QPAC Story Act 2 2018

Mad, Bad & Sad L ISA A P P I G NANE SI

Mother Complex N O N I H AZLEH UR S T

GISELLE DIES OF A BROKEN HEART AND JOINS THE WILIS…A GROUP OF FEMALE SPIRITS WHO HAVE BEEN SCORNED AND OCCUPY A HAUNTED WOOD. IT'S A FRIGHTFUL SIGHT THAT EVENTUALLY LED TO THE COMMON PHRASE ' GIVES ME THE WILLIES '.

Contents THIS EDITION OF STORY IS INSPIRED BY QPAC’S JULY TO DECEMBER 2018 PROGRAM.

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24

MAD, BAD & SAD

OUTSIDER ART

LISA APPIGNANESI

20

34

A BEAUTIFUL THING

ON THE RIGHT TRACK JUDITH MCLEAN

DOUGLAS MCGRATH

16

10 FACTS ON MENTAL HEALTH

28 THE ROAD FROM NORMAL

DALLAS JOHN BAKER

48 MOTHER

NONI HAZLEHURST

38

AFFAIR, BETRAYAL, HEARTBREAK, FORGIVENESS MAEVE BAKER

52

64 WHAT'S ON AT QPAC

LETHAL MAGICAL THINKING GUY RUNDLE

42 58 68

WAYS OF SEEING

FIVE MINUTES WITH...

BEHIND THE SCENES

JOHN CAMERON MITCHELL

UNAMPLIFIED LISA GASTEEN

Welcome Stor y is a magazine curated by QPAC for the creative and curious.

Arts is integral in our society. Often the focus is on how art makes us feel: inspired, uncomfortable, excited, challenged, relaxed. More than that, art helps us to make sense of the world around us, to make sense of each other, to find meaning and help create harmonious communities. Learning through art enables students and anyone who is curious to discover and develop empathy, to be problem solvers able to think creatively and to be resilient.

In these pages and beyond through our digital portal The Creatory, we bring together ideas, people, musings and moments so that we may know ourselves better, see others and imagine possible futures.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Story.

John Kotzas Chief Executive QPAC

In this edition In the opening line of Patti Smith’s lyrical and restless book M Train, she recounts an observation made in a dream that she recently had: ‘It’s not easy to write about nothing’.

I love a killer opening sentence and this one stuck with me.

I was reminded of it when we began discussing madness as the through line of this edition of Story. People were nervous, uncomfortable, it’s a subject that makes people twitchy.

Madness is real and imagined. Everything and nothing.

Light and heavy. Fleeting and eternal. Individual and collective.

I thought about Patti’s dilemma. It made me wonder how we choose subjects to write about, or in a lot of cases, how they choose us. QPAC’s program over the coming six months is rich with folly, joy, eccentricity, delusion and in some cases psychosis. Madness by any other name.

And so it was we found ourselves on a quest to consider

Melbourne based illustrator Maeve Baker has created a

madness from multiple directions, led by the most delusional

contemporary take on the traditional Giselle story arc of

figure in literary history, the knight errant Don Quixote.

betrayal, heartbreak, unravelling and forgiveness. QPAC

He is a prominent feature in our program. Teatro alla

Scholar in Residence Professor Judith McLean reminds

Scala Ballet Company will perform Rudolph Nureyev’s

us of the hard work consciousness requires and recounts

take on the wandering nobleman’s quest to revive chivalry

a personal experience of ‘stepping into the light’.

in its November season. In fact, madness also infiltrates the company’s second production Giselle. In this case, the madness borne of heartbreak.

Toowoomba’s Dallas Baker references his latest play Ghosts of Leigh about Leigh Bowery, the flamboyant performance artist, designer and legend of the 1980s

How to set the field for this discussion, so broad in its scope?

London club world. In his piece The Road from Normal,

British writer and former Chair of the Freud Museum

Dallas explores constructing visual façades and the intricate

Lisa Appignanesi allowed us to publish a section of her book

relationship between our outer and inner worlds.

Mad, Bad & Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors from 1800 to Present. In it are many stories of depression, anguish and addiction, some famous like Virginia Woolf or Zelda Fitzgerald and others not. It maps how we have viewed mental disorders and other states of mind over two centuries. Lisa Appignanesi very generously took time out from chairing the Judging Panel of the Man Booker Prize International to write us a new introduction especially for this edition of Story.

All of our contributors have taken different paths and arrived in different places in relation to madness.

And there is so much more.

While the beginning of Patti Smith’s M Train came back to me quickly, I confess I had forgotten how she concluded the collection of reflections on life and art. In the final pages she closes the loop on the dream challenge she described in the book’s opening. ‘It’s not so easy writing about nothing,’ she repeats. And then, sage and poet that she is, she quietened any lasting uncertainty I had about exploring madness.

‘Dreams beget wishes that beget lingering questions…

Perhaps it’s not where we are going but just that we go’.

As we approach the centenary of the First World War Armistice, Guy Rundle’s Lethal Magical Thinking takes us back to the Western border of Germany and then pulls us through to the present via multiple wars and cultural shifts including the invention of the term ‘shellshock’, the intellectuals of The Frankfurt School and growth of

Rebecca Lamoin

psychoanalysis.

Editor

Australian legend Noni Hazlehurst has written beautifully

rebecca.lamoin@qpac.com.au

and directly about chaos and sanity, the central role of art and creativity in the lives of children and about the magnificent one woman show Mother written especially for her.

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Contributors LISA APPIGNANESI Lisa Appignanesi OBE is a prize-winning writer, novelist, cultural commentator, and Chair of the Royal Society of Literature. She is the author of the non-fiction books Trials of Passion; Mad, Bad and Sad; and Freud’s Women (with John Forrester), an acclaimed family memoir, Losing the Dead, and nine novels, including The Memory Man and Paris Requiem. In September 2018, Fourth Estate will publish her latest work of non-fiction, Everyday Madness: On Grief, Anger, Loss and Love. She is a visiting Professor in Literature and Medical Humanities at King’s College London and was made a Chevalier de l’Ordre des Arts et des Lettres in recognition of her contribution to literature. She is a former President of English PEN and former Chair of the Trustees of the Freud Museum in London. Appignanesi was awarded an OBE for services to literature in 2013.

DALLAS JOHN BAKER Dallas teaches writing, editing and publishing at the University of Southern Queensland.

He has published dozens of scholarly articles and creative works, including a number of plays. Dallas spent most of the 1980s as a gender-bending club denizen in illegal and/or underground gay bars in Brisbane, Sydney and Melbourne, a time he sees as his apprenticeship for his later PhD studies. These days he spends his time writing and researching on topics such as creative writing, publishing and, of course, gender.

His most recent play, Ghosts of Leigh, was staged at the historic Empire Theatre in his hometown of Toowoomba.

MAEVE BAKER Maeve Baker is a Melbourne based animator, illustrator and comic artist. She struggles to put down her pen, seeking to communicate relatable content in interesting ways. Maeve studied under artists and animators at the Queensland College of Art (Australia) and Volda University College (Norway) during her Bachelor of Animation before it’s completion in 2017. During her degree, she received several awards for academic excellence as well as one of three awards for Best Portfolio in Animation (2017). Maeve is currently employed at 12Field Animation Studio and on an array of freelance animation projects for clients in Melbourne and Brisbane.

JOHN DOHERTY John Doherty is a Brisbane based artist, who has engaged in community art groups and initiatives for over 15 years. With a lived experience of schizophrenia, homelessness and marginalisation, Doherty has found art to be a form of therapy and purpose.

Recently Doherty successfully exhibited a large retrospective of works at Hope Street Café, an activity of Micah Projects. Doherty has a distinct style of freely brushed colours in which you can see a heavy influence from Impressionist artists such as Chagall and Cezanne – artists he refers to as heroes. Doherty confessed that he will continue to paint and exhibit his art so long as he has a bit of paint and a brush in hand.

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STORY TEAM Story Editor: Rebecca Lamoin (rebecca.lamoin@qpac.com.au).

Story Team Editorial: Professor Judith McLean, Emily Philip, Eleanor Price, En Rui Foo, Maria Cleary, Sally McRae.

NONI HAZLEHURST Noni Hazlehurst AM is one of Australia’s favourite and most respected and awarded actors.

Digital Lead: Kim Harper.

Creative & Design: Rumble.

In late 2016 she completed a second sell-out tour of Mother, for which she earned a Helpmann Award nomination for Best Actress. Earlier this year she performed a sell-out season of the play at Sydney’s Belvoir Street Theatre, once again to critical

Q PAC

acclaim. This year she has filmed A Place to Call Home – The Final Chapter bringing the much-loved series to its conclusion.

Chair Professor Peter

Other recent credits include feature films Ladies in Black, Truth and The Mule,

Coaldrake AO

and television projects The Broken Shore, Redfern Now and The Letdown for the ABC.

Deputy Chair Leigh Tabrett PSM Trustees Dare Power, Susan Rix AM, Leanne de Souza

JUDITH MCLEAN

Executive Staff Chief Executive: John Kotzas

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

Executive Director – Stakeholder Engagement Strategy: Jackie Branch

cultural leader across Australia. She is currently a Director on the Board of Tourism and

Executive Director – Visitation:

Events Queensland, and leads QUT’s executive programs using arts-based practices in

Roxanne Hopkins

the corporate and government sectors.

Executive Director – Business Performance: Kieron Roost Acting Executive Director – Curatorial: Bill Jessop

GUY RUNDLE Guy Rundle is currently Crikey's correspondent-at-large, and a regular contributor to The Sunday Age. He was an editor of Arena Magazine for fifteen years, and is a frequent contributor to a wide range of publications in Australia and the UK.

The views expressed in Story are those of the individual authors and contributors and do not necessarily reflect the position of QPAC.

Ö N D E R K I L AV U Z

(COVER ARTIST)

Önder Kılavuz is an Ankara, Turkey-based concept artist with a love for sci-fi and fantasy.

He explains - "I first met Don Quixote in an old black and white movie when I was a child.

His story taught the mere awareness of such a thing as imagination and how the perception of reality may alter through that ability. Cervantes dreamt Don Quixote as a hero who chased after his own imaginary epic. What I dreamt of was simply a new confrontation for him at the watermill, wondering what he would see."

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Brief ly CULTURAL HOTSPOTS

“Cultures and climates differ all over the world, but people are the same. They’ll gather in public if you give them a good place to do it.”

- Professor Jan Gehl, Danish architect & urban designer

NEWS & VIEWS MAKING HEADLINES IN THE ARTS WORLD

In May 2018, the Queensland Government announced a $150 million investment in a new theatre to be built at QPAC by 2022. A fifth theatre completes QPAC architect Robin Gibson’s vision for the Centre and provides space for QPAC and local companies to create and present new works.

Queensland isn’t alone. Arts infrastructure is making headlines around Australia. The Victorian Government announced funding to build a contemporary art wing as part of The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne’s Southbank and South Australia will have a new arts and cultural destination in Adelaide, transforming the former Royal Adelaide Hospital site.

It’s easy to look at an entertainment juggernaut like Netflix, or social media platforms like Facebook and think that everyone is in their own bubble consuming entertainment and “socialising” without having to interact IRL (in real life). But humans are social animals. We are hungry for stories, hungry to connect with people, hungry for ideas. Our public spaces should facilitate this.

Public spaces are integral to cities. They serve as meeting places and community hubs, places for people to congregate. Whereas once community was synonymous with geographic location, now when we are more connected than ever, public spaces like our theatres and art galleries serve as important beacons for communities of interested people to come together.

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT DON QUIXOTE Published between 1605 and 1615, the novel Don Quixote is considered a founding work of modern Western literature, arguably the greatest work of fiction ever published. It has been adapted and reinterpreted across various art forms since it was written. The tale of a knight errant searching for adventure and who is intent on proving that chivalry is not dead, has been cited by many including literary legends William Faulkner and Ben Okri as the best book of all time.

Adaptation is an art form in itself. With a work as rambling and grand as Don Quixote, what hope is there for those who dare to dream and chase windmills?

The adventures of Don Quixote have been told in many art forms. There are books based on characters and vignettes from the original, music, opera and dance including Rudolph Nureyev’s athletic ballet masterpiece which will be performed in the 2018 QPAC International Series by Teatro alla Scala Ballet Company in November. And dozens of film adaptations dating as far back as 1906.

Screenwriter, director, actor and comedian Terry Gilliam has spent a large portion of the past three decades trying to get his movie version of Don Quixote on screen. His efforts have mostly been famous for their failure, suffering casting and funding difficulties and literally fire and flood. Many have called the project cursed. But after 29 years, Gillam’s The Man Who Killed Don Quixote premiered at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. It received mixed responses.

8

the day. In 2018 that level of correction isn’t commonly available and so instead most of us must live and die by what’s on record.

No stranger to this, when Roseanne Barr tweeted late at night about a former Obama administration senior advisor, it must have come as no surprise that her comments were captured, dissected, reproduce and discussed at a rate of knots.

The reactions were widespread and polarising. Her TV network ABC moved swiftly to cancel the show she created and starred in, Roseanne.

People variously excused her, praised her, condemned her, chided her, called her out, unfriended her.

As the cries of ‘censorship’ grew in volume, some brave souls reminded us about nuance and complexity.

Documentary maker Michael Moore who said ‘Roseanne…is a person who long ago broke through and brought an authentic voice of working women and men to television via one of

THE MYTH OF THE ‘MAD’ GENIUS Creativity has long been linked with mental health issues. Increasingly, many artists and creatives are very open about their experiences of various mental health disorders including bipolar, schizophrenia, depression, anxiety and ADHD. Many historical artists are now being retroactively fitted with modern diagnoses.

The idea of a link between ‘madness’ and ‘genius’ is an old one dating as far back as the Ancient Greeks who believed that creativity came from the muses (gods). This notion carried forth to the Romantics and settled

also said to see the world in different

the greatest TV series of all time.

ways and so therein the link has

It was ground breaking because the

been made.

TV industry had historically either ignored, ridiculed or patronized those

A plethora of studies throughout the

of us who grew up in the working

20th and 21st centuries have looked

class. Roseanne changed that.’

at this and tried to definitively establish a link between creativity

It remains to be seen what happens

and mental illness. They’ve given

with the show Roseanne and whether

rise to ethical and moral questions

it can continue without her. The

about leaving mental health issues

controversy comes at a time when

unaddressed so as not to hinder

we’re questioning (again) whether or

creative outputs. Assumptions and

how to separate artists from their art…

stereotypes abound. Science has

or their madness.

offered multiple connections but is not definitive. The romantic notion of the ‘tortured artist’ is long lasting…

into general use through the link

TWEET STORM

that creativity is akin to originality in

In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of

that it allows one to see what others

Truth ensures that history is accurate

cannot. Those with mental illness are

according to the propaganda of

DISCOVER MORE STORIES AND READ RELATED ARTICLES AT QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

When I set out to research and write the book that became Mad, Bad & Sad – from which an extract follows on the next pages - I wanted both to inquire into the ways our current understandings of madness what in our highly medicalised age we call mental illness – had come into being. What I discovered in the process were the ways in which various diagnoses – together with the dividing lines between what is considered normal, what aberrant – were historically specific and depended greatly on a time’s expectations of behaviour. This was perhaps more the case for women, a gender that has always been subject to description by male experts and thinkers. Such description, together with the male medical gaze, inevitably impacts on women’s self-understanding.

Mad, Bad & Sad

BY LISA APPIGNANESI

10

The Adams Memorial featuring allegorical sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens commissioned by writer Henry Adams to honour his wife Clover Adams.

Saint-Gaudens named the figure The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth but it became commonly known as Grief . Adams rejected all naming and in a letter to the artist’s son declared:

"Do not allow the world to tag my figure with a name! Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption— Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Mens' Suits Made to Measure. Your father meant it to ask a question, not to give an answer; and the man who answers will be damned to eternity like the men who answered the Sphinx."

