QPAC Story Act 1 2017

For the creative & curious

Morris Gleitzman

Drusilla Modjeska

ON THE BOX

O N V I R G I NI A WOOL F

AC Grayling ON ME TA M O R P HO S IS

Contents

43

THIS EDITION OF STORY IS INSPIRED BY QPAC’S JANUARY TO JUNE 2017 PROGRAM.

THE GETTING OF WISDOM JUDITH MCLEAN

11

METAMORPHOSIS AC GRAYLING

23 AMERICAN IDIOCY

GUY RUNDLE

17 NEXT EPISODE STARTS IN...

MORRIS GLEITZMAN

33 EN POINTE

29 THE SPACE BETWEEN DRUSILLA MODJESKA

27 SUGAR SKULLS CHLOE WILSON

37 SHAKESPEARE

A CONVERSATION WITH JOHN BELL A0

41

47

53 TIM MINCHIN

COURT COUTURE

WITH BILL HAYCOCK

THE MABO ORATION

KEVIN COCKS AM

49 LIFE HACKS

55 OUT OF BOUNDS

MARY-ROSE MACCOLL

57

59

65

WHAT'S ON AT QPAC

SCENTS AND SENSIBILITY

HEATHER SMYTH

BEHIND THE SCENES

61

SAHY-UH-NS HARRY CLIFF

69 FIVE MINUTES WITH...

SUZI QUATRO

In this edition When David Bowie suggested ‘turn and face the strange’

short isn’t our skills, bravery or determination but other

as a strategy for managing change he was proposing we

people’s expectations.

conceive of change as inevitable and also that we do our best to look it straight in the eye and wherever possible

Morris Gleitzman pokes into our changed consumption

give it a hug.

habits, particularly in relation to television, and offers some theories about why our favourite TV characters

Change, large or small, frequently strikes fear in people

become so important in our lives.

and as a consequence drives all manner of aberrant behaviours. One of the things about change is that it

Drusilla Modjeska gives us a wonderful insight into one of

can happen incrementally or in an instant. And, even

the 20th century’s most enduring and important writers,

when you’re the impetus for change, there’s always the

Virginia Woolf. Three of Woolf’s novels are the inspiration

challenge of becoming out of step with those around you.

for Wayne McGregor’s ballet triptych for The Royal Ballet.

In The Space Between Modjeska looks at each of the three

Change or metamorphosis is the driving idea behind this

works and how Woolf and her fellow members of the

edition of Story. It began as an observation of how many

Bloomsbury Group changed, and were changed, by the

elements of the upcoming program started life in another

times they lived in: “War had disrupted old rigidities and

art form – novels transformed to musical theatre and

pomposities that were passing anyway; political protest

dance, television transformed to live performance, rock

and economic depression were all around.”

Story is for the creative and curious.

FOR PEOPLE WHO BELIEVE S TO R I E S M AT T E R .

album to rock opera. In addition to changing form, many of the works address deeper issues of transformation.

At a global level, Guy Rundle leads us by the hand, via the decaying skeleton of late 20th century consumption,

British philosopher Professor Anthony Grayling

to a bygone America. When Green Day produced their

sets the scene by exploring metamorphosis across

album American Idiot, they were in large part taking aim at

multiple disciplines – art, science and philosophy. He

the administration of President George W. Bush. The last

describes adapting from one domain to another as a

Presidential election has again reinvigorated rage against

characteristically human endeavour. He also reminds us

the political system and a disillusionment with the idea of

of the ubiquity of that ultimate metamorphosis – and

national identity.

invitation to use art as a lens to

All of this is to say that change is hard. It’s the subject of

know yourself; see others and

subject of Chloe Wilson’s poem Sugar Skulls – death.

If you view change as something that manifests at a very

innumerable songs, poems, literary works and therapy

personal to a global scale you could plot a transformation

sessions and has fuelled its own strand of management

trajectory that moved from internal emotional – or

consultancy. Franz Kafka published Metamorphosis in 1915.

attitudinal, physical, behavioural, environmental – to

It is not without cause that it’s been described as the most

global impact. Our contributors traverse each of these

famous and perhaps the greatest short story in the history

areas, inspired by the ideas and concepts within

of literary fiction.

The ideas, people, musings and moments assembled here are an

imagine possible futures.

our program.

Thanks to Pygmalion and its musical film adaptation My Fair Lady we’re all well versed as to where Spain’s rain falls. At its heart this story is one of personal transformation and independence, but also takes a shot at some of the complexities of class systems and gender.

In Out of Bounds, Mary-Rose MacColl proposes we try something new; the thing that frequently pulls us up

John Kotzas Chief Executive QPAC 7

Contributors The views expressed in Story are those

HARRY CLIFF

TIM MINCHIN

Dr Harry Cliff is a particle physicist from the University of Cambridge who works on the Large Hadron Collider,

Tim Minchin is an Australian composer/lyricist, musician, comedian, actor, writer and

the world’s largest scientific experiment, at CERN near Geneva. Harry’s research involves searching for signs of

director. He spent his twenties writing songs, playing in bands, acting in plays, composing

new particles and forces of nature in high-energy particle collisions in an attempt to improve our understanding

for theatre, playing piano for cabaret artists and penning tongue-in-cheek beat poems. Tim

of the fundamental laws of nature. He is also a Fellow of Modern Science at the Science Museum in London,

is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Old Vic Theatre, an

where he co-curated the critically acclaimed "Collider” exhibition, which is now touring internationally and has

ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, a patron of the British

Rebecca Lamoin (rebecca.

been seen by over half a million visitors. He is currently leading the development of a new exhibition telling the

Humanist Association, and patron of the West Australian Youth Theatre Company (WAYTCo).

lamoin@qpac.com.au). |

story of humankind’s changing relationship with the Sun, our nearest star.

He is a keen supporter of Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity (UK), Médecins Sans

Story Team Editorial:

Frontières (MSF), the National Autistic Society (NAS) and the Los Angeles homelessness

Professor Judith McLean,

KEVIN COCKS AM Kevin Cocks AM, a highly respected human rights and disabilities advocate, commenced his appointment as Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in February 2011. Kevin holds a Masters of Social Welfare, Administration & Planning from the University of Queensland and has received the following Community Recognition awards: Awarded an AM in 2010 for the promotion of Human Rights for people with disability in Australia; Awarded Australian Human Rights Medal 2005; Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC); Awarded Centenary Medal ‘for distinguished service to disability services in Queensland’ in 2003; and the QUT award ‘the Humanities and Human Services Outstanding Alumni Award’ for 2003, which recognises the contribution of exceptional professional achievement and contribution to the community at Local, State, National and International level.

Drusilla Modjeska’s books include Exiles At Home (1981), Poppy (1990), a ‘fictional biography’ of her mother, The Orchard (1994) and Stravinsky's Lunch (1999), which explored the lives of the

Story Editor:

Roxanne Hopkins, Emily Philip, Andrea Huynh, Isabella Williams, Alexandra Flynn, Lauren Sherritt, Carol Davidson. Digital:

Australian modernist artists Grace Cossington Smith and Stella Bowen. The Mountain (2012),

Kate Hardy, Jasmine Ellem,

is a novel set in Papua New Guinea, where she has worked with the literacy project

Asiya Muldabayeva.

‘Making Books’ with children in remote schools (seamfund.org/making-books). Her latest book,

Creative & design: Rumble.

Second Half First (2015) is a memoir that begins the night before her fortieth birthday.

Photography: Mindi Cooke.

S U Z I Q U AT R O

Morris Gleitzman is a bestselling Australian children’s author. His books explore serious and sometimes

Born in Detroit, Michigan, Suzi was raised in a musical family who all played various

confronting subjects in humorous and unexpected ways. His titles include Two Weeks With The Queen,

instruments. Suzi made her stage debut, playing bongos in her father’s jazz band, The Quatro

Grace, Doubting Thomas, Bumface, Give Peas A Chance, Extra Time, Loyal Creatures, Toad Delight and the series

Trio. From an early age, she studied classical piano and percussion and at the age of 14 began

Once, Then, Now, After and Soon. Morris lives in Brisbane and Sydney, and his books are published in more

an all-girl band with her sister Patti calling themselves The Pleasure Seekers. Between 1973

than twenty countries.

and 1980 Suzi Quatro featured in the British charts for 101 weeks and to date has sold over 55 million records.

Q PAC Chair Chris Freeman AM | Deputy Chair Simon Gallaher | Trustees Kylie Blucher, Professor Peter

AC G R AY L I N G

GUY RUNDLE

AC Grayling is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, London, and its Professor of Philosophy, and the

Guy Rundle is currently Crikey's correspondent-at-large, and a regular contributor to

author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays. He is a columnist for Prospect

The Sunday Age. He was an editor of Arena Magazine for fifteen years, and is a frequent

magazine, and was for a number of years a columnist on The Guardian and The Times. He has contributed to many

contributor to a wide range of publications in Australia and the UK.

Coaldrake AO, Leanne de Souza, Sophie Mitchell,

leading newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, and to BBC radios 4, 3, 2 and the World Service, for which he did

Professor Chris Sarra | Executive Staff Chief Executive: John Kotzas

the annual 'Exchanges at the Frontier' series; and he has often appeared on television. He has twice been a judge on

Executive Director –

the Booker Prize, in 2015 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist

Stakeholder Engagement

Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Strategy: Jackie Branch Executive Director –

MARY-ROSE MACCOLL

H E AT H E R S M Y T H

Mary-Rose MacColl’s international bestselling novel In Falling Snow was published to great acclaim in 2012. It

Dr Heather Smyth is a flavour chemist and sensory scientist who has been working with

was followed with Swimming Home which won The Courier-Mail 2016 People’s Choice Queensland Book of the

premium food and beverage products for more than 15 years. Dr Smyth’s expertise is in

Year Award and will be published internationally in 2017. Mary-Rose's first novel, No Safe Place, was runner-up

understanding how food composition relates to the sensory experience and consumer

in the Australian Vogel literary award and her first non-fiction book, The Birth Wars, was a finalist in the 2009

enjoyment of food. She has a background in wine flavour chemistry and extensive experience

Development: Megan Kair

Walkley Awards. In 2017, a true story from her life, For a Girl, will be published by Allen and Unwin. Mary-Rose

in seafood, wine and horticultural products such as coffee and tropical fruits. She currently

Executive Director – Business

lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband and son. She is an ordinary swimmer learning to skateboard.

works as a Senior Research Fellow for the University of Queensland as part of the Queensland

Performance: Kieron Roost

Curatorial: Ross Cunningham Executive Director – Visitation: Roxanne Hopkins Executive Director –

Alliance of Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) Institute.

authors and

JUDITH MCLEAN

do not necessarily reflect the position

Professor Judith McLean is the Chair in Arts Education, a joint appointment between Queensland University of

of QPAC.

Technology (QUT) and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) where she holds the role of Scholar in Residence. Judith’s career is distinguished by her breadth and diversity of experience as an arts educator, artist and cultural leader across Australia. She is currently a Director on the Board of Tourism and Events Queensland, and leads QUT’s executive programs using arts based practices in the corporate and government sectors.

8

DRUSILLA MODJESKA

MORRIS GLEITZMAN

of the individual

contributors and

charity, PATH.

STORY TEAM

CHLOE WILSON Chloe Wilson is the author of two poetry collections, The Mermaid Problem and Not Fox Nor Axe, which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. She received equal first prize in the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, and has been awarded the John Marsden Prize for Young Australian Writers, the (Melbourne) Lord Mayor´s Creative Writing Award for Poetry, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Prize and the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award.

9

Briefly

CULTURE MAKES CITIES SAFER AND STRONGER

NEWS & VIEWS

By 2030, it is predicted there will

MAKING HEADLINES

is, cities with a population of more

IN THE ARTS WORLD

such a scale and so quickly can have

be 41 megacities in the world – that than 10 million people. Expansion on implications for quality of life and environmental sustainability. A new report from UNESCO – Global Report, Culture: Urban Future – published in October 2016,

TREASURES FIRE SALE Australia re-entered the debate about selling off

LIFESTYLES OF THE (NOT SO) RICH AND FAMOUS

publically owned artwork to pay down national debt or fund government priorities when Victorian Senator James

Artistic prizes can be a double edged sword. On one hand,

Paterson argued for the sale of Jackson Pollock’s Blue Poles.

fame and boosted income, on the other, potentially unwanted notoriety.

It’s an argument taking place all over the world. The French Minister of Economy has raised the issue of selling off works

Two internationally acclaimed and hugely popular writers were

in museum storage. Even a whisper of selling the Mona Lisa,

recently ‘outed’ as it were. Bob Dylan was awarded the Nobel

which has an estimated value of €1.9 billion spooks the

Prize for Literature, and took weeks to work up to accepting

culture loving French and moves look unlikely to proceed.

the award. And Elena Ferrante, the nom-de-plume of an Italian super author whose identity was

Australia’s stocks are not so high. Four

revealed by an investigative journalist.

decades ago, Prime Minister Gough Whitlam controversially approved

Dylan has had devoted followers

the purchase of Jackson Pollock’s Blue

around the world for decades who

Poles. At a cost of $1.3 million, the

have been pretty used to his reluctance

decision was considered by many as an

to engage beyond his music – avoiding

outrageous waste of taxpayers’ money.

as he does, even stage banter. But

History tells a different tale.

investigates ways in which megacities can be inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.

What the report has found is that culture is a strategic asset for creating cities that are more

VIRTUAL REALITY, GAMING

inclusive and sustainable. According to the report

AND THE ARTS

there are three prerequisites for culturally diverse, safe and thriving cities: culture centric spaces;

Most industries and companies

urban environments shaped by culture; and

are embracing technology and live

integrated policy making that builds on culture.

performance is no different. Dutch National Ballet has created its first

Previous reports have shown the impact of culture in

virtual reality (VR) ballet which allows viewers to be dropped

restoring social cohesion, improving livelihoods and

into the centre of the action moving along with the dancer and

ensuring that reconciliation and dialogue between different

solo violinist. The production – Night Fall – was inspired by

groups is more easily accessible and effective. Moreover,

Swan Lake but created especially for VR audiences.

culture is credited with improving the economic power of cities too. We can hope then that the rise of the megacity is

Orchestras have also been experimenting with bringing

also the rise of cultural city.

audiences up close and personal with 360 degree camera views during performance and augmenting concerts with VR headsets handed out at performances (think 3D movies but supersized). And more and more orchestral concerts are featuring something extra… playing the live soundtrack

the so called unmasking of Ferrante

PASSAGE TO INDIA

sparked furious debate in the media

Recently, Blue Poles was estimated to

and literary world. Fans were appalled

be worth up to $350 million. More

that the author’s choice of anonymity

than that, this painting has seemingly

Two giants of the streaming world – Netflix and Amazon

had been subverted. It was labelled as

wrapped itself around the hearts of

– are pursuing very different strategies to achieve their

crass, misogynistic, poor journalism

many Australians who see the painting

ambition to expand in the Indian market.

and in the service of no-one. Is it

as a tribute to the progressive arts and

an outcome of our all-seeing,

cultural policies of the Whitlam era.

It’s a pointed demonstration of the difference between

all-exposing times?

Blue Poles was created by an American

creating ‘for and with’ an audience versus ‘for’. Amazon is

in New York and yet somehow the piece

digging into the local scene and engaging Indian talent and

has become almost Australian.

teams while Netflix is maintaining its very successful global

The relationship between an artist, their art and audience is complex. As

to a movie projected above the orchestra, partnering with scientists to amplify the reach of music and also make science more accessible.

Technology presents amazing opportunities and challenges for the cultural sector. Artists and managers have an ever expanding array of tools to create, distribute and market content but also enormous competition from other digital forms. How do we need to evolve to survive?

programming, pursuing growth from its US base.

audiences and consumers, what are

With questions of cultural identity,

we looking for when we grab for the

political expediency, budget black

Amazon Chief Roy Prince has reportedly said that while you

personal details of an artist and will we

holes and unfunded policies it doesn’t

can have a global service there is no such thing as a global

change our views of their work if we

look like this conversation is going

customer, only a local one. Stay tuned.

don’t like what we find?

away soon.

DISCOVER MORE STORIES AND READ RELATED

10

ARTICLES AT QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

Metamorphosis

Think of the end of Qing dynasty China, toppled at last

By AC Grayling

in 1911 after a century of being hollowed out by stasis, the sclerosis of its social life. For individuals the story is similar.

Life is change and growth, most significantly mental growth. Giving up, withdrawing into habit, retiring from What word best captures the implications of these synonyms:

the stimulation of work and social engagement, is mental

change, alteration, transfiguration, transformation? There are

and soon enough physical demise.

allusions in these words to other shifts and reinventions, for

Change, as they say, is inevitable, constant.

example in ‘displacement’, ‘emergence’ and ‘catalysis?’ The

But the kinds of changes so vitally at work in the biological

word that most neatly wraps these words together with all

realm are only analogously the same as those in the human

But our preparedness to wrangle with the

their meanings complete is: metamorphosis. Metamorphosis

realm. In the latter, change means adaptation – in the form

is the migration of anything from one form or pattern into

of fresh responses to old challenges, and innovation to

another. As change or alteration, this shape-shifting and

meet new challenges. It means learning lessons from one

evolutionary movement of things inwardly into one another,

sphere of activity to apply to another. It means looking

or outwardly into other things, is a central thread in how the

at things from new, different, unusual angles to see them

ourselves and our world is rarely as certain.

world works, and certainly the single most important aspect of

afresh. Lunacy has been defined as the opposite: as the

life in general and human life in particular.

insistence on repeatedly applying failed strategies over and

Britain’s Professor Anthony Grayling,

Think about it: the essence of biological existence is

Philosopher and Master of New College of

energy, and energy into activity and cells; animals eat plants

The Enlightenment of the eighteenth century is a

or other animals, changing them into energy and likewise

paradigm case of social transformation effected by

thence into activity and their own bodies. If their work of

adapting the methods and insights of one endeavour – the

the Humanities, London traverses multiple

transforming some things into other things stops,

nascent natural sciences – to another – the social sciences

organisms die.

and politics. To live at the beginning of that century, and to

disciplines – arts, science, philosophy –

But death is not an end. When organisms die they disperse

outcomes, the new forms in which we find

over again to the same problems; on this view, sanity must

to explore the idea of change at this moment in our history.

be defined as ever-readiness to experiment anew.

transformation – plants metamorphose light and air into

live at its end, was to live in two different worlds. back into the elements they had previously taken from nature

One way that the idea of adaptation works in the practical

to construct themselves. Biology is the metamorphosis of

sphere is illustrated by the use that engineers make of ideas

parts of the world into other parts of the world, and back into

drawn from biology. For example, biologists discovered

the world again.

that spiders spin silk at different speeds to produce different threads for different uses. When spun quickly,

Human individuals and societies similarly live by metamorphoses. History is rich in examples of what happens when change stops: societies that become stagnant are doomed to collapse either from decay or when an outside agency – an invader or coloniser – pushes them over.

