas, hopes, ideals, visions. The naming, the repeating, the acknowledging, the telling.

Over and over and over again. If need be.

two. The development of artists as leaders. Artists are dynamic, connected, entrepreneurial, skillful, political, resourceful, tough, funny, alive. They carry the possibility of providing a whole other set of parameters. There are more people in the creative industries than in the entire mining sector. Why don’t we have more influence? An artists' political party could, possibly, change everything…forever. ‘You can’t be what you can’t see.’ Candy Bowers

three. Dialogue, and Time. ‘Dialogue is exhilarating and fundamental.’ Rose Myers. I come back to it again and again and again. Ariane Mnouchkine talked often about the lunch/dinner table at which the members of her company Teatre du Soleil would sit, eat and talk, talk, talk. ‘It is the place where EVERY major decision of this company was made.’ Clearly this process needs TIME. Time for the dinner itself. Time for many dinners.

four. Ageing. Submerging artists. Oh god, I’m really going to have to get back to Simone..(de B). That affair of the mind and the heart is definitely NOT OVER YET.

five. Be an ‘R & D addict.’ (Paschal Berry) Go on, I dare you.

six. Mobility is mandatory.

seven. Live theatre can change the world. It changed my world. It continues to change my world. In the end, it comes down to this.

playing Simone

2011-08-08T08:58:13Z

Returned from an utterly (Roman)tic holiday in Italy on a Friday night about five weeks ago. On Sunday afternoon Helen Madden from the Stork Theatre texted me to ask if I was available and interested in a new play about Simone de Beauvoir. How could I resist? I met with director Justine Campbell and the deal was sealed. I was playing Simone de Beauvoir.

She is an amazing, incredible, and inspiring woman. We have had to work really hard over the last five weeks to get the play ready, to try and do justice to her, to tell a story which gives a glimpse of her life (because no play can tell it all) and which does not shut her world and life and ideas down, but instead opens them out.

We have had three performances so far, and it’s going pretty well and getting better each time, as we understand more and more what we are saying, how we are saying it, and how we are playing it. The first four or five scenes of the play happen really quickly: a memory, some philosophy, a recounted moment with Sartre (who doesn’t appear in the play), a scene with Nelson Algren, a scene with one of Simone’s young women lovers, and then a letter to Sartre. It’s fast, it’s a juggle, it’s intense, it’s demanding. And that, I think, is exactly what her life must have been. She is an inspiration to me because she so passionately believed in living life to the full, in realising one’s potential, and in living through the mind, the heart and the body. She didn’t cast off her body…that is still rare, even today.

“On the day when it will be possible for woman to love not in her weakness but in her strength, not to escape herself but to find herself, not to abase herself but to assert herself—on that day love will become for her, as for man, a source of life and not of mortal danger.” — Simone de Beauvoir

“No one would take me just as I was, no one loved me; I shall love myself enough, I thought, to make up for this abandonment by everyone. Formerly, I had been quite satisfied with myself, but I had taken very little trouble to increase my self-knowledge; from now on, I would stand outside myself, watch over and observe myself; in my diary I had long conversations with myself. I was entering a world whose newness stunned me. I learned to distinguish between distress and melancholy, lack of emotion and serenity; I learned to recognize the hesitations of the heart, and its ecstasies, the splendor of great renunciations, and the subterranean murmurings of hope. I entered into exalted trances, as on those evenings when I used to gaze upon the sky full of moving clouds behind the distant blue of the hills; I was both the landscape and its beholder: I existed only through myself, and for myself… My path was clearly marked: I had to perfect, enrich and express myself in a work of art that would help others to live.” — Simone de Beauvoir

What an amazing woman. It is a privilege to spend time with her.

Roma

2011-07-07T16:27:26Z

I hav been in Rome. More soon.

"Stripped" – the back story

2011-02-11T07:49:33Z

I started writing my novel, Stripped, in 2003. Earlier that year I had performed a one-woman play which I had also written, the three interiors of Lola Strong, which was about an architect, identity, being Australian and the relationship between interior and exterior space. I had been thinking about all of these issues for many years, so I felt that probably that was it, that was the one work which everyone is supposed to have in them. But then I did a Generative Writing workshop with a fabulous theatre director and writer, Jenny Kemp. To my surprise, encouraged and stimulated by the exercises and the environment, a whole new world started to emerge onto the page. That was the world of Stripped: the streets of Melbourne at night, the strip club, the sisters who have a complicated relationship, the journalist who loves sex but hates women, the magical realist elements, and the exploration of death.

In 2004, I started the Professional Writing and Editing course at RMIT. I did it part time, continuing with my acting work, and continuing work on Stripped. As all writers do, I wrote a lot of words and threw a lot away. Over time I started to realise that the centre of the story is Lillian’s death, and that because the story is told by multiple narrators there is no room for fill. The writing style, which is quite dense and poetic, became more defined and there were a few characters and a couple a small story threads which I cut out altogether. Through constant workshopping in classes, the input of both teachers and students, and with the help of a smaller workshopping group I was involved with, the novel became more and more refined, clearer, tighter and more powerful.

Stripped has a slightly unusual form. It follows, chronologically, the development of Lillian’s cancer, her treatment and, eventually her death. The story is told, however, as I said, by multiple first person narrators, their chapters intersecting to cover the events of the story. Each of these characters has a very different voice, perspective and emotional reactions to the events. In addition the writing is very pared-back, almost poetic. Thus, what we receive as readers is a richly textured, layered, and complex picture of the way in which these lives are changed by their encounter with death.

In 2005 I was awarded the Marion Eldridge Award for Emerging Women Writers, for a first draft of Stripped, which was an Australia-wide competition. With the help of this award I was able to complete a polished second draft.

During 2007, my final year at RMIT, I worked on a third full draft of Stripped, a process which included having it read in total by two health professionals associated with cancer care and further discussions with Dr. David Thomas and Dr. Simon Wein at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre.

In early 2008, I was approached by Sophie Cunningham who, having taken over the editorship of Meanjin, was interested in serialising Stripped. She read the third draft, offered editorial suggestions and I proceeded with another rewrite. The first part of Stripped was published in Meanjin, Volume 67, No.2, June 2008. It was approved by Sophie and expertly copy-edited by Richard McGregor. Each subsequent edition has included the next part of the novel with the final part being published in Volume 69, No.2, June 2010.

It was a fantastic opportunity to have had the novel serialised in Meanjin, and to have had the excellent editorial input of Sophie Cunningham, and Richard McGregor, and I received some really lovely feedback. Many people however said, “Yes, but when are you going to publish it as a whole?” I thought long and hard about how to do it, as it was now in a kind of no-man’s land of having been “sort-of” published. With Sophie’s assistance I came up with the plan of publishing a beautIfully designed, limited edition of the novel with a hand letter-press printed cover. Stuart Geddes, of chase and galley, had already been doing the design for Meanjin and I really loved his work on that so he seemed the perfect collaborator, and my dear friend, Carolyn Fraser of Idlewild Press has been doing amazing work in letter-press printing for years, and I was thrilled to at last be working on a project with her.

