Early June – before Sydney’s current Covid restrictions came into play – 7-ON’s latest publication was launched by Louise Gough at Gleebooks. With an introduction by Lee Lewis, Sharp Darts: Chamber Plays by 7-ON is a collection of fifteen short scripts reflecting our very different voices. You can buy the book through the Currency website, via Australian Plays Transform, or order it from your local bricks-and-mortar bookshop.
For me this has been a period of gathering. I’ve been setting up projects that will begin in the next six months, and as is the way of these things I can’t talk about them yet. But they cover a range from poetry to prose to theatre to film so a tad of multi-tasking coming up. And I’m happy and excited about all of them, so ... in these tricky old times, I’ll take that as a positive.
One publication in the immediate future: Five Senses Education has just released The Red Cross Letters, a play of mine from 2016. I’ve also been publishing a bit in Signal House a literary e-magazine which just gets better and better (Listen here to Luke Mullins reading three of Frank Prewett’s poems in an interview with author Joy Porter). And … with my co-conspirator, yoga teacher and Vedic chant expert Sally Riddell, I had to call off our May retreat in the Flinders Ranges due to a lightning lockdown at the wrong moment in Perth where Sally lives. But we have re-scheduled for May next year at a better venue and with a tighter program, so all to the good really. And I’ve been following up on past writing efforts, which are stubbornly refusing to move.
The last two points are possibly relevant to other writers. In this punishing environment for artists and culture, we must all learn to diversify and multiply our entrepreneurial skills to survive. I can see I’m lucky here. Not everybody has an impressive health and spiritual practices person in their back pocket to pursue a different and interesting ‘other direction’. But I’m sure there are other choices for others of you that reflect this dynamic. And the other question – when to relinquish a project you are certain has merit because it’s having difficulty getting traction? When does self-believe and tenacity become a waste of one’s good time when after all the potential for narrative is endless? I really don’t know.
My very last point has little to do with writing but much to do with surviving. The thing that has helped me more than anything else during the Covid tyranny has been the natural world. That’s a bit terrifying given it’s under such threat. But this morning I saw a brown bittern sneaking daintily through the scrub on Kangaroo Island. I’ve never seen one of them ever in my life before and, given KI’s losses over the past year, a double cause for gladness; and last night I saw a bold red moon sinking over the silky night-black sea. Thanks, world.
Since March I have been glued to my desk working on a big commercial musical that is still under wraps. More on that anon, but I can say it’s been a great joy working with a wonderful director and producing team.
While that’s taking the lion’s share of my attention, other projects have been humming along. Last month, NIDA mounted a beautiful production of a play that is very close to my heart, Perfect Stranger, directed by Kate Champion and featuring the stars of tomorrow, both onstage and backstage. It was the first time I’ve seen it, though commissioned by Yale Rep 14 years ago! Fitting, for a play that is all about time. An inspired design solution was to put the audience on a revolve, so that the action was always hurtling towards or receding from us, mirroring the way time feels as one gets older.
In April, City Recital Hall presented Saint-Saëns’ Carnival of the Animals, for which I wrote new verses. Benita Collings performed them with pianists Tamara-Anna Cislowska and Bernadette Harvey.
My Opal card was kept busy with trips to Parramatta for two creative developments. First, Alphabetical Sydney: All Aboard! a family musical based on the picture book I made with illustrator Antonia Pesenti (co-designing with Isla Shaw). Lots of play with director Liesel Badorrek, puppeteer Alice Osborne, performers Justine Clarke and Luke Escombe, and Zahra Stanton and Salina Myat playing Greta Gertler Gold’s music. I returned for The Colour Gold, a devised work directed by Darren Yap with dancers Raghav Handa and Victor Zarallo Muñoz, composer Nick Ng, and actor Nicholas Hope. Thank you respectively, Critical Stages and National Theatre of Parramatta.
I taught just one class, but it was a good one, for the Hunter Writers’ Centre in Newcastle. And I was delighted to be a judge for the Wilderness Society’s Environment Award for Children’s Literature: look out for a slew of gorgeous picture books grappling with climate change.
