*two new, but now very common, words
My summer break (in itself a very fraught and difficult time with major bushfires here in Australia) ended on January 28th with rehearsals for the second play in Red Stitch’s 2020 season, ‘Single Ladies’ by Michele Lee, directed by Bagryana Popov and with Andrea Swifte, Jem Lai and myself in the cast.
As we rehearsed during February, there were more and more reports in the media of a terrible virus which had hit China, and was creating a crisis within their health system. I think I really started to take notice when images began to be shown of patients lying in hospital corridors and nurses and doctors breaking down. Then the virus spread to Iran and Italy, and the same footage was being shown: desperately upset doctors and nurses, terribly ill people falling over in the street, dead bodies stored in makeshift morgues, massive amounts of coffins and graves…and then there were the stats. Huge numbers beginning to emerge of people who had contracted the virus, and those who had died from it. It was becoming clearer and clearer that this virus was not going to be contained to simply a few countries, and that it was having a huge impact wherever it was spreading.
Production week for our play began on March 2nd. Things proceeded more or less as usual during this week, but by the end of the week, concern in Australia over the virus was mounting, and various authorities were starting to publicly issue warnings and advise caution. I was very concerned. We began to increase cleaning and use of hand sanitiser at the theatre and there were discussions with the Artistic Director and General Manager about appropriate procedures to protect our audiences.
The momentum of the show, however, was building towards the first preview, which was on March 11th, and opening night on March 18th. It’s an accumulation of energy and focus which gathers slowly underneath a theatrical work, from the moment the play is programmed in a season, through the beginnings of rehearsals, it builds towards opening night and then flows out through the performance season of the work. This momentum is an important part of the process of making work, and thus is, even in a small theatre like ours, complicated to interrupt, disrupt. Not quite as difficult as turning a large ship (or a cruise ship??) around, but a little like that.
So, we continued into our previews: Wednesday March 11th until Sunday March 15th. However by Friday March 13th, it was pretty clear that it was no longer very safe for our audiences to come to our little theatre, nor for us to continue to perform. And so on Tuesday March 17th the final preview, the opening night and the rest of the season were cancelled.
And the big shut down began. Schools and most businesses in Victoria and all over Australia were closing up, and people ordered to stay at home, and if possible, to work from home.
I had work on a talking book scheduled that week, so I completed that book, and it was clear to me that there was a good chance that work on talking books might continue. The recording booth is an isolated environment after all, and as long as it’s properly cleaned, then there is minimal risk. Thus I was in the very fortunate position of not needing to stress too much about finances, and also my partner, being a psychologist, was continuing to work.
So for me, the first few weeks of lockdown were relatively ok. As we had made the transition from day rehearsals to night performances, I was already geared to having the days more or less free, and although I was sorry not to be performing the play, particularly as the previews had gone well, and there was a strange feeling of suspension, I was glad that we hadn’t actually opened, because there was, and still is in fact, a good chance that the play would be able to restart at some point, have an opening night and play out the season…albeit delayed for many months.
So, I caught up on sleep, caught up on chores, and continued more or less as I had planned, except without performing at night. I began a couple of routines: yoga every day, usually with Adriene, as it was no longer possible to attend my regular classes at the yoga studio, walks in the afternoon, and regular zoom meetings with the Red Stitch Ensemble, and with a director to do text analysis on a play which was going to be performed in 2020 but which will now be performed in 2021. All of which worked well for a while to give structure and some sense of purpose.
But after about three weeks I began to slump, was feeling unstable, sad, and anxious. And many friends, especially those in the decimated arts industry, were reporting the same sorts of feelings. I reflected upon how much my work gives my life purpose and meaning. And I was aware of how this peculiar (and ‘uncanny’) state of ‘iso’ left me vulnerable to my psychological dark spots…I felt my ‘demons’ floating round, pouncing here and there, destabilising, prodding, causing ripples. I had also lost purpose, I realised, due to the relatively recent death of my mother, for whom I had been actively providing a great deal of care for five years. Her death had destabilised me in a very broad sense, both psychologically as well as materially, left me feeling vulnerable, alone and a little lost. Iso, then, was a clear reminder that working is, for me, a way of keeping myself stable and grounded.