I applied for money for this project from the City of Melbourne, which I received, and we are well on the way.

During November and December 2010, we all met a number of times and finalised the design, then in January, the plates for the letter-press printing were ordered from the USA, and over the last two weeks Carolyn and Stuart have printed the cover. It looks fantastic. Yesterday Stuart, Sophie and I signed off on the inside pages, which have been sent to the printer. On Monday we’ll have a proof to look at and if that’s ok the printer will take the covers, print the inside and then bind the book. Wow. Very close now…

The launch is on March 15th, 5.30 – 7.00 at fortyfivedownstairs. If you’d like to come, send me a line. I am very excited and very nervous.

Finally, because things unfortunately changed recently at Meanjin, and they were going to buy some copies from me, I have a budget shortfall. This has opened up another whole adventure however, which is crowdfunding. If you’re interested, or want to buy a book and can’t make it to the launch, go to www.pozible.com.au.

This project was supported by the City of Melbourne Writing about Melbourne Arts Grant Program.

Minotaur – The Island

2011-01-31T07:47:48Z

First day of rehearsal for Minotaur –The Island. The score, which has music, paintings and instructions by David Young, and text by Margaret Cameron, is very beautiful and very inspiring. This is an example:

Notes.

Minotaur is a place – the island of Minotaur.

Lost—there is a story but that is not our opera.

Through-composed. A continuous thread. No sagging, everything attacca.

With each instruction and movement, attend to the sound, the event density, the distribution of pitch and timbre, the dynamics, attack and decay.

The text in bold is a score for movement.

The music is: —tense —just out of reach —fracturing and breaking into bits —travelling through corridors

The objects are the island, and are moved around the space like flotsam from a shipwreck that is washed ashore.

The things that are explicit—certain stage actions, costumes, words, sounds, objects may not be possible. It is best to concede this. Then to continue to form relationships between what is and what is not possible.

Over time, the work becomes finer, turning to a single thread of listening.

Very excited and at the same time slightly apprehensive about getting into the rehearsal room and working on this gorgeous piece. It’s the second time I have performed in an opera. The first time was equally amazing: I played the artist’s model in an season of La Bohème at the State Theatre, which starred Kiri Te Kanawa. During one of the dress rehearsals I was allowed to watch from the front when I wasn’t on stage and so I sat in the third row and fell in love with opera and music all over again. When Kiri Te Kanawa sang the aria “Mi Chiamono Mimi” I suddenly understood opera in a way I hadn’t before. It was clear to me that she HAD to sing because her emotion was so huge and so deep, that there was no other form of expression that would do. That the combination of music and poetry coming from deep within her, with maximum effort, concentration and commitment, was the only way to truly relate how she felt. It was amazing, and I have rarely felt or seen this again, mostly I think due to the massive scale of opera theatres. Actually I HAVE felt it occasionally from rock singers, for example, Rob Snarski, Sharon Jones, Renee Geyer, Patti Smith, and Tex Perkins, and each time have been overwhelmed in the same way. It is such a TOTAL experience. Transforming.

So, music and text, we of The Minotaur will also need to dig deep.

the new year

2011-01-02T14:33:51Z

Managed to define a couple of things for myself recently, concerning the celebrations of Christmas and the New Year. Contemplations which may, of course, once being made and conceded, be immediately broken, but it feels good nonetheless to have realised them, if only at least temporarily.

You see a few years ago I realised that this time, this late December early January time of fallowness…time to sleep, read, process, plan, mourn, recover, gather strength…is very important to me, quite crucial in fact to my mental health and to the health of the up-coming year. I love the fact that we have a summer break, a Christmas holidays and all of that, at the end of a year and the beginning of a year…it seems right…better than in Europe where you are still in the middle of the year’s work, in the middle of the working year that is…ours is neater and works much better.

You end the year’s work, have a break, even if it is short, or if you are lucky a summer holiday, then the new year starts and a new year of work starts. It’s very clean and clear. So, now to the recent realisations. One, after seeing a live performance of the Messiah quite close to Christmas last year, is that going to a musical celebration like that is a very good version of some kind of Christmas recognition for me. In my life, Christmas is about family and friends, about celebrating and making and giving…giving food, sharing food, looking after those around me if I can, contacting people, holding out a hand. And so, the church, or organised religion, has for a long time been very low in the radar at Christmas time (and even less significant at other times of the year except perhaps Easter, where I do intend to try the musical experiment again). But seeing the Messiah was good. It was a nod to religion, and it l felt nice to spend those few hours, in a secular context, thinking about Jesus and religion and Jerusalem and where Christmas actually came from.

The second realisation was about New Year, and was that it IS a significant time for me, I DO measure my life by years (and this is perhaps even more the case because of the Southern Hemisphere match-up mentioned above) by what happens in a year, how those years pass, how those years feel. It is as if we, in the Southern Hemisphere, are really given the chance to start again, to have a new start, by the way our new year falls. And perhaps because of all this, it’s hard to ignore it. So I realised that I need to mark it, that for me, pretending it isn’t, ignoring it, doesn’t really work, because in my mind and soul and body it IS a new year, it is happening and in some way it needs to be honoured. Writing resolutions in my diary isn’t enough, because I tried that last year…it needs to be something public, something about us all, in the place we are in, marking the shift together, and maybe talking about it a bit too. So this year it was spent on the beach, relaxed, watching fireworks, fires, people laughing and dancing, hearing the sea, feeling the darkness and the light. And it was better, and for that I am grateful.

And so, those tasks accomplished, now I am lying fallow, dreaming and planning for the year ahead, processing the year that has been, sleeping, reading and knitting, making bread, walking, watching films, swimming and, most pleasurably of all, wasting time. Just a bit.

the marathon

2010-11-04T12:11:23Z

It is not just that the carnival is over, but that the marathon is also over.

Earlier this year, while I was on tour, I read “What I Talk About When I Talk About Running” by Haruki Murakami. I loved it. A friend had given it to me, saying that he thought I’d enjoy it, and at the time, I’d thought that he was mainly referring to the ideas and inspiration about running contained in the book. As well as, of course, the thoughts about writing. And indeed it did inspire me, because I hadn’t been running since the October before, when I went for a run whilst in New York on a damaged knee and my knee swelled up to such an extent that the only way I could manage performing the play I was there to perform was on quite large doses of anti-inflammatories. It took about three months to settle down, but I feared that I was not ever going to be able to run again, for exercise.