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At no point in my research was I tempted to make the romantic leap into thinking that all forms of inner disorder and consequent behaviour were simply fabrications either on the sufferer’s or on the doctor’s part. From the first written records, it is clear that people, however they may express their ills, suffer from versions of extreme and debilitating melancholy which are more than sadness, from painful, disabling symptoms which have no known physiological base (this is true even in the age of scientific scans and superior mapping technologies), from hallucinations, dislocation, anomie, and so on. What changes, and changes emphatically through time, are the causes we attribute to often enough evolving symptoms and the attendant forms of treatment. Doctors and interventionist drugs do not always need to be the first point of call.

Whether we have now, as some psychiatrists may wish to claim, reached a high point in understanding and treating mental disorders, is open to question. There must be an irony to the fact that while we pretend to greater knowledge, to better and more scientific medicine, the toll of sufferers nonetheless seems to rise and rise. Diagnoses, themselves not impervious to movements and fashion, can amass followers.

We want names for the things that are difficult to bear.

I hope Mad, Bad & Sad sheds a little light on these perplexing matters.

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The simplest way to begin is to say that this is the story of madness, badness and sadness and the ways in which we have understood them over the last two hundred years. Some of that understanding has to do with how the dividing lines between them were conceived and patrolled, in particular by a growing group of professionals or 'mind doctors', who came to be known, as the nineteenth century turned into the twentieth, as 'alienists', psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts and psychotherapists. They were also sometimes neurologists, pathologists and latterly neuroscientists and psychopharmacologists. All of them thought they were in one way or another illuminating the dark corners of the mind and amassing crucial knowledge.

In that sense, and appropriately, they thought of themselves as scientists. They were helped along the way by criminologists, judges, statisticians and epidemilogists.

Crucially, they were also helped by patients.

"I have long been aware of the shallowness of sanity" So this is also the story of the way in which madness, badness and sadness - and all the names or diagnoses these states of mind and being have been given as time went on - were lived by various women. Frenzies, possessions, manias, melancholy, nerves, delusions, aberrant acts, dramatic ties, passionate loves and hates, sex, visual and auditory hallucinations, fears, phobias, fantasies, disturbances of sleep, dissociations, communication with spirits and imaginary friends, addictions, self-harm, self-starvation, depression - are all characters in the story this book tells. So too are the Latinate and Greek designations they took on as diagnoses - monomania, melancholia, hysteria, dementia praecox, schizophrenia, anorexia - and their often casual, but scientising shorthand today, MPD, ADHD, OCD and so on.

Since mind-doctoring, for better or worse, is not only about understanding and exploring the mind or psyche, emotions and acts, but also sometimes about making them work better

together, treatments are also players in this book, whether

Sometimes the pills, like other cures, work. At other times,

they are 'moral', surgical, galvanic, electrical, pharmaceutical

they can make things worse - no matter what the scientific

or talking - sometimes even writing.

imprimatur they wear.

I have long been aware of the shallowness of sanity. Most of

There is a battle being waged in the area of mental health.

us are, in one way or another. Madness, certainly a leap of

As more and more of our unhappiness is medicalised, as

the irrational, is ever close. We have all been children and

diagnoses are increasingly attached to conditions or aspects

can remember a parent's or sibling's sudden rage - even,

of behaviour and the number of sufferers grows, people

though less well, our own explosions. We all sleep and

want more service - either more pills or more therapy, even

wake and sometimes the dream lingers, won't be shaken

of the kind that comes as a computer program. They want

off, incomprehensible with its ruptures of time, space and sometimes shape, so that we're as small as Alice confronted by the caterpillar, let alone party to the languorous visions of that opium pipe. We drive along in our cars and suddenly emerge from a trance in which we can't remember who we were. At other times, our dead won't let go of us and shadow our days, as if they were there, in the room, too close.

Or we or a partner wakes and simply can't rise. The light has suddenly gone out on the world. It feels as if it will never go on again. Everything is too big, too difficult, too miserable. No pulling up of the socks will fix things. Those negative, persecuting screams of all that is wrong in our lives are so loud only suicide feels as if it might blot them out.

All this is common enough - as are physical symptoms for which the doctor can find no organic base. If any of this persists, or grows exaggerated, in partners, children or ourselves, we feel fear and perhaps shame. The fear that our minds have grown alien to us, the shame that our acts, words or emotions can slip from our control, are often combined with a wish to disguise both states if at all possible, or to find a simple physical reason at their base.

In our therapeutic society, we may equally feel that a trip to a GP or mind doctor will provide us with a pill that cures.

This made me want to know whether we had entered a century where sadness and madness, let alone attendant badness, had really grown to terrifying proportions. Or whether we had begun to count things we hadn't counted before and certainly not in the same way. In other words, had what we now term a mental disorder come to encompass something more than, or different from, what it had while I was growing up in what now seems like a distant last century, let alone in the century before? Since the business of history, like novel-writing, makes one distrust present certainties. I also wanted to know whether this incessant growth in illness might be linked to the unstoppable growth in potential cures. There is nothing like the discovery of a much publicised set of pills to invoke a mirroring illness. To put this another way, the shape of our unhappiness or discontent can, proteus-like, be morphed to fit the prevalent diagnoses.

doctors to cope with their wild, inattentive (ADHD), suicidal or self-starving children. They want some kind of control or overseeing of those who may be 'perverted', dangerous to others or themselves when in the midst of a frenzy which is also an inner anguish. Or they want help to see them through what they can't get through alone.

At the same time, there's a rising disenchantment with our mind doctors, from within their own ranks, too. The medical imperialising of all parts of our mental, emotional and psychic lives, the pills that promised to make us 'better than well', may now, it seems, have overreached. To assume that sadness, even in its malignant form, is caused by a chemical imbalance may not be an altogether useful hypothesis or a particularly true one. I feel sad when my dog dies. That causes a change in my brain. The emotion isn’t caused by the brain. Everything animate beings do or feel ­from watching a football match, to kissing, to eating – causes complicated chemical change. But no amount of serotonin will bring Mr Darcy to the door, make England win the World Cup, bring peace to warring neighbours or end global warming. Nor - any more than God - may the latest much publicised cure-all: cognitive behaviour therapy.

There are many aspects of our lives which have ended up within the terrain of the mind doctors when they might more aptly belong in a social or political sphere either of action or of interpretation.

Exploring the history of madness and mind-doctoring brings all this into focus. Putting historical periods, old diagnoses and symptoms side by side might, some would imagine, give us a bright sense of the rise and rise of science and of our present medical and pharmaceutical miracles. We certainly know far more about our neural and biochemical make-up than Pinel, the founder of 'alienism', or Freud dreamt of. We have more efficient drugs and more elaborate hypotheses. But where we have what may arguably be more sophisticated, certainly more ordered diagnoses, disorders proliferate and also grow in complexity.

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Therapeutic ideals have so penetrated

of mind doctors spotting, shaping,

same thing - the percentage of cures

our Western world that there is

naming - in a word, 'diagnosing' - or

through care or time does not seem

sometimes a sense that the 'psy'

even suggesting an illness, though

to have changed all that much over

professions can fix everything. What

all that happens too. People, and it is

the two hundred or so years that this

much of the ensuing history puts into

people who become patients, are not

book's story charts. But our managing

relief is that cures are rarely absolute

utterly passive. We are talking here of

of the most extreme forms of mania

or forever.

mental or psychic illness, and, mad

or delirium has.

or sane, patients are as susceptible to In one of his pithy, throw-away

knowledge as doctors and often know

I decided to focus on women as a

remarks, the philosopher Ian Hacking

how to hide from or use it.

way into this history of symptoms, diagnoses and mind-doctoring for

noted, “In every generation there are quite firm rules on how to behave

As historians of medicine have

various reasons. Perhaps the first is

when you are crazy.” Anthropologists

increasingly argued, illness is the

simply that there are so many riveting

have long charted the different

product of a subtle interplay between

cases of women, and through them a

expressions of madness and the forms

cultural perspectives and what is

cure may take in unfamiliar cultures.

Nor are modern cultures, however globalised, altogether homogeneous where disorder is in question. A BBC

is particularly the case with mental illness. In the 1820s and 1830s, George

psy professions was constructed. With John Forrester, I had explored some of this terrain in Freud's Women.

Man Burrows was as certain that he

There is more. Contemporary statistics

had proof of the links between the

always emphasise women's greater

uterine system and the disordered

propensity to suffer from the 'sadness'

‘stress' characterised by medics as

brain as some doctors and drug

end of madness. Go to any hundred

'retired husband syndrome', an illness

companies are today that what is

websites and this will be reiterated,

that could turn a wife's repressed

known in the psychiatric manuals

and perhaps not only because women

worry about a salaryman­husband's

as 'Female Sexual Dysfunction' is a

buy more self-improving drugs.

imminent return to the home, where

question of specific hormones. There

habits of obedience and servitude

was a sense during the last years of

would have to be reinforced, into a

the twentieth century that certainty

round of skin rashes, ulcers, asthma

had been arrived at and that the

and high blood pressure.

causes of mental illness had been

program about Japan, where the population is ageing, recently explored a prevalent and debilitating form of

As I was amassing material for this book, I realised that symptoms and diagnoses in any given period played into one another in the kind of collaborative work that all doctoring

14

also a shifting biological reality. This

large part of what we recognise as the

located in brain chemistry, or so the pharmaceutical companies had led us to believe. The new century has brought altered perceptions about biology itself.

inevitably entails. Often enough,

If symptoms or disorders can

extreme expressions of the culture’s

sometimes have aspects of a

malaise, symptoms and disorders

collaborative production between

mirrored the time's order - its worries,

patients and doctors, this does not

limits, border problems, fears.

make the torment, the anguish of a

Anorexia is usually an illness of plenty,

mind gone awry, any the less real.

not of famine, as depression is one of

And intervention by mind doctors can

times of peace and prosperity, not of

make illness better, though the kind

war. It is perhaps no surprise that an

of intervention - care or pill or talk

age in which the sum of information

or time away from the family - may

available in any given minute is larger

not always be instrumental in the

than it has ever been in history should

process as is sometimes thought. I

find a condition in which attention is

was surprised to discover that - in so

at a deficit. This is not a simple matter

far as people might be counting the

These figures may be true enough.

Certainly if they aren't 'true', the cultural illusion prevails. A magazine like Psychologies, which looks at the softer side of psychic order and disturbance, always carries a woman's face on its cover, as if psychology, that whole business of understanding the (troubled) mind and relations, were uniquely a feminine undertaking, whatever the gender of the doctors.

Hardly surprising to find that two out of three clients for the talking cures offered by Cambridge University's Staff Counselling Service are women.

The study of women, madness and mind doctors has its own history, and one which has gone through several shifts since Simone de Beauvoir first explored the terrain in The Second Sex. What came clear in that major study was that a particular period's definitions of appropriate femininity

or masculinity were closely linked to definitions of

wrote an MA thesis on Edgar Allan Poe and his hauntings

madness. Not conforming to a norm risks the label

by the dead and undead; and that I worked part-time for

of deviance or madness, and is sometimes attended

a psychoanalytic publishing house in New York, turning

by confinement. For Friedan, Millett, Greer, the great

what was often expert babble into prose.

feminists of the second wave, mind doctors constituted the enemy, agents of patriarchy who trapped women in

My doctorate, though in literature, already contains

a psychology they attributed to her, stupefied her with

some of the strands of this book: how femininity was

pills or therapy, and confined her either to the ‘madhouse’

constructed and understood by the great writers of the

or the restricted life of conventional roles. The promise

turn of the nineteenth century, in particular, Henry

was held out that women's rise in the professions would

James, brother of Alice, who features in these pages;

change all this.

Proust, still the greatest literary psychologist, and Robert Musil, a near-neighbour of Freud's, who also

Historians of the 1980s and 90s showed us that not only

came into that modernist literary picture with its

were there hidden prejudices in the way in which women

everyday psychopathologies.

were conceived of and treated, but that easy notions of historical progress and

Freud's Women is, of course, part

objectivity were themselves

of this trajectory, as are several

to be interrogated. It became clear that disease as much as gender and biology were hardly fixed universals, free of their time's, or our, ways of seeing. The history of psychiatry was not just the history of a great march down the Boulevard of Science towards immutable scientific laws and better drugs for everything. Today, we might want to question whether brain scans and neuro-chemistry, whatever else they may teach us, really do hold the keys to ultimate knowledge of the mind and its disorders.

"Contemporary statistics always emphasise women's greater propensity to suffer from the 'sadness' end of madness"

of my novels, from Memory and Desire to Sanctuary and Paris Requiem, where mind doctors somehow seem to intervene to strut their stuff. Finally, my mother's Alzheimer's vividly reminded me both how fragile and how extraordinary the human mind is. It sent me on a journey into the harder side of the brain sciences. I spent two years shadowing the world of the Brain and Behaviour Lab of the Open University. Here, neuroscientist Steven Rose led research into memory. I was forced, through what sometimes felt like supervisions, alongside reading and conferences, to

People have asked me why,

confront a biochemical approach

after writing fiction, I have chosen to immerse myself in

to brain and mind. All this is partly reconfigured in my

the history of a science and practice which has so many of

novel The Memory Man. Of course, it also prepared me for

its own writing professionals. Have I been a practitioner?

the work in these pages.

Am I a patient?

In a way, Mad, Bad & Sad is a book I have been I could answer that, as a writer, I simply have a faith in

writing all my life.

the outsider's view and have always had a fascination for the vagaries of the human mind. Or, since there are many ways of tracing one's trajectory, I could say that an interest in madness was also a form of survival. My early family

Q PAC I N T E R N AT I O N A L

life – which I evoked in Losing the Dead – amongst people

S E R I E S : T E AT R O A L L A

chased by the Holocaust to peaceful Canadian shores

S C A L A B A L L E T CO M PA N Y

had its own strangeness, one that was hardly reflected in

- DO N Q U I XOT E

television sitcoms. Retrospectively, it makes sense that I

7 – 1 7 Novem b er 2 0 1 8 Ly r i c Th ea t re, QPAC

15

Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It is an integral part of health; indeed, there is no health without mental health. Mental health is determined by a range of socioeconomic, biological and environmental factors.

Cost-effective public health and intersectoral strategies and interventions exist to promote, protect and restore mental health.

10 FACTS ON MENTAL HEALTH 1. Around 20% of the world's children and adolescents have mental disorders or problems

This stigma can lead to abuse, rejection and isolation and

About half of mental disorders begin before the age of 14.

health system, people are too often treated in institutions

Similar types of disorders are being reported across cultures.

which resemble human warehouses rather than places

Neuropsychiatric disorders are among the leading causes

of healing.

of worldwide disability in young people. Yet, regions of the world with the highest percentage of population under the age of 19 have the poorest level of mental health resources.

Most low-income and middle-income countries have only one child psychiatrist for every 1 to 4 million people.

exclude people from health care or support. Within the

7. Human rights violations of people with mental and psychosocial disability are routinely reported in most countries These include physical restraint, seclusion and denial of basic needs and privacy. Few countries have a legal

2. M ental and substance use disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide

framework that adequately protects the rights of people

About 23% of all years lost because of disability is

8. Globally, there is huge inequity in the distribution of skilled human resources for mental health

caused by mental and substance use disorders.

3. About 800,000 people commit suicide every year Over 800,000 people die due to suicide every year and suicide is the second leading cause of death in 15 to 29 year olds. There are indications that for each adult who died of suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide. 75% of suicides occur in low-income and middle-income countries. Mental disorders and harmful use of alcohol contribute to many suicides around

with mental disorders.

Shortages of psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychologists and social workers are among the main barriers to providing treatment and care in low-income and middle-income countries. Low income countries have 0.05 psychiatrists and 0.42 nurses per 100,000 people. The rate of psychiatrists in high income countries is 170 times greater and for nurses is 70 times greater.

the world. Early identification and effective management

9. There are five key barriers to increasing mental health services availability

are key to ensuring that people receive the care they need.