And then, the Australia Council funding decisions were announced, and my beloved La Mama, as well as a number of other hugely important grassroots companies, lost their triennial funding.
It was such a blow. It felt personal. It felt ideological.
And indeed I still think it is. All of those things. Our current conservative government is not simply disinterested in non-mainstream culture, (we have known that for some time now) but more actively (although strategically operating more passively and at arms length) attempting to inhibit and even silence dissenting, alternative, objecting voices. Witness the on-going cuts to one of our most precious cultural institutions, the ABC. Witness the disinterest in extending JobKeeper payments to include the hundreds of thousands of workers in the arts, despite petitioning, despite evidence. Thrown to the wolves along with migrant workers and foreign students.
We are fortunate that here, still, in Australia, there is still wealth. We are a wealthy country. And a very substantial number of citizens have made donations to arts companies and arts workers, from very small to extremely large, from the price of a theatre ticket to the price of a large house. Which is extremely heartening. And I feel fortunate to live in Melbourne, where the arts are actively supported and appreciated, and in Victoria, where the current Labor government has been proactive in its support of cultural institutions and their workers.
A few more stats, from Alison Croggon’s excellent piece in Witness:
‘According to the Department of Communications and the Arts, cultural and creative activity contributed $111 billion to the economy in 2016–17, with the arts alone furnishing $4.6 billion (2015 Australia Council figures). By the gross value added metric – a different measure from the gross domestic product – the contribution of cultural and creative industries to the economy in 2016–17 was $86 billion, or 5.2 per cent (Australian Bureau of Statistics). That’s almost twice the contribution of agriculture, fishing and forestry ($48 billion), and more than half that of the mining industry ($148 billion in 2017–18). Yet, cultural spending represents just 0.5 per cent of the federal Budget – approximately $2.6 billion, which includes funding for the ABC, SBS, galleries, archives, films, museums and libraries, as well as the beleaguered Australia Council.
For comparison, according to a study by the International Monetary Fund released in May this year, subsidies to the Australian fossil-fuel industry alone amount to $29 billion a year.’
I roused myself. I applied for a grant for a new piece of fiction I’m writing. I contacted the talking book company and auditioned for two different talking books. There was a hiatus of a couple of weeks. I read some beautiful words on the internet about how when you are lost or down, begin to clean, clean the corners of your own house. So I began. And did a lot of cleaning, and a lot of throwing things away.
And then all of a sudden, things landed. I got the grant, well a part of the grant…sigh. I received a generous payment for a short story. And I was contracted to read seven talking books in five weeks. Three from publishers in the US. Nice.
And the shape of time immediately changed. Getting up at 6am, doing yoga, making lunch, driving to the studio, recording all day, coming home, then prepping the next book in the evenings and weekends. Working on accents: Glasgow, Dublin, Midlands, Polish, Japanese, Chinese, Orkney, Manchurian…as well as Aboriginal text and Old English text. Working out whether the expression is you’ve got another thing coming, or you’ve got another think coming…stuff like that.
I am very grateful for the grants and the work. Both financially and psychologically. I love doing my work. The relentless nature of the last four weeks has been challenging, but again, I am very used to periods of calm followed by periods of frenetic activity.
I haven’t got my literal or metaphorical houses as clean or ordered as I would have liked, but there’s still time. Theatres here are not opening yet (although interestingly they have remained open in places like South Korea through almost the entire duration of the pandemic) so I’m hoping for a few more months of cleaning, thinking and writing. I have enjoyed many aspects of this simpler, (mostly) calmer life, and this is one of the things which somehow, I would like to retain from this time. I’m not so sure about this concept of a ‘new normal’ but I feel that this pandemic has been an ‘event’ as defined by Badiou, and I am hoping for more that is new rather than that which is normal. Knowing as I say this, that the new is often, and may also be this time, no better than the old.
I’m worried. I’m worried for the environment, I’m worried for the growing numbers of people around the world who are suffering economically, who have nothing to eat, no job, no shelter, no water, no clean air. These realities are the greatest challenge. The perspective these realities throw on one’s purpose, one’s life, on what kind of new can be, should be, built.