However after reading the Murakami, and experiencing the liberty and leisure of being on tour, I started going to various gymnasiums in the various towns I was in, and began slowly building up my running strength. I started with five minutes on the treadmill, and kept increasing it so that, by the end of the tour, I was doing 4.5 km in about 25 minutes on the treadmill. And I was feeling great. During that period I would often think of various lines from Murakami’s book, for example, “No matter how much you might command your body to perform, don’t count on it to immediately obey. The body is an extremely practical system. You have to let it experience intermittent pain over time, and then the body will get the point. As a result it will willingly accept (or maybe not) the increased amount of exercise it’s made to do. After this, you very gradually increase the upper limit of the amount of exercise you do. Doing it gradually is very important so you don’t burn out,” and “It’s only pain,” and “…of all the habits I’ve acquired over my lifetime I’d have to say this one has been the most helpful, the most meaningful. Running without a break for more than two decades has also made me stronger, both physically and emotionally.”

So then, upon returning from the tour, I start work on recording four talking books, pretty much one after the other, which was fantastic; as well as rehearsing and performing in the wonderful “Carnival of Mysteries.” Also, I keep going to the gym, I keep running.

The Carnival was an amazing experience. Because it was so intense, (we performed 15 shows a week, that is, 2 x 2 hour shows on Tues, Wed and Thurs and then 3 x 2 hour shows on Fri, Sat and Sun) it was even more all-consuming than performing usually is. It was UTTERLY consuming. And it was like running a marathon. I was so grateful that I was fit, and that I had had some preparation, both physically and emotionally, for the arduousness of the task. Because it was, also, incredibly hard. Not only the hours, and the endurance and the effort it required to entertain and communicate to group after group of people for hours on end, but also that I was doing new things, performing in a way that I hadn’t done before with material I hadn’t performed before.

Peta Murray, the playwright (who had two short works performed in the Carnival, one of which, Sacrament, I performed in) wrote to Moira about observations she had made whilst being an audience member of the Carnival. She wrote something like this: (my words) that she noticed that during the course of the show the audience opened up, yielded, became innocent again. I remembered these words because this was certainly my experience with the work that I did during the evening. My first appearance was as The Letter Writer, where, in a small room, with one or two people and a typewriter, I would assist in the writing of a postcard, note or letter. Invariably, as we concentrated together on the task of communicating the ideas which needed to be expressed, a relaxation and openness would occur…the delight of expression, of communication, of care, of speaking and recording thoughts and feelings. Mostly, these few people would leave the little room smiling, happy, and relieved. Similarly, as the show continued, I would see many of the audience excited and inspired by stories, by magic, by skill, by kindness, by the imagination, by the unexpected. It was a wonder and a privilege.

Also, of course, one doesn’t do a marathon alone. The Carnival was only possible because of masses of support and commitment from a huge amount of people: front-of-house, bar staff, ticketing, volunteers, family, carers, sponsors, philanthropists, funding bodies, friends and the incredible group of artists and performers.

The marathon might be over, but the running, the writing, the work, the pain and the pleasure continues. Change has happened, is being assimilated, and I run on.

honey

2010-08-10T08:06:54Z

Been home for two weeks. Trying to hold on to a sense of spaciousness and calm and not get too frantic too soon. It is inevitable that things will start to speed up and get busy again, especially in the lead up to The Carnival of Mysteries, the wonderful, enormous project I am part of in the Melbourne Festival, but in the meantime I am trying to stay a bit free, a bit floaty, a bit slow.

I got a new bike. That’s part of it. I’ve been meaning to get a new bike for about two years, but knew it would take time. So the other day, having some hours up my sleeve, I went to a bike shop, where they are very nice, and where they have been having a sale, and test rode a few different models, and then a few different seats, and in the end I settled on a bike and got my basket fitted on it and then rode it home. It’s very lovely; it’s a silvery-blue colour, a Giant Cypress, and it has gears and great brakes and…it works!

Since then I’ve really been enjoying riding around, (it feels so easy,) seeing the small things that have changed since I got home. There’s been lots of building, for example there is a new building on the corner of Nicholson St. and Brunswick Rd, and another new one on the corner of Queensberry St and Bouverie St. On the other hand a building has disappeared on the corner of Grattan St. and Royal Pde. That’s a strange thing, that building had been there since I was a child. It’s weird to see all that new space.

The smells are great too. Yesterday I smelt hyacinths and wattle and muddy water, and then on the way home I went along the bike path past the spot where the trees smell like honey.

And am also slowly catching up with friends and loved ones. Which also smells like honey.

some remarkable things

2010-06-01T13:30:42Z

~ walking to the theatre in Armidale. Along a dirt path. Really dark. Could see the stars. What a great way to get to work.

~ driving to Narrabri, we see white puffy stuff on the side of the road, lots of it, for kilometres and kilometres. We debate in the car: is it cotton or is it wool? Then we debate whether it just fell out of a truck or whether it came from the fields…’cos there was none to be seen in the fields. Finally we stop the car, get out and pick some up. It is cotton…and very fluffy, sort of like a cotton wool ball. And then a few kilometres further on we pass a field, all white…cotton, cotton everywhere.

~ being in Narrabri, where the streets are wide and empty and lead out into the cotton fields and the hills beyond. Quite surprisingly, a lot of people came to the theatre to see the show. They loved it, laughed, sighed, and one sweet lady down the front even spoke to us a few times she was so involved. It was fantastic. We stayed afterwards and spoke to people and there were all sorts of folk there, farmers, workers from a coal mine, students, teachers and others. Not many shows go to Narrabri apparently, and they were very grateful. One man said to me, “Oh I can see us all laughing about this together tomorrow…there were some great jokes!”

~ it is possible to: boil eggs very successfully in a kettle in a motel room; make espresso coffee by turning your iron upside down, wedging it with your towel and placing your little espresso machine upon it; steam vegetables in a sieve on top of your kettle.

~ going on a bush walk up Bald Rock, an amazing granite rock in Tenterfield, apparently the largest exposed granite rock in the Southern Hemisphere. Kind of like Uluru, only grey. Majestic and wonderful. Eating my mandarine, way up there, looking at the carpet of green all around. The only problem was some baby boomer was talking, far too loudly, on his mobile phone about his kitchen renovations. Mamma mia. If looks could kill I’d’ve been in a lot of trouble with the law.

~ the kangaroos featured in the pattern of the lace curtains in my motel room in Glen Innes.

~ how ugly your standard 3 and a half star motel room bedspread really is, and how crap it makes you feel.

~ the joy of arriving in Port Macquarie and being put up in beautiful apartments with kitchens and a pool and a sauna and a spa. Going for a pre-breakfast swim. Cooking up a storm: scrambled eggs on crumpets, coissants with jam, toast and avocado and tomato and basil, poached pears, minestrone. Watching the footy on a comfortable couch with a flat screen tv.

~ the sounds of audiences laughing and laughing and laughing.