In order to increase the availability of mental health services,

4. War and disasters have a large impact on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing Rates of mental disorder tend to double after emergencies.

there are five key barriers that need to be overcome: the absence of mental health from the public health agenda and the implications for funding; the current organisation of mental health services; lack of integration within primary

5. M ental disorders are important risk factors for other diseases, as well as unintentional and intentional injury Mental disorders increase the risk of getting ill from other diseases such as HIV, cardiovascular disease, diabetes, and vice-versa.

care; inadequate human resources for mental health; and lack of public mental health leadership.

10. Financial resources to increase services are relatively modest Governments, donors and groups representing mental

6. Stigma and discrimination against patients and families prevent people from seeking mental health care

health service users and their families need to work together

Misunderstanding and stigma surrounding mental ill

and middle-income countries. The financial resources

health are widespread. Despite the existence of effective

needed are relatively modest: US$ 2 per capita per year

treatments for mental disorders, there is a belief that they

in low income countries and US$ 3-4 in lower middle

are untreatable or that people with mental disorders are

income countries.

to increase mental health services, especially in low-income

difficult, not intelligent, or incapable of making decisions.

CRISIS SUPPORT If you or someone you know needs immediate help, please contact: Emergency 000 | Lifeline 13 11 14 | Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION WWW.WHO.INT

MensLine 1300 78 99 78 | Suicide Call Back 1300 659 467 Your local GP or treating psychologist / psychiatrist if you have one.

17

A beautiful thing W I T H D O U G L A S M C G R AT H

Douglas McGrath is effervescent, in the way Americans often are, and is a superb storyteller. It’s a talent he’s utilised as a playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. In the early 1980s, and right out of college, he landed smack in the heartland of American satire, Saturday Night Live. Presumably this is where he sharpened his wit and honed his political jabs which now feature on the pages of some of the United States most respected publications including The New Yorker, The New Republic, Vanity Fair and The New York Times.

McGrath and his collaborator Woody Allen were nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay for Bullets Over Broadway, he also wrote and directed the adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. In lots of ways he was the perfect choice when producers wanted someone to write the book for the musical about legendary singer-songwriter Carole King. Story had some fleeting moments with him.

20

MUSICAL THEATRE IS A KIND OF MADNESS… Can I tell you a story about my son? I grew up in Texas, bleak west Texas, which is one colour, brown. It’s just dirt.

So when I saw The Sound of Music, which is lush and green and Julie Andrews and her blue eyes and the pink lips and everything gorgeous, I was just…wow. It’s a wonderful musical. So when Henry our son was three or four, I thought he was ready to see The Sound of Music. It’s a little early, but when you’re a parent there are certain things you can’t wait to share with your kids.

I put him in the chair and we got it going. I put it on the big TV screen and you know that wonderful opening with the aerial shots all over the city and then it finally ends up on the mountain and it’s beautiful and clear? Then over the mountain comes one of the great musical stars of all time, beautiful Julie Andrews. She flings out her arms and she drops her jaw and out comes that peerless voice of hers.

I was so excited. I thought I can’t believe it, I’ve now got a son and I’m showing him this wonderful movie. I’m a creative person, so I’m also needy. I wanted to make sure that by this point he was sufficiently enraptured. I stole a glance over at him and this is what I saw. Just like this (facial expression of boredom). He felt me looking at him so he turned to me and said, “Well, she’s weird”. I was just horrified. “What do you meeeean?”.

Then I realised he’d never seen a musical before. So he had no idea that if you have a feeling, instead of telling someone your feeling, you sing it. I thought, “Okay, you need to get with the program here Henry because this is a great art form”. He stuck with it and about 15 minutes later, early in the story still, he turned to me, this time not taking his eyes off the screen and he whispered, “I think she likes the captain”. Then I thought, “OK we’re in!”.

A musical itself is a form of madness because if madness is the rejection of rationality or reality or what we know, there’s nothing madder than a musical!

THE CREATIVE PROCESS….

This was such a wonderful experience, Beautiful, but it was the first musical I’d written and so I was very, very lucky it was fantastic.

When you’re writing for print, like my political satire, you’re essentially writing by yourself. Your editor might make a suggestion or two but it’s really up to you.

21

When you’re making a film, even if

I thought warmth had to be our

The Locomotion. They wrote Blame

you’re the director, you’re working

guiding point and as a producer Paul

it on the Bossa Nova. They just did

with scores of people and although in

loved that. Whenever anyone else

whatever was of the moment.

the end they have to do what you want,

came aboard the project who had a

you like the idea of building not just

different approach, he would always

OLD IS NEW IS OLD

consensus but you want people to see

say, “No, no. We’re doing it this way”.

I had this preconception that I was

things the same way.

so sure was right about her, about the We had someone come in early on

four of them in fact, and about the

In anything that works, I think it’s

who had an idea that the musical

place they worked. Do you know

because everybody working on it

should be done like an old-fashioned

about the Brill Building?

signed on to the same vision. The

musical where people sing the songs to

things that don’t work are always

each other as their feelings, but I had

There were two buildings people

the ones where you feel like – in the

written it in a different way. For want

mean when they talk about the Brill

case of a musical for instance - the

of a better term, or at least to use a

Building. The Brill Building is at 1619

composer wanted one show, the

less exciting term, it’s a more realistic

Broadway, which is 49th or 50th St.

book writer wanted another show,

musical in that nobody is pretending,

They were at 1650 Broadway just up

the actress playing the part wanted

they’re not on the top of an alp singing

the street. It was in those two buildings

another show. They weren’t all

about the sound of music or anything.

that the sound, the Brill Building

on the same page.

They come into an office and they say,

sound, was created. At 1619 there were

“I wrote a song last night. Do you want

wonderful writers like ( Jerry) Leiber

We were very lucky in our show in

to hear it?”. So the audience never has

and (Mike) Stoller and Ellie Greenwich

that Paul Blake, one of our producers

to make that leap of, “Why are they

but at 1650 there was Carole and

(our two producers are Paul and Mike

singing like that?”.

Gerry, Barry and Cynthia, Neil Sedaka,

Buzner), they loved how I saw the show. Early on Paul asked me, “What do you think the tone for this show is?”.

COMPETITION, AMBITION AND DRIVE

been around since the teens and the 20s and they were the buildings where

You have to figure that out early. I said,

Carole told me this and I found this

the songwriters of the earlier era went

“To me it’s Comdon and Green”. (Betty

so interesting… they were genuine

to sell their songs, the Tin Pan Alley

Comdon and Adolph Green wrote

artists, the four of them and they really

writers, but some of the great writers,

Singin’ in the Rain and The Band Wagon).

wanted to write something great but

Irving Berlin and all those people

They always wrote these shows that

they also wanted whatever they wrote

would have passed through those

had a love story in them but that were

to be popular. They always studied

buildings to first sell their songs.

essentially about friendship. They had

the charts. I think it was Wednesday

a wonderful warmth to them.

when the Billboard charts would come out. They’d immediately go right

In creating Beautiful, one of the things

downstairs to the newsstand and grab

I learned in talking to Carole and

it - remember newsstands? Then they

Gerry (Goffin) and Barry (Mann) and

would see whatever was number one.

Cynthia (Wiel), our four characters,

If it wasn’t them, they’d think, “Why

four real people, is what came through

is that song number one?”, and they

was this warmth from the four of

would study and try to analyse why

them. Warmth between Carole and

the song was number one.

Gerry, who had divorced after a

22

Bobby Darin. Both those buildings had

But now it’s the late 50s and the old guard is changing. The public mood is changing and no-one really wanted to dance to Oh What a Beautiful Morning anymore and the big band sound had passed. So my idea was that the musical was going to be about these kids, these kind of ground-breaking revolutionaries who were going to overthrow the old guard and create the

contentious unhappy marriage. They

Neil Sedaka did this a lot. He would

new sound of rock’n’roll. That made

still had this great feeling of warmth

analyse it right down to what are the

sense to me based on what I knew. So

with each other. And they were great

chords in that song, or that sound. In

when I told Carole that idea and her

competitors with Barry and Cynthia,

Carole and Gerry’s case they did it

face just lit up like a sunrise and she

who were on the other side of a wall in

and sometimes turned out something

leaned across the table and took my

their New York office building. They

great. It didn’t just feel like a copy.

hand to squeeze it, I thought, “I have

were great competitors and yet they

If dance songs were a craze, they

so nailed this idea”. But she squeezed

loved each other. I loved that!

wrote dance songs. They wrote

my hand and she said, “That is so

wrong”. I almost fell out of my chair.

people were doing him, everybody

18 writers helping him, he has an

She said, “We loved the old guard.

does imitations of him. Saturday Night

individual voice and a wonderful take

We loved Cole Porter. We worshiped

Live has the very funny Alec Baldwin

on things. I think he’s doing something

Irving Berlin and George Gershwin”.

version, he’s everywhere. As I studied

unique because he devotes essentially

it, I just thought, I can’t keep doing

the whole show to one topic and

Trump himself, it’s too worn out.

although they dress it up with a lot of

That explains a lot. It explains the melodic complexity of their music.

comedy, what’s underneath is heartfelt.

By ‘complexity’, it’s not overly complex

So the other three pieces I wrote,

but it’s not simple the way many pop

I came at him indirectly. The second

songs are simple. Listen to Will You Still

piece was about Jeb Bush. It’s called

Most late night people - and I

Love Me or to Natural Woman. These are

Jeb Bush is Totally Committed but you

know why, if you’re on five nights

songs that have a beautiful depth of

see he’s in shellshock. He is back home

a week - just have to make jokes.

feeling. They come into the ear easily

with George and Barbara and he’s

I know what it was like at Saturday

but they’re not simple minded. And

totally in shock by the way he’s been

Night Live. You’re scouring the news

Gerry’s lyrics and Cynthia Weil’s lyrics

treated by Trump. The whole piece is

for anything. There’s a nursing home

are much richer than most, not all,

about Trump and yet it’s seen through

fire and you’re, like, “What’s the joke?”

but most of the lyrics of the period. I

the eyes of other players.

and then you feel sick about yourself.

He picks things that he cares about.

John will pick a topic that he can find

believe that’s because both Gerry and Cynthia wanted to be playwrights and

Then I did one called What the Obamas

a lot of humour in but that he can also

so they wrote characters. Each song is

Like to Watch. Remember when Trump

make legitimate points about. It’s a

the story of somebody. Maybe not The

accused Obama of wiretapping? So I

kind of social critique.

Locomotion but certainly Up on the Roof

thought what if he did, that’s just too

or Cynthia’s wonderful song Uptown.

good. So the premise of the piece is

The piece that got me hooked on

I think Will You Still Love Me could be

that once Trump was elected, the CIA

the show was one he did early in the

a one-act play by Tennessee Williams,

installed cameras in all parts of his

first season on these awful accidents

it’s so tender.

universe. Then when the Obamas get

General Motors was having. Their cars

home every night they watch the feed

were exploding or something, some

- the CIA gave it to them as a parting

terrible thing. Of course they knew all

gift. They come home every night and

about it, didn’t do anything for a long

they can’t wait to watch. But I never use

time, put the blame on somebody else.

Trump. I use Ivanka and Jarrod getting

The way he approached it, he was like

dressed for dinner (he’s worried his

an outraged activist but with a superb

pants make him look fat.) Of course,

sense of humour. And the sense of

it’s almost always about Trump

humour didn’t in any way minimise

but coming from the side or

what he was trying to say, the punch

different angle.

was still there.

It takes a while, because you want each

Dickens was very brilliant at balancing

piece to be just so and you can get

comedy and drama and what he knew

them to that point and then the night

and what I was lucky to learn from

before you mail it in, your same idea

him, was that the comedy makes the

could be on Jimmy Kimmel. Whereas

drama all the more dramatic and the

they’re not really doing the other stuff

drama makes the comedy all the more

the way I was doing it. I thought it was

relieving when it comes.

THE UNITED STATES AND POLITICAL SATIRE We’re deep in madness at the moment.

It’s all pre-satirised. I wrote four satirical pieces about the Trump administration for The New Yorker.

The first piece is called We Have a Serious Problem. That one is Trump himself. It’s Trump and an aide and he’s trying to figure out how to get out of the running for President because he didn’t really want to run for President. By that point he was running. By the time he was in, everybody, dead people were doing satire about Trump because he’s a big target. He refreshes the well every day.

a way to cut through.

He is the gift that keeps on giving.

JOHN OLIVER AND CHARLES DICKENS

He is a disaster for the country and the

John Oliver, he is so brilliant, he is

world but he is a gift to satirists. What

a person that has a really individual

B E AU T I F U L : T H E CAROLE KING MUSICAL

I found was that because so many

voice - I mean, even though he has

F rom 1 3 Ju ly 2 0 1 8 Lyr i c T he a t re , QPAC

“I’ve got a huge collection of artwork at home, and try to paint daily.

Art is very good for my health; it is very uplifting for the spirit and it works to communicate good vibes for people.”

- J O HN DOHERTY, ARTIST.

24

Outsider Art The French artist Jean Dubuffet took the Surrealist obsession with Outsiders to a new level by daring to collect and exhibit their work. Not only did he champion the artwork of schizophrenics and local mediums, but he also celebrated art made by eccentric isolates and self-taught laborers. Dubuffet recognized in the work of these divergent groups one unifying trait: a raw quality untouched by academic rules or current trends.

Outsider Art Fair, Paris Outsiderartfair.com

25

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The road from normal

BY DALLAS JOHN BAKER

Writing is like dancing, it’s moving (or making marks) to a beat, a beat inside. The things that are written—novels, poems and plays—hold those rhythms in them, ready to be released when read or performed.

That beat doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s the echo of the writer’s experiences, their loves and losses. It’s easy enough to hear the music in any piece 28

of writing, but to understand it fully, we sometimes need to track that beat back to its source, to the moments and experiences that led to its creation. To understand my play Ghosts of Leigh, you need to go back to the 1980s and take a ride in a Datsun 120Y through the rolling grasslands of the Darling Downs.

“Those who dance are considered mad by those who cannot hear the music” – Friedrich Nietzsche The road sparkled in the morning sun like a strip of black diamonds. Beautiful, even though the sparkle was just the glitter of millions of tiny shards of glass from broken headlights embedded in the bitumen.

The highway curved between low hills blanketed in wild, golden grass, separating the paddocks on one side from those on the other with a dark, glittering slash.

The paddocks stretched back in every direction under a luminous blue sky. Every now and then, far off in the

We were quite a trio, my mother, my grandmother and I. All outcasts in our small conservative town, and all so disconnected (perhaps alienated) from other people’s expectations that we just did what we wanted; unconcerned by others’ reactions, unfazed by the risk inherent in being different, in standing out. My mother went to bed for days in depressed, hypochondriac fits.

My grandmother spoke in riddles and often went on lone adventures in the middle of the night; barefoot and wearing only a nightgown. I grew my hair long and put on my mother’s make-up and an op-shop kimono and went for long walks in the countryside; a gender-bending bush-baby.

distance, a lonely farmhouse sat on the horizon, watched over by a lightning-struck gum tree. The Darling Downs, my home.

To outsiders, the things my grandmother did and the things that I did were in the same category: stuff only lunatics did. My mother’s sins were not seen as quite so

My mother’s little Datsun 120Y rode on the sparkling blacktop almost silently, the noise of the engine lost in that empty landscape. My mother steered the car with one hand and wound down the window with the other.

She angled her face to let the cold air dry the tears that rolled freely down her cheeks. They just kept coming and she’d grown tired of wiping them away. She was heartbroken over something. I didn’t know what.

It was one of the saddest things I’d seen in my whole life. Even though I was only fourteen years old, I was sure I could live to a hundred and not see anything that sad ever again.

serious. But if on occasion sympathy was shown to my mother or grandmother, none ever came my way. People seemed to think that I’d chosen to be different, to be a freak. Whereas they thought my grandmother was born crazy, they believed my own actions and choices had made me that way. And somehow my crimes were more taboo, because mine were crimes against gender. It was as if they thought I was being different (being myself) to spite them, as part of a willing refusal of their sense of what was normal, right and good. Whatever they believed, my behaviour and gender presentation weren’t about rebellion, or trying to set myself apart.