Looping back to musicals, last month composer Greta Gertler Gold and I secured the music theatre rights to Picnic at Hanging Rock. We are beyond excited, and while there won’t be a panpipe within cooee, the spirit of the book will be honoured.
I’m writing this in the middle of the latest Sydney lockdown which caused the cancellation of the entire season of my new play Prevail. Part of Morning Star, a multi-writer performance produced by subtlenuance, this piece joins Jump For Jordan and Stella Started It on my list of COVID-cancelled shows. The fact that Susie Lindeman’s performance in Prevail was leaning towards astonishing makes it just that much more terrible … Also stopped in its tracks was Performing Redress, my July keynote address to the Society of Women Writers at the State Library. The event has been bumped to December.
The pandemic has also kept my Hearing co-writer Felix Cross in London longer than he’d planned, and the development of this commission from ATYP has been protracted as a result. His August return, and our long-awaited workshop, is cautiously anticipated. Similarly, collaborating with Perth-based Trish Ridsdale on my one woman show Ridsdale was stalled by WA’s controlled border. In May, we managed to meet face to face – essential for this project – and will grab these opportunities when her now less frequent business trips to Sydney allow.
In March, I was one of eight Darlinghurst Theatre Company 2020 Season artists invited to record a podcast with a veteran creative nominated by the Actor's Benevolent Fund. It was a joy to discuss the topics of survival, resilience and life in the theatre with the dynamic and whip-smart Zahra Newman. The Luminary Series podcasts should be up on their website soon.
Green Door Theatre Company has continued to support the development of the full length iteration of Stella Started It, and hosted a two day development in April with actors Zoe Carides, Deb Gallanos, and director Sophie Kelly. I can imagine it more wildly as a result of our time together.
In June, I worked with Nick Atkins, Producer, New Work at the Q Theatre, to develop the concept for a playwright-driven radio play / podcast / AI project called Express Service. I also collaborated with Brisbane composer Lynette Lancini to run a roundtable for the International Focusing Institute called Artists Who Focus where we facilitated a Zoom conversation with other artists who use the modality of Focusing in their practice.
Mid-winter now, I’m midway through teaching the Page to Stage playwriting course at the National Theatre of Parramatta, have marking to do before I wrap up my Scriptwriting course at Excelsia College, and am hunting for a Day Job to replace the one which evaporated due to – surprise, surprise – the pandemic.
Wow that first half of the year went quick.
Ok well first off … the PhD research and the work on the practice. The practice is a 6- part television narrative comedy and there may or may not be a lot of lived experience regarding monkeys. Yes monkeys. The kind I used to see in Penang, gnawing on my sister’s face, stealing the instant coffee from Girl Guide camps, scowling and creasing their wizened red foreheads as if they already knew what those pesky humans were capable of fucking up.
Damn you Cassandra-like monkeys but also bless you because you were joyous and frivolous and cheeky and actually the mascots of my childhood.
I directed a very teeny tiny play I wrote, in Newcastle for the MicroTheatre Festival which was extremely jolly fun and won a slew of prizes for acting, writing, directing and ehm ‘ensembling’. I have to say I like directing. I like the way it makes me think creatively, as a writer.
But as well (as a writer) I did a script development for my new play with awesome director and actors and dramaturg (all names redacted). And it was fab and led to many insights and also new writing, but sadly I’m not allowed to give any details yet. In the second half of the year there is a second script development also planned, depending of course on this horrible ever-changing virus.
And finally, the television series script I’m co-writing is moving along. It’s funny when you work your ring out on something and then it goes elsewhere and you are no longer working on it because other people are. It is, as they say, out of your hands. Cue anxiety and irritating questions texted (by me) to my agent. Who knows. Hmm …
A few posts back I wrote about the Catherine Wheel of Creativity, my thought being that working collaboratively on a creative outcome (like with 7-ON) enables one to work on individual projects.
But I now wonder if it works the other way too, so any creative outcome I achieve as an individual also benefits the 7-ON collaborative project.