~ the entire weekend in Quirindi. Started out inauspiciously with a general gloom about the motel, but there was karaoke, a family barbeque and the privilege of performing at the opening of the newly renovated theatre. The audience were SO EXCITED. They’d been preparing for weeks. They’d cooked up a storm. Many of them had worked very hard to make it all happen. One woman told me about which doors and walls she had painted! It was fabulous. And then they loved the play. They really listened, went on the journey with the characters and laughed and laughed. One man confessed to me that he laughed until he cried. “I had to wipe away the tears before anyone saw them,” he said.

~ and finally, one of my tour highlights so far was Bessie and I being invited out to the house and farm of Doug and Laurice McGilchrist just out of Wallabadah. The drive out there was fantastic, meeting cows and horses along the way. Then when we arrived at the house we walked along a track for a km or so to their “hut” where Doug had lit the fire and set billys on to boil and we had tea and a delicious orange and poppyseed cake which Laurice had made. It was still warm in the middle! Then we climbed into the back of the ute and stood up in the trailer and held on tight while Doug took us on a drive right up high to see a wonderful view of the hills and valleys all around. It was magnificent. Particularly as the sun was just starting to go down. There were all the blues and indigos of the sky and then the gold of the hills, and the grass and then all the different shapes and colours of eucalypts scattered everywhere. We also saw lots more cattle and calves and a mob of about twenty kangaroos. It was a real treat. Another example of wonderful country hospitality.

Sounds of touring

2010-05-11T09:56:17Z

So, we’ve started on the next stage of the tour. The tour de Cosi de Australie. The stage where we don’t get to go back home for a long time. There was certainly a little trepidation in my heart, and I’m sure the hearts of the others, as we set off. We may get to pop back to Melbourne after we perform in Darwin, but, if not, it will be about 11 weeks on the road. Quite an overwhelming prospect. Exciting too, of course!

Luckily our first stop was Echuca, and while the accommodation was nothing much to write home about, it was by no means the worst we have had. Equity (the actors’ union) stipulates that we have to be in minimum three and a half star accommodation, but we are discovering that there is quite a variation of quality in the three and a half star range. So, in the range of three and a half star accommodation, Echuca was about 5/10. The thing that was great about the motel was the location—it was very close to the Murray River and so there were lots of large, beautiful trees around and with them, masses of birds. There were huge flocks of galahs, cockatoos and other birds in the parrot family, as well as magpies, kookaburras and, I’m sure, lots of others. As well as heaps of ducks, ibis and other water birds. At dawn and in the evening the sound of the birds was overwhelming as they all flew around squawking and carrying on, getting settled for the night or getting ready for the day. (Possibly a little bit like us all descending on the motel reception to check in or check out…) The birds really made a racket, but it was a good racket. Also, at various intervals during the day, we heard the sounds of the whistles from the steam boats, which really evoke another era.

As a country town Echuca has a lot to recommend it. They have clearly done a lot to preserve and restore many of the heritage buildings still remaining in the town, and so it is very picturesque and also interesting. The history of the town is quite easy to imagine and access. There were some excellent second-hand bookshops and, close to my heart, some fabulous cafes, foodstores and restaurants. I had a wonderful brunch with my friend Fiona who had travelled up from Melbourne to see the show, and then the next night most of the cast got together and had a great meal at a lovely place called Oscar W’s, which is right on the river in the area of the old wharf. They had an amazing wine list and I had, together with other dishes, a mashed potato which rivalled the pure deliciousness of the mashed potato in Hamilton.

The soundscape continued to be a feature in Wangaratta, where there were beautiful sounds of church bells in the morning and evening, as well as more sounds of birds and also trains. The Wangaratta Performing Arts Centre is new and beautiful and was fantastic to work in, and we had a receptive and lovely audience. I was also thrilled to be able to see a touring exhibition of video art from ACCA, which featured works by Anastasia Klose, Shaun Gladwell, and David Rosetsky amongst others. I spent a very pleasant hour and a half in there.

Wagga Wagga was the next town we visited and it too had sounds of bells, which was great, but also the truly appalling, annoying and extremely irritating sound of a leaf-blower. Is there anyone, apart from the small minority of people who, bedecked with ear-muffs, operate such stupid, energy-inefficient and idiotic contraptions, who thinks they are a good idea? What is wrong, for heavens sake, with a broom? Especially early in the morning? At the Wagga Wagga accommodation, which was quite nice, they felt the need to blow the leaves about not just once, but twice a day. During the afternoon when one might, for example, be wanting to have a nap, and at about 10 am, when one might, for example, be wanting to sleep in. If, for example, one was a performer working at night.

The show went really well though, at Wagga, they managed to sell out a 500-seat theatre and had drinks and nibbles afterwards, which is always a great opportunity for us to meet the locals and get some feedback about the play. I also visited the Wagga Art Glass Gallery, which had some really stunning works in glass. I was excited by all the different techniques that are now used and that a lot of the works are sculptural and also conceptual. The main art gallery was also interesting, in particular an exhibition by Annabel Nowlan, entitled “bugger.” They were beautiful mixed media works, quite monochrome in green, grey and silver, using a lot of tarnished metal, etching, and even fabric. The work dealt with landscape, history, and the experience of rural life.

Then finally, there’s also the sounds of motels/hotels in general. The walls are often quite thin, so you hear the sounds of other people’s televisions, radios, sometimes even their conversations. Not to mention the ubiquitous sounds of other people in bed…which, apart from one snoring neighbour, I have not yet been subject to, for which I give thanks. But there’s also lots of other sounds: sounds of pipes, windows, the creaking of the building, cars, cleaners, air-conditioning. Every place is a new world, it smells new and strange, and sounds new and strange.

It’s all about the sky.

2010-04-22T16:26:42Z

One of the great and rather unexpected delights of this tour so far has been the sky. Particularly when we are driving from place to place, which is when we see a lot of it. It is so big and so beautiful. I don’t know whether it is the time of year, or luck, or just because I live in the city, but almost every time we do a long drive the sky and the clouds have been totally magnificent. We have seen storms approaching, quite a bit of rain, rainbows, sun showers, sunsets and all sorts of wild and amazing cloud formations and the most incredible combinations and shades of blue, indigo, violet, lavender, cream, white, grey, pink, rose, and many many others. It’s been fantastic.

Last week we were in Gippsland: Warrigal, Traralgon, Wonthaggi and Ringwood. One of the highlights was arriving in Wonthaggi at about 11.30am on a balmy Friday and then discovering the beach and a man-altered rock pool at Cape Paterson, which is about 10 mins out of Wonthaggi. We raced back to the motel, grabbed bathers and some lunch and then spent a wonderful couple of hours at the beach, swimming, playing and walking. The landscape is amazing there, quite wild and rugged, with cliffs and almost black rocks, and a steeply shelving beach which the waves pounded on, but there is also a more sheltered bay and the pool, and it was really quite warm, so very easy to while away the warm afternoon there.