13

silk is stronger, because the crystals constituting it are

fashion designer, in just such a rout of partying we read

smaller and have fewer flaws. The spider uses this kind

about in the gossip columns of Hollywood magazines.

of silk to make its web. It spins thicker strands, and more These are instructive metamorphoses: they are an

and less sticky silk, for other jobs; cocoons to protect

integral aspect of the way art lives on, constant only in

its young, a thread to hold onto while using the wind to blow it to a new hunting site. By studying the structure

bird’s-eye approach to retelling the saga; the 2002 version,

its originality. A same story differently told cannot fail to

of spider threads, engineers garner ideas about how to

far more compressed, filleted out and emphasised the

make us receive it afresh. Resistance to such innovations is

make new materials permitting radically original designs

story of Soames Forsyte – wonderfully played by Damian

commonplace, but it is worth remembering that a person

in everything from buildings and bridges to aircraft and

Lewis – and his tragically unhappy marriage to Irene.

who would most enjoy adaptations and re-envisionings of

computer hardware.

The dialogue was sparer and sharper, honed to essentials,

his work would without question be Shakespeare, whose

leaving the acting to convey almost everything about the

plays have been given the full spectrum of experimental

Adapting ideas from one domain to another is a

personalities of the characters and the nature of their

and innovative treatments in all forms. Some of these

characteristically creative human activity. The most

relationships. It is beautifully done; the comparison

promise to be classics in their own right: Ian McKellen as

familiar example is the adaptation of literary works

between the two styles is not invidious; one can enjoy

a fascist Richard III in Richard Loncraine’s gripping film

into television series and films. Two striking facts leap

either. But they are a striking example of the difference

version will himself probably recognise this as a more

out when one contemplates this activity. One, the most

between then and now in the way adaptations are made.

enduring achievement than his portrayal of Gandalf.

obvious, is how the narrative techniques of the different media work: what a film leaves out from a literary original, and what it adds or changes to make the story work in its own medium, are marks of where the essentials of the respective art forms differ.

The other, less obvious, fact is how much adaptations rely on their contemporary audience expectations. Look now at the 1967 television adaptation of John Galsworthy’s Forsyte Saga novels, and the 2002 TV miniseries version; and compare both to the original

Sanity must be defined as ever-readiness to experiment anew.

books. Fifty years ago what

Some adaptations take on a

There is a quite different kind of metamorphic activity

status that makes it hard for

in culture: the use of ideas and metaphors from one area

later adaptations to compete.

of creativity in another – for one tendentious example,

This is true of the BBC’s Pride

the employment of ideas from particle physics in literary

and Prejudice with Jennifer

criticism. Here the ice grows thinner over which theorists

Ehle and Colin Firth, and the

skate, unless they are truly at home in both terrains. One

contrast with the film version

study of the novel El Tunel by Argentinian writer Ernesto

starring Kiera Knightley and

Sabato was conducted ‘by applying some of the language

Matthew Macfadyen. Where

of quantum theory’ to it – on the grounds that Sabato had

the former successfully allowed

commenced his adult career as a physics teacher. There

itself the original’s textual

was some justification for the endeavour: the novel is

weight, the latter was a film

full of ambiguity, constructed in parallel timelines, with

made for its times – a romantic

labyrinthine destinies for the characters – all in ways

tale, in essence appealing to

suggestive (to the authors of the study) of superposed

the same constituency who

quantum states awaiting an observation that would collapse

watched other recent examples

the wave function into a definite state, or turning on

of the genre, such perhaps

something like quantum entanglement in the implicated

as Becoming Jane with Anne

destinies of characters.

Hathaway and Never Let Me Go

could be said and shown on television screens was not so

also with Kiera Knightley. Again the comparison is not

The ice is thinner here because although metaphor can

different from now, but if the fifty year old version seems

intended as invidious, merely illustrative. The earlier

be a powerfully illuminating tool, it can also run away

tremendously old fashioned to contemporary eyes, and

adaptations cleaved to the textual original, the later to what

with its users and become forced and implausible. Often

not just because of technical advances since made, it is

the director knew the audience would expect.

literary theorists use scientific terminology ignorantly or in disanalogous ways. In one scholarly study of Hamlet

because many of the conventions of acting and directing have changed, and most of all in the degree to which they

The stories that obsess and absorb us all are few in number,

the worlds of Elsinore and the afterlife where Hamlet’s

exploit the text itself.

and they are mainly stories of love, suffering, loss and the

father roams were likened to superposed states, as in

quest for redemption of one or another kind; some with

the ‘Schrodinger’s cat’ thought experiment, and the

Films of the 1930s and 40s, and television costume dramas

happy endings, some not. They are told and retold, in

relationship of the Prince to Ophelia was likened to

of the BBC type of the 1960s and 70s, were unafraid

different forms, in different adaptations, each shedding

quantum entanglement – all very well, but not vastly

of words. Long speeches, long continuous dialogues as

new light on new possibilities in them. Jan Philipp Gloger’s

illuminating, nor even compelling: for the ghost enters

in stage productions, and long monologues such as in

2016 production of Cosi Fan Tutte at London’s Covent

the physical realm of Elsinore to deliver his message,

the opening of the 1967 Forsyte Saga in Kenneth More’s

Garden asked questions about human fallibility and fidelity

and the pull between Hamlet and Ophelia is remarkably

beautiful voice, were the result of much greater closeness

in general, not just about the fickleness of women; the new

weak, unlike the entanglement of space-like separated

to literary originals. The 1967 Forsyte took the panoramic,

perspective was enabled by a staging that, among others,

particles subjected to action on one of them, producing

involved the cast materialising out of the audience in the

instantaneous mirror-image change in the other.

stalls. In the 1990s the Estates Theatre in Prague repeatedly

14

hosted a Don Giovanni (where it was first premiered in 1787)

It is in science itself that the true and ubiquitous nature of

in which the amorous Don appears as a dissolute modern

metamorphosis is most apparent. Evolutionary theory in

15

biology is the classic example; in a saga both grander and

Both science and science fiction, however, prise open the

more amazing than imagination can absorb in one bite, the

lid on the world beyond our ordinary kin, and then we see

story of life emerging into ever more complex and diverse

it transfigured: and art does it also, changing our view of

forms, and doing so over vast epochs, leaves us reeling once

things into new forms; and music can alter us emotionally as

we grasp its implications. From looking at the multiferous

we listen, speaking to us beyond words. Myth and folklore is

forms of nature we see our own: the highly advanced state

full of shape-shifters, transmogrifiers and metamorphoses,

of human society is matched by little else in the world, but

those that Ovid reported and Kafka invented, made to

our limitations are reflected back at us also. Butterflies and

seem not so strange after all because we can think without

bees see flowers covered in dots and circles in the ultraviolet

surprise of the tadpole turning into a frog and a caterpillar

spectrum, where we see a narrow range of colours only. Bats

into a butterfly. And perhaps we find even more interesting

hear noises high above our capacity to hear, and elephants

the idea of an ugly duckling turning into a swan – that

far below. The biologist EO Wilson offers this analogy for

comes closer to home, more central to the human concerns

humans in a world wild with colour, scent and sound sealed

we have about possibilities that matter. But it is still a

from us: we are, he says, as if walking deaf and blind in the

metamorphosis, and it needs art to bring it home.

streets of New York.

Change, alteration, transfiguration, transformation: the works of metamorphosis are present in everything alive, and are the essence of life itself.

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Book your Brisbane getaway at mantra.com.au/Brisbane or call 13 15 17.

Some people are elegant dancers, others offer elegant solutions.

MinterEllison is delighted to be the Principal Partner of the QPAC International Series.

Fawlty Towers is in the air at QPAC, and just a whiff was enough to send me scampering off for a nostalgic re-squiz. Just one ep.

Or two. OK, all twelve, which was certainly nostalgic, but left me thinking more about now than then. Our brave new play-all, on-demand culture. Access all areas, dude, and skip the titles.

If like me you enjoy a bit of delayed gratification, thank God we’ve got election promises. So I was left pondering, are we happier with bulk telly on tap?

Yes, I think we are. When Fawlty Towers was first broadcast, one ep a week, two series with a four year gap, the TV industry’s business model was to make us wait. And wait. In the hope that we’d fill the aching void with whatever was being advertised and/or This Day Tonight.

THE NEXT

Episode STARTS IN...

By Morris Gleitzman It’s the Golden Age of Television (or at least it’s the second or third incarnation of it). Certainly it’s a gilded era for watching TV, an activity that has changed so enormously since the box first appeared in the corner of our lounge rooms that it bears almost no resemblance to its 1950s beginnings.

Novelist Morris Gleitzman offers some ideas on why our viewing MO has changed.

No aching void these days. We don’t even mind sitting through ad breaks, not with sixty eight episodes of Arrested Development on our phone. Compared to the series length we’re used to now, Fawlty Towers is a slip of a thing. Six hours all done. I was in bed by two thirty, barely feeling binged at all. Reflecting how in thirty seven short years TV has gone from drip-feed to forcefeed. With us self-administering the Netflix nozzle, unfussed if our frontal lobes turn into foie gras.

We use food terminology a lot these days when we talk about TV. Partly because half of what’s on air is about food. But also because the new technologies of viewing present us with the same issues that we in fortunate societies have often faced with food. The savoury guilts and perverse pleasures of gluttony.

Come on, admit it, the last time you did twenty eps of HBO in a weekend, your head might have ached but your spleen was singing, right?

I think, though, that binge-speak is only telling part of the long-form TV story. So come with me to a kinder cultural theory, one that says we’re not greedy guts or feeble-minded escape junkies or fools who don’t value our time and bandwidth.

That if we choose to spend nineteen hours of any given twenty four hanging out on a corner in Baltimore or getting indignant in an idealised Oval Office or up to our necks in mud and mofos in a wild west frontier town pig pen, maybe it’s because the experience is giving us something we can’t get elsewhere.

There are certainly things going on in the likes of The Wire and West Wing and Deadwood that movies can’t offer. For a start, the characters hang around for more than a hundred minutes.

We get to know them and all their messy human contradictions because they’re not preoccupied with moving breezily through a three-act Hollywood agenda, down, up, down, up, down, up, and off into the emotional sunrise triumphant and selfactualised and not needing us any more.

19

Compared to these movie one night stands, series characters are available, sometimes for years. And the way they blunder around, failing to solve their problems, also for years, how human is that? One step forward, two steps back. You want to put your arms round them. (Mostly. In Deadwood only if it’s bath week.)

So heart-warmingly wonky are their trajectories, these old friends of ours, and so incomplete their achieved dreams, we can’t help but feel they’re actual real people. Even if they do suffer fools a bit less gladly than us (Sopranos), and have a slightly more organised grasp of their domestic finances (Breaking Bad).

Of course we’re not the first to yearn for this.

Back in the fourteenth century Boccaccio was the box-set boy with multiple seasons of his Decameron. And thousands of ratings periods before that, in India, the Sanskrit temple play Mantrankam was being performed in ever longer versions, packed with ever more examples of daily human foibles, until centuries later it took forty one days to watch. They knew how to binge, those Brahmins.

Then or now, long-form heroes usually arrive at some sort of resolution or redemption or rebirth eventually, but down such convoluted, hapless, plottossed paths we never feel shamed by them or inadequate in their presence. (Well, not often. Watching the Peter Capaldi character in The Thick Of It or any of the characters in Deadwood, I do sometimes wish I was better at swearing.)

Series characters eventually get to where we’d like to be: a little bit better off than where we are now, but in a human rather than a Hollywood way.

The goals vary – emotional security, peer status, self-respect, personal and social insight, and sometimes the gains aren’t huge (slightly-cleaner fingernails in Deadwood), but series characters console and inspire by reminding us that being stuck wherever we are now doesn’t have to be permanent.

Unless, of course, we’re in a sitcom.

Sitcoms are how we pay our respects to the human truth that some of us are incapable of change. By season twenty seven, the folk in The Big Bang Theory will probably be running the

CSIRO, but they won’t have changed inside. Thus proving the Third Law Of Thermodynamics: you can never destroy a sitcom character’s lovable dysfunction, just spin it off.

There’s another type of unchanging character peering balefully out from certain series. They tend to be shorter than average (the series, not the characters) and these characters, usually housed in familiar but slightly twisted cop procedurals (True Detective, Babylon, Red Riding) are so unusual and unpredictable and dark and complex that we don’t want them to change. We just want them to keep fascinating us and expanding our notion of what’s possible in the human psyche and causing our mouths to stay open even while we’re eating individual Snickers.

Mostly though, I think we like long-form series because of their eerie ability to slowly draw us into themselves and at the same time insidiously (nice insidiously) infuse our lives with their presence.

Five minutes into ep one of Mad Men we’re dizzily agreeing that the past truly is another country and they do absolutely do things differently there. Five eps into season three and we’ve refurnished our place with spindly blond furniture and taken up smoking again.

Different connections for different people, though. So for example when I watch House Of Cards, even as I’m grimly and unnecessarily reminded that in a liberal democracy our worst possible self can be president, I’m also coming to understand more about the relationship between fear and fundamentalist thinking and obsessive-compulsive disorders and free markets. Oh, and that in some political circles facial subtlety and good posture are as important as branch stacking.

As I watch The Sopranos I develop the suspicion that the human heart is often a mafioso too, its capacity for love in no way diminishing its preparedness to whack anyone and anything, including itself, that threatens those it cares about, including itself.

Fawlty Towers, so sublimely funny on the surface, but below stairs might it be an early expression of Brexit fury?

Is all this enough to explain the lure of the on demand longform series? All the deep multiseason friendships and hard-won wisdoms and lost weekends and workplace blackouts?

I don’t think so. Let’s be honest, if all we wanted was to spend hundreds of hours on a roller coaster of emotion and challenging circumstance with a fascinating but dauntingly complex individual who may or may not make it through to the end, most of us in relationships wouldn’t need to watch TV at all.

So there must be something else that draws us to the LED shrine. Some ancient atavistic need that can only be satisfied by the cycle of the seasons.

I have a sense of what it is, and I think it’s both universal and very personal. All good drama has subtext, and the deep subtext of fifty or sixty hours of good drama is a powerful thing. It can connect with some of our deepest, most powerful fears and apprehensions and wonderings and confusions.

And dear Fawlty Towers, so sublimely funny on the surface, but below stairs might it be an early expression of Brexit fury?

Is Basil’s the rage of the ordinary man whose country and gender once enjoyed five stars in all the guidebooks but now neither the plumbing nor the wife will do what they’re told.

Or could it be merely the apoplexy we all feel as we realise it’s not Michelin who takes our stars away, it’s time.

You probably don’t agree.

Which is exactly how it should be. Watching TV is a personal journey.

That’s why, I think, we devote so much of our lives to these huge unwieldy cultural experiences – could the Brahmins ever have guessed how paltry forty one days would come to seem – and download so many eps with such determined stamina.

Personal journeys are often long ones. Mine is far from completed. Yours may not be either. If the thoughts herein have struck a chord, put them to the test. Take a few months off, truck in the personal Snickers, assemble your fifteen or twenty favourite shows and watch them all again.

You know you want to.

FAW L T Y TOW E R S L I V E

28 December 2016 - 22 January 2017 Playhouse, QPAC

21

IT'S ONE OF THE BASIC TRUTHS OF THE UNIVERSE. THINGS DON'T D I S A P P E A R . T H E Y J U S T. . .

CHANGE AND

CHANGE AND

IDIOCY

American

By Guy Rundle

CIVILISATIONS AND NATION STATES RISE AND FALL, THEIR FORTUNES RIDING AS MUCH ON THEIR CULTURES AS THEIR ECONOMIC CAPACITY, MILITARY DOMINATION, ENVIRONMENTAL GOOD FORTUNE OR BENEVOLENT LEADERSHIP. THEY DON’T GROW AND PROSPER INDEFINITELY. THINK THE ROMAN EMPIRE, MAYAN CIVILISATION, SOVIET UNION AND NOW PERHAPS MODERN DAY UNITED STATES. MORE THAN A DECADE AGO U.S. BAND GREEN DAY PRODUCED AMERICAN IDIOT, A CONCEPT ALBUM RAILING AGAINST WHAT THEY SAW AS A MYOPIC AND SELF-OBSESSED CULTURE AND GOVERNMENT. FOR AUTHOR AND COMMENTATOR GUY RUNDLE, LAST YEAR’S PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION MIGHT YET PROVE TO BE THE PINNACLE OF AMERICAN IDIOCY.

Behind the car park where the bus pulls in, there it is, towering, extraordinary, the sheer walls and boxy buildings, the glass frontage, and the faded department store signs, Kohl’s, Shoprite, Petco. Half of one corner of the main block has been demolished, but then they stopped. The roof was taken off another part, and is gaping. Against the chill grey sky, the place has the air of a sentinel, a fort guarding against some disaster which has long since occurred. It was magnificent. Taken me two trains and a bus to get here, but it was worth it.

This was Owings Mills Mall in Maryland, just outside Baltimore. Owings was one of the last of 'deadmalls'; one of the thousands of shopping malls across the country that had gone broke, been deserted and which, for a time, were left undemolished, unredeveloped.

From around 2003 to 2010, you could tour the country hopping from deadmall to deadmall, and thousands did, glorying in the poignant and epic spectacle of places that had once hosted shoppers in their millions, and were now ghastly and deserted, signs left above shopfronts, movies still listed on the top floor cinemas, escalators rusted and buckling out of shape. They were all the same, but they were all different (the photographer Seph Lawless has created several deadmall collections), portraits of the innumerable ramifications of what happens when something suddenly stops.

