What we did the first 6 months of 2023

CATH
My time has gone on such wild imaginings in this past half year. 

I’ve written the first draft of a large scale, large cast work for Kambala. It’s very visual, cinematic even, and will have a strong sonic component.  It’s been fascinating researching and writing this work. The first draft, though, only just scraped the surface of the world of the play, its characters and communities. 

But I had the pleasure of having the students at the Kambala read through the work. It doesn’t matter how experienced a writer you are it can be both terrifying and thrilling hearing that raw first draft. Thankfully the students dove into this strange vision and afterwards gave astute feedback and hummed with excitement. One of the students turned to me and said “It’s so cool. It’s just so cool”.  High praise indeed! However, there’s a long way to go. I’m searching my constellation of characters for the balance of humour, loss, politics, and wonder. There’s quite another half a play to write with much to be solved. As all writers know some answers defy logic and just feel right. And this of course would be utterly appropriate for my play The Halo Effect.

As usual I’ve been doing a new art series—The Electrical Drawings. It is about the electricity that drives our minds and bodies and the emergence of A.I. I started writing a poem on these themes, but I only got halfway through. I suspect A.I. is going to have to finish the poem! I had the drawings up at Articulate Gallery Art Garage sale. It was good to get a chance to see them together. Here’s a sample

HILARY

I have been continuing to shepherd along a few different projects, and it’s been good fun working on such a variety of things with such lovely folks.

Alphabetical Sydney: All Aboard!, my musical with composer Greta Gertler Gold, returned to the stage after opening last year at Riverside. It had a short run in Chatswood and has a longer one at the Sydney Opera House in September. Although it’s done and dusted as far as writing’s concerned, there are always tweaks, the need for which become clear with the benefit of multiple performances, not to mention seasons.

Greta and I have been hard at work on our musical adaptation of Picnic at Hanging Rock. In April I joined she and our director Jo Bonney in New York City for a development, and in July with support from the Hayes Theatre, we did a week’s workshop, ending in an industry showing. We’ll do another of these in NYC in November for producers and investors.

I was in London in June for a two-week workshop of another musical, with the working title The Pavarotti Project. Thrilling to be in the room with 19 extraordinary singer/dancer/actors singing Jacob Collier’s intricate harmonies under Michael Gracey and Simon Gleeson’s direction.

I am currently in rehearsals for Summer of Harold, a trio of playlets at Ensemble Theatre. The company generously provided two script development workshops earlier in the year, a huge boon, meaning the script is truly rehearsal ready. Frankie Savige directs Berynn Schwerdt and Hannah Waterman.

In June I taught a weekend course for Writing NSW, which is always so pleasurable, and with my partner-in-picture-books Antonia Pesenti was a guest at the Scone Literary Festival, where with local schoolkids we created the future bestseller, Alphabetical Scone.

NOËLLE
I’ve had my head down the first six months of 2023 with two projects. I finished—well, as much as any script is finished—my new performance essay-cum-monologue, The Past is a Wild Party. It had its first public outing at the end of March when I presented it at the University of Queensland’s temporary drama studio. Three months later, it was one of five finalists for the 2023 Australian Theatre Festival NYC New Play Award. 

My previous performance essay-cum-monologue, The End of Winter (Siren Theatre Company with Critical Stages) completed the first leg of its 2023 regional tour. The second leg begins mid-August. The End of Winter was shortlisted for the 2023 NSW Premier’s Literary Awards (Nick Enright Prize for Playwriting). 

The second project is Culinary Inauthentic and it’s a work for the page. I’m looking to bring a more genre-bending approach to writing about food, culture, and culinary history. I’ve long been interested in matters culinary and I have a food blog. Eat The Table. Check it out. 