It was especially nice for me because I hadn’t particularly enjoyed Traralgon: the motel wasn’t great and I felt a bit stuck, I couldn’t really find a way out of the feeling of a small, and somewhat unprepossessing, town even though I went out and had a swim, which definitely helped. So to get out of the motel early in Wonthaggi and see such beautiful landscape was fabulous. In fact, Wonthaggi, together with Bendigo, is my favourite town we have visited so far. It has a lovely feel to it. Laid back and easy, but also somehow open. I felt like I could live there. I don’t know, of course, if I actually could, but it felt possible, whereas living in Traralgon definitely did not feel possible!

This week, (Mooroopna, Swan Hill, and Benalla so far) we have had a gorgeous drive from Shepparton to Swan Hill, and then the bonus of a hotel up-grade because there was an error in the bookings…(thankyou very much!) We were in the Best Western Resort, which had an indoor and outdoor pool, nice light and clean rooms, a sauna, spa, gym and table tennis table. It was a lot of fun. I also squeezed in a beautiful two hour walk along the banks of the Murray, and saw lots of birds and large, happy trees. The river had SOME water in it, although not heaps because a lot has gone out down the irrigation channels, but that has made everyone very happy! Not so the locusts, which due to the unseasonably warm weather are in large numbers. Apparently this does not bode well for the Spring, because they lay their eggs now, the lie dormant and then spring out in Spring, all springy, and STARVING. They can eat a crop in a day.

Claire, our stage manager, filled my acting week with joy when she sorted out Ruth’s pills into colours (Ruth is my character and at a certain point in the play she distributes medication to the rest of the inmates of the asylum.) They looked so pretty in the pill-box, that Ruth has had a smile on her face all week. (Except when Doug is hassling her of course.)

One last thing I am just loving and really appreciating is the hospitality shown to us by various venues. For the most part the staff at the venues are really helpful, happy to see us, and very welcoming. Sometime there is a coffee/tea/biscuit station set up backstage, often we are offered drinks after the show, and we have even been given a box of Danish biscuits and last night we were given half a box of wine!!! It certainly makes us feel looked after and helps take the edge off the tiring nature of life on the road.

"Cosi" in the suburbs

2010-04-06T06:36:33Z

And so we arrive at the end of the first part of our tour…the suburbs of Melbourne and some. Over the past couple of weeks we have performed in Dandenong, Nunawading, St. Martins (South Yarra), Bendigo, Werribee, Moorabbin and Pakenham. Now we have a blessed break over Easter, and then we resume again, into regional Victoria. It’s like we’ve had a little taste of life on the road and now we have a rest, and then we begin in earnest. It has been fascinating, a bit confronting, and extremely interesting.

First, Dandenong. This was our first public outing of the play. Up until then we had been performing either just to Dennis, the director, or maybe to one or two of the producers. So we did a dress rehearsal in the lovely new Drum Theatre in Dandenong, to an audience of about 25, which was fantastic, they laughed a lot and were very responsive, so we got a TINY feel of what a real audience might feel like. But then the next night, our opening night, also in Dandenong, we had an audience of 550 people. This was astonishing and quite wonderful. I personally hadn’t played to an audience that big since I performed in the Playhouse in 1995, and I think some of the cast had never performed to an audience that size.

The fact that it was a full house was itself surprising given the nature of the place itself. On brief acquaintance Dandenong felt pretty bleak. The architecture was dull and not very pretty, and the main street is a four-lane highway. The barrenness was emphasised by the construction happening all along the main road, which meant it felt like there was NO life in the place, especially after 5pm. During the tech, I went to try and find a newspaper, (I didn’t find one…) to do get the crossword and the quiz, which has rapidly become one of our cast’s group activities. I ended up going into a horrible complex called The Plaza, in which I still couldn’t find a newsagency. I was in costume, Ruth’s bleak, brown clothes and as I walked past these two rather rough boys on of them said, “Oh yeah, I’d really like to FUCK that woman in the brown…” which made me feel quite uneasy and rather awful. I didn’t find a newsagency or a newspaper anywhere but in the end the VERY nice young man behind the bar in the theatre let me take the newspapers from the café, as well as making me a coffee when he really was actually closed. He was lovely. (This was, indeed, in marked contrast to the coffee maker at the café where we rehearsed, who was not a happy chappy. I was glad to see the end of HIM.)

One day I went out by train and Dandenong station is also very bleak. It’s not manned by any staff and the barriers were open for all to get through. It felt like a scary wasteland where it appeared that no-one gave a stuff what was going on. Near the station however is a strip of Indian restaurants and shops selling food and clothing and other imported stuff and I am sorry I didn’t get a chance to try out one of the Indian restaurants. They smelt fabulous. Clearly there is life in Dandenong, and a real interest in the arts, as was evidenced by our audience of 550, and I have heard that a new Aesop store has recently opened there and is going off, but it just wasn’t immediately apparent.

However, contrary to all expectations, the opening night with its full house was AMAZING. The audience LOVED the play, they completely got into it. We found out later that there were about 200 year 11 and 12 students because Cosi is on the school syllabus this year) and the rest were adults. They laughed, they cheered, they sighed, they clapped. The energy and excitement in the theatre was intoxicating, and it was so incredible to be in a theatre with that level of enthusiasm and joy. It was a gift. Denis, the director came back to the dressing rooms after the show and he had tears in his eyes! He said that he hadn’t experienced a night in the theatre like that for a long time, and then Nava, one of the producers came back and said it was like being at a rock concert. They were so excited and so proud. It was fantastic. For us it was wonderful to finally get reactions, and lots of them, to what we were doing on stage, to what we’d been working on for the previous five weeks in rehearsal.

The next few performances were at Nunawading. It felt weird going to new theatre for the first time, especially because we’d been at Dandenong all week and also because we’d had such a great show. But Nunawading turned out to be really lovely. The staff were fabulous and very interested in the show and welcomed us like kings and queens. There were chips, chocolates and tea and coffee and water in the dressing room! And a free drink at the bar afterwards. It was gorgeous hospitality, and made the transition to being on the road a lot easier. Also there was a ballet studio there, backstage of the theatre. It was fabulous to warm up in. The performances at Nunawading went really well, and the audiences seemed very happy. The only one who was not really happy was our cast dog, Jack, who belongs to Claire our stage manager, but who we have all taken to our hearts. He just couldn’t settle. We figured the theatre was probably haunted (as they mostly are) by someone who didn’t like dogs.