By the time I got into them, the great age of the deadmall was dying itself. Some lay dormant for a decade, until a municipality yoked together enough interested parties to rezone and rebuild. The malls not only came down, they disappeared from memory. They were usually the old 'atrium' mall style, four storeys or so organised around a central well, product of a German designer named Victor Gruen, who had built them in Minnesota and Canada, reproducing the centralcourt style of mitteleuropean towns for the American west. Gruen wanted the mall to be a town centre, with municipal offices, libraries, schools etc. Instead it became a private space, for big box stores, draining life from town centres. Nevertheless, for a quarter century or so, the mall was the place, the arena for meeting up, especially for kids. As the Reagan era turned into the Clinton era, America enjoyed a two decade consumer boom, one which disguised decay and decline with a great party.

The shopping mall didn't die in 2005, but a certain style of it did. Marketers no longer wanted a place where everybody would hang out – they wanted sleeker, more focused places which emphasised luxury content. Sure, some of what killed 'the mall' was the rise of online shopping, and social media. But what also did it was... more malls, built beside the old ones, malls which effortlessly shuttled people from one high-end brand store to the next. Having damned the old atrium mall for its destruction of the town square, we were now shedding a tear at its passing. Me especially.

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The mall, like the high school prom, graduation, the big game, and a hundred other things, were part of the fantastical place, America, made out of music and movies and sitcoms, and games, and celebrity.

Since getting on the deadmall kick I’d become obsessed, detouring thousands of kilometres in the states, while covering US presidential campaigns, to find the last of them. They were a ruin-porn fetishists dream come true, brick and cement archives of every failed hope and forlorn dream of the past era. Whether they were deserted, chained up (easily broken), preserved intact or crumbling into mounds, or, occasionally, still running with no tenants left (to stop vandalism), the escalators whirring up and down in the deep silence, the deadmall never disappointed. Occasionally, I'd run into other deadmallers, spelunkers of the great cultural abyss. There was an etiquette of sorts; brief greetings, an exchange of remarks, but no hanging out together, no joining up.

The deadmall was a private experience, a trip back into oneself, as much as it was into the vastness of America.

That mattered all the more because we were doing different things, American deadmallers, and I, looking in on it from the outside, an Australian for whom the 'American mall' had been something mythical and faraway, the realm of fantasy. Americans probing the deadmall – and the vast landscape of abandonment which was the rustbelt Midwest – were trying to work out who they were, where they'd come from, and how their country had come to be in this place. I was trying to work out the strangeness of being Australian, of the weird positionality of it, coming from a place whose popular culture had come to be dominated by America for a period of decades – yet which was irrecoverably distanced from it. Australia had had malls after all. But they had come later, and lesser, they were more provisional and partial, did not sit at the centre of our youth culture. The mall, like the high school prom, graduation, the big game, and a hundred other things, were part of the fantastical place, America, made out of music and movies and sitcoms, and games, and celebrity. Americans had grown up with America, after all, they knew it before they knew themselves, and so the fantasy was mixed up with the dun reality of it all – the miles of suburban tract homes, the dull strips of shops, the decayed downtowns.

For Australians, it was different – especially in the days before the web/internet collapsed the time and distance between. We were the place the most like America, but we weren't it. So it remained a land of the pure other, a place of impossible intensity. Years ago, the US culture industry realised that Australian actors and singers, were a perfect talent source – not only capable of hitting the accent, but trained by a well-funded state education talent system – and set up a veritable pipeline for them to come over.

Prior to that, every Australian success overseas, every star making it, or band with a number one was a source of national celebration. Other than that, we were off the side of the earth. The idea that America was a place someone could just be in, by an act of will, was, for most people, an absurdity.

That transfer of culture, that parallax, left us in a strange position. We were impossibly separated from America, but more American than the Americans. When McDonalds landed in the 1970s, in a country which had only just become accustomed to the char-grilled hamburger, the sweet, melty taste of a Big Mac, somewhere between a burger and a dessert, jacked straight into the brain. When 7-Eleven started opening, around the same time, amid a sea of milk bars, they were like alien pods landing among us, with their fluoro lit shops, their perfect uniformity.

Now, the convenience stores represent the plague of uniformity, while the milk bars, then seen as dusty and old and tired, are now chic and retro and emblematic of a freer time, when we were more ourselves. At the time, it was possible to believe that America did not exist at all – that the off-sync US

reports inserted into news bulletins (the TV systems didn’t match, so the footage looked like overexposed polaroids) were dodged up in house, as was the breakfast Today show, which Australian TV began running off a live feed at 1am in the morning, sometime in the 80s.

Today really was a revelation to millions, because it gave you a window into something really new – American stupid, the thing itself. The movies were either spectacular or deep, the music was polished, the sitcoms were witty and sardonic. But Today – breakfast TV at midnight before we had breakfast TV - was an hours-long American stream-of-consciousness, the country talking to itself, and us listening in. And what we heard was a discourse so many rungs below average Australian exchanges – we have since caught up – that one could only marvel that these people were running the world. As Reagan's new cold war

raged across the face of the earth, pushing us towards 'winnable' nuclear war, the Today team talked about how now that summer was coming on it was getting warmer, that in winter it had been colder, spent ten minutes on heating breakfast oats before or after you added the milk, marvelled at the inexplicable habits of foreigners ('so the Queen is like the President of Britain, right?') and on it went. It was a foretaste of what one found when finally visiting: a country so wrapped up in itself, so enclosed, that it had no reality-testing device. In the years before Asian cinema, British TV, or Japanese cuisine was known in the place, Americans simply had no presence of the outside world in their empyrean.

America, for them, wasn't America. It was simply being, 'is'-ness, what was. That is the paradox that goes to the heart of the notion of an 'American Idiot' – it is simultaneously a lament at that sequestration, and a triumphant celebration of it. And that was alright for a while, for decades. Now, as an Asian century dawns, and billions demand the lives that others have lived, American idiocy has reached its apex, with the election of Donald Trump, the man who promises that the rustbelt will be revived, the deadmalls will live again, and the iPhone will be made in California. This will not last overlong, either, and what comes after this, no-one can say. In the vacant malls, in the empty downtowns, in the tangle of freeways, the country is dreaming afresh of what it might become.

G R E E N DAY ' S A M E R I C A N I D I OT

Fro m 2 3 Feb r ua r y 2 017 Playhouse, QPAC

27

Sugar Skulls

By Chloe Wilson Oh yes, the dead get peckish.

Every winter, they begin to sniff the air, expecting their levy of tidbits – they’ve been watching through hollow sockets – femur crossing femur, every overdressed Catrina drumming her phalanges on the nearest marble cenotaph as we consider the relative merits of crèmes brûlée and caramel, and rotate piglets on spits. They dream in their tiny plywood living rooms

of milk and eggs, of tearing open bread loaves, while rats gnaw boredly on their toes. Then the days shrink, the moon swings, a hatch opens and they’re back, shaking the creases from their outdated finery.

Before or after the show, always

entertaining.

They mill around the ofrendas we’ve left, testing the ripeness of pears, gorging on sweetmeats, measuring love by who remembered the mezcal and cigarettes.

They outnumber us, and we act as though we don’t notice, savoring the tres leches cakes we baked in their name. We never think to ask why they return underground at all, whether it’s habit or whether the dead abide by a system of honor.

One year, they might miss curfew, move in, begin to fossick through our refrigerators, our stores of preserves and pickles. They’ll find the sugar skulls on which we’ve written our names and devour them, stopping only to offer us a trepanned canapé – knowing the sugar, set harder than bone, will grind living teeth down to dust.

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Originally published in Chicago Literari.

treasurybrisbane.com.au

The Space Between

By Drusilla Modjeska

Virginia Woolf was no dancer; it was her mind that was

contained any longer in such ill-fitting vestments.’ The

limber – her mind and her language. As McGregor

task of ‘modern fiction’, and the challenge, was to convey

reminds us, dance was already there in her words; his task

this shifting pattern, the turbulence of competing views,

was to delve down to their essence, to give those words the

competing voices. If a character were to step out from

language of dance, the physicality of ballet. ‘Respectfully’,

modern fiction, he, or she, ‘would have not a single button

was the word he used when asked how he approached

sewn on as the Bond Street tailors would have it.’ Nor did

the task. Respectfully but not literally. His aim was

they. James Joyce’s Ulysses was published in 1922 by the

transformation, and discovery – not adaptation.

Shakespeare Company in Paris. In London, in the Woolfs’ basement, the Hogarth Press published TS Eliot’s

Virginia Woolf lived and worked in turbulent times, as do

The Waste Land, an English translation (by Virginia Woolf)

we. Her first novel was published in 1915, during World

of Dostoyevsky’s The Devils – and all three of the novels

War 1, but her great works – Mrs Dalloway, Orlando and

that in another century Wayne McGregor would transform

The Waves – from which McGregor creates Woolf Works, were written and published in its aftermath, between 1925 and 1931. ‘Death’s enormous sickle’ had cut its swathe through the youth of a generation, leaving ‘a well of tears’; tears and sorrows, turmoil and uncertainty. War had disrupted old rigidities and pomposities that were passing anyway; political protest and economic depression were all around.

That was her world, the world in which she lived and worked – as a novelist and an essayist, as a critic, as a publisher at the Hogarth Press which she and her husband Leonard set up in the basement of their house in London’s Tavistock Square. It was

Words into ballet, dance from the rhythm of a novel: this is the transformation The Royal Ballet’s

a time when new ways of writing, new ways of thinking, were coming into being. Across the arts, it was the era of the Moderns, a radical and necessary

into ballet.

WRITING MAY

In Mrs Dalloway, this philosophy of art, of modern fiction, is given shape

HAVE THE LIGHTNESS OF

in words. It is a London day in June, the weather is sweet, the trees are green, and Clarissa Dalloway is to give a party that evening. She sets out for Bond Street to buy flowers, and as she

HUMOUR, THE BITE OF SATIRE

walks through the crowded streets, she thinks back through her life, to her love for Sally Seton – a love that only now, maybe, can find a name – back to her childhood before the war

AS ORLANDO DOES, BUT IT IS

when the days themselves seemed dependable, before the tumult was upon her – of love, of passions that couldn’t be named, of a marriage that was dependable, and dull. As she walks,

ALSO SERIOUS WORK.

break. English fiction, Virginia Woolf

her mind moving back and forth – the people passing, the cars on the streets, the party that night, figures from the past, long ago, vivid, part of her, gone, still there. ‘I now, I then’, McGregor calls the first of his Woolf Works

Resident Choreographer

famously wrote in her 1919 essay Modern Fiction, once the

triptych, the flow of past and present, the flow of mind

Wayne McGregor achieves in his

most fluid of forms, had become rigidified in the years

and consciousness, that long ago kiss transformed –

before the war. The novelist could no longer inhabit the

triumphantly, delicately – into the dance, the rhythm of

beautiful, utterly contemporary

comfortable high ground, the ‘pinnacle’ of ‘accepted style’,

Woolf given perfect expression.

Woolf Works. Seventy five years

and neat resolutions. If the characters from those novels

Woolf’s way of writing, McGregor has said, her ‘stream

came to life they’d ‘be dressed’, she said, ‘down to the last

of consciousness’ is not so different from the process of

button in the fashion of the hour.’ No more. Doubt had set

choreography; that flow from one idea, one perception,

into the river with stones in her

in, ‘a spasm of rebellion’.

one moment into the next, is as much the essence of

pocket, in March 1941, Woolf still

‘Whether we call it life or spirit, truth or reality, this, the

after Virginia Woolf walked

works – and works magnificently.

and look down with measured plots and careful narratives

ballet, for him and the dancers of Woolf Works, as it is the spirit of Woolf’s language. ‘The Crowded Dance of

essential thing, has moved off, or on, and refuses to be

31

Modern Life,’ Woolf called it, and as a writer she has no

So she wrote Orlando. She was in love with Vita Sackville-

compunction in leaving the stream of Clarissa Dalloway’s

West, rocked by ‘the most violent waves of emotion’ for the

consciousness to rise up as if looking down, not from a

aristocratic Sapphist, Mrs Nicolson. Orlando is her love letter.

knowing pinnacle, but as if with the air that lifts the leaves

Orlando is an androgynous boy born in the Elizabethan

in the park, seeing, just for that moment, the housemaids

era, who morphs and changes over the centuries to become

at their windows, a fat lady in a cab, ‘a voice bubbling up

an androgynous girl of the twentieth century. He, she, is

without direction’, before descending again into the life

beautiful in nakedness and clothed, a lover of love and

and being, the consciousness of others there in the street,

poetry, an adventurer in love and life. ‘It’s all about you,’

some known to Clarissa Dalloway, others not known to her,

Woolf wrote to Vita in October 1927, ‘the lusts of your flesh

but known to us. Poor Septimus, shell-shocked from the

and the lure of your mind… the odd incongruous strands

war, his friend Evans killed in front of him, weeps at the

in you.’ It began as a game, and became serious: how many

London sky, engulfed by ‘the gradual drawing together of

selves could a single self encompass, how many multiples,

everything to one centre before his eyes as if some horrors

how many impressions?

had come almost to the surface’.

He is taken away by the doctors, as Virginia Woolf had been when she was engulfed by depression: closed in, another form of horror, an unbearable transformation of the self. That night Septimus jumps from the window. Mrs Dalloway hears of it at the party where the guests bring their own memories, intersecting and diverging, some shared, some known, some not known, passing, patterning, some still clinging onto their buttons, oh so correctly.

Don’t think of the shapes, McGregor told his dancers.

Think of the transitions.

That is where dance happens.

Don’t think of the shapes, McGregor told his dancers.

Think of the transitions.

That is where dance happens.

‘Becomings’, McGregor calls this second of the Woolf Works triptych.

In the final draft of Orlando the eroticism was toned down, more metaphoric, less actual; another transformation. In 1928, when Orlando was published by the Hogarth Press, the emotional realities of androgyny and gender fluidity were lived experience, articulated and explicit among her Bloomsbury friends and colleagues; their loves and alliances were as fluid as their art. But change brings with it resistance, and 1928 was also the year of Radcliff Hall’s prosecution for her lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness.

Writing may have the lightness of humour, the bite of satire as Orlando does, but it is also serious work. It was in 1928, and it is now. If it is to remain alive, it must move, always in the moment,

After Mrs Dalloway (1925) –

changing, dancing, resisting the censors,

and To The Lighthouse (1927) that McGregor doesn’t use –

resisting those who resist change, those who want to

Virginia Woolf wanted some fun. Those two novels had

remake the certainties.

broken through to a style that, at last, satisfied her. ‘Soft &

stones and walked into the River Ouse at Rodmell just

have lived on, gathering readers, writers, dancers,

before the tide turned, sweeping her body downstream

film-makers, actors. ‘Creative energy’, McGregor calls it. So

until it became snagged. She could feel the wave of

when he incorporates her death into his ‘Tuesday’, it is not

depression rising, she wrote in her note to Leonard, and

as ‘a moment of depression and hopelessness; it’s a moment

this time she knew it would engulf her, she would not

of this energy, this collective energy being atomised and

return to shore.

delivered into the universe.’

The one thing she’d never be able to do as a writer was

The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great

describe her own death. There’s the note to Leonard with

beast stamping.

that one word ‘Tuesday’ written at the top. Then nothing.

Nothing, that is, of the living, breathing woman who was

Endnote

bound by the brief span of human life. Yet her words

Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Modern Fiction’ can be found in her collected Essays (ed. Leonard Woolf) Vol II; the ‘Soft & pliable’ quotation is from her diary, 21

pliable, and I think deep, & never a word wrong for a page

And so we come to The Waves, Woolf’s most radical work,

March 1927 is from The Diary of Virginia Woolf (ed. Anne Olivier Bell) p. 132; the

at a time.’ They had also stressed her, casting her back to

a stream of six consciousnesses, a patterning of being,

line from the letter to Vita Sackville-West, 9 October 1927, is from The Letters

the depression she describes as an engulfing wave, to the

a further step back from narrative. Voices rise and fall,

of Virginia Woolf (ed Nigel Nicolson) Vol 111, p. 429. Quotations from the novels

horrors of doctors and enforced seclusion. But still she wrote

connecting, missing, overlapping as six friends cross and

are from the Penguin editions. All references to and quotations from Wayne

the novels that brought not only her, but the form itself

separate, merge and part. The writing rises and falls, wavers,

out from the war, through the tears, circumventing the old

falters, advances and retreats – like waves, like changing

certainties, creating new forms to hold together the ‘myriad

light, or shadows falling, perspectives shifting. It is a mighty

impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with

novel, and the dance that McGregor works from it rises to

the sharpness of steel’ that complicate both modern life and

its challenge. ‘Tuesday’, he calls this last work of the triptych.

modern fiction.

Tuesday, the day Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with

32

McGregor can be found in an interview with Bonnie Greer, 8 May 2015.

2 0 1 7 Q PAC I N T E R N AT I O N A L S E R I E S T H E R O YA L B A L L E T W OO L F W O R K S

29 June - 2 July 2017 Lyric Theatre, QPAC

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En Pointe Ballet shoes – with their flushed pink demeanour and gentle, dangly ribbons – connote ideas of softness and delicacy and the sense that they arrive in perfect form ready to be slipped on to the awaiting foot of an excited ballerina. Instead, dancers put their shoes through all manner of fire and fury before they get anywhere near their feet. Queensland Ballet’s Lisa Edwards demonstrates her process of deconstruction and reconstruction.

WHY DO DANCERS ALTER THEIR SHOES? To customise them to your feet so they fit perfectly when you dance. Each shoe is handmade and no two pairs are ever identical.

HOW MANY POINTE SHOES WILL YOU USE FOR A SEASON? A Principal dancer can go through 2-3 pairs of pointe shoes during one performance.

H O W L O N G D O E S I T TA K E Y O U TO P R E PA R E A PA I R O F POINTE SHOES? It can take up to 40 minutes to prepare one pair, each dancer has a different method.

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QUEENSLAND THEATRE A great season of theatre is like a great album. It is a series of unique experiences that form a meaningful whole and take you on a journey.