It was simply the outflow of an atypical mind, of thinking

At best, outsiders read my mother as not quite normal, at worst, they read her as hysterical. In reality, she was just sensitive and a little bit sad. She turned on the radio and cranked up the volume. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me by Culture Club was playing. One of our favourite songs.

She started singing along, the tears still streaming down.

This was the moment I understood that some people’s minds are quite different to everyone else’s; that one person’s way of thinking and perceiving can be as unlike another person’s as moonlight is to the harsh gleam of stadium floodlights. It was also the moment I realised that there is beauty in that difference. There is pain and loneliness, yes, but also something tender that is worth cherishing.

“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness” – Allen Ginsberg The kids in my neighbourhood called my grandmother ‘the mad witch’. She was a paranoid schizophrenic in a time when hardly anyone had heard that term let alone knew what it meant. They called me ‘the sissy freak’. Everyone knew exactly what that meant: queer.

differently; of not having the same (restricted) sense of what was normal that everyone else had. I just didn’t believe in gender the way other people did. For me it was something to be played with, something fluid and fun, a performance. Playing with gender was how I expressed myself. Because of that I was drawn to other people whose approach to gender was much the same.

An expression of this was my record collection, which in the 1980s contained barely a single gender-normative performer. It was all David Bowie, Boy George, Marilyn, Dead or Alive and Divine. And it was through my genderbending fandom that I encountered the unforgettable Leigh Bowery, a genius of shock and outrage whose drag-inspired costumery spoke to me (and woke me) in ways nothing else had before.

“There is no great genius without some touch of madness” – Aristotle The idea that genius, especially creative genius, is linked to madness is literally as old as Aristotle. That’s a fair bit more than a two thousand year tradition of linking

artists, writers and performers to ‘lunatics’. It’s no wonder then that the idea is hard to dislodge, despite the fact that there is no substantial evidence linking mental illness with creativity. Madness, in the form of hysteria, has long been associated more with women than men.

The connection between creative genius (or talent), madness and femininity is evident in everyday life.

The few creative professions most people encounter on a regular basis—such as hairdressing, window-dressing, interior design, dressmaking and beautician—have long been seen as feminine. The men who participate in these professions are deemed effeminate by default. The same is true for men who participate in the more rarefied arts of ballet, opera and theatre. The figure of the ‘artsy effeminate’ is a cultural stereotype that persists despite the fact that male dancers, singers and actors are often both masculine and heterosexual. It is because of this persistent association between creativity and femininity, between madness and the effeminate, that men who don’t look how men are supposed to look, whose gender presentation (or visual façade) defies gender norms, are often perceived as hysterics, as lunatics. More to the point, they are also often perceived as scary and dangerous. Leigh Bowery played up to the notion of the scary effeminate with sublime irreverence and turned his (powdered) nose up at all social norms around gender.

In fact, he made these things the basis for all of his (unconventional) art.

In an interview with Ian Parker in London’s The Independent1, Bowery described his artwork as, ‘both serious and very funny. It's decorative, but there's something underlying [it] that's maybe tragic and disturbing. There's a tension between the two.’ The tension between the two is the tension between

“A person needs a little madness, or else they never dare cut the rope and be free” – Nikos Kazantzakis Ironically, to be free does not come without a price.

We all pay something for our freedom. Sometimes we pay a price just for being ourselves, especially when being ourselves confronts sacrosanct norms like gender.

When we do that, when we break or transcend taboos, we are deemed mad, perhaps even dangerous. In my stage play, Ghosts of Leigh, the lead character, the ghost of a young (1980s) Leigh Bowery, says this: ‘There is always a price to pay for being different, always, and sometimes it’s a high price, but it’s worth it. Besides, the price you pay for hiding who you really are is much higher.

Sometimes it costs you your life.’ In a lot of ways this play had its genesis in that Datsun 120Y, on that empty road slicing through the Darling Downs when I was 14.

I knew then that I was not like everyone else and that as a result I would experience loneliness, and perhaps pain. But I also knew that I wouldn’t conform and be like everyone else, even if I could. If I did, then I would lose the tenderness that comes from being an outsider, the tenderness that makes an ordinary country road seem like a thread of glittering black diamonds. Leigh Bowery was the role model I used for negotiating the pain and loneliness, and for how to be myself, how to preserve the tenderness within.

‘Look out there, Dallas,’ my mother had said on that morning, motioning with her head out to broad skies and acres of golden grass. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, raising my voice a little over the wind flooding in the window. ‘It’s really beautiful.’

normal and abnormal, sane and insane, male and

She smiled, wiping the last tear away. ‘Not everyone

female, between the banal and commonplace and the

sees it, but I knew you would.’ She hit the accelerator.

extraordinary. Bowery’s crafted visual façade reads

The little 120Y lurched forward, its tires whirring on the

on the outside as outlandish, as mad, but it rests on

glittering road that stretched far away from normal to

an inner philosophical architecture that is profoundly

another place; a place where people like us could feel at

logical. Through outrageous costumery and a flirtation

home and dance to the beat of a different drum.

with the limits of acceptable behaviour and dress, Bowery is highlighting two things: 1. That gender norms are deeply conservative and conformist; and 2. That most individuals unconsciously adhere to a rigid (and

1

2

‘A bizarre body of work’ (Sunday 26th February 1995) Running Wild (1988)

hierarchical) dress code as opposed to following their own inner impulses or desires, which is, in itself, a kind of (imposed) madness or forced inhibition. It’s as though that made by author J.G. Ballard when he wrote, ‘In a

PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT

totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.’ 2

F rom 2 6 Sept em b er 2 0 1 8

Bowery’s costumes were a visual declaration similar to

Ly r i c Th ea t re, QPAC

31

on the right track

BY JUDITH MCLEAN

One of the pleasures of insomnia is that it offers uninterrupted nights for deep listening; a favourite is the BBC Radio 4 podcast Desert Island Discs. Many of you will be familiar with such programs that invite people from all walks of life to select music that delineates the vicissitudes of their life. For me, the best interviews are the ones where the person doesn’t try to tell a victory narrative leaving out the warty bits, but rather reveals their vulnerabilities, their frailties and foibles.

Frankly, perfection bores me.

When I was invited to be a guest on a similar program (Hi-Fidelity on ABC 612), I spent many nights listening extra carefully, trying to determine what sparked the interviewer’s imagination. Certainly it was the stories that left me perplexed asking, ‘how could they think or do that, that’s just madness, are they crazy?’ that fired my imagination. The Talmud is recalled here: ‘we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are,’ pointing to the possibility that we all seem slightly mad to one another.

I realised that creating a lifeline

undertaking cognitive therapy, talking

punctuated by music was an opportunity

with a counsellor, a life coach, or a

to reflect and bring to light motives

psychiatrist, becoming conscious requires

behind choices I had made or perhaps

intense effort in attempts to understand

more interestingly choices I had not made

ourselves. Nobel Prize winning physicist

and the associated life consequences.

David Bohm supported this when he

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says

stated, ‘you’ve got to give a lot of attention

getting conscious is like, ‘stepping into

to consciousness. This is one of the things

the light’. It does require work, really

of which our society is ignorant. It assumes

hard emotional mental work. This kind

consciousness requires no attention.

of deep emotional reckoning is not often

But consciousness is what gives attention.

credited as exertion or effort. Reasons

Consciousness requires very alert attention

include privacy, people don’t talk about

or else it will simply destroy.’

it fearing others’ judgement, stigma, addressing mental issues makes others

Bohm goes onto to argue that normally

uncomfortable, suspicion or a person

our thoughts have us rather than we having

seeking help may have deep pathologies.

them. This is the rider (ego) and elephant (id) metaphor, thinking we are in control

Whether it’s talking honestly in the

of this unruly beast (unconscious), when

media, reflecting on a lifeline, meditating,

essentially we haven’t much of an idea

35

how it behaves. Antidotes to unruliness are definitely mindfulness and meditation, but as I chose my music I began to think something more was at play.

I determined that the stories of misadventures that reverberated for me in others were not because of schadenfreude but rather because of a fascination about how we seem to expect solidity from this protean thing called the ‘self’, acting as if omnipotence and omniscience are a replicable model, as if infallibility is some kind of fixed entity that always acts in full self-awareness. This struck me as plain silly. Like believing we’re Greek gods and can meditate ourselves into logic and order.

There’s an ongoing preposterousness inherent in assuming that we can know how our lives will turn out and also know how to act wisely in the world, and if we don’t know that, it’s a real character flaw. More often than not as we listen to people’s stories we realise that what we do is sabotage ourselves by doing quite the opposite of what might be good for us. The examples are endless: over/under committing, unadvisedly/never falling in love, over/under parenting, over imbibing/wowsering, over/under exercising, overspending/being stingy, over/ under eating, repeating the same mistakes over and over again.

For interviewers, artists, scholars, teachers, therapists and audiences of the arts and humanities, the primary purpose is to reflect and understand the complexities of

The idea even that we have an unconscious inner life that runs in us is an anathema to many people whose ego cannot accept that they’re not in charge

the human condition, particularly focused on the vagaries of the self. Scholar Deborah Britzman calls it, ‘creating a love affair with what is at its most difficult to love,’ and

because I could not put my experience side by side with

psychoanalyst Adam Philips says that, ‘revealing the

my intentions and see where I had been wrong. All I

idiosyncrasy of our desire – or what in different languages

could do was drift blindly from one experience to

might be called our madness, or our passions, or our

another, vaguely hoping that if enough things happened

imagination,’ is the unofficial (or illicit) work we do on

to me I would eventually learn wisdom…I did not know

trying to figure out our inner anomalies. The idea even

how to emerge from blind thinking into that state of

that we have an unconscious inner life that runs in us is

seeing in which reflexion and the drawing of conclusions

an anathema to many people whose ego cannot accept

were possible.’

that they’re not in charge.

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The idea of doing the same thing and expecting a

British author and psychoanalyst Marion Milner explains

different result is a platitude for madness. Milner’s

that a lack of consciousness is like a temporary madness,

writing calls to mind an idea called the implicit paradox.

wanting a thing and doing the opposite. She refers to it

The implicit paradox, as the name suggests, is when

as ‘blind thinking’. The synonyms abound: foolishness,

unknowingly we fail to link intentions, experience and

stupidity, irrationality, craziness, idiocy. In psychology it’s

outcomes, so patterned or habituated behaviour happens

called unconscious thinking. Milner’s ideas are as relevant

despite expecting a different result. The implicit paradox

now as they were in 1934: ‘I plunged into experiences only

manifests itself when the automated natural way of being

to find when I came out I could conclude nothing from

- even though often painful - happens automatically

them and I could find no rule for future guidance,

because it’s a well-practiced neurological pathway and

behaviour becomes comfortable. Whilst it seems to be

the best of everyone, my need is to see people as they

what we want (anger and yelling), that choice works against

really are and not some fictionalised view of people.

what we really need (vulnerability and understanding).

PLAYLIST: MARVIN GAYE - WHAT’S GOING ON

Ironically, by unconsciously choosing anger we sabotage our chances of getting what we need, adopting the former

Deep reverence for mystery – As an academic, I’m prone

behaviour automatically because it is a familiar patterned

to being an iconoclast wanting empirical proof for the

response. Sadly, unconscious choices often derail us, in

big existential questions of life. I’ve struggled to accept

turn making us miserable and mad.

mystery and the inexplicable. Becoming a grandmother has helped.

As I compiled my playlist, nowhere was my own implicit paradox more startlingly obvious than in my love life.

Getting to consciousness around my beleaguered love life

PLAYLIST: ECHAD MI YODEA BY OHAD NAHARIN PERFORMED BY BATSHEVA - THE YOUNG ENSEMBLE

meant seeking the wisdom of that great sage Rick Astley

Re-parenting one’s self – Many people I coach haven’t

in the 1987 hit Never Gonna Give You Up. Come on, please

been parented as well as they could have been despite their

no judgement, it was the 80s - big emotions, big hair,

parents’ best intentions. We all need to learn we are lovable

shoulder pads and dance pop. As I cried, danced and sang

and the life we have is a gift. A good coach or therapist will

along it was indisputable that Rick had written this song

help you with the hard inner work of becoming conscious.

just for me.

PLAYLIST: DEEP PEACE (ANY VERSION IS SOOTHING)

And if you ask me how I'm feeling

Telescopic view of time – Taking the long view. So much

Don't tell me you're too blind to see

of our life is about the short haul. Whilst achieving goals is

Never gonna give you up

important, realising that time, space and pace are artificial

Never gonna let you down Never gonna run around and desert you Never gonna make you cry Never gonna say goodbye Never gonna…

Without seeming defensive, it’s fair to say that most of us are very good at falling in love and not so accomplished at falling out of love, hence Rick’s music soothed my

constraints and needn’t dictate goals that need longer time, space and time.

PLAYLIST: MAX RICHTER THE WAVES - TUESDAY REFERENCES / READING LIST Bohm, D. in Jaworski, J. (1996). Synchronicity: The inner path of leadership. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers.

Britzman, D. (2003). After-Education. New York: State University of New York Press.

obstinacy (want) to stay in a relationship that was past

Britzman, D. (2009) The very thought of education: psychoanalysis

salvaging when what was desirable (need) was to move on

and the impossible professions. New York: State University of

from the broken relationship. Unexpectedly, even though

New York.

it appears counter intuitive, the pain experienced while

Burow, P (2016) NeuroPower: Leading with Neurointelligence

extricating ourselves from broken relationships and facing

Copernicus Publishing Pty Ltd

what’s needed, offers more opportunities for insight and growth than its flipside, falling in love.

Damasio, A. (2000). The feeling of what happens: Body, emotion and the making of consciousness. London: Vintage.

So, how do we become more conscious of our implicit

Damasio, A. (2004). Looking for Spinoza. London: Vintage.

paradoxes and move towards sanity, acknowledging that

Milner, M (1934) A life of one’s own. London: Virago.

ultimate sanity is a utopian state? Here’s four things to consider that have helped me out and were part of the aforementioned playlist.

Phillips, A. (1993). On kissing, tickling and being bored.

Great Britain: Faber & Faber.

Phillips, A. (1998). The beast in the nursery. London: Faber & Faber.

Cognitive fitness – Reflect on your habituated patterns and determine whether they are wants or needs. How

judith.mclean@qpac.com.au

well are your current wants serving you? What might the unconscious need be? E.g., my want tends to be to think

37

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Physical spaces offer tiny glimpses, insights into the people who occupy them and the things that happen there.

Elements seen every day are seen anew by someone else’s eyes. A worn spoon is suddenly more evocative, a sign more poignant, corners sharper or noises more acute.

What happens beyond the realm of the public gaze? What do you, say or value in private that you do not in public?

Story invited friends who are resident at West End’s Common Ground to bring new ways of seeing to some of the hallways, orchestra pits, nooks and crannies backstage at QPAC.

Ways of Seeing BEHIND THE SCENES

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BRISBANE OPEN HOUSE 1 3 & 14 Oct o ber QPAC and Brisbane wide

QPAC is proud to play host to an inspired array of world-class shows and artists as part of this year’s Brisbane Festival. Under the banner ‘All together Brisbane’, the program is a curation of masterful performances that are altogether epic, challenging, shocking, spellbinding and hilarious.

Book your tickets now at brisbanefestival.com.au or QTIX 13 62 46

HORROR

GRATITUDE AND GRIEF

Memorial

Eskimo Joe with Camerata

SYMPHONY FOR ME

7-9 September

THE OWL AND THE PUSSYCAT

15 September

Out of the darkness, a vast field of bodies emerges. At the centre,

It’s music for the masses, programmed by the people. The hugely

a woman stands, the voice and heart of a god, the elements, time

successful Symphony for Me returns to QPAC. This free concert,

itself and thousands of lives caught in visceral moments of war.

performed by the Queensland Symphony Orchestra, will uncover extraordinary stories in an unforgettable evening of music

Hamnet

requested by you.