Then, at the beginning of the following week, we had our second opening night at St. Martins in South Yarra. Lots of us had friends, family and agents coming. It was a little bit weird at first being there, we were all still getting used to the whole new theatre thing. There is a different shape, space, feel and acoustic in every new theatre, as well as a whole new backstage and dressing room set up and it can be quite disorienting. But this second opening night also went really well. People laughed a lot but also seemed to appreciate the subtleties of the performance and the characters. It was really exciting and the foyer was abuzz afterwards. Then we had a series of matinees at St. Martins. These were great for getting the sense of the difference between performing to a mix of kids and adults and then just kids. My character Ruth, seems to be appreciated more when there is a mix of kids and adults. My final image from St. Martins is from the dressing rooms where the laminate on the bench tops had this groovy 50’s black and white pattern of aborigines.

Next we travelled to Bendigo, where we stayed two nights and did three shows. The first taste of life on the road. We travel in two Tarragos, four of us in each. The set and crew go separately in a big truck. It was really lovely to see trees and hills and grass and sky. And, while the countryside was not luscious, it was quite green in parts and didn’t looked parched. We arrived sometime in the early afternoon and settled into our accommodation which were serviced apartments and very nice. There was a pool! The theatre was really beautiful, a grand building with columns out the front. Apparently it had originally belonged to the Masons. It had been renovated and restored and was really gorgeous. It was painted a beautiful red colour inside. It kind of glowed. There was a lot of backstage space which was a relief, it always makes all the costume changes and backstage business much easier to handle, although I did have a minor disaster with my last quick change. I have to change from my elaborate Cosi Fan Tutte costume into my ordinary Ruth clothes in about one minute. I have Claire to help me but it is still very quick. I have to change clothes AND take off all my makeup. I have these pretty green glistening beads which I wear for my Cosi Fan Tutte costume and which I like to wear on top of Ruth’s ordinary clothes in her final scene because it is a little sign of the changes that are taking place for her on account of having been involved in Cosi Fan Tutte. On the second night in Bendigo as I took my beads off and put them on the floor ready to put on again once I had Ruth’s day clothes on, I heard a weird sound and they had fallen down a little hole in the floor and were nowhere to be seen! Claire and I looked at each other aghast. She opened up the hole…it was a little trap door and there were the beads glinting up at us from about six feet below. No beads for Ruth’s final scene that night! Luckily they were able to rescue them when they did the bump out and apparently Jack the dog enjoyed wearing them for a few hours!

We were also treated to wonderful hospitality in Bendigo. After the first show (in which we got our first standing ovation!) we were invited to have drinks at a little café/bar next to the theatre called the Basement, which was really lovely, then the following afternoon, following the matinee, we had an excellent lunch at a place down the road from the theatre called Wine Bank. We went back there after the evening show because it had a great atmosphere, nice feed, great wine, good coffee and lovely people.

Bendigo is a very beautiful town. There is a lot of gorgeous period architecture and also some really fantastic contemporary buildings, like the Bendigo Bank building (BNV Architecture and Gray Puksand) and the new police station. There is a fabulous art gallery, a contemporary art gallery and even the swimming pool had a beautiful aspect and was fabulous to swim in. I think this really affects one’s state of mind and being. I felt really comfortable and happy there, excited about what we would find next.

And as it happened what we found next was brilliant. Jacob Allen, one of the actors in the show, has a wine wholesaling business and so he contacted one of his mates and thus the next day, on our way from Bendigo to Werribee, we stopped off at Bress Winery in Heathcote and were treated to a hilarious and very informative tour of the winery and the wine (in all stages of preparation) by the head Winemaker and Proprietor, Adam Marks. The wine was fabulous but Adam was even more fabulous, very funny, a real raconteur and an excellent host. So, a couple of hours later, with lots of sips of wine in our bellies and bottles in the car boots, we continued the trip down to Werribee.

How could the Werribee mall measure up? It didn’t. And things in general felt a bit bleak for a few hours, even in the theatre, which was really cold and barren in a sort of new, institutional way. Fortunately we had a reasonably large and very appreciative audience, and the added bonus of having finished a long week and being able to go home to our own beds for a couple of days rest.

Then we went to Moorabbin. It was crazy. We squeezed our set (minus a good couple of feet either side and from the front of the playing space!) and ourselves (masses of costumes, props and actors) into a tiny theatre, which sat about 97 people. It felt like a living room compared to what we’d been performing in. We had to spend a solid hour and a half in the theatre working out new blocking to accommodate the new space, which was not only smaller, but also a bit wider. But it was all worth it. The audience was packed, mainly with adults, and it went off, they loved it. I actually really enjoyed being able to be small and quiet for once, not having to really project, and knowing that all the detailed work would be seen by all the audience. Also Denis Moore, our director, came to see the show for the last time. It was great to get his feedback after a week or so of being on our own. Now it feels right for us to embark on the next part of this crazy journey.

Our last show before Easter was in Pakenham. It was a long drive, felt far away from the city, and indeed is quite a beautiful place, nestled at the southern end of the Dandenongs. The theatre was new and rather lovely, a great design, and had lots of backstage space, which was fantastic. The show, although not packed, went well, but we had our first backstage drama. During the show, towards the end, Bessie Holland, who plays Cherry, tripped over as she was exiting and fell very heavily down the prompt side stairs. She was very shaken and badly hurt her hand, wrist, and shoulder. There was lots of adrenalin and a small amount of chaos backstage, we were all shocked and worried, but she was fabulous, as were Claire and Jacob Williams, our backstage crew, who helped her and steadied her. She was able to make it through to the end of the show but then had to be taken to casualty. It wasn’t a great end to the week, but at least it was then the Easter break. Hopefully we will all have rested and recovered and be ready to continue with our crazy Cosi.

rehearsing "Cosi"

2010-03-08T22:17:29Z

I love rehearsing.

One way of considering the process of rehearsal is that it is about moving the written work from the page to the stage. Naturally the process will be very different depending on what sort of piece it is, and the people involved.

For me, a performer, the work starts even before rehearsal, when you research the piece, the writer, and the ideas. This is a wonderful time, liberating and opening the mind and the imagination about the world of the piece, filling in the gaps, finding the back story of your character, and it is amazing how much of this early thinking and dreaming finds its way into the finished work. This work is kind of like the cushion on which the work floats, on which all of the creative work is supported. There was a wonderful interview with Yvonne Kenny on Classic fm recently in which, amongst other things, she spoke of the work she does to prepare a character, and how pleasurable this process can be. She is very eloquent, and obviously still very excited by her work. It’s an inspiring interview.

So I am in the midst of rehearsing “Cosi” by Louis Nowra. My preparation has included reading other plays by Louis Nowra; two autobiographies; some essays by him; which were collected in a book called “Chihuahua’s, Women and Me,” which is a great read; seeing the film version of “Cosi”; watching a film version of “Cosi Fan Tutte” by Mozart, listening to the opera “Cosi Fan Tutte” by Mozart and studying the libretto; reading about Obsessive Compulsive Disorder; watching films about psychiatric institutions; reading about psychiatric institutions; speaking to specialists; reading about the Vietnam War; and then other bits and pieces relevant to the world of the play and the world of my character. It’s been fascinating and fun, as usual.