The journey across our nine shows in 2017 is deliberately varied, but unified by our desire to share the very best with Brisbane. You can see urgent new Australian stories, the finest international plays, the hottest next generation of talent and the country’s most outstanding artists.

Each of the plays in Season 2017 achieves what theatre does best – puts human experience under the microscope. We can see ourselves reeling with chaos in the workplace, enraptured in new romance, navigating the parent-child relationship, celebrating with family and wrestling with a failing marriage.

Theatre is unique in its capacity to change how we feel – about ourselves, about our lives, about our universe. Welcome to the next era of your Queensland Theatre.

Ladies in Black (28 Jan — 19 Feb)

(10 Feb — 5 Mar)

The Flick

Constellations

Our heart-warmingly joyous musical back by popular demand

An exquisitely observed meditation on love and change

A romance wrapped in a science blanket

Once in Royal David’s City

Noises Off (3 — 25 Jun)

(24 Jun — 16 Jul)

The great new Australian play by one of our greatest writers

A shamelessly entertaining farce that guarantees a fun night

An insightful story about the personal side of globalisation

My Name is Jimi

An Octoroon

Scenes from a Marriage

An intimate audience with our most charismatic storyteller

A provocatively hilarious interrogation of identity

A riveting portrait of a marriage performed by a real-life couple

(22 Apr — 14 May)

(22 Jul — 13 Aug)

(16 Sep — 8 Oct)

(9 Mar — 9 Apr)

Rice

(11 Nov — 3 Dec)

THE 2017 SEASON

Shakespeare A conversation with John Bell AO

PUNISHMENT Inga: Why don’t you think the son comes back to life?

Is there any significance in that? Like he can’t have it all back?

John Bell: I think that’s right. It would be just too good!

Let's begin...

John Bell: So, let’s start with the story. It’s set in the beginning in Sicilia… [extended plot summary that includes best friends, alleged adultery, madness, banishment, death, a shipwreck, a bear, adopted baby, concealed identity, forgiveness and resurrection]

RELEVANCE

Shakespeare’s works, saturated with

John Bell: What relevance has the play today to an audience,

vibrant images, language, movement

you know, apart from a great story, beautiful story? I’m not

and characters, remain ripe for twenty

sure if the ballet emphasises this, but there are uncomfortable echoes of domestic violence in this and the way men can treat

first century adaptation across theatre,

To begin the task of delving into one

ballet, television, and film. The stories,

of The Bard’s lesser known works,

although centuries old, transcend time

The Winter’s Tale, we invited famed

and place to illuminate contemporary

actor, writer, director and founder

concerns about love, nature, beauty,

of Bell Shakespeare, John Bell, to a

you take away forgiveness. Hermione’s forgiveness, which is

life and death, and what it means

conversation on the Cremorne Theatre

the greatest… how could anyone forgive that? But she does and

to be human. His works encourage

stage. He led a group of QPAC staff

that’s what makes it uplifting. We are capable of being as good

conversation, urging us to explore our

through themes of jealousy, shipwreck,

own ideas and hypotheses, safe within

brother versus brother, forgiveness

a realm of infinite possibility.

and reconciliation on the way to the colourful world of Bohemia. Here’s a snapshot...

women and the effect it has on their children.

I think what you take away with you is the enormity of the crime, Leontes’ grief, his repentance. You take away Paulina’s patience and wisdom, the way she handles it and most of all

as Hermione.

Alex: Shakespeare often uses a disguise for women to have power, but Paulina doesn’t seem to have that. Would you say that perhaps Shakespeare represents her as sort of a Venus figure in the text?

John Bell: That’s fantastic. I haven’t heard of that before.

Emily: In the ballet they do really go down that domestic violence path. It’s quite violent in that first scene especially when Hermione comes out when she’s pregnant and there’s all of this gesturing towards her belly and kind of throwing her to the ground. I think that’s a really strong theme that

Elaine: There’s also a sense of universal punishment of some kind. You must pay a price for the cost of your actions to other people.

John Bell: Yes, I think that’s right. He can never be really happy again – totally – because of what he’s done. You can’t make up for all of that.

Elaine: I’m really struck by the notion that Leontes’ madness is so sudden and so psychotic compared to the other kinds of madness that Shakespeare investigates in Macbeth and Othello, which are drawn on by other characters ­­– other characters manipulating and working on a character’s weakness.

John Bell: I’d say that Lear got pretty close to it. He just snaps and says, ‘get out!’ That’s a bit like Leontes there and it’s certainly irrational… it’s coming from arrogance and pride and being embarrassed in public.

MADNESS John Bell: I would say that by the end of the trial scene when he says, ‘yes, you’re right, you’re actually right I’ve done terrible things’. He’s coming back out of it then. He realises.

He’s coming back to his senses, but that’s not enough.

He has to go through all this repentance before he can be forgiven. So it’s a temporary insanity and he can be shocked out of it just as he was shocked into it, by witnessing something that he thought he saw. He can be shocked out of it by the death of his son and death of his wife. Those two severe shocks seem to bring him out of it.

Elaine: But also, dramatically, it’s just extraordinary isn’t it? Like, too hot, too hot ­– BANG! We’re right there. In the audience at the time, we’re going, ‘oh my god’ – ‘what’s going to happen now?’ It’s just such a perfect narrative choice.

John Bell: Yes, Shakespeare doesn’t ease you into it.

comes out. It is very clear in the physicality of dance –

Elaine: No. It slaps you across the head and you have

throwing her away.

absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. Anything is possible on the stage now. It’s also a sense of his own approaching death – his own inability to maintain his kingdom and control.

39

John Bell: He has this fantasy about, ‘I’ll just retire now and I’ll come and stay with you all and have a lovely soft retirement and look at all my work’. He’s got these unrealistic expectations and he’s used to flattery… it’s an old man’s arrogance.

Elaine: Polixenes says a similar thing in this play where he talks about the quality of Leontes’ rage and jealousy – I can’t remember the exact words – but because Hermione is as beautiful and pure as she is, so his jealousy must be enormous, because he is a man of such position, so his anger will be…

John Bell: … all the greater!

PRICE OF GREATNESS Elaine: Yes, so it seems to be like a recurring Shakespearean theme around the notion of the cost of greatness.

John Bell: Well, it’s certainly the arrogance of entitlement.

John Bell: Redemption I suppose is a good word… one

John Kotzas: The Winter’s Tale is the first time since 1965

single word for it, but redemption has to happen through

that The Royal Ballet has committed to a story ballet.

someone redeeming you, it’s not just you. Someone has

The last one was Romeo and Juliet. Now, we know

to forgive you. You have to be prepared to accept it. At the

Christopher Wheeldon is a great choreographer, but this

end of The Tempest everybody accepts forgiveness, except

is quite a brave decision and an interesting challenge after

Antonio. So it’s a two-way thing. You’ve got to be ready to

a long period of time.

be forgiven.

John Bell: They have kept Romeo and Juliet in their Lauren: I’m interested in that theme of redemption and

repertoire. It’s something that nobody else has thought

how important it is in this story… will modern audiences

of doing frankly. I think they’re a bit frightened of

follow Hermione with her forgiveness? Not having seen it, I

Shakespeare, ‘how could I possibly put that in dance, it seems

find it a bit hard to believe that I would come out of 16 years

kind of presumptuous’. So I think they’ve made a clever

and say ‘yes I forgive you’. I wonder if the appreciation of

choice, actually, because it’s a fairy story. Fairy stories are

the play for a modern audience hinges on them buying

easier to do than, let’s say, Macbeth.

the forgiveness?

John Bell: It will be interesting to see.

Emily: Do you think Shakespeare had any idea that 400 Lauren: I wonder if this play does give us the opportunity

common theme and most of the Kings have to learn that along the line somewhere… that they are human. Lear most of all. You can’t go on doing that to people. They all pay the price for arrogance – Julius Caesar for instance. You can’t just assume ongoing entitlement.

Brendan: Hopefully Donald Trump might not!

years later we’d be sitting around dissecting his work?

to have a nuanced look at forgiveness which, at the moment on our stages, we don’t see so much? There’s this

John Bell: Probably not. He didn’t publish his plays.

encouragement towards either don’t go back or there’s the

They sold copies of them, but he never collected them all

tragedy of the person staying in the situation.

together. That was done by his friends after he died.

Jennifer: Or even revenge.

Ben Jonson was the first one to put all of his works together

Thinking that because you’re a certain position you have the right to stand on people – the authoritarian. That’s a pretty

ENDURING RELEVANCE

and call it his works and people mocked him – ‘what are you talking about works, they’re plays!’ Works were philosophy and

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

poetry. Shakespeare did publish his sonnets. He was very

Leontes

The King of Sicilia.

Hermione

The virtuous and beautiful Queen of Sicilia.

Perdita

The daughter of Leontes and Hermione.

Polixenes

The King of Bohemia, and Leontes’ boyhood friend.

Florizel

Polixenes’ only son and heir.

Camillo

An honest Sicilian nobleman

can simplify it down to those symbols… it needs a clear

Paulina

A noblewoman of Sicily.

narrative to carry it through and I thought it was a really

Autolycus

A roguish peddler, vagabond, and pickpocket.

Shepherd

An old and honourable sheep-tender.

Antigonus

Paulina's husband, and also a loyal defender

ART FORM Inga: When you were talking about the difference between

proud of his sonnets and his poems.

the ballet and the spoken, dramatic work, I actually think it’s almost like the symbols that you talked through are more

John Kotzas: I think that’s a really good question.

at the forefront in the ballet because you lose all the text.

Which of our playwrights will be relevant in 400 years’

They really pinpoint these key moments… I don’t know if

time? Which of our musicians will be relevant?

REDEMPTION

you saw, she’s got a necklace, which symbolises her royalty.

En Rui: Amidst jealousy, domestic violence would you

find out, ‘oh, it is my daughter’.

That’s her mum’s necklace and it’s hers and that’s how they

Emily: Which TV show? Game of Thrones, we know!

argue there’s an overarching theme of art versus humanity?

You know, the kind of madness that he portrays is actually a very inherent part of human nature… the art of love has driven him insane.

Jennifer: It was a really good story for ballet because you

good choice for a story ballet.

John Bell: It’s hard to find one simple thematic line… because it’s such a complex piece.

When I saw it as a play I thought it was quite simple and didn’t realise there was all this complexity involved.

Jennifer: Redemption?

2 0 1 7 Q PAC I N T E R N AT I O N A L S E R I E S

of Hermione.

T H E R O YA L B A L L E T T H E W I N T E R ' S TA L E

5 – 9 July 2 0 1 7 Lyric Theatre, QPAC

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Clown

The Shepherd's buffoonish son, and Perdita's adopted brother.

Mamillius

The young prince of Sicilia, Leontes and Hermione's son.

THE

Mabo Oration

"The title of this oration –

“Many benefits have flowed

Corroboree – is to emphasise

from the Mabo judgment

the First Peoples’ sustained

and the recognition of native

institutions and systems for

title to land – these benefits

governance. These systems

have been both practical

thrived for tens of thousands

and symbolic. The Mabo

of years and still exist under

judgment was an agent for

By Kevin Cocks AM

the encumbrance of the

"And so, the overarching

change and recognition,

Australian State. Our goal

theme of this Oration is

though many issues of

to survive as Indigenous

about self-evident truths

Indigenous recognition and

25 years ago the Mabo Case rewrote Australian law and recognised the existence of native title.

peoples – custodians with

in Aboriginal and Torres

rights remains unresolved.”

inherent obligations to

Strait Islander affairs.

the natural and spiritual

In particular, the need to

environment

build stronger relationships

– is a legitimate one."

between Indigenous and

Driven by a desire to honour the courage and significance of Edward Koiki Mabo’s work, in 2005 the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland (ADCQ) and QPAC partnered to establish The Mabo Oration – a biennial public oration from expert voices in the field of native title and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Since then, six leaders from divergent fields have delivered orations on subjects ranging from the legal protection of cultural knowledge to meeting the

- Les Malezer, The Mabo Oration 2013

contemporary challenges of social justice.

non-Indigenous Australians that are based on honesty, acknowledgment and

"The Mabo Case and the legacy of Eddie Mabo Queensland’s current Anti-Discrimination Commissioner

Of course the High Court decision began another iteration of

Kevin Cocks AM believes public institutions have a critical role in

conversations. It provided a framework for Aboriginal and Torres

facilitating and enabling important public conversations, especially

Strait Islander Peoples to have further conversations about the

around issues of rights.

impact of living in a country that did not recognise the oldest living culture, and custodians of the land that now is home to over

In 1982 Edward Koiki Mabo and four of his fellow Mer Islanders

24 million people.

began their legal claim in Australia’s High Court for ownership of lands on the island of Mer. Ten years later the High Court decided

The Mabo Oration is an opportunity for ADCQ and QPAC to pay

in their favour in what is known widely now as the Mabo Case. The

our tribute to Mr Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Island man whose

legal doctrine of native title was a landmark moment, it changed

achievements, some 24 years after the original decision in Mabo

the foundation of land law in Australia and the Native Title Act was

against the Commonwealth of Australia, are still only beginning

introduced the following year.

to be recognised.

Eddie Mabo began this journey through conversations.

Now, 25 years after the High Court decision, The Mabo Oration

Conversations with his community, the family and the academic

provides a continuing platform for all Australians to engage in a

community where he challenged the notion of terra nullius in a way

conversation that will challenge, and enlighten all of us who are

that brought voices of influence along the journey that ultimately

descendants of those who have come by boats and planes or recent

saw the destruction of the myth of terra nullius, through the High

arrivals. Through conversations we can transform our relationships

Court Decision in Mabo Number 2.

with our First Nation's Peoples.

himself remind us that there

understanding.”

- Professor Tom Calma AO, The Mabo Oration 2009

are times in our nation’s history where the tide turns

"Eddie Mabo knew the

and Australians begin to

importance of keeping

understand that the fates

culture alive, no matter

of Aboriginal and other

where you lived, or how

Australians are tied."

far you travelled from your

- Professor Larissa Behrendt, The Mabo Oration 2007

island home. Indigenous peoples’ rights to land are inter-connected with the rights to stories, song, dance, resources, totems, and relationships of kin, associated with land."

- Terri Janke, The Mabo Oration 2011

42

- Dr Dawn Casey PSM FAHA, The Mabo Oration 2015

"The principles established

by Mabo represented the best opportunity for resolution of the Colonial grievance between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians”, and noted that he had often referred to Mabo as 'the once in a nation's lifetime opportunity'. He believes Mabo is our 'cornerstone for reconciliation” - Noel Pearson, The Mabo Oration 2005

It’s a place that used to be ubiquitous but regrettably is fast

not remembering the who, why, where, when of encounters

disappearing which is disastrous for the planet as this place holds

with others. Why is it that we so often refuse to engage deeply

the wisdom of the world. I fear the day is coming when I’ll no

with others - writers, artists, politicians, historians, teachers,

longer be able to wile away hours losing myself by becoming

brothers, sisters, and on and on? Do we actually hate learning

disinterested in time, or in the normal routines of my everyday

new things?

life. It’s generally quiet in my favourite place yet it doesn’t matter

The Getting of Wisdom

By Professor Judith McLean

how many people are there I manage to tune out by tuning into

Or, is life really just one big Groundhog Day? Or, is

myself, into a private conversation between me and whatever

‘individuation’ or to use the colloquial the ‘getting of wisdom’

author is in my hands. It’s in this place where I grow my inside.

even possible in this overwrought, overstimulated life today?

I suspect that if you’re reading this you’ll also identify with the

Staggeringly, it’s said that every two days we create as much

local bookshop as a favourite place.

information as we did up until 2003. But information is not knowledge, knowledge differs from understanding and

Back to my insight…it was early morning as I waited patiently Lost Lovers, a novel by Nadeem Aslam, a British-Pakistani writer recommended to me by a trusted reader friend.

(Incidentally, the book is breathtakingly gorgeous. Equal parts tragic yet beautiful in its depiction of the lives of Pakistani immigrants in England’s north. Highly recommended.) It was here that I was privy to a conversation between Andrea – my book advisor/seller – and her purchaser let’s call her Patricia. It went like this…

Andrea: Have you read the book she wrote before this one?

Patricia: I think so but I can’t remember.

I read a book a day and I never remember anything I read…

And there it was… an insight into Patricia’s life… as well as my own.

Patricia’s glib acceptance that she

Last week at my favourite place, I had an epiphany, it’s a slight exaggeration to call it an epiphany perhaps it

understanding does not necessarily guarantee wisdom.

to pick up a book I’d ordered, Maps For

couldn’t recall anything she reads opened up a rabbit hole I dove right down into. I couldn’t help wonder if it was indeed possible to read a book a day and

Wisdom has many beginnings but ultimately it’s recognised as an embodied quality (inside) revealed through a life lived with passion and grace (outside).

Wisdom has many beginnings but ultimately it’s recognised as an embodied quality (inside) revealed through a life lived with passion and grace (outside). None of us is born wise. Through life’s struggles we either get it or not. Art points us in the right direction because by its very nature, it deals with humans in messy situations either railing against themselves or others, against the world, or against the natural elements.

We can learn vicariously that in tragedy, protagonists often learn too late to listen inwardly and consequently destroy theirs and other’s lives. Think of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists – Lear, Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet – their inability to listen inwards reveals a hubris that brings them undone.

By listening inwards we enter the languages of feelings, of the senses, of the unspoken, of understanding the symbolic order – the world of art and culture. Listening inwards taps us into our inner teacher and inner conversations accessed through playfulness, through our preparedness to make-believe, through reflecting on the lives of others.