It’s the kind of thing I need to ask a Penang based Cassandra-like monkey with an instant coffee addiction.
Here we are in lockdown again. Last year, the Parramatta season of Good With Maps didn’t happen because of Covid. This year it did. Yay! And then it toured to Tasmania.
With Siren Theatre Company and the Good With Maps team (Director Kate Gaul, Actor Jane Phegan, Sound Designer Nate Edmundson) I’ve been working on a new play/performance essay: The End of Winter. Our second development workshop in March (thank you, Critical Stages) culminated in a public reading.
Mrs C Private Detective is a nonfiction audio script I’m researching and writing for ABC RN. It’s about a woman who operated as a private detective in Brisbane in the early decades of the last century. It brings together two of my enduring interests—detective stories and investigating little-known and/or overlooked histories of women.
On the subject of history, I’m one of the judges for this year’s NSW Premier’s History Awards. (The 2021 judges are all listed on the Awards website, so I’m not revealing anything confidential here.) That has involved a massive amount of reading etc.
From Create NSW I received a small/quick response grant to develop a new audio-cum-live theatre script, Flying Saucers Over Fairfield. With fellow 7-ONer Donna as Dramaturg, work on this project will be happening in the second half of the year.
Also in the ‘to be developed’ pipeline, I have a suite of queer-themed projects across performance, poetry and prose. Too early to say much more about them.
The absolute writing highlight on my last 6 months was the launch of Sharp Darts.
Not just the fact that we were able to come together to create such a diverse work but the way we collaborated on the launch itself. Gleebooks was the perfect venue and their support was crucial to such an exciting evening. It was amazing to see so many people there and to experience the buzz of the night. And, of course, reading Vanessa’s hilarious play was a standout moment. Except for the fact that I couldn’t stop laughing—very unprofessional.
My other highlight was to finally find a path to publishing my first novel as an independent publisher in partnership with Broadcast Books. The next step is to settle on a title and a cover. Then it’s getting it into bookshops, online and out into the world at large. It’s a very personal story and one I hope resonates with readers. Stay tuned!
Oh … and I ‘spose I should mention that I had so much fun playing a grey nomad in Foxtel’s Mr Inbetween, even if I did meet a rather sticky end.
In the last six months I’m most thrilled that my eyesight was restored from the deepening fog of cataracts. I had two relatively quick procedures by excellent specialists. It’s left me gazing at the crystalline beauty of the world. I’m finding it gives some respite – meditative moments shoring me up against the cruelty currently engulfing the world.
Here’s one of my new paintings-in-progress since the eyes were fixed –
I’ve also been making more of my mysterious horses out of air-dried clay. Many have trotted off to pride of place on the desks of collectors. It brings me such joy they are much loved.
I’m also immersing myself in the figurative. It’s highly technical and tender as I consider each step of the prep and painting. Here’s one that is in progress -
Now onto the more mundane issues – I have had a number of projects this year that I so wanted support for but didn’t get the grant or the award or the whatever. Of course I will continue working on them, but my deepest desire to have that writer/theatre superstructure in place and to be a part of making something beautiful, dangerous and I hope profound. But these are strange times and it is chaos out there. I’ve spoken with literary managers and there’s such a backlog of scripts. So I think I can only do what I can, and must create in whatever way I can.
But there was a bright light in my writing adventures when subtlenuance picked up my short play The Family Name for their Morning Star multi-play project. The pitch was to present plays that are concerned with pernicious ideas touched with evil.
that, at first, seem so positive and helpful,
but ultimately just add to human misery … ’
Unfortunately, there were only two performances before season one of Morning Star was cancelled because of Covid. It must have been a heart-breaking decision when so much striving, excellence and energy had gone into it. I only hope that subtlenuance will recover and recoup their losses psychically and financially.
So that’s it from me. It’s raining outside. There are birds making a racket, maybe wondering what the hell is going on with the humans. It’s such a good question even if egocentric – ‘What the hell is going on with the humans?’ As artists we search …
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