This process of reading and researching continues throughout the formal rehearsal period, which is when we “get on the floor”, that is, start rehearsing on our feet in a rehearsal room, finding the physicality of our characters, building the inner life of the characters, and discovering and learning the “blocking”, which is where the characters move on the set. It’s a combination of discussion, and work on our feet, trying things out, finding things, rejecting them…sort of like assembling a jigsaw puzzle, both individually and collectively. In this case we have the incredible luxury of five weeks full time rehearsal. This is because “Cosi” is a fairly substantial play, around two hours long, and there are 11 characters being played by 8 actors. It’s an ensemble piece, which means that for a lot of the time many, if not all, of us are on stage together, which requires a lot of careful orchestration. Also it is a comedy, so there is comedic business and quite a lot of props. All in all, a big piece.

We are just starting week five and are in a great place, having done our first full run though of the whole play at the end of last week “off the book”, (that is with lines learnt), and with most props, costumes, costume changes and set changes. Therefore this week, week five, we’ll do one or two runs each day, and some detailed work on any scenes or sections which feel sticky or aren’t working properly either internally or externally. At the beginning of next week, production week, we’ll transfer from the rehearsal room to the theatre, and will place all our work into the real set, and lights and sound will be added.

We play in a few different theatres around Melbourne and then the whole shebang gets loaded into a truck and we make our way throughout Victoria and then to Tasmania, New South Wales, Queensland, Northern Territory and Western Australia!

It’s been wonderful so far, and is just about to get even more interesting…

playing in nyc (two)

2009-11-08T03:49:42Z

Highlight 1: DIA Beacon: we went out of Manhattan on a train which runs along the Hudson. Even the train trip was beautiful because you are travelling right along the edge of the water and all you can see is this vast, beautiful water and then a large escarpment on the far side, hills, really, covered in trees starting to turn with the Autumn. Then you walk to the gallery from the station. The gallery, which opened to the public in 2003, occupies a former box-printing facility built in 1929 and it has “240,000 square feet of exhibition space illuminated by natural light.” Yes, it is huge, and also incredibly beautiful. So much money, vision and energy have gone into it. Artist Robert Irwin has designed the gardens which surround the gallery, and they too are amazing. Then, there is the art! I was particularly transported and delighted by the works by Richard Serra, in particular one absolutely enormous room, (the former railway depot for the building) in which four of Serra’s massive torqued steel ellipses are on display. There is also a wonderful collection of sculptures by Louise Bourgeoise, including one of her spiders, which are on display in a slightly secluded “attic” space lit only by natural light. These works, and the experience of them in the space, were completely compelling. I also particularly enjoyed the constructions made from string by the artist Fred Sandback, whose work I have not seen before. They were wonderful, and ideal for the vastness of the space. The whole project is utterly magnificent, and is a classic example of the truly amazing energy, drive and commitment of many Americans in relation to art and culture.

Highlight 2: Two home-cooked meals: the first at our friend Maria Porter’s house. She and her gorgeous family invited us to come out to their place in upstate New York and have a meal, so four of us caught the train up there…again, along the gorgeous Hudson, and then we went for a walk in a park, something like Hampstead Heath in feel, donated to the county by the Rockefeller family, and then we had a delicious meal and provocative dinner-table conversation. Another night Jacob and Sarah had us all around to their apartment and we had a feast with the centrepieces being roasted vegies and mind-blowingly good ice-cream.

Now to other important discoveries: Eating: taim falafel and smoothie bar, 222 Waverly place at 7th avenue. The best falafels I think I have ever eaten. The anyway bar, E 2nd, between 2nd and 3rd avenues. They make their own vodka infusions and the lychee martini rivals the lychee martini at double happiness in Melbourne. They also make amazing wild mushroom pelmeni. Rice, a wonderful restaurant at the top of Elizabeth st. near Bleeker. Excellent, fresh, healthy food and many varieties of delicious rice to eat it with.

Shopping: Muji, Unico, Strand books

Architecture: well, just everything really, but particularly the old tenement buildings in the Lower East, the New Museum on Bowery, the old bank building on Bowery, the lofts and cobbles in Soho, the Rockefeller building.

Walking: the utter pleasure of walking everywhere.

Curiosities: Bottom-enhancing undies.

playing in nyc (one)

2009-11-04T05:48:04Z

So yes, late on the Wednesday afternoon, as we were doing the technical rehearsal for the show, (the show was opening the next night, Thursday) a critical piece of the set broke. It was one of the hinges of the mirror. At first I was not deeply concerned because this bit had broken before and had been able to be fixed, but as time went on it seemed clear that it was broken and it was quite seriously broken, and that if it was not fixed then we were in trouble. (The play is set on a dressing table, and during the course of the play we put the mirror of the dressing table in place and then we turn the mirror on its hinges, quite furiously, and then in the last part of the play the mirror needs to be held in place so the audience gets images of us in the mirror.) Sarah phoned the wonderful Eduardo, who had helped us out already with a new string for Rhoda, my puppet, whose leg string had broken, and he came into the theatre to see what he could do. He suggested glueing the piece together, or, failing that, we could weld it on the weekend when his friend could do it for us. So Sarah got the glue and glued the hinge and set it to dry overnight.

The next morning we got into the theatre at about 11am. We had an appointment with the photographer at 12noon, to do a dress rehearsal of the play and for him to take photographs. But the glue had not worked and the set was still broken and we could not proceed. Not only could we not proceed but if it does not get fixed we will not be able to actually do the play on opening night. Panic, worry, upset…not hysteria…but certainly fear. It’s New York! Eduardo came over again to help and he got La Mama’s head technician, Mark, into the theatre to help us. Mark listened, looked, thought, and took the parts away, saying he thinks he’ll be able to do something. The photographer came at 12, there was still no set, so we couldn’t do the dress rehearsal, but he took some photos. THEN at about 1pm, Mark came back, and just like that the mirror was all fixed! And what did he fix it with? Bolts that hold the toilet seat to the toilet! Apparently he had looked at the hinge and had thought…I know this, this is reminding me of something…I have seen this…and then he went to the hardware shop and that’s what they were!