What if…? What happened here…? What

was more of an unexpected insight. Not a blinding

remember nothing. If so, what was the

knock-you-over insight into the meaning of life yet

appreciable effect on who we are, what

circumstances? Where is the Lear, Othello,

we think or how we live? Psychologically

Macbeth, Hamlet in me…?

significant enough that it stayed with me and inspired me to write about it. But before I share what happened let me digress and tell you a little about my favourite place.

point of such experiences if they had no

are the circumstances that have led to this behaviour…? How would I behave in similar

speaking why do anything that doesn’t help us ‘individuate’ to use Carl Jung’s concept. In broad terms to ‘individuate’ is to integrate

Listening inwards may sound slightly esoteric but Jonathon

both unconscious and conscious selves to reach our highest self,

Lear describes it as an eminently practical skill which involves

to become a wise being? Is it enough to spend hours of our lives

three phases: 1. naming the experience and the accompanying

in mindless activities, merely filling in time?

emotions (as above with Patricia and Andrea); 2. increasing a practical skill of monitoring life experiences (going down the

At the time I struggled to sort through a mishmash of feelings.

rabbit hole); 3. interpreting the experience (understanding

Why had this seemingly innocuous conversation continued

through analysis).

to puzzle me? Afterwards, as I reflected on my confusion, I identified wistfulfulness – what a luxury to be able to read a

As I descended deeper into the rabbit hole I wondered

book a day; envy – oh, if only I had that much time to read; and

if perhaps Patricia’s habit of spending her days reading

a certain sadness for Patricia, for myself, for fellow humans. I

enthralling narratives, meeting fascinating characters, following

thought about how much of our precious lives we waste by

intricate plots, might possibly stay with her more consciously if

45

JOIN US

"I read a book a day and I never remember anything I read." she learnt to practice what psychoanalyst and paediatrician DW Winnicott describes as growing ‘an inside’. My suspicion about Patricia’s and my own lack of stickiness in using experiences to learn from suggests our inner and outer worlds may not be in unison. Incidentally, they’re accessed by two distinctly different modes of thought, and housed in different hemispheres of the brain so it does require joinedup conversations. The brilliant American educationalist Parker Palmer explains the concept of growing an inside in the following way: ‘…the inner life of any great thing will be incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my own. I cannot know in another being what I do not know in myself.’

In re-surfacing from the rabbit hole to the outer worlds it’s important to regularly visit one’s favourite places anywhere where books, writers, artists, ideas, theories, narratives link both these inner and the outer worlds. This reciprocal interplay between each other – writer and reader, mother and daughter, poet and audience, artist and percipient that helps make our life experiences challenging, nourishing and meaningful. It’s at the bookshop and the theatre, where I encountered Jung’s challenge to find the myth I was unconsciously living by to assist in growing an inside. He writes:

‘What is the myth you are living’ I found no answer to this question, and had to admit I was not living a myth, or even in a myth… So, took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth and I regarded this as the task of tasks’

QPAC

I reflected that I needed to take more time consciously recognising my inner myth more knowingly hopefully placing me on Wisdom Road. We all have inner teachers to guide us in locating these myths all we need to do is invite them into our conversations. At the same time, it’s useful to appreciate

MEMBERSHIP

that paradox – when things that don’t automatically make sense - enriches our lives and helps us understand the deeper complexities of life. We can’t do this alone. Inner work demands both solitude and community - artists, performers, writers, poets, characters whose lives we’ll never live. By connecting and having inner and outer conversations we become more

Endnote

connected to ourselves as well as others.

Jonathan Lear’s ideas on ‘listening inward’ can be found in, Freud (2005).

DW Winnicott’s theory of ‘growing an inside’ is located in, Playing and Reality

46

Thanks Andrea and Patricia for taking me down the rabbit hole.

(1971). Parker Palmer’s quote on the ‘inner life’ is from his book titled, A Hidden

I’ve learned lots about myself and how art can teach me

Wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life (2004). Carl Jung’s thoughts on

even more.

‘myth’ and ‘individuation’ are written in, The Undiscovered Self: The dilemma of the individual in modern society (2006).

Priority booking, zero transaction fees, savings, news and entertainment.

JOIN NOW!

qpac.com.au/membership | 136 246 | QPAC Box Office queensland theatre, a christmas carol. designed by jonathan oxlade. photograph rob maccoll.

Court Couture With Bill Haycock

WHAT New judicial robes for the High Court of Australia.

WHY There was a desire to make new robes more practical and lighter than before and reflect a sense of Australia.

HOW Bill designed the robes to be made from Australian merino wool and silk and to encompass three symbolic features:

7 EQUAL TUCKS These reflect the 7 components of Federation – the States and the Commonwealth.

The equal tucks also refer to equality under the law.

SAND RIPPLES Fabric design is inspired by sand ripples and has a wool warp and silk weft.

The sand ripples reference Australia as the world’s largest island and the prevalence of our iconic deserts and beaches.

TRIANGLE The triangular motif represents the High Court’s function as the final court of appeal.

WHERE Designed and made in Brisbane… worn in Canberra.

WHEN October 2016

WHO Bill Haycock – stage, costume and graphic designer Margaret Adam – cutter Saffron Firkins – maker Kay Faulkner – weaver

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49

Life Hacks

Robyn Gander TICKETING AND CLIENT

The idea of hacking comes to us via the world of computers and code but is now used broadly to describe ways to subvert any system. Life hacks are prolific across the internet with everyone from celebrities to bloggers to Aunt Gertrude’s cat offering low budget tips to improve our time management, make up prowess, storage capability of our wardrobes, or previously unthought-of uses for everyday objects. In this spirit, here are some tips from our varied QPAC experts.

SERVICES MANAGER WHAT’S THE BEST SEAT IN A THEATRE? At the bar! Actually, it’s a personal preference and

Roger Leong

depends on the show of course. People often think front row is best but it usually isn’t in terms of acoustics and view. My favourite row is stalls row E.

SENIOR WEB DEVELOPER 2016’S BEST APP OR NEW GADGET? Google Photos for images backup (IOS and Android) and

Kim Thiel

Dyson V8 handheld vacuum for busy families!

PROTOCOL MANAGER (BOARD LIAISON) BIGGEST FAUX PAS TO COMMIT IN FRONT OF A DIGNITARY?

John Buswell

So much can go wrong! If your theatre seat is on the other side of a VIP… best not to attempt the shimmy past but make your way to the

CUSTOMER INSIGHTS & RESEARCH ANALYST – TALK DATA TO US… If someone quotes a percentage or a fraction, convert it to a ratio (17% is approximately 1 in 6).

It makes you sound smart (or pretentious) and also forces you to think about what’s being said.

50

Cindy Ullrich

other side via an aisle.

A butt to the face of a celebrity or VIP is not particularly elegant. Also it’s so easy to fall into their laps… yes it has happened.

PUBLICITY MANAGER WHAT'S YOUR BEST PITCHING TIP? Know your stuff and keep it short… succinct, succinct, succinct is they key (although repeating it 3 times seems to break my own rule).

Whenever you pitch anything to anyone, make it

(Vice versa works too, if someone quotes a ratio,

personalised, timely and a

convert it to a percentage).

perfect fit for them.

51

Keep in touch Q PA C WAT E R C O O L E R C H AT S Quick chats, big ideas Is poetry dead?

What makes a stage show a ‘work of art’?

Do adults have just as much to learn from children as they do from us?

Is it the responsibility of the artist to create morally and ethically sound works?

Twice a month, QPAC staff and friends gather around the metaphorical watercooler for a 30 minute chat about news and issues relating to arts and culture – new thinking, sponsorship, popular culture, digital innovations, venue management, festivals, technology and more.

Join in and tell us what you think each fortnight or follow the conversation on Twitter #QPACchat ENEWS The latest shows and events Subscribe to QPAC eNews for the latest show and events at qpac.com.au SOCIAL Put yourself in the picture QPAC’s social media channels feature news, information, behind the scenes insights, competitions and conversation.

Be our friend, follow us and stay across all that happens in a busy performing arts centre. #QPAC #QPACSTORY

52

@ ATQ PA C

Q PAC T V

@Q PAC

@ ATQ PA C

We are delighted to be the Preferred Airline Partner of the 2017 Qpac International series

Tim Minchin COMPOSER, LYRICIST, MUSICIAN, COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER AND DIRECTOR AGREED TO CHAT IN EXCHANGE FOR CAKE.

QP

HERE ARE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS…

" Don’t let my hair fool you, I am the nerdiest person you know." " When you go to the theatre what you want is an experience that allows you to escape from your life."

M AT I L DA T H E M U S I C A L

Un til 1 2 Fe b r uary 2 0 1 7

54

Lyric Theatre, QPAC

"Music is an element that allows us to express ourselves and that helps us shed reality… songs are like soliloquies. "

AC

’s

Dive deeper. Be fearless in thought.

Ask the question. Form an opinion.

Discover. Learn. Provoke.

"To be an artist you need to be bringing a world view to your craft. "

Bask in creativity.

Take time, wonder about stuff.

Be curious and imagine.

Get sweaty, create. qpac.com.au/the-creatory

OUT OF

BOUNDS

By Mary-Rose MacColl

Gender is one of many constraints stopping us doing what we might want to do or be suited to in life. The changes we’re seeing I’m teaching myself to skateboard. Actually, my fourteen

under the rainbow banner in the present century are chipping

year old son is teaching me to skateboard. Most early

away at gender, just as various rights movements in the twentieth

mornings, we visit the local skatepark which has been

century chipped away at race and class. Each new freedom, even if

recently refurbished in smooth, hurtful concrete. It’s next

we don’t relate to it personally, makes us all more free.

to a tennis court with a more kindly surface and fewer obstacles. I skate around and around the tennis court while

Maybe we’re not as solid as we think we are anyway. I read that our

my son does tricks in the skatepark. Every now and then, he

body cells, the basic building blocks that make us who and what we

looks over and gives me advice. So far, I’ve learned to avoid

are, are entirely replaced every seven years. If this were true, we

colliding with the fence and net most of the time.

could become whole new people many times over across our lives.

We could transform. Yes yes, I know it’s more pseudo than science.

After half an hour, we go home and have breakfast and my

While many cells die after just a few hours or days, our creaky old

son goes to school and I go to my writing desk. If anyone

brain cells, the ones that determine consciousness, are with us for

comes past while I’m skateboarding – swimmers on their

the long haul. We’re kind of stuck with ourselves. Psychologists,

way to the pool, commuters on their way to the bus – I yell

with their odd combination of numeracy and emotional

something like, ‘I hear it’s good to learn new skills as you

intelligence, say we can really only change about five per cent of

get old.’ I laugh and try to show off how good I’m getting

our basic personalities across our lives.

Eliza’s Doolittle’s transformation from a ‘squashed cabbage leaf’ to a ‘work of art’ is one of the twentieth century’s most enduring makeover stories. In Pygmalion, George Bernard Shaw’s tale of manners, Eliza shifts class, sensibility, and self-awareness only to arrive at the realisation that it’s all smoke and mirrors with a touch of hypocrisy thrown in.

and then generally fall over. People laugh back and say

Eschewing a bonnet and embroidered gown in favour of knee pads, novelist Mary-Rose MacColl seeks a different kind of transformation and offers a suggested route to escape some of the invisible borders that hem us in, the ones made of expectation and perception.

I think I’d score highly on a skateboarding aptitude test.

care less about other people’s expectations. All she needed was

I’m small, with a low centre of gravity. I’m strong and I have

someone to think to put wheels under her feet, and she’d be there

good balance. I love speed. It’s got me thinking about why I

now in the skatepark, doing 540s out of the bowl.

something, mostly encouraging. No one has been rude yet,

I don’t care. I want transformation to be possible. I write novels

but it’s early days.

and my characters transform themselves in seven minutes, sometimes seven seconds of writing, which is often satisfying. It’s

You might not immediately pick me for a skateboarder.

possible that all fiction is about transformation. A character starts

I’m fifty five and a woman. I often say I was fifty before I

here and ends there. The shape-shifter like Gandalf and Darth stay

stopped caring what people think of me but since I’m yelling

with us, along with the ones who gain something we want, Jane

at passers by to explain why I’m skateboarding, it’s clear I

Eyre her independence, Holden Caulfield insight. We want that

haven’t quite managed to shake off the prejudices of others.

sure confidence that change is good. 'Bring on those new cells!'

And perhaps we never do. Perhaps all of life we let our fears

we say.

about what people will think of us determine who and what we are.

If I had a choice, I’d ask for a cell refund rather than a whole new kit. I’d go back to the cellular me at eight years of age. She couldn’t

never took up skateboarding in childhood. Even now, there are very few young women at the skatepark among the

When we let ourselves be constrained by what’s expected, we miss

dozens of young men. Is skateboarding something only boys

opportunities to be who we are. When we place those expectations

like to do?

on others, it can’t be anything but prejudice. Skateboarding is terrifying and exhilarating and it makes my brain light up in places I’m sure nothing else in my life does. It’s intuitive, and it’s proof of life.

M Y FA I R L A D Y

From 14 March 2017

56

Lyric Theatre, QPAC

57

BEHIND

the scenes

The annual QPAC International Series presents iconic, world renowned companies that feature some of the most exciting artists of our time. In between performances of the acclaimed, edgy Snow White, France’s Ballet Preljocaj took two masterclasses with local dancers as part of QPAC International

Ballet Preljocaj’s Assistant Director Youri Van Den Bosch (left) and company teacher Baptiste Coisseau (opposite) took

Series Residency Program.

class and gave participants insights into choreographer

Masterclass participants were

Angelin Preljocaj’s creation process for Snow White.

required to have a minimum of Advanced level training.

43 dancers came from dance schools and professional companies across the state.

DISCOVER MORE - VIEW THE ENTIRE BEHIND THE SCENES

58

PHOTO GALLERY AT THE CREATORY QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

59

When we drink a fine wine, our senses perceive the various components of texture, aroma, taste and mouthfeel. Receptors, on our taste buds and olfactory bulb, send a complex array of messages to our brain which are simultaneously perceived. Our brain interprets these messages as wine flavour and determines if we like the sensation, or if it does not meet our taste.

Wine flavour arises from many hundreds of individual compounds that work in combination to create the sensory experience of wine. Like instruments in a symphony orchestra, all components must be present at just the right level and playing in tune with one another. If one wine component is missing, the flavour can be lacking and hollow. If another component is present at very high levels, it can cause an off-note in the wine.

Interestingly, the part of our brain that interprets food and wine aroma is also responsible for functions such as emotion, behaviour and the formation of memories.

Different smells often remind us of a time or place, and can influence our mood and emotions. This certainly

SCENTS

&

sensibility

By Dr Heather Smyth

helps to explain emotional eating!

With performance, we are often ‘in the mood’ for one style or another. Depending on how we feel we might enjoy some jazz or prefer something a little more upbeat. It’s also true that for many, if we’re not in the right mood for a certain style of performance it can be completely irritating!

So, is there a food or wine style and flavour that can put us in the right emotional state for one style of performance or other? ‘Dinner and a show’ goes handin-hand, but the link between what we’ve just eaten and how much we enjoyed the show could be stronger than we realise.

The science of understanding links between sensorial experiences, emotions and behaviours is still in its infancy. Typically, simple flavours have been recognised for their mood-altering abilities.

Peppermint is known to increase alertness while rosemary increases calmness and contentment. The

The sensory enjoyment of music and theatre is not unlike our enjoyment of

emotive influence of complex flavour combinations

food and wine - we all have different tastes. This is largely due to how we’ve

Thai curry, is still far from understood.

been brought up and what we’ve been exposed to, and there is a physiological

Nevertheless, next time you enjoy a live performance,

element that plays a role. Dr Heather Smyth looks at whether there might be a

Hawaiian pizza made you feel about the comedy, or

link between what we like to eat, and what types of music or live performance

appreciated in whole foods like a Grenache wine, or a

it may be worth paying closer attention to how your how your chicken cassoulet influenced your response to the ballet.

we prefer?

L Y R E B I R D R E S TA U R A N T

60

Wednesday to Saturday from 5pm QPAC 07 3840 7598

61

[sahy-uh ns]

Why do you think science has become so popular and would you classify it as “cool”? together at the same time – for starters scientists are increasingly public. Superstars like the ones you mentioned have led the charge, but more and more scientists in general are getting out there and giving talks to the public, running science festivals and even doing science-comedy. At the same time, we’re living through an

The popular appeal of science is broadening.

Television show The Big Bang Theory is one

why a blue line painted on the plate moved in the way it did, and he worked out the maths of it just for fun.

I think it’s probably down to a load of different factors coming recognising the importance of communicating what they do to the

With Dr Harry Cliff

thrown across the cafeteria at CalTech. He wanted to understand

unprecedented period of discovery; from spectacular international projects like the Large Hadron Collider and the Square Kilometer

But that work then went on to help him develop one of the cornerstones of modern physics, describing how particles of light and matter interact. More than that he was also a very human person, far from the dusty intellectual that people might imagine a theoretician to be, he was a safe-cracker, prankster, played the bongos, became a pretty accomplished painter and generally squeezed whatever he could out of life.

Array that offer the potential to answer some of the deepest

What’s your take on the connection between

questions it’s possible to ask about our universe, to attempts to

science and art?

understand the workings of the human brain. It’s hard to not be excited by what’s happening in science at the moment!

Why do you think there’s been such a public interest

I think it depends on the scientist/artist, but I think the two fields have a lot to learn from each other. Ultimately, science and art are both practiced by people and they both ask questions about the human condition, our place in the universe. Artists are increasingly

of the highest rated sitcoms in the United

in particle physics and discoveries like the Higgs particle (one of the 17 particles in Standard Model

creating new art forms that wouldn’t have been possible in the past.

States attracting millions of viewers each

of physics)?

At the same time, scientists can benefit hugely from collaborating with

episode, science communicators like Neil deGrasse Tyson, Bill Nye and Brian Cox are developing guru status. When New York brought its World Science Festival to

That’s an interesting question actually. Back in 1983 an earlier giant accelerator at CERN (the European Organization for Nuclear Research) discovered two new fundamental particles called the W and Z bosons, arguably more significant than the discovery of the Higgs but there wasn’t nearly so much public interest. So what’s different today? Well for one, CERN are much cannier at getting their message out and we have a range of charismatic spokespeople to talk to the public about the discovery.

The Large Hadron Collider itself has also captured the public’s

being inspired by developments in science, and new technologies are

artists and designers, particularly when it comes to communicating with the public. The main reason that the Collider exhibition that I worked on at the Science Museum has been so successful was because it was created in collaboration with playwrights, artists and theatre designers to create a world which the visitor feels immersed in. The ability that art has to transport you to a different time or place can be hugely powerful when you’re trying to tell a scientific story.

Do sci-fi movies help or hinder real science? What is

imagination thanks to its sheer size, the ambition of its scientific

your favourite science movie and why?

program and just the fact that it looks so damn sexy on camera.