8-12 September

Hamnet is a video-based and live-action play of a boy - the ghost of William Shakespeare’s only son who died at age 11. It is a story

En Masse

19-22 September

of loss and how the absence of a son and a father ultimately

A wild, tender and savage ride, En Masse presents two visions

influences another, the story of Hamlet. Set somewhere in purgatory,

of humanity at its extremes through circus settings of Schubert’s

both worlds are brought together by Dead Centre and presented

Winter’s Journey and Stravinsky’s Rite of Spring.

in a sparse and thought-provoking production.

Gratitude AND Grief

PETER GRIMES 9 September

20 AND 22 September

Peter Grimes is the defining British opera of the 20th century and a

Katie Noonan’s Elixir, Michael Leunig and Camerata

masterpiece of musical theatre. What really happened to the young

Multi-platinum selling, and five-time ARIA award-winning singer/

apprentice of gruff fisherman Peter Grimes? This monumental,

songwriter Katie Noonan returns with her jazz trio Elixir, Australia’s

life-defining musical event stars Australian tenor Stuart Skelton -

‘poet laureate’ and illustrator Michael Leunig, and Camerata –

the greatest performer of the title role on the planet.

Queensland’s Chamber Orchestra – for a special evening of word-inspired illustration and music.

Horror

HoME

Inspired by your favourite scary movies, Horror is an imaginatively

12 -15 September

26-29 September

gory, genuinely terrifying and funny live experience. A young woman

On an empty stage, a house is conjured up from thin air. You watch

and her friends are terrorised by a vengeful spirit when they visit the

it fill room by room as generations of inhabitants move in, grow up,

place of her tormented childhood.

get old, argue, do laundry, fall in love, work and party.

The Owl AND the Pussycat Stalin’s Piano

14 September

26-29 September

The Owl and the Pussycat is an enchanting and intimate theatrical

A composer, a piano, a virtuoso, historical footage, and a wildly

experience for families. Be swept away in this all-new opera with

chilling – at times very funny – meeting of Joseph Stalin, Ai Wei Wei,

stunning vocals, interactive theatre, and a troupe of musical puffins.

Bertolt Brecht, Joseph Goebbels, John F. Kennedy, Gough Whitlam, Julia Gillard, Donald Trump, and more.

Eskimo Joe with Camerata

28 September

It’s a cultural sound clash as one of Australia’s biggest selling indie bands and Queensland’s premier chamber orchestra perform in a one-off musical event together. Eskimo Joe, along with Camerata invite you to an evening of their ARIA chart-topping hits including ‘From the Sea’, ‘Black Fingernails, Red Wine’ and ‘Foreign Land’ as you’ve never heard them before.

Mother

BY NONI HAZLEHURST

Noni Hazlehurst is an artist, educator and activist. She is beloved and awarded for her work across music, stage, television and film.

For several years she has been performing Mother, playwright Daniel Keene’s deft and poetic work on a woman untethered from the everyday. Using Mother as a starting point, we invited Noni to consider ideas of madness.

48

Madness thrives on chaos.

are actually devoid of reality, but

Sanity depends on peace.

which eerily crawl into the zeitgeist to become a new reality.

Madness has different meanings for different people.

Although the research into the developmental effects on children

I can only describe my own

of our current technology

definition of it - one that has

dominated lifestyles is in its

changed over the years. I’ve learned

early days, in the studies already

lessons about the effects on all of

done, the conclusions are clear. A

us - particularly children - of the

dependence on technology at the

overly judgmental and reductive

expense of human interaction has a

demands of our way of life.

detrimental outcome for children.

Even an occasional opportunity for peace is better than none. But we live in a state of chaos, especially in cities, where the madness is magnified. Our environments are

And the ever growing statistics show that anxiety, depression, self harm and worse are almost becoming de rigueur for younger and younger children.

defined by constant bombardment

And while we try to do what we can

of all the senses, hard surfaces,

to protect our children, our eyes are

greyness, with only perfunctory

fixated on screens. We don’t make

and confined examples of nature

eye contact with each other. We’re

to soften the landscape. Wherever

all on our individual treadmills,

we go, we’re surrounded by screens

trying to stay out of trouble, and

and headlines, which either distract

working hard to pay off the debts

us from, or alert us to, news of

we’ve chosen to accumulate. And

imminent disaster.

there’s such a preponderance of

The pressures of our world drive adults crazy. We know that.

So what is it doing to our children?

Children are growing up more engaged with the world than any previous generation. But they’re also clearly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that they’re not always able to assimilate or contextualise, given their limited experience. It’s almost impossible for our kids to find peace.

The prevailing ‘popular culture’ experienced by children today focuses on reality shows which

horrifying news that we retreat to our fortressed cells and lock ourselves in to rest, before donning our armour to do it all again tomorrow.

The madness everywhere makes us fearful. We know there are people who’ve been driven to the point of craziness by the madness, and we try to avoid them.

It makes us feel overwrought, overcome, even paranoid.

Everything is a fight. It’s US v.

THEM. There’s no peace. It’s war.

That’s no way to live.

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Everyone needs and wants to feel

which triggers reflection on the status

while providing $250 million for

connected. Separation and isolation

quo and on our own perceptions of

school chaplaincy programmes is

play a big part in madness. As nature

reality, which can lead to a desire

positively bonkers.

demonstrates, we need each other.

for change.

Without leaving the city altogether,

The arts speak truth to power, shining

better if the arts are a meaningful

the only way to provide the sustenance

a light into dark corners, which is the

component in their lives.

for the mind, body and spirit that

bleedingly obvious reason why arts

nature bestows, is exposure to and

budgets are being slashed, and artists

Surely it is the definition of madness

involvement in the arts.

commonly vilified. We’re now labelled

to ignore overwhelming evidence?

Not just children, but everyone fares

‘elites’, generally by people who fit There is overwhelming evidence

well and truly into that category

that a life lived without free access to

themselves. There is nothing elite

enjoyment of, and participation in, the

about being an artist in this country,

arts is a life severely compromised.

I assure you!

Without exposure to high quality art

Official State and National art is

in any or all of its forms - theatre,

sanctioned, but for the tens of

music, dance, painting, literature -

thousands of practitioners whose

there is little available to ameliorate

vocation is to make art, and who

the effects of the madness.

want to develop their skills through

The arts help us to live our lives.

There lies their wonder and potency.

Beautifully made art, when executed at the highest level, brings peace - it reminds us that we are not alone, that we share more similarities than differences, that the world doesn’t have to be the way it is, or might not even be the way it seems. The arts teach us that everyone has a story.

The arts allow us to reflect and consider. A work of art can have a palpable effect on our consciousness, and when it does, it stays in our memories forever.

Madness manifests in the brain.

Sufferers become detached from the real world. But what actually is the real world right now?

The arts speak to our brains, but also more importantly, our hearts.

They can restore and comfort tired spirits and help to address feelings of isolation and confusion. And God forbid, they can encourage a response

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practise, and who make a massive contribution financially and culturally to the country, the message is clear.

Go away and get a real job.

Most artists have a real job, and most of them work at it day and night.

They’re just not paid for their work.

In official terms, we have no value and are surplus to requirements.

Yet part of the madness is that many of us are doing just that - choosing to ignore the truth in favour of expediency or the preservation of power and privilege. Anything other than the official view is deemed fake.

Which explains why the arts and artists are considered so damn pesky. Creativity doesn’t toe a line.

Who knows where great art comes from, but anyone lucky enough to experience it can attest to its power.

The character of Christie in Mother is the perfect example of someone not dealing with the madness and cruelty of the world. Hers is a life barely lived, due to familial and societal neglect, and through a lack of empathy and support. She is perceived as mad

And it’s a vicious cycle - how can we

because she is disconnected from the

argue for the value, the preservation

world and utterly alone. By choice.

and support of the arts when the public is constantly presented with ordinary examples, not the extraordinary?

With no advantages, no significant others, no education, and with her experience of life limited and compromised, she cannot and will not

Just as the knighthood for Prince

live in the so-called real world. She’s

Philip was deemed mad by many, the

one of the many people on the outer

recent further slashing of the ABC’s

peripheries of society who speak

budget to nigh on unsustainable levels,

the truth, and are called mad for

and the concurrent announcement of

their trouble.

nearly $50 million to commemorate Captain Cook’s arrival strikes me as gobsmackingly crazy. The removal of arts programs in schools, which all available evidence suggests are incredibly valuable,

The response to the play has been humbling. We have somehow managed to create a work which moves many people to feel empathy for all the lost souls in the world, sometimes for the first time.

With Daniel Keene’s beautiful text, Matt Scholten, my director and dear friend, and I have tried to create a safe space where you can spend a little while in someone else’s shoes. Where you can hear Christie’s story and begin to understand and to feel empathy.

Empathy is in very short supply, or so it would seem. The arts remind us that it is in fact everywhere. We are all born with it. No child is born a bigot - it’s adults who create intolerance.

And the arts, particularly theatre, can touch us in a way nothing else can, and connect us to our fellow human beings, showing us a way through the madness.

Daniel Keene writes about people who fall through the cracks, those for whom hard work will never be rewarded by prosperity, and who need our help and compassion.

At its bottom line, the play’s message is a plea for kindness and empathy, and I look for that in all the work I choose. I want to be part of stories that are worth telling, that add something useful to the sum of human existence.

And the gift of Mother is the perfect vehicle for me to nail my colours to the mast.

I’m grateful for the opportunity to perform it in my home state, and I look forward to your responses.

M OT H E R 7 to 18 Au gu s t 2 0 1 8 Crem o r n e Th ea t re, QPAC

LETHAL MAGICAL THINKING

BY GUY RUNDLE

That’s the legend. In fact, several military experts had warned that this would not be a war like other European conflicts; they had looked at the US Civil War, which had seen the first use of ‘Gatling’

The Western border of Germany,

machine guns and barbed wire, new types of cannon, ‘scorched

a summer night in 1914; grey

was coming. By mid-1915 it was there. Across Eastern France, both

clad troops cross the border, establish their forward defences.

earth’ destruction of cities and understood that something else sides dug trenches from Belgium to the Swiss border; they would eventually become multi-levelled systems, the line of defence of sovereignty. By 1916, they had become not protection, but

The twentieth century and the

mantraps, where shells rained day and night, and men went mad,

First World War had begun –

the Somme series of battles, saw twenty thousand men killed on

a week too early. The Germans

twisted and dying in the wire and mud. In 1916, the first day of a patch of brown earth. By now, the war had become an insanity, visible to those waging it, and running it, carefully hidden from

had crossed into neighbouring

general publics. By 1917 that was no longer possible. The stream of

Luxemburg a week ‘early’, and

weren’t merely torn up, they were broken. Those who expected

wounded coming back to the major cities of the belligerent powers,

had to back off somewhat. The

valiant heroes baring their wounds bravely found mad man-rabbits

embarrassment was not about

women patients: phobias, paralysis, screaming fits, anxiety, the

the invasion of another country,

consumed with the hysteria usually associated, in that era, with works. In Britain, the military psychologist Charles Myers coined the term ‘shell shock’ and used behavioural and physical techniques

the erasure of its identity;

– including electric shock – to get patients up and running, and

everyone knew the war was

government over themselves.

coming. It was not a war crime, but a breach of manners. The

back to the front, where they fell apart again immediately, losing all

But in Vienna, as the entire Austro-Hungarian empire came apart, another physician was having more success at putting people back

war would be a series of strategic

together. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis as a total

skirmishes, and exchanges of

anti-Semitic Habsburg regime. By 1917 they would try anything,

territory, everyone knew that.

system, had been viewed with suspicion by the anti-intellectual and and suddenly the advocate of a talking treatment for the bewildered bourgeoisie of middle Europe had thousands of damaged men, and

One way or another, it would

the resources of the military hospital system at his disposal. This

be over by Christmas.

the psyche would change dramatically, and this new approach – in

would have two major effects: Freud’s thinking on the nature of which the sexual drive was seen as being partnered by a new ‘death drive’ – would now be carried by state hospitals and health systems to every corner of social life. Psychoanalysis had already staked a claim in literature and the arts; now it would be applied en masse to social life – often in reductive and simplistic forms – from the 1920s into the 1980s.

The new theory would match the century. Immersion in the mass death factory of the military system, the death of his daughter Sophie, and the work of Sabina Spielrein on sadism and destructiveness – unjustly neglected, though credited by Freud – convinced Freud that our drive towards non-being, towards a

53

"For Freud, the willingness of millions of men to kill strangers could not simply be explained by patriotism, propaganda, punishment or the will to kill; there was a will to die, as well, an embracing of death" state beyond the eternal lack of desire,

fascists would use it to hone their

that, there was the Second World War,

issued in destructiveness, of self and

propaganda techniques – which

a completion of the first, and one in

others. For Freud, the willingness of

included screeds against the theory

which both the madness of human

millions of men to kill strangers could

as ‘degenerate Jewish pseudoscience’;

destructiveness and the theorisation

not simply be explained by patriotism,

in 1935 Alcoholics Anonymous was

of it came together. To say that the

propaganda, punishment or the will to

founded, with a religious content

Holocaust was mad is to speak of only

kill; there was a will to die, as well, an

– surrender your will to God,

one dimension of it of course, and

embracing of death. Our destructive

however you see him – but with a

many object to such a characterisation

drives would thus take centre stage

psychoanalytic form, surrendering the

of an event that was radically evil,

from the 1920s on in explaining

internal ‘superego’ control of behaviour

committed by participants who knew

things like irrationality in personal

to a more concrete belief, in order to

they were doing such. But it was mad as

relations, sexual and emotional

allow the ‘ego’ – the meaning forming

well, the idea that the glory of Germany

masochism, addiction, dependence.

self – to reassert its integrity and

could be restored by throwing small

The techniques of psychoanalysis

stabilise its boundaries.

children into a gas chamber at

would be ‘reverse engineered’ to create

54

Treblinka, lethal magical thinking,

modern psychological marketing by

This would all reach its apogee in

for which a Freudian approach could

Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew), in

the 1960s and 70s, with the self-help

supply an explanation: the total

his 1928 book Propaganda; surrealism

movement and the ‘me’ decade,

surrender by a whole nation, of their

was saturated in it; by way of Germany

whose dominant fads – from the hit

moral judgement to a fuehrer, who

it would come to popular cinema

book Games People Play analysis to

would give them a fully meaningful

in the film noir genre (Freud had

‘primal screaming’ – all had roots in

existence – a world without doubt –

popularised cocaine use in the 1880s;

psychoanalysis, however mutated the

in exchange.

he is truly the father of Hollywood);

branching tree became. But before

The US government definitely thought so. Mid war they

sexual satisfaction to a good life, and the rough idea that

engaged the exiled intellectuals of the Frankfurt School –

the absence of such produces a certain type of cramped,

a group of theorists, the most prominent being Theodor

rigid, joyless personality type is something most of us apply

Adorno and Herbert Marcuse, who combined Marxist and

to encounters, a sort of barefoot psychoanalysis. Even as

Freudian theories – to make a study of German culture and

psychoanalysis itself has faded from view we take its terms

psychology, to determine how deep rooted the appetite

or derivation – guilt-trip, denial, repressed – and use them

for Nazism was in the nation, and ways that it could be

at the office, the family BBQ, watching the latest US school

‘denazified’ after defeat. The Frankfurt School, were

shooting on a screen. We would not do so had two wars

engaged directly by the OSS, the forerunner of the CIA, and

produced sufficient madness to require whole governments

came up with a volume entitled The Authoritarian Personality,

to fuse themselves to a minor medical-philosophical

which went further than its commissioners had anticipated,

movement, and propagate it across the whole of modernity.

identifying the roots of a submission to authority in the manner in which corporate and industrial capitalism

The purported cure survives; so too perhaps does the

turned society into a series of ‘instrumental practices’

trauma. Medieval and traditional societies have everyday

– from the factory floor to government –

violence in much greater occurrence than ours. But it was

in which moral or value questions are never asked.