So, at last it was fixed, everything was ready and at 5pm we did a dress rehearsal of the play. We had a little rest, and then, we opened. The opening night performance went well. The audience was very appreciative and very supportive and afterwards we got some very lovely feedback. Puppets are so magical…if it is working they really transport the audience, and that is what seemed to happen…the audience were delighted and amused and then taken by surprise…so much stuff comes out of the dresser. The world of the play is transformed from a delicate, controlled, formal space into a wild, chaotic, messy space. And the audience, every night, is coming on that journey with us. We’ve done four shows now and they’ve all been different, of course, but in each the play works and the audience comes for the ride. It is satisfying and really, really fun.

aqp in nyc

2009-10-31T04:36:15Z

Of course you know it’s all about the food. (And the culture, and the idiom, and the shopping.) Especially in production week, when we are working frantically to get our production of A Quarreling Pair ready for its New York debut. And let me tell you we have eaten very, very well. I mean we are staying in the East Village (4th St. between 2nd and Bowery)…the perfect place to eat well. So, on the first night our hosts here from the New York La MaMa, Denise and Federico, took us to a fabulous restaurant called The Organic Grill on First Avenue, between 5th and 6th. I had this grilled tofu sandwich thing, which was delicious. It had been pouring with rain since the moment we’d got off the plane, but that didn’t deter us…in fact it was probably a perfect antidote to the stale air we had been breathing for the previous thirty hours in transit. (Although I must just add here that we flew Qantas and were MIRACULOUSLY upgraded to Premium Economy seats on the Sydney/Los Angeles leg of the flight…the thirteen hour bit…and it made a huge difference and was so comfortable and amazing!)

The next day was Sunday, which was a recovery day so we went to the Wholefoods market on East Houston and bought lots of supplies ready for breakfasts and lunches for the week ahead when we would be spending pretty much all day in the theatre. We wandered through a gorgeous neighbourhood garden which has been lovingly constructed on a narrow site perched on East Houston. But once you’re inside you’d never know it was on a busy road…it was magic. Then Denise and Federico met us and took us to have coffee at Think Coffee on Bowery, just around the corner from the theatre. The coffee was great and it is a lovely place. (I went back there early one morning and took shelter while I waited for the day to warm up and wake up. I had risen early to call home and when I returned to my building found the front door blocked by a bike, some gear and two bodies wrapped tightly and cosily in their blankets…I had used another door to get out but couldn’t get back in that way…it was early and cold and I really couldn’t bear to disturb them so took myself round the corner to Think Coffee. I had a toasted raisin bagel and an excellent latte which the barista drew a Halloween pumpkin face on…pretty cool!)

That afternoon we saw the puppet show which preceded us at La MaMa in this mini festival of puppetry we are part of. It was an interpretation of Women of Troy, which had been intertwined with stories of inspiring contemporary women activists. I found it quite problematic, mainly because I didn’t really understand why they had chosen to tell this story with puppets and not with actors, and then also because I didn’t feel the interweaving of the stories was very skilful or did any of the stories much justice…even though they remained very interesting stories in themselves. Nonetheless is was great to get a sense of La MaMa and the context in which we were going to be working. That night we ate minestrone which I cooked on one hot plate upstairs in our little kitchen, then went to see a band play in Brooklyn at a cool space with pools of water called Galapagos.

On Monday we started work in our theatre, which is the first floor theatre at La MaMa. I’m pretty sure it is the original theatre although they now have a number of other spaces. We met Jack, our tech and lighting operator, and Mark, who is the head technician, and started work putting up lights, patching them and doing a rough focus.

The set of A Quarreling Pair consists of a dressing table with a mirror and side mirrors, a stool, and a bramble which hovers over everything like a cloud of twisted thoughts. Jacob Williams, who is the partner of Sarah Kriegler, the other performer in the play, has done an utterly amazing job of reconstructing the set, exactly like the original, except in a form that can be totally dismantled and packed into a suitcase. I know!! We carried the whole set and the props with us in our luggage! The bramble, however, does not fit into a suitcase…and could have presented difficulties with customs, so we had a frame for the bramble, but not the actual bramble. So while the lights were being rigged Cynthia Troup, one of the writers of A Quarreling Pair, and Margaret Cameron, the director, went on a hunt for materials to make a bramble…and after a lot of effort and a run-in with a New York cabbie who threatened Cynthia with the police, discovered the flower district and a lovely wholesale florist and some willow and this twisty stuff called walking stick which Sarah then made into a beautiful bramble. I can’t really remember what I did but I’m sure I was useful.

That evening David Young, the Artistic Director of Aphids (the company producing the show) arrived from Melbourne, and so we met up with some other friends and supporters of Aphids who happen to be in New York, Eugene Schlusser and Margaret Leggatt, and Ian Britain, and we all went off to John’s Restaurant on East 12th St. and had a fabulous old school Italian meal. The waiter was wonderful and so was the food. I ate a kind of home-made cannelloni-type dish filled with the softest, most delicate ricotta in the world, and topped with sweet mozzarella and napoli…oh it was heavenly. After that we all needed to walk, so even though it was after 11pm we set off looking for gelati, but the shop was closed so we ended up at Café Gitane in Mott St. and had a bottle of Sauternes and some Lillet. Quote of the day from the waiter at John’s who wasn't able to remember something, “I’m spacing the name of it.”

On Tuesday and Wednesday we continued to plot lights and sound and started to run the play. (All this still suffering from jet lag…please see previous post for an example of my state of mind.) Amongst this we managed another visit to The Organic Grill, a couple of samplings of pierogi (the East Village has a Polish thing going on...as well as everything else), a fantastic vegan meal at Angelika on East 12th and, at 7pm, a very interesting and thought-provoking piece of theatre entitled Idiot Savant, directed by Richard Foreman of the Ontological-Hysteric Theatre Company, and featuring Willem Defoe in the title role. I’ll probably write more about Idiot Savant later. It was the first piece of Richard Foreman’s I have seen and I really enjoyed it, unlike some other members of the audience. Quote of the day from another woman in the audience, “Well I was having a great night until 7 o’clock.”

Then came Thursday, yesterday, the day A Quarreling Pair made its debut in New York City. It went really well…but the full story will have to wait…

jed(i)-lag

2009-10-27T03:02:58Z

g’night she had hands like a duck bridges were everywhere, they stretched in all directions it was hot then it was cold then it was raining it was spring and then it was autumn I am trying to get downtown not uptown a man hassles me on the subway upside down I don’t need help I say please I don’t need help! it’s a dream it’s new york it’s jetlag it’s so hot it is not permitted to make minestrone the fire department will come great big rats will come we are not allowed to drink the demons will come it’s halloween.

They could get me in my brand spanking new Martha Graham sheets that would be Stewart Martha Stewart sheets we got our breakfast option in premium economy although the people in row 36 didn’t there was room to look out the window and sleep I dream of minestrone take a right just up there on the left man! oh miss, I mean miss he had eyes like a ferret forty different types of yoghurt and easy cheese no mess no fuss no fire department.

In my dream I am suffocating or was it merely snoring it’s really hot in here we see a band with pheramones definitely one of the best theremin players in the world Pamela x ray that pig nothing to see except a baby hole and a patched ear puppetry can be dodgy the world over look it’s not really a puppet play more a piece of theatre with puppets? oh it's another day some coffeee and some bagels and some minestrone later it's a jedi-day. g’day.