I think for the most part science fiction plays an important role in

I sometimes wonder whether the detectors like ATLAS and CMS

inspiring people to take an interest in science. Even if movies often

were designed deliberately to look like something out of a sci-fi

get the science wrong, they do often capture the essential curiosity

film. You also have the rather moving story of Peter Higgs and his

and ambition that drives scientific endeavour as well as imagining

colleagues, who were all relatively young men back in 1964 when

Cliff, a particle physicist at the University

what kind of worlds science might allow us to create one day. I came

they first came up with the idea of the Higgs mechanism, and then

out of seeing The Martian feeling absolutely inspired by the possibility

waited their entire lives to see their idea vindicated. It was hard not

that people might get to walk on Mars in my lifetime, and I’m sure

of Cambridge.

to be moved by the site of Peter Higgs, now an old man in his 80s,

that film will have inspired a few future astronauts.

Brisbane for the first time last year, the city went mad for it. When it returns in March this year one of its guests will be Dr Harry

wiping away a tear at the discovery announcement.

I think my favourite all-time sci-fi film is probably 2001: A Space

Who are some notable figures in science you’re

Odyssey. I saw it for the first time in a while recently and apart from

influenced by and why?

being reminded just how weird a film it is, I was really impressed

Like a lot of my colleagues I was hugely inspired by reading

like, considering it was made a year before the 1969 moon landings.

about the life of Richard Feynman, one of the greatest theoretical physicists of the twentieth century. It’s not just that he was a brilliant scientist, but he embodied that spirit of pure and joyous curiosity.

by the vision and the imagination of what life in space would be It’s also one of the few films that really captures the vastness and bleakness of space in a way that feels far more real and visceral than a film like Star Wars, much as I am a massive fan of those films too.

Well, maybe not the prequels.

Feynman was someone who found fascination and pleasure in the world around him – one of his greatest contributions of quantum theory was inspired by watching a dinner plate wobbling as it was

22 – 26 March 2017

62

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W O R L D S C I E N C E F E S T I VA L B R I S B A N E 2 0 0 1 : A S PA C E O D Y S S E Y W I T H Q U E E N S L A N D S Y M P H O N Y O R C H E S T R A W O R L D S C I E N C E F E S T I VA L B R I S B A N E PIONEERS IN SCIENCE: PROFESSOR IAN FRAZER

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V I S I T Q PAC . CO M . AU O R C A L L 136 246 F O R B OO K I N G S O R M O R E I N F O R M AT I O N . I N F O R M AT I O N CO R R E C T AT T I M E O F P R I N T I N G .

en er a n ng

Don’t think of the shapes, McGregor told his dancers.

Think of the transitions.

That is where dance happens.

Administration & Planning from the University of Queensland and has received the following Community Recognition awards: Awarded an AM in 2010 for the promotion of Human Rights for people with disability in Australia; Awarded Australian Human Rights Medal 2005; Human Rights and Equal Opportunities Commission (HREOC); Awarded Centenary Medal ‘for distinguished service to disability services in Queensland’ in 2003; and the QUT award ‘the Humanities and Human Services Outstanding Alumni Award’ for 2003, which recognises the contribution of exceptional professional achievement and contribution to the community at Local, State, National and International level.

MORRIS GLEITZMAN

in Story are those

Flynn, Lauren Sherritt, Carol Davidson. Digital: Kate Hardy, Jasmine Ellem,

is a novel set in Papua New Guinea, where she has worked with the literacy project

Asiya Muldabayeva.

‘Making Books’ with children in remote schools (seamfund.org/making-books). Her latest book,

Creative & design: Rumble.

Second Half First (2015) is a memoir that begins the night before her fortieth birthday.

Photography: Mindi Cooke.

Q PAC

Trio. From an early age, she studied classical piano and percussion and at the age of 14 began an all-girl band with her sister Patti calling themselves The Pleasure Seekers. Between 1973 and 1980 Suzi Quatro featured in the British charts for 101 weeks and to date has sold over 55 million records.

Chair Chris Freeman AM | Deputy Chair Simon Gallaher | Trustees Kylie Blucher, Professor Peter

GUY RUNDLE

Coaldrake AO, Leanne de

AC Grayling is the Master of the New College of the Humanities, London, and its Professor of Philosophy, and the

Guy Rundle is currently Crikey's correspondent-at-large, and a regular contributor to

Professor Chris Sarra |

author of over thirty books of philosophy, biography, history of ideas, and essays. He is a columnist for Prospect

AC G R AY L I N G

The Sunday Age. He was an editor of Arena Magazine for fifteen years, and is a frequent

magazine, and was for a number of years a columnist on The Guardian and The Times. He has contributed to many

contributor to a wide range of publications in Australia and the UK.

Souza, Sophie Mitchell,

leading newspapers in the UK, US and Australia, and to BBC radios 4, 3, 2 and the World Service, for which he did

Executive Staff Chief Executive: John Kotzas Executive Director –

the annual 'Exchanges at the Frontier' series; and he has often appeared on television. He has twice been a judge on

Stakeholder Engagement

the Booker Prize, in 2015 serving as the Chair of the judging panel. He is a Vice President of the British Humanist Association, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.

Strategy: Jackie Branch Executive Director –

MARY-ROSE MACCOLL

H E AT H E R S M Y T H

Mary-Rose MacColl’s international bestselling novel In Falling Snow was published to great acclaim in 2012. It

Dr Heather Smyth is a flavour chemist and sensory scientist who has been working with

Curatorial: Ross Cunningham Executive Director –

premium food and beverage products for more than 15 years. Dr Smyth’s expertise is in

Year Award and will be published internationally in 2017. Mary-Rose's first novel, No Safe Place, was runner-up

understanding how food composition relates to the sensory experience and consumer

in the Australian Vogel literary award and her first non-fiction book, The Birth Wars, was a finalist in the 2009

enjoyment of food. She has a background in wine flavour chemistry and extensive experience

Walkley Awards. In 2017, a true story from her life, For a Girl, will be published by Allen and Unwin. Mary-Rose lives in Brisbane, Australia with her husband and son. She is an ordinary swimmer learning to skateboard.

Visitation: Roxanne Hopkins Executive Director – Development: Megan Kair

in seafood, wine and horticultural products such as coffee and tropical fruits. She currently

Executive Director – Business

works as a Senior Research Fellow for the University of Queensland as part of the Queensland

Performance: Kieron Roost

Alliance of Agriculture and Food Innovation (QAAFI) Institute.

authors and

reflect the position

Australian modernist artists Grace Cossington Smith and Stella Bowen. The Mountain (2012),

Roxanne Hopkins, Emily Philip, Andrea Huynh, Isabella Williams, Alexandra

S U Z I Q U AT R O Born in Detroit, Michigan, Suzi was raised in a musical family who all played various instruments. Suzi made her stage debut, playing bongos in her father’s jazz band, The Quatro

Once, Then, Now, After and Soon. Morris lives in Brisbane and Sydney, and his books are published in more

JUDITH MCLEAN

do not necessarily

of QPAC.

Drusilla Modjeska’s books include Exiles At Home (1981), Poppy (1990), a ‘fictional biography’ of her mother, The Orchard (1994) and Stravinsky's Lunch (1999), which explored the lives of the

than twenty countries.

of the individual

contributors and

charity, PATH.

DRUSILLA MODJESKA

Morris Gleitzman is a bestselling Australian children’s author. His books explore serious and sometimes

was followed with Swimming Home which won The Courier-Mail 2016 People’s Choice Queensland Book of the

The views expressed

lamoin@qpac.com.au). | Story Team Editorial: Professor Judith McLean,

confronting subjects in humorous and unexpected ways. His titles include Two Weeks With The Queen, Grace, Doubting Thomas, Bumface, Give Peas A Chance, Extra Time, Loyal Creatures, Toad Delight and the series

STORY TEAM Story Editor: Rebecca Lamoin (rebecca.

Professor Judith McLean is the Chair in Arts Education, a joint appointment between Queensland University of Technology (QUT) and the Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) where she holds the role of Scholar in Residence. Judith’s career is distinguished by her breadth and diversity of experience as an arts educator, artist and cultural leader across Australia. She is currently a Director on the Board of Tourism and Events Queensland, and leads QUT’s executive programs using arts based practices in the corporate and government sectors.

7

CHLOE WILSON Chloe Wilson is the author of two poetry collections, The Mermaid Problem and Not Fox Nor Axe, which was shortlisted for the Kenneth Slessor Prize for Poetry and the Judith Wright Calanthe Award. She received equal first prize in the 2016 Josephine Ulrick Poetry Prize, and has been awarded the John Marsden Prize for Young Australian Writers, the (Melbourne) Lord Mayor´s Creative Writing Award for Poetry, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Fish Publishing Flash Fiction Prize and the Arts Queensland Val Vallis Award.

John Bell: I think that’s right. It would be just too good!

John Bell: So, let’s start with the story. It’s set in the beginning in Sicilia…

u

John Bell: What relevance has the play today to an audience,

vibrant images, language, movement

you know, apart from a great story, beautiful story? I’m not

and characters, remain ripe for twenty

sure if the ballet emphasises this, but there are uncomfortable

first century adaptation across theatre,

To begin the task of delving into one

ballet, television, and film. The stories,

of The Bard’s lesser known works,

although centuries old, transcend time

The Winter’s Tale, we invited famed

and place to illuminate contemporary

actor, writer, director and founder

echoes of domestic violence in this and the way men can treat women and the effect it has on their children.

I think what you take away with you is the enormity of the crime, Leontes’ grief, his repentance. You take away Paulina’s patience and wisdom, the way she handles it and most of all

concerns about love, nature, beauty,

of Bell Shakespeare, John Bell, to a

you take away forgiveness. Hermione’s forgiveness, which is

life and death, and what it means

conversation on the Cremorne Theatre

the greatest… how could anyone forgive that? But she does and

to be human. His works encourage

stage. He led a group of QPAC staff

conversation, urging us to explore our

through themes of jealousy, shipwreck,

own ideas and hypotheses, safe within

brother versus brother, forgiveness

a realm of infinite possibility.

and reconciliation on the way to the colourful world of Bohemia. Here’s

that’s what makes it uplifting. We are capable of being as good as Hermione.

Alex: Shakespeare often uses a disguise for women to have power, but Paulina doesn’t seem to have that. Would you say that perhaps Shakespeare represents her as sort of a Venus figure in the text?

John Bell: That’s fantastic. I haven’t heard of that before.

March 1927 is from The Diary of Virginia Woolf (ed. Anne Olivier Bell) p. 132; the line from the letter to Vita Sackville-West, 9 October 1927, is from The Letters

the depression she describes as an engulfing wave, to the

a further step back from narrative. Voices rise and fall,

horrors of doctors and enforced seclusion. But still she wrote

connecting, missing, overlapping as six friends cross and falters, advances and retreats – like waves, like changing light, or shadows falling, perspectives shifting. It is a mighty novel, and the dance that McGregor works from it rises to

the sharpness of steel’ that complicate both modern life and

its challenge. ‘Tuesday’, he calls this last work of the triptych.

modern fiction.

Tuesday, the day Virginia Woolf filled her pockets with

John Bell: Yes, I think that’s right. He can never be really happy again – totally – because of what he’s done. You can’t make up for all of that.

Elaine: I’m really struck by the notion that Leontes’ madness

Mabo Oration

Driven by a desire to honour the courage and significance of Edward Koiki Mabo’s work, in 2005

John Bell: I’d say that Lear got pretty close to it. He just

the Anti-Discrimination Commission Queensland (ADCQ) and QPAC partnered to establish

snaps and says, ‘get out!’ That’s a bit like Leontes there and

The Mabo Oration – a biennial public oration from expert voices in the field of native title and

it’s certainly irrational… it’s coming from arrogance and pride

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander cultures. Since then, six leaders from divergent fields have

and being embarrassed in public.

delivered orations on subjects ranging from the legal protection of cultural knowledge to meeting the

TO P R E PA R E A PA I R O F

MADNESS

32

33

34

“Many benefits have flowed from the Mabo judgment

the First Peoples’ sustained

and the recognition of native

institutions and systems for

title to land – these benefits

governance. These systems

have been both practical

thrived for tens of thousands

and symbolic. The Mabo

of years and still exist under

when he says, ‘yes, you’re right, you’re actually right I’ve done

theme of this Oration is

though many issues of

to survive as Indigenous

about self-evident truths

Indigenous recognition and

peoples – custodians with

in Aboriginal and Torres

rights remains unresolved.”

inherent obligations to

Strait Islander affairs.

the natural and spiritual

In particular, the need to

environment

build stronger relationships

- Dr Dawn Casey PSM FAHA, The Mabo Oration 2015

between Indigenous and

– is a legitimate one."

non-Indigenous Australians that are based on honesty,

"The principles established

by Mabo represented the best opportunity for resolution

Queensland’s current Anti-Discrimination Commissioner

Of course the High Court decision began another iteration of

be forgiven. So it’s a temporary insanity and he can be

Kevin Cocks AM believes public institutions have a critical role in

conversations. It provided a framework for Aboriginal and Torres

shocked out of it just as he was shocked into it, by witnessing something that he thought he saw. He can be shocked out of it

facilitating and enabling important public conversations, especially

Strait Islander Peoples to have further conversations about the

around issues of rights.

impact of living in a country that did not recognise the oldest living culture, and custodians of the land that now is home to over

by the death of his son and death of his wife. Those two severe

In 1982 Edward Koiki Mabo and four of his fellow Mer Islanders

shocks seem to bring him out of it.

began their legal claim in Australia’s High Court for ownership of

24 million people.

lands on the island of Mer. Ten years later the High Court decided

The Mabo Oration is an opportunity for ADCQ and QPAC to pay

Elaine: But also, dramatically, it’s just extraordinary isn’t

in their favour in what is known widely now as the Mabo Case. The

our tribute to Mr Eddie Mabo, a Torres Strait Island man whose

it? Like, too hot, too hot – BANG! We’re right there. In the

legal doctrine of native title was a landmark moment, it changed

achievements, some 24 years after the original decision in Mabo

audience at the time, we’re going, ‘oh my god’ – ‘what’s going

the foundation of land law in Australia and the Native Title Act was

against the Commonwealth of Australia, are still only beginning

to happen now?’ It’s just such a perfect narrative choice.

introduced the following year.

to be recognised.

Elaine: No. It slaps you across the head and you have

Conversations with his community, the family and the academic

provides a continuing platform for all Australians to engage in a

community where he challenged the notion of terra nullius in a way

conversation that will challenge, and enlighten all of us who are

himself remind us that there history where the tide turns

"Eddie Mabo knew the

and Australians begin to

importance of keeping

understand that the fates

culture alive, no matter

of Aboriginal and other

where you lived, or how

Australians are tied."

far you travelled from your

saw the destruction of the myth of terra nullius, through the High

arrivals. Through conversations we can transform our relationships

Court Decision in Mabo Number 2.

with our First Nation's Peoples.

Or, is life really just one big Groundhog Day? Or, is ‘individuation’ or to use the colloquial the ‘getting of wisdom’

author is in my hands. It’s in this place where I grow my inside.

Staggeringly, it’s said that every two days we create as much information as we did up until 2003. But information is not knowledge, knowledge differs from understanding and

Back to my insight…it was early morning as I waited patiently

Last week at my favourite place, I had an epiphany,

opportunity'. He believes

it’s a slight exaggeration to call it an epiphany perhaps it

Mabo is our 'cornerstone

was more of an unexpected insight. Not a blinding

for reconciliation”

knock-you-over insight into the meaning of life yet

- Noel Pearson, The Mabo Oration 2005

significant enough that it stayed with me and inspired me

land are inter-connected

to write about it. But before I share what happened let me

with the rights to stories,

digress and tell you a little about my favourite place.

song, dance, resources,

Lost Lovers, a novel by Nadeem Aslam, a British-Pakistani writer recommended to me by a trusted reader friend.

(Incidentally, the book is breathtakingly gorgeous. Equal parts tragic yet beautiful in its depiction of the lives of Pakistani immigrants in England’s north. Highly recommended.) It was here that I was privy to a conversation between Andrea – my book advisor/seller – and her purchaser let’s call her Patricia. It went like this…

Andrea: Have you read the book she wrote before this one?

Patricia: I think so but I can’t remember.

I read a book a day and I never remember anything I read…

couldn’t recall anything she reads opened up a rabbit hole I dove right down into. I couldn’t help wonder if it was indeed possible to read a book a day and remember nothing. If so, what was the point of such experiences if they had no

Court Couture

JOIN US

With Bill Haycock

worlds may not be in unison. Incidentally, they’re accessed

At the time I struggled to sort through a mishmash of feelings.

Why had this seemingly innocuous conversation continued to puzzle me? Afterwards, as I reflected on my confusion, I identified wistfulfulness – what a luxury to be able to read a book a day; envy – oh, if only I had that much time to read; and

incomprehensible to me until I develop and deepen an inner life of my

In re-surfacing from the rabbit hole to the outer worlds it’s important to regularly visit one’s favourite places anywhere both these inner and the outer worlds. This reciprocal interplay between each other – writer and reader, mother and daughter,

world’s largest island and the prevalence of our iconic deserts and beaches.

life experiences challenging, nourishing and meaningful. It’s at the bookshop and the theatre, where I encountered Jung’s

TRIANGLE

challenge to find the myth I was unconsciously living by to assist in growing an inside. He writes:

The triangular motif represents the High Court’s function as the final court of appeal.

‘What is the myth you are living’ I found no answer to this question, and had to admit I was not living a myth, or even in a myth… So, took it upon myself to get to know ‘my’ myth and I regarded this as the task

WHERE

of tasks’

QPAC Jonathan Lear’s ideas on ‘listening inward’ can be found in, Freud (2005).

(1971). Parker Palmer’s quote on the ‘inner life’ is from his book titled, A Hidden

DW Winnicott’s theory of ‘growing an inside’ is located in, Playing and Reality

Wholeness: The journey toward an undivided life (2004). Carl Jung’s thoughts on ‘myth’ and ‘individuation’ are written in, The Undiscovered Self: The dilemma of the individual in modern society (2006).

enthralling narratives, meeting fascinating characters, following

thought about how much of our precious lives we waste by

intricate plots, might possibly stay with her more consciously if

COMPOSER, LYRICIST, MUSICIAN, COMEDIAN, ACTOR, WRITER AND DIRECTOR AGREED TO CHAT IN EXCHANGE FOR CAKE. HERE ARE SOME OF THE HIGHLIGHTS…

Roger Leong

usually isn’t in terms of acoustics and view. My favourite row is stalls row E.