The volume would be one source of

"MEDIEVAL AND TRADITIONAL

policy for occupied Germany, but it

SOCIETIES HAVE

would be equally influential on the

EVERYDAY VIOLENCE

US ‘New Left’ – thinkers in the 50s who saw that political liberation as involving personal liberation, in terms of sex, gender, love, values – and that in turn would help shape what we know as ‘the 1960s’. As knowledge of the Holocaust became more general through the 1960s and 70s, the question of how human beings could be so unlimitedly cruel to others, in the millions, became a preoccupying one. The century came to be assessed through the lens of something it

IN MUCH GREATER OCCURRENCE THAN OURS. BUT IT WAS ALMOST ALWAYS AT THE LEVEL OF THE HUMAN BODY,

almost always at the level of the human body, the violent encounter. We are the successors to a century which has a meat grinder at the centre, which churned for thirty years, from 1914 to 1945, the violence of machines on people, treating the human body as contingent object. Nations deployed it, then movements. There had been nothing like it for centuries; there may be, please God, nothing like it for centuries more. The ‘world war’ may have the same status for us as the war against Troy had for Homeric Greece and hence for the West. We may be living in its aftershocks still. Would our popular culture be so obsessed with particular scenarios of

THE VIOLENT

violence and retribution if not as an echo

ENCOUNTER"

of random strangers occur as a solution to

had produced: a psychoanalytic key

of such an event? Would the mass shooting life’s problems without it? Did it create two

concept, ‘the return of the repressed’, that desires stifled,

generations in which millions of men were so irremediably

will come back in another, often cruder and more violent,

damaged that the return of their repressed – violence,

form. The Communist psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich had

coldness, rage – created an idea of what masculinity is, and

been arguing this since the 1930s, and his simple view

should be. Would we now be so concerned with our own

that maximum sexual liberation and satisfaction would

boundaries, our self-sovereignty in safe spaces, against the

dissolve much political oppression - an idea quite contrary

impingement of the Other, were fear not such a dominant

to Freud’s idea that a significant amount of repression

mood of the era? The wars, the madness are not over.

(and with it, everyday unhappiness) was necessary for

They have barely begun.

meaningful life – became hugely influential. Even as the prospect of radical political liberation rose and fell – its high point perhaps the Paris uprising of May 1968 – the idea of sexual/personal liberation remained. Today, the idea sells a million magazines and TV shows. The centrality of

ARMISTICE SPECIAL EVENT 10 & 1 1 Novem b er 2 018

56

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Unamplified

WITH LISA GASTEEN

Madness is almost immediately dramatic and can play out on stage in multiple forms. The madman unhinged from reality and railing against things others don’t see, the heroine unravelled by betrayal, the collective main of the village mob. These may manifest as a frantic dance solo, a soaring aria that punches you in the heart or the pathos of Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heavens!’

In the joys and sorrows of opera, the raw power of unamplified voices, there is fertile ground to examine the human experience.

Indeed, there is a long interconnection between the opera and madness.

Story spoke with internationally acclaimed Wagnerian soprano Lisa Gasteen AO about some of the delights and challenges of opera and the work of the elite opera coaching school she founded in Brisbane in 2011, the Lisa Gasteen National Opera School.

STORY: IS OPERA MAD?

brother-in-law was an opera virgin and one time he came

LISA: Opera is not mad. But it can promote madness in

along to a performance with my sister and he absolutely

performers. If you’re not mad to start with, you will have

hated it. Hated it, thought it was the most naff drivel

periods of madness.

he’d ever seen, and for years he didn’t come back. Then we managed to convince him again to come when I was

I was living out of a suitcase for 18 years. That’s pretty

singing in Tristan und Isolde, singing Isolde, which you

mad, anyone who would do that. Even when I was at

would think that’s a hard ask, he absolutely loved it!

home the suitcases were always on the floor, always open.

You’re living out of a suitcase constantly. You’re subjecting

So I can’t tell you what the magic formula is but if you’re

yourself to people who have no personal interest in you,

going to try and switch someone on to opera, it’s got to be

so you’re just a commodity or a circus animal for them

different enough from what they’re used to getting to be

to thrash. You have incredible highs and huge lows. The

of interest to come back. And I do think free tickets help!

lifestyle, the travel, the loneliness. Who else is going to subject themselves to that sort of punishment? Only a mad person. We do it for the music, for the love of the music. When it comes down to it, that’s really what opera’s about, it's about music.

It mystifies me why theatre directors, or drama directors, are attracted to opera. Let’s face it, the stories, they’re not gripping plots generally. They’re not great drama. The libretti are often very weak. Without the music it’s just bad, most of the time. It’s really about the music and I do wish that the music was given its due in modern day.

I think we’re losing what is actually special about opera.

By trying to make it popular, we’re actually losing what’s special about it. Not always but often.

STORY: WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT IT? LISA: The quality of the music. If you amplify an opera, for example, you can go and see opera on the beach, and I did it, it was fun, it really was fun. But the music suffered, the art suffered, but it was a fun event. I think as long as those sorts of things are balanced, with true acoustics and with an orchestra and conductor and everybody in the same room, it works. You know, what does it do for the art form when the orchestra is located a block away? There’s no cohesion and if it’s all amplified then it’s all on one level so you don’t have the nuance.

That’s what’s special about it. So as long as we’re mindful of what we’re taking from it.

STORY: HOW WOULD YOU CONVINCE SOMEONE TO TRY OPERA AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER FOR THE FIRST TIME? LISA: Here’s a story…years ago I was going down to Melbourne to sing a lot with the Victorian State Opera and Opera Australia on tour, I was doing Carmen (not singing Carmen, I was Frasquita). At the time, my

It really comes back to music again. The music has to be really, really of a very high quality because that’s what touches people, it’s the music, it’s the vibrations, it’s the quality of voices unamplified. That has a really profound effect on some people and they can’t explain it away.

It’s appealing.

People are affected by the vibrations and the sound wraps around you. It’s not like it’s just a big wall of amplified noise. There’s something else about it. It affects your body. It has an effect on people. It transforms them, it takes them out of their ordinary existence. These days our ordinary existence is full of electronic, amplified and artificial sound.

STORY: WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT TRAINING OPERA SINGERS? LISA: I love it when they come and they’re absolutely hungry for knowledge, hungry for input, hungry for experience. I love it when they’re receptive and open to instruction and they run with it and they feel the difference and you can see their persona change.

Walking down the corridors, at the end of the first week, some of them are quite transformed because they’re having an experience that they have not had before.

It’s what they’ve been hungering for, but just haven't had access to the right people to experience it until now. That’s really, really gratifying.

Then for them to make the contacts and travel overseas and be introduced to things as students, to be in contact with people who can get them into dress rehearsals and free tickets, and they get to see a lot of high, high quality music and singing, that’s a great thing. That’s very broadening and not something you have access to in this country.

59

STORY: YOU’VE HAD THE ENERGY AND DRIVE TO START

STORY: IT’S CONSIDERED A SLIGHTLY UNUSUAL

THE SCHOOL, YOU MUST HAVE A PARTICULAR ANSWER

WORK ISN’T IT?

TO THIS OVER ASKED QUESTION - WHAT DOES IT TAKE

LISA: Well, that was Strauss. It’s very clever, the way he

FOR STUDENTS TO BECOME GREAT?

wrote it. I guess for him it was challenging. I often think

LISA: Incredible tenacity and hard work. There’s no magic,

that Strauss just wrote stuff because he could.

it’s really, really hard work. Of course, with that is the right instruction. For a person, it’s really not easy to find or know

I think he was a show off. I used to think when I was

what the right instruction is. I always count myself as lucky

studying some of his music, I used to think why is this man

because I had a very, very fine teacher from when I started,

even bothering with a key signature because every half bar

so I knew what was right. I think a lot of people don’t have

it’s changing, there’s new accidentals everywhere, so why

that advantage and then they go away and they don’t actually

does he even bother with a key signature? I suppose just

know what is good for them.

because he had to, but I just thought no, you’re just a show off Mr Strauss. I often think that and thought oh come on,

It’s work. It’s work, work, work. We are our own instrument.

give us a break.

We can’t change a string, we can’t re-felt a hammer, we can’t change our reed, we are our voice. It’s a very complicated

As a singer I would always learn my lines. I can’t play the

instrument, the voice.

piano so it would be really I would be just learning my melody and it would often have not a lot of sense to it.

STORY: TALK ABOUT EMOTIONS AND THE IMPACT

But then of course, when everything comes together it’s

ON THE VOICE.

glorious. It just shows you the intellect of the man.

LISA: We were talking about the madness before.

You think of it, when you cry, when you start to cry, what’s the first thing that goes? Your voice.

It’s unfortunate but I don’t believe that this work is understood terribly well in Australia. I think people think it’s Strauss so it must be dramatic, and it’s huge and all that.

So if you’re in an emotional state – and you’ve got to

It’s actually a lyric opera. It’s lyric and it’s ideal. Apart from

remember that with a lot of the roles they’re not straight

the three main big roles there’s lots of opportunity for

forward characters always. A lot of the time, the director on

young singers. We have done excerpts from Ariadne

a daily basis is trying to wrench from you every ounce of

previously in the school.

emotion and sadness that you’ve ever experienced in your life. So that’s always on the surface. You’re always actually living with that, whereas most people can suppress it and swallow it and just pretend it’s not there, or it’s there in the past and that was horrible, but they’re living now. But performers don’t do that because it’s being dredged up all the time. So you actually have that with you the whole time… very, very present.

You can never separate your voice because it’s your body.

Ariadne came about because I’ve been after (conductor) Simone Young for years to come and do some work at the school and since she finished full time at Hamburg she now has more time. So we met and had dinner in London and she said, ‘Okay, I’ve got these two weeks in late November/ December, could we do something then? What about Ariadne?’ I’ve always wanted to do it because it’s one of my favourite operas.

STORY: YOU HAVE PERFORMED THE ROLE OF ARIADNE?

It’s not all bad, I have to just put that in. A lot of it’s great,

LISA: Yes with opera companies in Strasburg and Berlin.

a lot of euphoric moments, a lot of great joy, a lot of huge

For me it’s a dream role. It’s one of those roles that you just

satisfaction when you get something, and it feels good.

want to sing, and sing, and sing. It’s a really beautiful thing

In the opposite way to sadness, joy also colours the voice.

to sing. It’s very lyric and takes a lot of discipline. There’s no complicated emotion to mess you up, mess with your head.

STORY: LGOS IS PRESENTING ARIADNE AUF NAXOS

It’s just beautiful singing, that’s how I found it, just lovely.

LATER THIS YEAR, WHY DO YOU THINK THAT’S SUCH

It’s a gorgeous, gorgeous thing to sing.

A POPULAR STORY? LISA: Love, death, renewal. That’s the eternal theme.

A R I A D N E AU F N A XO S 9 & 1 1 Decem b er 2 0 1 8

60

C on s e r va t or i u m T he a t re , Sou t h Ba n k

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Behind-the-scenes - Fanfare

Interview with author Andy Griffiths

Five minutes with Sarah McLeod

Resistance by Professor Jacqueline Rose

Fred Leone on songlines and dreamtime

Behind the Scenes – an acrobat’s warm up

Paul Grabowsky AO on improvised jazz

Everybody Moves – a doco about dance

A Life Through Music

Dive deeper. Be fearless in thought. Ask the question. Form an opinion. Discover. Learn. Provoke.

Bask in creativity. Take time, wonder about stuff. Be curious and imagine. Get sweaty, create.

qpac.com.au/the-creatory

W H AT ’ S O N

QPAC

J U LY UNTIL 8 JUL

A I R P L AY

CONCERT HALL

UNTIL 8 JUL

T H E A R R I VA L

P L AY H O U S E

10 J U L

BEYOND THE BARRICADE

CO N C E R T H A L L

11 – 1 5 J U L

SENIOR MOMENTS

P L AY H O U S E

12 J U L – 4 AU G

Q U E E N S L A N D T H E AT R E G OO D M U S L I M B O Y

C R E M O R N E T H E AT R E

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T H E E V E R L Y B R O T H E R S & D E L S H A N N O N I N CO N C E R T

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FROM 13 JUL

B E AU T I F U L : T H E C A R O L E K I N G M U S I C A L

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

14 JUL

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA RUSSIAN MARVELS

CO N C E R T H A L L

15 JUL

M E D I C I C O N C E R T S : J AY S O N G I L L H A M

P L AY H O U S E

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A U S T R A L I A N YO U T H O R C H E S T R A

CONCERT HALL

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J O H N C A M E R O N M I TC H E L L T H E O R I G I N O F L O V E – T H E S O N G S A N D S TO R I E S O F H E D W I G

CONCERT HALL

18 JUL

B O T H S I D E S N O W – C E L E B R AT I N G T H E S O N G S O F J O N I M I TC H E L L

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

19 – 20 JUL

THE WHITE ALBUM CONCERT

CONCERT HALL

20 – 21 JUL

T H E B A R AT B U E N A V I S TA

P L AY H O U S E

21 JUL

SUMI JO & JOSE CARBO IN MAD FOR LOVE

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22 JUL

S O U T H E R N C R O S S S O L O I S T S S TA R O F T H E C O N C E R TG E B O U W

CONCERT HALL

28 JUL – 18 AUG

Q U E E N S L A N D T H E AT R E J A S P E R J O N E S

P L AY H O U S E

29 JUL

A C O O S B O R N E TO G N E T T I VA L V E I N R E C I TA L

CONCERT HALL

30 JUL

RHETT & LINK

CONCERT HALL

1 AU G

T H E L E G E N DA R Y CO U N T B A S I E O R C H E S T R A

CONCERT HALL

3 AU G

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA ORCHESTRAL SOLOISTS

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4 AU G

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 S O L O I S T S A N D S P O N TA N E I T Y CO N C E R T H A L L

CONCERT HALL

7 – 1 8 AU G

MOTHER

C R E M O R N E T H E AT R E

7 AU G

AU S T R A L I A N B R A N D E N B U R G O R C H E S T R A – K A R A KO R U M : A M U S I C A L J O U R N E Y

CO N C E R T H A L L

9 AU G

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA (NOT) THE LAST NIGHT OF THE PROMS

CONCERT HALL

10 AU G

C A M E R ATA B L I S S

CONCERT HALL

11 AU G

Q U E E N S L A N D P O P S O R C H E S T R A B R OA D WAY O N S C R E E N

CO N C E R T H A L L

1 2 AU G

BRISBANE SINGS

CO N C E R T H A L L

1 3 AU G

ACO G O L D B E R G VA R I AT I O N S

CO N C E R T H A L L

1 6 AU G

K I N G O F T H E W O R L D – T H E E L V I S M E G A CO N C E R T

CO N C E R T H A L L

18 AU G

Q U E E N S L A N D YO U T H S Y M P H O N Y R I T E O F S P R I N G

CO N C E R T H A L L

19 AU G

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 L O V E A N D O T H E R C ATA S T R O P H E S

CONCERT HALL

21 AU G – 2 S E P

SHAKE & STIR THEATRE CO GEORGE’S MARVELLOUS MEDICINE

C R E M O R N E T H E AT R E

22 & 23 AU G

DA N & P H I L 2018 W O R L D TO U R – I N T E R AC T I V E I N T R O V E R T S

CO N C E R T H A L L

24 AU G – 1 S E P

BANGARRA DANCE THEATRE DARK EMU

P L AY H O U S E

24 AU G

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA HAPPY BIRTHDAY BERNSTEIN

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25 AUG

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 B E R N S T E I N AT 1 0 0

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26 AUG

T H E S I M O N A N D G A R F U N K E L S TO R Y

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27 AUG

TWILIGHT NOTES WITHOUT BOUNDARIES

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30 AUG

KITTY FLANAGAN: SMASHING

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31 AUG

R O Y O R B I S O N O R C H E S T R AT E D I I

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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 .