Working on Culinary Inauthentic I’ve been listening to Vivaldi’s bassoon concertos. While Vivaldi is not on my list of favourite composers – I’ve been Four Seasoned to death in cafés, malls, and other public spaces—'the backbeat of the bourgeois bustle’ as one music critic puts it – the 39 concertos he wrote for the bassoon are full of spare, surprising moments. I’ve also been listening to Sofia Gubaidulina‘s Concerto for bassoon and low strings and thinking about the persistence and prevalence of Russian elements and threads in my writing. 

VERITY
I think many are feeling as if we are riding a rollercoaster as we advance towards the predicted convulsions of the Anthopocene. Me, too. It’s hard to focus on things like writing when robber barons stalk the earth and in so many places it feels like Orcs Ascendant. Still. We are here now, as the saying goes, so this has been my year so far.

I’ve been coming and going a bit from drafts of my adaptation of Pip Williams’ The Dictionary of Lost Words. We had a workshop in at the STCSA in late July to test what I thought was the final draft. Nope. You finish scripts when you finish them, that is to say I sent the rehearsal draft to my creative peers on the gig, Jess Arthur (director) and Ruth Little (dramaturg) from Aix-en-Provence two weeks ago as I looked wearily out at the summer sunshine from my flu-ridden bed. 

We start rehearsals on 21  August, and will open in Adelaide on 27 September, before transferring to Sydney in October where we’ll open on the 28 October and play through to early December. I’m so looking forward to the process. 

Next cab off the ranks is a South Australian Film Corporation-funded development of a film, Flatlands, on which I’m working with director Matthew Thorne. In smaller notes, this year I’ve published a review of Kath Kenny’s terrific book, Staging a Revolution: When Betty Rocked the Pram in the Australasian Drama Studies Journal; a poem of mine, Home, won the Silver Tree Poetry Prize; and my YA Fantasy novel, Una and the Many Worlds of Dream was shortlisted for the Text YA Unpublished Manuscript Prize.

NED

Life in the Arts is full of surprises, much like life itself. 

I have been on the “book trail” talking to anyone and everyone about Painting the Light. I’ve talked to five people and a dog (mine) at the Yass Bookstore. I’ve talked to thirty plus at the Cowra RSL. I’ve been to the Cairns and Bowral Writers’ Festivals and am off to Mudgee, near Rylstone where we had a farm when I was a kid. Writers’ festivals are a great opportunity to sell books (yes, it’s that crass) and to talk to people. Except at Cairns where they forgot to get in any books and my talk was well received but no bananas when it came to sales. At Bowral I not only sold a few Painting the Lights but also, to my surprise, some Playground Dutys. Who knows what Mudgee will hold, except for some very good wine?

In the Book World (I’m a pro now!) it’s crucial to work out who your market is. When I wrote Painting the Light it never occurred to me that I would be the bookseller, book promoter, book deliverer and general dog’s body. It suits me, specially the last one. My market research (incredibly detailed and thorough) has resulted in me identifying people with rich lived experience as my “market”. They are people whose parents or grandparents had similar experiences to my protagonists. Last Friday I did a talk for u3a (University of the Third Age) at Leichhardt Library. Instead of just talking about myself (soooo tempting) and the process of writing Painting the Light, I have fashioned my talks to encourage my audience to re-discover their own creative skills. To write stories, poems, songs. To paint or potter. To share their wealth of life experience in any form they choose.

I begin these talks by asking: “What was your favourite subject at school? What was your favourite arts subject?” I am now consciously seeking out u3a groups to talk to. 

I did an ASA Online Chat (is that what they’re called?) the other day. It was focussed on indie and self-publishing and how to get your book out there. Social Media is great for this type of thing except that the vast majority of my potential readership have never heard of Insta and many don’t do Facebook or the on the nose Twittersphere. That, then is the challenge, how to reach these people? The other (vaguely) interesting thing about all this is that I now find myself encouraging people at either end of the age spectrum to pursue the arts as a means of self expression. After a lifetime (50 years this year since I first walked into a classroom) of teaching young people, I am now using the skills I’ve accrued to do the same with their elders. 

At the same time, I am directing a production of my play Alice Dreaming with a bunch of Year 8’s and 9’s.