SENIOR WEB DEVELOPER 2016’S BEST APP OR NEW GADGET? Google Photos for images backup (IOS and Android) and Dyson V8 handheld vacuum for busy families!

BIGGEST FAUX PAS TO

If someone quotes a percentage or a fraction, convert it to a ratio (17% is approximately 1 in 6).

Margaret Adam – cutter

It makes you sound smart (or pretentious) and

Saffron Firkins – maker

also forces you to think about what’s being said.

Kay Faulkner – weaver

47

48

49

Cindy Ullrich

other side of a VIP… best not to attempt the shimmy past

other side via an aisle.

A butt to the face of a celebrity or VIP is not particularly elegant. Also it’s so easy to fall into their laps… yes it has happened.

"Music is an element that allows us to express ourselves and that helps us shed reality… songs are like soliloquies. "

"When you go to the theatre what you want is an experience that allows you to escape from your life."

So much can go wrong! If your theatre seat is on the

but make your way to the

CUSTOMER INSIGHTS & RESEARCH ANALYST – TALK DATA TO US…

and graphic designer

qpac.com.au/membership | 136 246 | QPAC Box Office

PROTOCOL MANAGER (BOARD LIAISON)

DIGNITARY?

Bill Haycock – stage, costume

JOIN NOW!

Kim Thiel

COMMIT IN FRONT OF A

WHO

"Don’t let my hair fool you, I am the nerdiest person you know."

depends on the show of course. People often think front row is best but it

John Buswell

WHEN

Priority booking, zero transaction fees, savings, news and entertainment.

queensland theatre, a christmas carol. designed by jonathan oxlade. photograph rob maccoll.

WHAT’S THE BEST SEAT IN A THEATRE?

October 2016

both solitude and community - artists, performers, writers,

connected to ourselves as well as others.

SERVICES MANAGER

At the bar! Actually, it’s a personal preference and

Designed and made in Brisbane… worn in Canberra.

MEMBERSHIP

Thanks Andrea and Patricia for taking me down the rabbit hole.

PUBLICITY MANAGER WHAT'S YOUR BEST PITCHING TIP? Know your stuff and keep it short… succinct, succinct,

to break my own rule).

M AT I L DA T H E M U S I CA L

(Vice versa works too, if someone quotes a ratio,

personalised, timely and a

Until 12 February 2017

convert it to a percentage).

perfect fit for them.

Lyric Theatre, QPAC

50

53

Dive deeper. Be fearless in thought.

Ask the question. Form an opinion.

Discover. Learn. Provoke.

succinct is they key (although

Whenever you pitch

’s

"To be an artist you need to be bringing a world view to your craft."

repeating it 3 times seems

anything to anyone, make it

AC

PAG E 45

PAG E 47

PAG E 49

PAG E 53

Bill Haycock.

Photo: Mindi Cooke.

QPAC Staff: John Buswell, Robyn Gander, Roger Leong, Kim Thiel, Cindy Ullrich.

Photos: Mindi Cooke.

Tim Minchin.

Photo: Darren Thomas.

BOUNDS

By Mary-Rose MacColl

BEHIND

year old son is teaching me to skateboard. Most early

under the rainbow banner in the present century are chipping away at gender, just as various rights movements in the twentieth

mornings, we visit the local skatepark which has been

century chipped away at race and class. Each new freedom, even if

recently refurbished in smooth, hurtful concrete. It’s next

we don’t relate to it personally, makes us all more free.

to a tennis court with a more kindly surface and fewer obstacles. I skate around and around the tennis court while

Maybe we’re not as solid as we think we are anyway. I read that our

my son does tricks in the skatepark. Every now and then, he

body cells, the basic building blocks that make us who and what we

looks over and gives me advice. So far, I’ve learned to avoid

are, are entirely replaced every seven years. If this were true, we

colliding with the fence and net most of the time.

could become whole new people many times over across our lives.

get old.’ I laugh and try to show off how good I’m getting

our basic personalities across our lives.

masterclasses with local dancers

I don’t care. I want transformation to be possible. I write novels

as part of QPAC International

and then generally fall over. People laugh back and say but it’s early days.

and my characters transform themselves in seven minutes,

You might not immediately pick me for a skateboarder.

possible that all fiction is about transformation. A character starts

sometimes seven seconds of writing, which is often satisfying. It’s I’m fifty five and a woman. I often say I was fifty before I

here and ends there. The shape-shifter like Gandalf and Darth stay

stopped caring what people think of me but since I’m yelling

with us, along with the ones who gain something we want, Jane

at passers by to explain why I’m skateboarding, it’s clear I

Eyre her independence, Holden Caulfield insight. We want that

class and gave participants insights into choreographer Angelin Preljocaj’s creation process for Snow White.

43 dancers came from dance schools and professional

If I had a choice, I’d ask for a cell refund rather than a whole new

companies across the state.

about what people will think of us determine who and what we are.

Suzi Quatro

Different smells often remind us of a time or place, and can influence our mood and emotions. This certainly Ballet Preljocaj’s Assistant Director Youri Van Den Bosch

SCENTS

(left) and company teacher Baptiste Coisseau (opposite) took

&sensibility

required to have a minimum

sure confidence that change is good. 'Bring on those new cells!'

different meaning!

FIVE MINUTES WITH

Interestingly, the part of our brain that interprets food and wine aroma is also responsible for functions such as emotion, behaviour and the formation of memories.

of Advanced level training.

we say.

HOW DID IT FEEL? I once saw strippers in Russia taking it all off to ‘Too Big’. Mmm makes you think doesn’t it? I thought it was quite funny, gave a

present at very high levels, it can cause an off-note in the wine.

Series Residency Program.

haven’t quite managed to shake off the prejudices of others.

staff, we have become a trusted curator, presenter and host; a place to come together to relax, reflect, share stories and celebrate.

SONGS BEING PERFORMED AS KARAOKE?

one another. If one wine component is missing, the flavour can be lacking and hollow. If another component is

Masterclass participants were

And perhaps we never do. Perhaps all of life we let our fears

emerging, local and new – and connect to the stories and ideas at the heart of each production. Through the warmth and expertise of our

and always listen. I have given a serious answer because it is, in my opinion, a serious question.

H AV E YO U E V E R H E A R D O N E O F YO U R

all components must be present at just

kit. I’d go back to the cellular me at eight years I think I’d score highly on a skateboarding aptitude test.

I’m small, with a low centre of gravity. I’m strong and I have good balance. I love speed. It’s got me thinking about why I never took up skateboarding in childhood. Even now, there

By Dr Heather Smyth

are very few young women at the skatepark among the

helps to explain emotional eating!

With performance, we are often ‘in the mood’ for one style or another. Depending on how we feel we might enjoy some jazz or prefer something a little more upbeat. It’s also true that for many, if we’re not in the right mood for a certain style of performance it can be completely irritating!

Like many artists who’ve been creating for

So, is there a food or wine style and flavour that can put us in the right emotional state for one style of

decades, there’s a long list of descriptors that run

performance or other? ‘Dinner and a show’ goes hand-

beside Suzy Quatro’s name – singer, songwriter,

in-hand, but the link between what we’ve just eaten and how much we enjoyed the show could be stronger than

actor, activist and glam rock legend and role

we realise.

model are among the many.

The science of understanding links between sensorial experiences, emotions and behaviours is

Ahead of her time in being a strong, sexy woman

still in its infancy. Typically, simple flavours have

fronting a rock band, playing an instrument

been recognised for their mood-altering abilities.

and co-writing her own material, Suzi’s been an

rosemary increases calmness and contentment. The

like to do?

The sensory enjoyment of music and theatre is not unlike our enjoyment of food and wine - we all have different tastes. This is largely due to how we’ve been brought up and what we’ve been exposed to, and there is a physiological element that plays a role. Dr Heather Smyth looks at whether there might be a link between what we like to eat, and what types of music or live performance

WHICH OF YOUR SONGS MEANS MOST TO YOU?

OUR VENUES QPAC has four theatres suitable for a range of performance styles: Lyric Theatre (2,000 seats) is designed primarily for opera, ballet and large-scale theatre events such as musicals; Concert Hall (1,600 seats) is a versatile space, designed primarily for orchestra performances and also used for contemporary music, stand-up comedy and presentations; Playhouse (850 seats) is primarily designed for theatre and dance; and Cremorne Theatre (312 seats) is an intimate and versatile black box theatre space.

CONNECT There are a few, Sometimes Love is Letting Go from the Back to the Drive album. Singing with Angels, from the In the Spotlight album -

@ ATQ PA C

which is my tribute to Elvis. And on our upcoming QSP album (to be released for the 2017 Australian tour, where our new super-group Quatro, Scott & Powell will be performing the first part of the show) there is a song called Pain, co-written with Andy Scott. But I must say… there is a track on this new album, called Broken Pieces Suite…

@Q PAC @ ATQ PA C Q PAC T V

I wrote this a little while ago and humbly call it my masterpiece.

I don’t think I will ever write a song like this again. Don’t even know

Peppermint is known to increase alertness while

dozens of young men. Is skateboarding something only boys

the best in live performance – the world renowned alongside the

if people would talk ‘to’ each other and not ‘at’ each other. Always speak your truth, thereby allowing the other person to speak theirs

the sensory experience of wine. Like instruments in a symphony orchestra,

edgy Snow White, France’s Ballet Preljocaj took two

something, mostly encouraging. No one has been rude yet,

w

leading centres for live performance. Welcoming over 1.3 million visitors to more than 1,500 performances each year, we embrace

mouth. I think most of the problems in the world would be solved

Wine flavour arises from many hundreds of individual compounds that work in combination to create

the right level and playing in tune with

artists of our time. In between

A B O U T Q PAC Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) is one of Australia’s

I am inspired by true understanding and communication between people, and strive to achieve that every single time I open my

sensation, or if it does not meet

The annual QPAC International

performances of the acclaimed,

Get sweaty, create.

interprets these messages as wine

our taste.

renowned companies that

the long haul. We’re kind of stuck with ourselves. Psychologists, with their odd combination of numeracy and emotional intelligence, say we can really only change about five per cent of

Be curious and imagine.

flavour and determines if we like the

Series presents iconic, world

While many cells die after just a few hours or days, our creaky old brain cells, the ones that determine consciousness, are with us for

comes past while I’m skateboarding – swimmers on their way to the pool, commuters on their way to the bus – I yell something like, ‘I hear it’s good to learn new skills as you

W H AT O R W H O I N S P I R E S Y O U ?

bulb, send a complex array of messages to our brain which are simultaneously perceived. Our brain

feature some of the most exciting

We could transform. Yes yes, I know it’s more pseudo than science.

After half an hour, we go home and have breakfast and my son goes to school and I go to my writing desk. If anyone

Take time, wonder about stuff.

When we drink a fine wine, our senses perceive the various components of texture, aroma, taste and mouthfeel. Receptors, on our taste buds and olfactory

the scenes

Gender is one of many constraints stopping us doing what we might want to do or be suited to in life. The changes we’re seeing I’m teaching myself to skateboard. Actually, my fourteen

Bask in creativity.

qpac.com.au/the-creatory

Home library with cozy armchair.

Photo: Stocksy United Photography.

OUT OF

if perhaps Patricia’s habit of spending her days reading

a certain sadness for Patricia, for myself, for fellow humans. I

Tim Minchin

Robyn Gander TICKETING AND CLIENT

The idea of hacking comes to us via the world of computers and code but is now used broadly to describe ways to subvert any system. Life hacks are prolific across the internet with everyone from celebrities to bloggers to Aunt Gertrude’s cat offering low budget tips to improve our time management, make up prowess, storage capability of our wardrobes, or previously unthought-of uses for everyday objects. In this spirit, here are some tips from our varied QPAC experts.

Fabric design is inspired by sand ripples and has a wool warp and silk weft.

The sand ripples reference Australia as the

poet and audience, artist and percipient that helps make our

45

WHY

HOW Bill designed the robes to be made from Australian merino wool and silk and to encompass three symbolic features:

SAND RIPPLES

where books, writers, artists, ideas, theories, narratives link

I’ve learned lots about myself and how art can teach me

High Court of Australia.

equality under the law.

own. I cannot know in another being what I do not know in myself.’

even more.

Life Hacks

WHAT New judicial robes for the

There was a desire to make new robes more practical and lighter than before and reflect a sense of Australia.

These reflect the 7 components of Federation – the States and the Commonwealth.

The equal tucks also refer to

up conversations. The brilliant American educationalist Parker Palmer explains the concept of growing an inside in the following way: ‘…the inner life of any great thing will be

Endnote

through analysis).

As I descended deeper into the rabbit hole I wondered

44

7 EQUAL TUCKS

by two distinctly different modes of thought, and housed in different hemispheres of the brain so it does require joined-

poets, characters whose lives we’ll never live. By connecting

What if…? What happened here…? What are the circumstances that have led to this behaviour…? How would I behave in similar

emotions (as above with Patricia and Andrea); 2. increasing a practical skill of monitoring life experiences (going down the

Torres Strait Island Photo: Stutterstock

DW Winnicott describes as growing ‘an inside’. My suspicion

and having inner and outer conversations we become more

through our preparedness to make-believe, through reflecting on the lives of others.

Listening inwards may sound slightly esoteric but Jonathon

rabbit hole); 3. interpreting the experience (understanding

PAG E 43

that paradox – when things that don’t automatically make

world of art and culture. Listening inwards taps us into our inner teacher and inner conversations accessed through playfulness,

in mindless activities, merely filling in time?

Book Pages.

Photo: Shutterstock.

sense - enriches our lives and helps us understand the deeper

By listening inwards we enter the languages of feelings, of the senses, of the unspoken, of understanding the symbolic order – the

Lear describes it as an eminently practical skill which involves

PAG E 41/42

complexities of life. We can’t do this alone. Inner work demands

Hamlet – their inability to listen inwards reveals a hubris that brings them undone.

three phases: 1. naming the experience and the accompanying

Eddie Mabo.

Photo: Jim McEwan.

me on Wisdom Road. We all have inner teachers to guide us

inwardly and consequently destroy theirs and other’s lives. Think of Shakespeare’s tragic protagonists – Lear, Othello, Macbeth,

Macbeth, Hamlet in me…?

Carl Jung’s concept. In broad terms to ‘individuate’ is to integrate

ohn Be AO Pho o M nd Cooke

in locating these myths all we need to do is invite them into

the world, or against the natural elements.

We can learn vicariously that in tragedy, protagonists often learn too late to listen

both unconscious and conscious selves to reach our highest self,

PAG E 40

our conversations. At the same time, it’s useful to appreciate

direction because by its very nature, it deals with humans in messy situations either railing against themselves or others, against

to become a wise being? Is it enough to spend hours of our lives

PAG E 37

I reflected that I needed to take more time consciously

with passion and grace (outside). None of us is born wise. Through life’s struggles we either get it or not. Art points us in the right

circumstances? Where is the Lear, Othello,

appreciable effect on who we are, what we think or how we live? Psychologically

kin, associated with land."

- Terri Janke, The Mabo Oration 2011

Wisdom has many beginnings but ultimately it’s recognised as an embodied quality (inside) revealed through a life lived

speaking why do anything that doesn’t help us ‘individuate’ to use

Shakespeare: In conversation with John Bell AO. Photo: Mindi Cooke.

recognising my inner myth more knowingly hopefully placing

Wisdom has many beginnings but ultimately it’s recognised as an embodied quality (inside) revealed through a life lived with passion and grace (outside).

totems, and relationships of

41

understanding does not necessarily guarantee wisdom.

to pick up a book I’d ordered, Maps For

Patricia’s glib acceptance that she

once in a nation's lifetime

even possible in this overwrought, overstimulated life today?

I suspect that if you’re reading this you’ll also identify with the local bookshop as a favourite place.

Patricia’s life… as well as my own.

referred to Mabo as 'the

peoples’ rights to

with others - writers, artists, politicians, historians, teachers, brothers, sisters, and on and on? Do we actually hate learning new things?

how many people are there I manage to tune out by tuning into myself, into a private conversation between me and whatever

And there it was… an insight into

and noted that he had often

island home. Indigenous

- Professor Larissa Behrendt, The Mabo Oration 2007

By Professor Judith McLean

between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians”,

are times in our nation’s

descendants of those who have come by boats and planes or recent

that brought voices of influence along the journey that ultimately

absolutely no idea what’s going to happen next. Anything

- Professor Tom Calma AO, The Mabo Oration 2009

Now, 25 years after the High Court decision, The Mabo Oration

Eddie Mabo began this journey through conversations.

John Bell: Yes, Shakespeare doesn’t ease you into it.

of the Colonial grievance

understanding.”

legacy of Eddie Mabo

He has to go through all this repentance before he can

The Getting of Wisdom

change and recognition,

Australian State. Our goal

"The Mabo Case and the

terrible things’. He’s coming back out of it then. He realises.

not remembering the who, why, where, when of encounters with others. Why is it that we so often refuse to engage deeply

longer be able to wile away hours losing myself by becoming disinterested in time, or in the normal routines of my everyday life. It’s generally quiet in my favourite place yet it doesn’t matter

judgment was an agent for "And so, the overarching

the encumbrance of the

acknowledgment and

He’s coming back to his senses, but that’s not enough.

It’s a place that used to be ubiquitous but regrettably is fast disappearing which is disastrous for the planet as this place holds the wisdom of the world. I fear the day is coming when I’ll no

"The title of this oration – Corroboree – is to emphasise

- Les Malezer, The Mabo Oration 2013

contemporary challenges of social justice.

about Patricia’s and my own lack of stickiness in using

IDIOCY

POINTE SHOES? It can take up to 40 minutes to prepare one pair, each dancer has a different method.