6 SEP

QUEENSL AND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BEETHOVEN’S 7TH SYMPHONY

CONCERT HALL

7 – 15 SEP

QUEENSLAND BALLET’S CINDERELLA

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

20 – 22 SEP

B R I S B A N E F E S T I VA L P E T E R G R I M E S

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26 SEP

THE DIRE STRAITS EXPERIENCE

CONCERT HALL

FROM 26 SEP

PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

26 – 29 SEP

B R I S B A N E F E S T I VA L H O R R O R

P L AY H O U S E

30 SEP

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA THE BEST OF MOVIE MUSIC

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5 OCT

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA BEAUTY AND POWER

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6 OCT

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 T H E B A R D A N D B E YO N D

CONCERT HALL

8 OCT

A C O G R I N G O L T S P L AY PA G A N I N I

CONCERT HALL

12 & 13 OCT

A RUSSIAN TRIPLE BILL

CONCERT HALL

12 – 20 OCT

E X P R E S S I O N S D A N C E C O M PA N Y N ATA L I E W E I R ’ S E V E R Y D AY R E Q U I E M

C R E M O R N E T H E AT R E

14 OCT

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA TRADIES AND ARTISTS

CONCERT HALL

15 OCT

IN THE MOOD

CONCERT HALL

16 & 17 OCT

BILL BAILEY – EARL OF WHIMSY

CONCERT HALL

18 OCT

O P E R A Q U E E N S L A N D D I D O & A E N E A S YO U T H W O R K S H O P P E R F O R M A N C E

P L AY H O U S E

19 OCT

E L A I N E PA I G E

CONCERT HALL

19 OCT – 3 NOV

O P E R A Q U E E N S L A N D D O N G I O VA N N I

P L AY H O U S E

20 OCT

Q U E E N S L A N D P O P S O R C H E S T R A A M I G O S PA R A S I E M P R E

CONCERT HALL

22 OCT

T W I L I G H T N O T E S WAY F A R I N G

CONCERT HALL

24 OCT

PAT R I Z I O B U A N N E – I TA L I A N I S S I M O TO U R 2 0 1 8

CONCERT HALL

25 OCT

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA HEROIC SYMPHONY

CONCERT HALL

27 OCT

Q U E E N S L A N D YO U T H O R C H E S T R A F I N A L E C O N C E R T

CONCERT HALL

28 OCT

SOUTHERN CROSS SOLOISTS THE VIRTUOSOS

CONCERT HALL

7 – 17 NOV

L A S C A L A B A L L E T C O M PA N Y D O N Q U I X O T E

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

9 NOV

C A M E R ATA V I VA V I VA L D I

CONCERT HALL

14 – 18 NOV

L A S C A L A B A L L E T C O M PA N Y G I S E L L E

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

16 NOV

B I L L M U R R AY , J A N V O G L E R A N D F R I E N D S

CONCERT HALL

19 NOV

A C O TO G N E T T I ’ S B E E T H O V E N

CONCERT HALL

20 & 21 NOV

T H E C AT H E R I N E TAT E S H O W L I V E

CONCERT HALL

23 NOV

QSO MAHLER 8 JOHANNES FRITZSCH

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24 NOV

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 A L O N D R A CO N D U C T S M A H L E R 3

CONCERT HALL

8 DEC

QUEENSLAND SYMPHONY ORCHESTRA HANDEL MESSIAH

CONCERT HALL

14 – 22 DEC

Q U E E N S L A N D B A L L E T T H E N U TC R A C K E R

L Y R I C T H E AT R E

21 & 22 DEC

SPIRIT OF CHRISTMAS

CONCERT HALL

65

Image credits Brief ly

Welcome

GISELLE DIES OF A BROKEN HEART AND JOINS

Stor y is a magazine curated by

THE WILIS…A GROUP OF FEMALE SPIRITS WHO HAVE

QPAC for the creative and curious.

BEEN SCORNED AND OCCUPY A HAUNTED WOOD. IT'S A FRIGHTFUL SIGHT THAT EVENTUALLY LED

Arts is integral in our society. Often the focus is on how art makes

TO THE COMMON PHRASE ' GIVES ME THE WILLIES '.

And so it was we found ourselves on a quest to consider

Melbourne based illustrator Maeve Baker has created a

us feel: inspired, uncomfortable, excited, challenged, relaxed. More

madness from multiple directions, led by the most delusional

contemporary take on the traditional Giselle story arc of

than that, art helps us to make sense of the world around us, to make

figure in literary history, the knight errant Don Quixote.

betrayal, heartbreak, unravelling and forgiveness. QPAC

sense of each other, to find meaning and help create harmonious

He is a prominent feature in our program. Teatro alla

“Cultures and climates differ all over the world,

Scholar in Residence Professor Judith McLean reminds

but people are the same. They’ll gather in

communities. Learning through art enables students and anyone

Scala Ballet Company will perform Rudolph Nureyev’s

us of the hard work consciousness requires and recounts

take on the wandering nobleman’s quest to revive chivalry

a personal experience of ‘stepping into the light’.

public if you give them a good place to do it.”

Toowoomba’s Dallas Baker references his latest play

- Professor Jan Gehl, Danish architect & urban designer

solvers able to think creatively and to be resilient.

we bring together ideas, people, musings and moments so that we may know ourselves better, see others and imagine possible futures.

I hope you enjoy this edition of Story.

in its November season. In fact, madness also infiltrates the company’s second production Giselle. In this case, the madness borne of heartbreak.

performance artist, designer and legend of the 1980s

In May 2018, the Queensland Government announced

How to set the field for this discussion, so broad in its scope?

London club world. In his piece The Road from Normal,

a $150 million investment in a new theatre to be built at

Dallas explores constructing visual façades and the intricate

Lisa Appignanesi allowed us to publish a section of her book from 1800 to Present. In it are many stories of depression, anguish and addiction, some famous like Virginia Woolf or Zelda Fitzgerald and others not. It maps how we have viewed mental disorders and other states of mind over two

John Kotzas Chief Executive QPAC

centuries. Lisa Appignanesi very generously took time out from chairing the Judging Panel of the Man Booker Prize International to write us a new introduction especially for this edition of Story.

In this edition In the opening line of Patti Smith’s lyrical and restless book M Train, she recounts an observation made in a dream that she recently had: ‘It’s not easy to write about nothing’.

Ghosts of Leigh about Leigh Bowery, the flamboyant

British writer and former Chair of the Freud Museum Mad, Bad & Sad: A History of Women and the Mind Doctors

All of our contributors have taken different paths and arrived in different places in relation to madness.

new works.

collection of reflections on life and art. In the final pages she

headlines around Australia. The Victorian Government

closes the loop on the dream challenge she described in the

announced funding to build a contemporary art wing as Southbank and South Australia will have a new arts and cultural destination in Adelaide, transforming the former

‘Dreams beget wishes that beget lingering questions…

Royal Adelaide Hospital site.

Perhaps it’s not where we are going but just that we go’.

It’s easy to look at an entertainment juggernaut like

As we approach the centenary of the First World War

Netflix, or social media platforms like Facebook and

Armistice, Guy Rundle’s Lethal Magical Thinking takes

think that everyone is in their own bubble consuming entertainment and “socialising” without having to interact

us through to the present via multiple wars and cultural

psychoanalysis.

Editor

Australian legend Noni Hazlehurst has written beautifully

rebecca.lamoin@qpac.com.au

uncomfortable, it’s a subject that makes people twitchy.

part of The National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne’s

repeats. And then, sage and poet that she is, she quietened any lasting uncertainty I had about exploring madness.

I was reminded of it when we began discussing madness as the through line of this edition of Story. People were nervous,

Queensland isn’t alone. Arts infrastructure is making

book’s opening. ‘It’s not so easy writing about nothing,’ she

Rebecca Lamoin

IRL (in real life). But humans are social animals. We are hungry for stories, hungry to connect with people, hungry for ideas. Our public spaces should facilitate this.

Public spaces are integral to cities. They serve as

and directly about chaos and sanity, the central role of

Madness is real and imagined. Everything and nothing.

art and creativity in the lives of children and about the

Light and heavy. Fleeting and eternal. Individual and collective.

magnificent one woman show Mother written especially

I thought about Patti’s dilemma. It made me wonder how we

for her.

surprise that her comments were captured, dissected, reproduce and discussed at a rate of knots.

The reactions were widespread and polarising. Her TV network ABC she created and starred in, Roseanne.

moved swiftly to cancel the show People variously excused her, praised her, condemned her, chided her, called her out, unfriended her.

meeting places and community hubs, places for people to congregate. Whereas once community was synonymous with geographic location, now when we are more connected than ever, public spaces like our

choose subjects to write about, or in a lot of cases, how they

theatres and art galleries serve as important beacons

choose us. QPAC’s program over the coming six months is

for communities of interested people to come together.

rich with folly, joy, eccentricity, delusion and in some cases psychosis. Madness by any other name.

As the cries of ‘censorship’ grew in

THERE’S SOMETHING ABOUT DON QUIXOTE

volume, some brave souls reminded us about nuance and complexity.

Published between 1605 and 1615, the novel Don Quixote is

While the beginning of Patti Smith’s M Train came back to

us back to the Western border of Germany and then pulls shifts including the invention of the term ‘shellshock’,

former Obama administration senior advisor, it must have come as no

IN THE ARTS WORLD

Robin Gibson’s vision for the Centre and provides space for QPAC and local companies to create and present

me quickly, I confess I had forgotten how she concluded the

the intellectuals of The Frankfurt School and growth of

No stranger to this, when Roseanne Barr tweeted late at night about a

NEWS & VIEWS MAKING HEADLINES

QPAC by 2022. A fifth theatre completes QPAC architect

relationship between our outer and inner worlds.

And there is so much more.

I love a killer opening sentence and this one stuck with me.

correction isn’t commonly available and so instead most of us must live and die by what’s on record.

CULTURAL HOTSPOTS

who is curious to discover and develop empathy, to be problem

In these pages and beyond through our digital portal The Creatory,

the day. In 2018 that level of

Documentary maker Michael Moore

considered a founding work of modern Western literature,

who said ‘Roseanne…is a person who

arguably the greatest work of fiction ever published. It has

long ago broke through and brought

been adapted and reinterpreted across various art forms

an authentic voice of working women

since it was written. The tale of a knight errant searching

and men to television via one of

for adventure and who is intent on proving that chivalry is not dead, has been cited by many including literary legends William Faulkner and Ben Okri as the best book of all time.

Adaptation is an art form in itself. With a work as rambling and grand as Don Quixote, what hope is there for those who dare to dream and chase windmills?

THE MYTH OF THE ‘MAD’ GENIUS Creativity has long been linked with mental health issues. Increasingly, many artists and creatives are very open about their experiences of various mental health disorders

The adventures of Don Quixote have been told in many art

including bipolar, schizophrenia,

forms. There are books based on characters and vignettes

depression, anxiety and ADHD.

from the original, music, opera and dance including

Many historical artists are now

Rudolph Nureyev’s athletic ballet masterpiece which will be

being retroactively fitted with

performed in the 2018 QPAC International Series by Teatro

modern diagnoses.

alla Scala Ballet Company in November. And dozens of film adaptations dating as far back as 1906.

The idea of a link between ‘madness’ and ‘genius’ is an old one dating as

Screenwriter, director, actor and comedian Terry Gilliam

far back as the Ancient Greeks who

has spent a large portion of the past three decades trying to

believed that creativity came from

get his movie version of Don Quixote on screen. His efforts

the muses (gods). This notion carried

have mostly been famous for their failure, suffering casting

forth to the Romantics and settled

and funding difficulties and literally fire and flood. Many

into general use through the link

also said to see the world in different ways and so therein the link has

ignored, ridiculed or patronized those A plethora of studies throughout the

of us who grew up in the working

20th and 21st centuries have looked

class. Roseanne changed that.’

at this and tried to definitively establish a link between creativity

It remains to be seen what happens

and mental illness. They’ve given

with the show Roseanne and whether

rise to ethical and moral questions

it can continue without her. The

about leaving mental health issues

controversy comes at a time when

unaddressed so as not to hinder

we’re questioning (again) whether or

creative outputs. Assumptions and

how to separate artists from their art…

stereotypes abound. Science has

or their madness.

offered multiple connections but is not definitive. The romantic notion of the ‘tortured artist’ is long lasting…

TWEET STORM In Orwell’s 1984, the Ministry of

have called the project cursed. But after 29 years, Gillam’s

that creativity is akin to originality in

The Man Who Killed Don Quixote premiered at the 2018

that it allows one to see what others

Truth ensures that history is accurate

cannot. Those with mental illness are

according to the propaganda of

Cannes Film Festival. It received mixed responses.

the greatest TV series of all time.

It was ground breaking because the TV industry had historically either

been made.

DISCOVER MORE STORIES AND READ RELATED ARTICLES AT

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INSIDE COVER

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Don Quixote Illustrator: Önder Kılavuz

La Scala Giselle.

Photo: Brescia & Amisano

John Kotzas, Chief Executive, QPAC Photo: Mindi Cooke Rebecca Lamoin, Story Editor & Associate Director – Learning & Public Engagement, QPAC Photo: Judith McLean

L'ingénieux hidalgo Don Quichotte de la Manche par Miguel de Cervantès Saavedra; illustrations de Dubout, 1938

Can I tell you a story about my son? I grew up in Texas, bleak west Texas, which is one colour, brown. It’s just dirt.

Bad & Sad – from which an extract follows on the next pages - I wanted

1. Around 20% of the world's children and adolescents have mental disorders or problems

both to inquire into the ways our current understandings of madness what in our highly medicalised age we call mental illness – had come into being. What I discovered in the process were the ways in which various

Neuropsychiatric disorders are among the leading causes

age of 19 have the poorest level of mental health resources.

Mental health is more than the absence of mental disorders. It is an integral part of health; indeed, there is no health without mental health. Mental health is determined by a range of socioeconomic, biological and environmental factors.

Cost-effective public health and intersectoral strategies and interventions exist to promote, protect and restore mental health.

gaze, inevitably impacts on women’s self-understanding.

Mad, Bad & Sad

Most low-income and middle-income countries have only one child psychiatrist for every 1 to 4 million people.

2. Mental and substance use disorders are the leading cause of disability worldwide About 23% of all years lost because of disability is caused by mental and substance use disorders.

3. About 800,000 people commit suicide every year Over 800,000 people die due to suicide every year and suicide is the second leading cause of death in 15 to 29 year olds. There are indications that for each adult who died of suicide there may have been more than 20 others attempting suicide. 75% of suicides occur in low-income and middle-income countries. Mental disorders and harmful use of alcohol contribute to many suicides around the world. Early identification and effective management

commissioned by writer Henry Adams to honour his wife Clover Adams.

Saint-Gaudens named the figure The Mystery of the Hereafter and The Peace of God that Passeth but it became commonly known as Grief . Adams rejected all naming and in a letter to the artist’s son declared:

These include physical restraint, seclusion and denial of basic needs and privacy. Few countries have a legal framework that adequately protects the rights of people with mental disorders.

8. Globally, there is huge inequity in the distribution of skilled human resources for mental health

treatment and care in low-income and middle-income

W I T H D O U G L A S M C G R AT H

countries. Low income countries have 0.05 psychiatrists and

9. There are five key barriers to increasing mental health services availability there are five key barriers that need to be overcome: the

Yorker, The New Republic, Vanity Fair and The New York Times.

McGrath and his collaborator Woody Allen were nominated for an Academy Award for the screenplay for Bullets Over Broadway, he also wrote and directed the adaptation of Jane Austen’s Emma. In lots of ways he was the perfect choice when producers wanted someone

Governments, donors and groups representing mental to increase mental health services, especially in low-income

health service users and their families need to work together

to write the book for the musical about legendary singer-songwriter Carole King. Story had some fleeting moments with him.

needed are relatively modest: US$ 2 per capita per year

treatments for mental disorders, there is a belief that they

in low income countries and US$ 3-4 in lower middle

are untreatable or that people with mental disorders are

income countries.

Then I realised he’d never seen a musical before. So he

The French artist Jean Dubuffet took the Surrealist

had no idea that if you have a feeling, instead of telling someone your feeling, you sing it. I thought, “Okay, you

obsession with Outsiders to a new level by daring to

need to get with the program here Henry because this is a great art form”. He stuck with it and about 15 minutes

collect and exhibit their work. Not only did he champion

taking his eyes off the screen and he whispered, “I think

the artwork of schizophrenics and local mediums, but

she likes the captain”. Then I thought, “OK we’re in!”.

he also celebrated art made by eccentric isolates and

A musical itself is a form of madness because if madness is the rejection of rationality or reality or what we know,

self-taught laborers. Dubuffet recognized in the work of

there’s nothing madder than a musical!