John Bell: I would say that by the end of the trial scene

experiences to learn from suggests our inner and outer

American

H O W L O N G D O E S I T TA K E Y O U

T H E R O YA L B A L L E T W OO L F W O R K S

29 June - 2 July 2017

25 years ago the Mabo Case rewrote Australian law and recognised the existence of native title.

manipulating and working on a character’s weakness.

she learnt to practice what psychoanalyst and paediatrician

N w Yo k C y Pho o by Tod Qu k nbu h p o h N w Yo k C y Un p h o on

shoes during one performance.

of Virginia Woolf (ed Nigel Nicolson) Vol 111, p. 429. Quotations from the novels are from the Penguin editions. All references to and quotations from Wayne

2017 Q PAC I N T E R N AT I O N A L S E R I E S

Lyric Theatre, QPAC

By Kevin Cocks AM

is so sudden and so psychotic compared to the other kinds of madness that Shakespeare investigates in Macbeth and Othello, which are drawn on by other characters – other characters

ohn Ko zas Ch e Execu ve QPAC Pho o M nd Cooke

Bob Dy n M yH To on o Ap 8 980 Pho o by n Lu Ou n n d und CC BY 2 0

A Principal dancer can go through 2-3 pairs of pointe

McGregor can be found in an interview with Bonnie Greer, 8 May 2015.

separate, merge and part. The writing rises and falls, wavers,

out from the war, through the tears, circumventing the old certainties, creating new forms to hold together the ‘myriad

some kind. You must pay a price for the cost of your actions

38

PAG E 13

YOU USE FOR A SEASON?

(ed. Leonard Woolf) Vol II; the ‘Soft & pliable’ quotation is from her diary, 21

And so we come to The Waves, Woolf’s most radical work, a stream of six consciousnesses, a patterning of being,

to other people.

approaching death – his own inability to maintain his

Sp derweb covered w h dew Pho o S ocksy Un ed Pho ography

Episode

Virginia Woolf’s essay ‘Modern Fiction’ can be found in her collected Essays

kingdom and control.

PAG E 11

by C

Elaine: There’s also a sense of universal punishment of

is possible on the stage now. It’s also a sense of his own

Swan on rippled water.

Photo: Stocksy United Photography.

THEIR SHOES?

HOW MANY POINTE SHOES WILL

Endnote

pliable, and I think deep, & never a word wrong for a page

THE

Is there any significance in that? Like he can’t have it all back?

throwing her away.

k on Po o k B u po 9 2 d N on G y o Au C nb pu h d 9 3 © Po o k K n Found on ARS

WHY DO DANCERS ALTER

you dance. Each shoe is handmade and no two pairs are ever identical.

that one word ‘Tuesday’ written at the top. Then nothing.

Nothing, that is, of the living, breathing woman who was bound by the brief span of human life. Yet her words

at a time.’ They had also stressed her, casting her back to

PUNISHMENT Inga: Why don’t you think the son comes back to life?

Let's begin...

all of this gesturing towards her belly and kind of throwing

PAG E 9 10

Ap o

The waves fell; withdrew and fell again, like the thud of a great beast stamping.

PAG E 34

her to the ground. I think that’s a really strong theme that

PAG E 6

deconstruction and reconstruction.

To customise them to your feet so they fit perfectly when

The one thing she’d never be able to do as a writer was describe her own death. There’s the note to Leonard with

Queensland Ballet.

Photos: Mindi Cooke.

comes out. It is very clear in the physicality of dance –

PAG E 7/8

Tim Minchin.

Photo: James Morgan.

of this energy, this collective energy being atomised and delivered into the universe.’

PAG E 32

on

Drusilla Modjeska.

Mary-Rose MacColl.

Photo: Mel Koutchavlis.

resisting those who resist change, those who want to remake the certainties.

this time she knew it would engulf her, she would not return to shore.

The Royal Ballet, Woolf Works, Sarah Lamb © ROH, 2015.

Photo: Tristram Kenton.

Shakespeare’s works, saturated with

8

Photo: Antonia Hayes.

1928, and it is now. If it is to remain alive,

when he incorporates her death into his ‘Tuesday’, it is not as ‘a moment of depression and hopelessness; it’s a moment

PAG E 29

Shakespeare

Metamorphosis

Contributors

KEVIN COCKS AM Kevin Cocks AM, a highly respected human rights and disabilities advocate, commenced his appointment as Queensland’s Anti-Discrimination Commissioner in February 2011. Kevin holds a Masters of Social Welfare,

Briefly

TIM MINCHIN

Humanist Association, and patron of the West Australian Youth Theatre Company (WAYTCo).

He is a keen supporter of Roald Dahl’s Marvellous Children’s Charity (UK), Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF), the National Autistic Society (NAS) and the Los Angeles homelessness

near their feet. Queensland Ballet’s Lisa Edwards demonstrates her process of

film-makers, actors. ‘Creative energy’, McGregor calls it. So

until it became snagged. She could feel the wave of depression rising, she wrote in her note to Leonard, and

Portrait of Virginia Woolf ( January 25, 1882 – March 28, 1941), a British author and feminist.”

By George Charles Beresford (1864-1938) restored by Adam Cuerden. This work has been identified as being free of known restrictions under copyright law, including all related and neighbouring rights under Public Domain Mark 1.0.

"I read a book a day and I never remember anything I read."

for theatre, playing piano for cabaret artists and penning tongue-in-cheek beat poems. Tim

Writing may have the lightness of humour, the bite of satire as Orlando does, but it is also serious work. It was in

before the tide turned, sweeping her body downstream

have lived on, gathering readers, writers, dancers,

PAG E 27

when Hermione comes out when she’s pregnant and there’s

NS DE COVER

is an Associate Artist of the Royal Shakespeare Company (RSC) and the Old Vic Theatre, an

year of Radcliff Hall’s prosecution for her lesbian novel, The Well of Loneliness.

stones and walked into the River Ouse at Rodmell just

Sugar Candy Sku w h flowers Pho o Shu ers ock

a snapshot...

Mar o Queen o he C rcus 2015 Pho o Prudence Up on

ambassador for The Prince’s Foundation for Children and the Arts, a patron of the British

put their shoes through all manner of fire and fury before they get anywhere

colleagues; their loves and alliances were as fluid as their art. But change brings with it resistance, and 1928 was also the

31

O N META MO RPH OS I S

Tim Minchin is an Australian composer/lyricist, musician, comedian, actor, writer and

ready to be slipped on to the awaiting foot of an excited ballerina. Instead, dancers

lived experience, articulated and explicit among her Bloomsbury friends and

and To The Lighthouse (1927) that McGregor doesn’t use –

impressions – trivial, fantastic, evanescent, or engraved with

Drusilla Modjeska

director. He spent his twenties writing songs, playing in bands, acting in plays, composing

connote ideas of softness and delicacy and the sense that they arrive in perfect form

when Orlando was published by the Hogarth Press, the emotional realities of androgyny and gender fluidity were

Virginia Woolf wanted some fun. Those two novels had

the novels that brought not only her, but the form itself

u

demeanour and gentle, dangly ribbons –

was toned down, more metaphoric, less actual; another transformation. In 1928,

broken through to a style that, at last, satisfied her. ‘Soft &

h n

Ballet shoes – with their flushed pink

of the Woolf Works triptych.

In the final draft of Orlando the eroticism

changing, dancing, resisting the censors,

After Mrs Dalloway (1925) –

O N VIRGIN IA WOO L F

HARRY CLIFF

Don’t think of the shapes, McGregor told his dancers.

Think of the transitions.

That is where dance happens.

‘Becomings’, McGregor calls this second

it must move, always in the moment,

AC Grayling

been seen by over half a million visitors. He is currently leading the development of a new exhibition telling the

depression: closed in, another form of horror, an unbearable

buttons, oh so correctly.

Gold Beetle.

Photography: Oscar Nicholson & Gin Poppelwell.

story of humankind’s changing relationship with the Sun, our nearest star.

as Virginia Woolf had been when she was engulfed by

shared, some known, some not

violence path. It’s quite violent in that first scene especially

new particles and forces of nature in high-energy particle collisions in an attempt to improve our understanding

how many impressions?

known, passing, patterning,

Emily: In the ballet they do really go down that domestic

of the fundamental laws of nature. He is also a Fellow of Modern Science at the Science Museum in London,

in you.’ It began as a game, and became serious: how many selves could a single self encompass, how many multiples,

some still clinging onto their

COV E R PAG E

where he co-curated the critically acclaimed "Collider” exhibition, which is now touring internationally and has

poetry, an adventurer in love and life. ‘It’s all about you,’ Woolf wrote to Vita in October 1927, ‘the lusts of your flesh and the lure of your mind… the odd incongruous strands

everything to one centre before his eyes as if some horrors had come almost to the surface’.

He is taken away by the doctors,

bring their own memories,

RELEVANCE

Dr Harry Cliff is a particle physicist from the University of Cambridge who works on the Large Hadron Collider,

an androgynous girl of the twentieth century. He, she, is beautiful in nakedness and clothed, a lover of love and

war, his friend Evans killed in front of him, weeps at the London sky, engulfed by ‘the gradual drawing together of

intersecting and diverging, some

madness, banishment, death, a shipwreck, a bear, adopted baby,

the world’s largest scientific experiment, at CERN near Geneva. Harry’s research involves searching for signs of

era, who morphs and changes over the centuries to become

and being, the consciousness of others there in the street, some known to Clarissa Dalloway, others not known to her, but known to us. Poor Septimus, shell-shocked from the

night Septimus jumps from the

For the creative & curious

En Pointe

aristocratic Sapphist, Mrs Nicolson. Orlando is her love letter.

Orlando is an androgynous boy born in the Elizabethan

in the park, seeing, just for that moment, the housemaids at their windows, a fat lady in a cab, ‘a voice bubbling up without direction’, before descending again into the life

window. Mrs Dalloway hears of

concealed identity, forgiveness and resurrection]

O N T HE B OX

So she wrote Orlando. She was in love with Vita SackvilleWest, rocked by ‘the most violent waves of emotion’ for the

consciousness to rise up as if looking down, not from a knowing pinnacle, but as if with the air that lifts the leaves

it at the party where the guests

[extended plot summary that includes best friends, alleged adultery,

Morris Gleitzman

Modern Life,’ Woolf called it, and as a writer she has no compunction in leaving the stream of Clarissa Dalloway’s

transformation of the self. That

A conversation with John Bell AO

n h ed

The Space Be ween

Be o e o a e he how a way

QP

Image credits

Sugar Sku s

emotive influence of complex flavour combinations

where it came from. Truly inspired.

FAV O U R I T E A L B U M ? W H Y ?

(07) 3840 7444 | qpac.com.au/story First one. Because it is the first one. Suzi… And Other 4 Letters Words.

Lots of good self-penned songs. Back To The Drive, my ‘coming of age’ album.

Jett as we learned in movie The Runaways. With

Nevertheless, next time you enjoy a live performance,

more than 50 years as a professional artist and

it may be worth paying closer attention to how your Hawaiian pizza made you feel about the comedy, or how your chicken cassoulet influenced your response to

ABN: 13 967 571 1218

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Queensland Performing Arts Trust is a statutory body of the

ARE YOU AN EARLY BIRD OR A NIGHT OWL?

State of Queensland and is partially funded by the Queensland

Early bird for sure. Always have been unless I am working then

Government: The Honourable Annastacia Palasczuk MP, the Premier

you don’t really have a choice.

and Minister for the Arts; Director-General, Department of the Premier and Cabinet: David Stewart.

inspiration to many including a teenage Joan

appreciated in whole foods like a Grenache wine, or a Thai curry, is still far from understood.

C O N TA C T PO Box 3567, South Bank, Qld, 4101

W H AT D O E S M A K I N G M U S I C M E A N TO Y O U ?

Everything… I could not exist without doing what I do. I love it exactly the same as the first time I stepped onto a stage. It is a

50 million albums sold, the rocker from Detroit

labour of love. My life cycle is complete every time I see the

continues to delight in creating music.

audience leaving smiling… long may it continue.

Story is published by QPAC. Printed in Brisbane, Australia. Contents of Story are

the ballet.

subject to copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission

we prefer?

of the publisher is prohibited. The publication of editorial does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of views or opinions expressed. The publisher does

L Y R E B I R D R E S TA U R A N T DISCOVER MORE - VIEW THE ENTIRE BEHIND THE SCENES

56

PAG E 17

PAG E 19

PAG E 23

PAG E 25

50’s House wife. photo: Shutterstock.

Faw y Towers Cas Pho o A amy

Abandoned Shopping Centre.

Photo: Shutterstock.

Abandoned Shopp ng Cen re Pho o Shu ers ock

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PHOTO GALLERY AT THE CREATORY QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

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59

Wednesday to Saturday from 5pm QPAC 07 3840 7598

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not accept responsibility for statements made by advertisers. All information was

S U Z I Q U AT R O – L E AT H E R F O R E V E R

DISCOVER MORE - READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AND OTHERS,

correct at time of printing. Story welcomes editorial contributions or comments.

7 February 2017

AT QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

They should be sent by email to story@qpac.com.au. Printed January 2017.

Concert Hall, QPAC

PAG E 55

PAG E 57/58

PAG E 59/60

PAG E 70

Longboard.

Photo: Stocksy United Photography.

Ballet Preljocaj, 2016.

Photos: Darren Thomas.

“ The Spice Bazaar, Istanbul - kruidenbazaar (Istanbul)” (Original upload date 14 October 2005)

By Barbarossa~commonswiki assumed (based on copyright claims) under the Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Out of the Box Festival 2014.

Photo: Darren Thomas.

Soweto Gospel Choir, 2014.

Clancestry, 2015. Photo: Mick Richards Kate Miller-Heidke. Photo: Jo Duck Veronika Part and Cory Stearns.

American Ballet Theatre. Photo: Fabrizio Ferri.

Pablo Ferrández. Photo: Queensland Symphony Orchestra. Fluff, 2015.

W H AT O R W H O I N S P I R E S Y O U ?

A B O U T Q PAC Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) is one of Australia’s

I am inspired by true understanding and communication between

leading centres for live performance. Welcoming over 1.3 million

people, and strive to achieve that every single time I open my

visitors to more than 1,500 performances each year, we embrace

mouth. I think most of the problems in the world would be solved

the best in live performance – the world renowned alongside the

if people would talk ‘to’ each other and not ‘at’ each other. Always

emerging, local and new – and connect to the stories and ideas at the

speak your truth, thereby allowing the other person to speak theirs

heart of each production. Through the warmth and expertise of our

and always listen. I have given a serious answer because it is, in my

staff, we have become a trusted curator, presenter and host; a place

opinion, a serious question.

to come together to relax, reflect, share stories and celebrate.

H AV E YO U E V E R H E A R D O N E O F YO U R SONGS BEING PERFORMED AS KARAOKE?

QPAC has four theatres suitable for a range of performance styles:

HOW DID IT FEEL?

Lyric Theatre (2,000 seats) is designed primarily for opera, ballet

I once saw strippers in Russia taking it all off to ‘Too Big’. Mmm makes you think doesn’t it? I thought it was quite funny, gave a different meaning!

FIVE MINUTES WITH

Suzi Quatro

OUR VENUES

WHICH OF YOUR SONGS MEANS MOST TO YOU?

and large-scale theatre events such as musicals; Concert Hall (1,600 seats) is a versatile space, designed primarily for orchestra performances and also used for contemporary music, stand-up comedy and presentations; Playhouse (850 seats) is primarily designed for theatre and dance; and Cremorne Theatre (312 seats) is an intimate and versatile black box theatre space.

CONNECT There are a few, Sometimes Love is Letting Go from the Back to the Drive album. Singing with Angels, from the In the Spotlight album -

@ ATQ PA C

which is my tribute to Elvis. And on our upcoming QSP album (to be released for the 2017 Australian tour, where our new super-group Quatro, Scott & Powell will be performing the first part of the show) there is a song called Pain, co-written with Andy Scott. But I must say… there is a track on this new album, called Broken Pieces Suite…

@Q PAC @ ATQ PA C Q PAC T V

I wrote this a little while ago and humbly call it my masterpiece.

I don’t think I will ever write a song like this again. Don’t even know

Like many artists who’ve been creating for decades, there’s a long list of descriptors that run beside Suzy Quatro’s name – singer, songwriter, actor, activist and glam rock legend and role model are among the many.

Ahead of her time in being a strong, sexy woman fronting a rock band, playing an instrument and co-writing her own material, Suzi’s been an

where it came from. Truly inspired.

FAV O U R I T E A L B U M ? W H Y ?

more than 50 years as a professional artist and

PO Box 3567, South Bank, Qld, 4101 (07) 3840 7444 | qpac.com.au/story

First one. Because it is the first one. Suzi… And Other 4 Letters Words.

Lots of good self-penned songs. Back To The Drive, my ‘coming of age’ album.

ABN: 13 967 571 1218

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Queensland Performing Arts Trust is a statutory body of the

ARE YOU AN EARLY BIRD OR A NIGHT OWL?

State of Queensland and is partially funded by the Queensland

Early bird for sure. Always have been unless I am working then

Government: The Honourable Annastacia Palasczuk MP, the Premier

you don’t really have a choice.

and Minister for the Arts; Director-General, Department of the Premier and Cabinet: David Stewart.

inspiration to many including a teenage Joan Jett as we learned in movie The Runaways. With

C O N TA C T

W H AT D O E S M A K I N G M U S I C M E A N TO Y O U ?

Everything… I could not exist without doing what I do. I love it exactly the same as the first time I stepped onto a stage. It is a

50 million albums sold, the rocker from Detroit

labour of love. My life cycle is complete every time I see the

continues to delight in creating music.

audience leaving smiling… long may it continue.

Story is published by QPAC. Printed in Brisbane, Australia. Contents of Story are subject to copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission of the publisher is prohibited. The publication of editorial does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of views or opinions expressed. The publisher does

70

not accept responsibility for statements made by advertisers. All information was

S U Z I Q U AT R O – L E AT H E R F O R E V E R

DISCOVER MORE - READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AND OTHERS,

correct at time of printing. Story welcomes editorial contributions or comments.

7 February 2017

AT QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

They should be sent by email to story@qpac.com.au. Printed January 2017.

Concert Hall, QPAC

P U B L I S H E D B Y Q U E E N S L A N D P E R F O R M I N G A R T S C E N T R E A S PA R T O F Q PA C ’ S L E A R N S T R AT E G Y .

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