“I’ve got a huge collection of artwork at home, and try to paint daily.

Art is very good for my health; it is very uplifting for the spirit

THE CREATIVE PROCESS….

and it works to communicate good vibes for people.”

This was such a wonderful experience, Beautiful, but it was

difficult, not intelligent, or incapable of making decisions.

the first musical I’d written and so I was very, very lucky it

you’re essentially writing by yourself. Your editor might make a suggestion or two but it’s really up to you.

MensLine 1300 78 99 78 | Suicide Call Back 1300 659 467 Your local GP or treating psychologist / psychiatrist if you have one.

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Outsiderartfair.com

When you’re writing for print, like my political satire,

WORLD HEALTH ORGANISATION WWW.WHO.INT

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Grief monument, Rock Creek Cemetery, Washington DC. Flickr. com/people/martinpro Photo: Martin Prochnik, © 2009

Artwork: John Doherty

Douglas McGrath Photo: Jim Lee

Artwork: John Doherty

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these divergent groups one unifying trait: a raw quality

Outsider Art Fair, Paris

CRISIS SUPPORT If you or someone you know needs immediate help, please contact:

untouched by academic rules or current trends.

- JOHN DOHERTY, ARTIST.

was fantastic.

Emergency 000 | Lifeline 13 11 14 | Kids Helpline 1800 55 1800

10

he turned to me and said, “Well, she’s weird”. I was just horrified. “What do you meeeean?”.

later, early in the story still, he turned to me, this time not

lack of public mental health leadership.

10. Financial resources to increase services are relatively modest

and middle-income countries. The financial resources

Outsider Art

son and I’m showing him this wonderful movie. I’m a

a glance over at him and this is what I saw. Just like this

and the implications for funding; the current organisation of mental health services; lack of integration within primary care; inadequate human resources for mental health; and

Misunderstanding and stigma surrounding mental ill

I was so excited. I thought I can’t believe it, I’ve now got a

(facial expression of boredom). He felt me looking at him so

Rates of mental disorder tend to double after emergencies.

other diseases such as HIV, cardiovascular disease,

the mountain comes one of the great musical stars of all time, beautiful Julie Andrews. She flings out her arms and she drops her jaw and out comes that peerless voice

Douglas McGrath is effervescent, in the way Americans often are,

5. Mental disorders are important risk factors for other diseases, as well as unintentional and intentional injury

6. Stigma and discrimination against patients and families prevent people from seeking mental health care

the aerial shots all over the city and then it finally ends up on the mountain and it’s beautiful and clear? Then over

and is a superb storyteller. It’s a talent he’s utilised as a playwright, screenwriter, film director and actor. In the early 1980s, and right out of college, he landed smack in the heartland of American satire, Saturday Night Live. Presumably this is where he sharpened his wit and honed his political jabs which now feature on the pages of some of the United States most respected publications including The New

Mental disorders increase the risk of getting ill from

I put him in the chair and we got it going. I put it on the big TV screen and you know that wonderful opening with

that by this point he was sufficiently enraptured. I stole

high income countries is 170 times greater and for nurses is 70 times greater.

In order to increase the availability of mental health services,

thought he was ready to see The Sound of Music. It’s a little early, but when you’re a parent there are certain things you can’t wait to share with your kids.

creative person, so I’m also needy. I wanted to make sure

0.42 nurses per 100,000 people. The rate of psychiatrists in

absence of mental health from the public health agenda

and everything gorgeous, I was just…wow. It’s a wonderful musical. So when Henry our son was three or four, I

of hers.

Shortages of psychiatrists, psychiatric nurses, psychologists and social workers are among the main barriers to providing

4. War and disasters have a large impact on mental health and psychosocial wellbeing

health are widespread. Despite the existence of effective

"Do not allow the world to tag my figure with a name! Every magazine writer wants to label it as some American patent medicine for popular consumption— Grief, Despair, Pear's Soap, or Macy's Mens' Suits Made to Measure. Your father meant it to ask a question, not to give an answer; and the man who answers will be damned to eternity like the men who answered the Sphinx."

A beautiful thing

of healing.

7. Human rights violations of people with mental and psychosocial disability are routinely reported in most countries

are key to ensuring that people receive the care they need.

diabetes, and vice-versa.

The Adams Memorial featuring allegorical sculpture by Augustus Saint-Gaudens

So when I saw The Sound of Music, which is lush and green and Julie Andrews and her blue eyes and the pink lips

health system, people are too often treated in institutions which resemble human warehouses rather than places

world with the highest percentage of population under the

on a time’s expectations of behaviour. This was perhaps more the case experts and thinkers. Such description, together with the male medical

This stigma can lead to abuse, rejection and isolation and exclude people from health care or support. Within the

About half of mental disorders begin before the age of 14.

Similar types of disorders are being reported across cultures. of worldwide disability in young people. Yet, regions of the

diagnoses – together with the dividing lines between what is considered normal, what aberrant – were historically specific and depended greatly for women, a gender that has always been subject to description by male

BY LISA APPIGNANESI

MUSICAL THEATRE IS A KIND OF MADNESS…

10 FACTS ON MENTAL HEALTH

When I set out to research and write the book that became Mad,

Courtesy of the State Library of New South Wales

and I. All outcasts in our small conservative town, and

then that the idea is hard to dislodge, despite the fact

they never dare cut the rope and be free”

all so disconnected (perhaps alienated) from other

that there is no substantial evidence linking mental

– Nikos Kazantzakis

The road sparkled in the morning sun like a strip of was just the glitter of millions of tiny shards of glass from broken headlights embedded in the bitumen.

The highway curved between low hills blanketed in wild, golden grass, separating the paddocks on one side from those on the other with a dark, glittering slash.

The paddocks stretched back in every direction under a luminous blue sky. Every now and then, far off in the over by a lightning-struck gum tree. The Darling Downs, my home.

that empty landscape. My mother steered the car with one hand and wound down the window with the other.

She angled her face to let the cold air dry the tears that rolled freely down her cheeks. They just kept coming and she’d grown tired of wiping them away. She was heartbroken over something. I didn’t know what.

It was one of the saddest things I’d seen in my whole life. Even though I was only fourteen years old, I was sure I could live to a hundred and not see anything that sad ever again.

madness and femininity is evident in everyday life.

The few creative professions most people encounter on

lone adventures in the middle of the night; barefoot and

a regular basis—such as hairdressing, window-dressing,

wearing only a nightgown. I grew my hair long and put

interior design, dressmaking and beautician—have long

on my mother’s make-up and an op-shop kimono and

been seen as feminine. The men who participate in these

went for long walks in the countryside; a gender-bending

professions are deemed effeminate by default. The same

bush-baby.

is true for men who participate in the more rarefied arts of ballet, opera and theatre. The figure of the ‘artsy

To outsiders, the things my grandmother did and the

effeminate’ is a cultural stereotype that persists despite

things that I did were in the same category: stuff only

the fact that male dancers, singers and actors are often both masculine and heterosexual. It is because of this

serious. But if on occasion sympathy was shown to my

persistent association between creativity and femininity,

mother or grandmother, none ever came my way. People

between madness and the effeminate, that men who

seemed to think that I’d chosen to be different, to be a

don’t look how men are supposed to look, whose gender

freak. Whereas they thought my grandmother was born

presentation (or visual façade) defies gender norms,

crazy, they believed my own actions and choices had

are often perceived as hysterics, as lunatics. More to

made me that way. And somehow my crimes were more

the point, they are also often perceived as scary and

taboo, because mine were crimes against gender. It was

dangerous. Leigh Bowery played up to the notion of the

as if they thought I was being different (being myself)

scary effeminate with sublime irreverence and turned his

to spite them, as part of a willing refusal of their sense

(powdered) nose up at all social norms around gender.

of what was normal, right and good. Whatever they believed, my behaviour and gender presentation

In fact, he made these things the basis for all of his

weren’t about rebellion, or trying to set myself apart.

(unconventional) art.

sensitive and a little bit sad. She turned on the radio and

She started singing along, the tears still streaming down.

This was the moment I understood that some people’s minds are quite different to everyone else’s; that one person’s way of thinking and perceiving can be as unlike another person’s as moonlight is to the harsh gleam of stadium floodlights. It was also the moment I realised that there is beauty in that difference. There is pain and loneliness, yes, but also something tender that is worth cherishing.

“Follow your inner moonlight; don’t hide the madness” – Allen Ginsberg The kids in my neighbourhood called my grandmother ‘the mad witch’. She was a paranoid schizophrenic in a time when hardly anyone had heard that term let alone knew what it meant. They called me ‘the sissy freak’. Everyone knew exactly what that meant: queer.

differently; of not having the same (restricted) sense of

In an interview with Ian Parker in London’s The

what was normal that everyone else had. I just didn’t

Independent1, Bowery described his artwork as, ‘both

believe in gender the way other people did. For me it

serious and very funny. It's decorative, but there's

was something to be played with, something fluid and

something underlying [it] that's maybe tragic and disturbing. There's a tension between the two.’ The

fun, a performance. Playing with gender was how I expressed myself. Because of that I was drawn to other

tension between the two is the tension between

people whose approach to gender was much the same.

normal and abnormal, sane and insane, male and

vicissitudes of their life. For me, the best interviews are the ones where the person doesn’t try to tell a victory narrative leaving out the warty

a young (1980s) Leigh Bowery, says this: ‘There is always

on the right track

a price to pay for being different, always, and sometimes it’s a high price, but it’s worth it. Besides, the price you pay for hiding who you really are is much higher.

Sometimes it costs you your life.’ In a lot of ways this play had its genesis in that Datsun 120Y, on that empty road slicing through the Darling Downs when I was 14.

I knew then that I was not like everyone else and that as a result I would experience loneliness, and perhaps pain. But I also knew that I wouldn’t conform and be like everyone else, even if I could. If I did, then I would lose the tenderness that comes from being an outsider, the tenderness that makes an ordinary country road seem like a thread of glittering black diamonds. Leigh Bowery was the role model I used for negotiating the pain and loneliness, and for how to be myself, how to preserve the

‘Look out there, Dallas,’ my mother had said on that morning, motioning with her head out to broad skies and acres of golden grass. ‘Isn’t it beautiful?’

‘Yes,’ I answered, raising my voice a little over the wind flooding in the window. ‘It’s really beautiful.’

She smiled, wiping the last tear away. ‘Not everyone

female, between the banal and commonplace and the

sees it, but I knew you would.’ She hit the accelerator.

extraordinary. Bowery’s crafted visual façade reads

The little 120Y lurched forward, its tires whirring on the

on the outside as outlandish, as mad, but it rests on an inner philosophical architecture that is profoundly

another place; a place where people like us could feel at

logical. Through outrageous costumery and a flirtation

home and dance to the beat of a different drum.

Leigh Bowery, a genius of shock and outrage whose

with the limits of acceptable behaviour and dress,

drag-inspired costumery spoke to me (and woke me)

Bowery is highlighting two things: 1. That gender norms are deeply conservative and conformist; and 2. That most individuals unconsciously adhere to a rigid (and

bits, but rather reveals their vulnerabilities, their frailties and foibles.

Frankly, perfection bores me.

When I was invited to be a guest on a similar program (Hi-Fidelity on ABC 612), I spent many nights listening extra carefully, trying to determine what sparked the interviewer’s imagination. Certainly it was the stories that left me perplexed asking, ‘how could they think or do that, that’s just madness, are they crazy?’ that fired my imagination. The Talmud is recalled here: ‘we don't see things as they are, we see them as we are,’ pointing to the possibility that we all seem slightly mad to one another.

I realised that creating a lifeline

undertaking cognitive therapy, talking

punctuated by music was an opportunity

with a counsellor, a life coach, or a

to reflect and bring to light motives

intense effort in attempts to understand ourselves. Nobel Prize winning physicist

and the associated life consequences.

David Bohm supported this when he

Neuroscientist Antonio Damasio says

stated, ‘you’ve got to give a lot of attention

touch of madness” – Aristotle to madness is literally as old as Aristotle. That’s a fair bit

of which our society is ignorant. It assumes consciousness requires no attention.

of deep emotional reckoning is not often

But consciousness is what gives attention.

credited as exertion or effort. Reasons

Consciousness requires very alert attention

include privacy, people don’t talk about

28

or else it will simply destroy.’

it fearing others’ judgement, stigma, 1

2

addressing mental issues makes others

‘A bizarre body of work’ (Sunday 26th February 1995)

uncomfortable, suspicion or a person

Running Wild (1988)

seeking help may have deep pathologies.

Bohm goes onto to argue that normally our thoughts have us rather than we having them. This is the rider (ego) and elephant (id) metaphor, thinking we are in control

own inner impulses or desires, which is, in itself, a kind

Whether it’s talking honestly in the

of this unruly beast (unconscious), when

of (imposed) madness or forced inhibition. It’s as though

media, reflecting on a lifeline, meditating,

essentially we haven’t much of an idea

that made by author J.G. Ballard when he wrote, ‘In a

PRISCILLA QUEEN OF THE DESERT

totally sane society, madness is the only freedom.’ 2

From 26 September 2018

Bowery’s costumes were a visual declaration similar to

more than a two thousand year tradition of linking

to consciousness. This is one of the things

the light’. It does require work, really hard emotional mental work. This kind

hierarchical) dress code as opposed to following their

The idea that genius, especially creative genius, is linked

psychiatrist, becoming conscious requires

behind choices I had made or perhaps more interestingly choices I had not made

getting conscious is like, ‘stepping into

BY JUDITH MCLEAN

glittering road that stretched far away from normal to

Dead or Alive and Divine. And it was through my genderbending fandom that I encountered the unforgettable

“There is no great genius without some

Island Discs. Many of you will be familiar with such programs that invite people from all walks of life to select music that delineates the

we are deemed mad, perhaps even dangerous. In my stage play, Ghosts of Leigh, the lead character, the ghost of

An expression of this was my record collection, which

in ways nothing else had before.

for deep listening; a favourite is the BBC Radio 4 podcast Desert

pay a price just for being ourselves, especially when being ourselves confronts sacrosanct norms like gender.

When we do that, when we break or transcend taboos,

in the 1980s contained barely a single gender-normative performer. It was all David Bowie, Boy George, Marilyn,

One of the pleasures of insomnia is that it offers uninterrupted nights

Ironically, to be free does not come without a price.

We all pay something for our freedom. Sometimes we

tenderness within.

It was simply the outflow of an atypical mind, of thinking At best, outsiders read my mother as not quite normal, at

cranked up the volume. Do You Really Want to Hurt Me by

of writing, but to understand it fully, we sometimes need to track that beat back to its source, to the moments and experiences that led to its creation. To understand my play Ghosts of Leigh, you need to go back to the 1980s and take a ride in a Datsun 120Y through the rolling grasslands of the Darling Downs.

illness with creativity. Madness, in the form of hysteria, has long been associated more with women than men.

The connection between creative genius (or talent),

went to bed for days in depressed, hypochondriac fits.

My grandmother spoke in riddles and often went on

lunatics did. My mother’s sins were not seen as quite so My mother’s little Datsun 120Y rode on the sparkling blacktop almost silently, the noise of the engine lost in

Culture Club was playing. One of our favourite songs.

Writing is like dancing, it’s moving (or making marks) to a beat, a beat inside. The things that are written—novels, poems and plays—hold those rhythms in them, ready to be released when read or performed.

That beat doesn’t come out of nowhere, it’s the echo of the writer’s experiences, their loves and losses. It’s easy enough to hear the music in any piece

people’s expectations that we just did what we wanted; unconcerned by others’ reactions, unfazed by the risk inherent in being different, in standing out. My mother

distance, a lonely farmhouse sat on the horizon, watched

worst, they read her as hysterical. In reality, she was just

BY DALLAS JOHN BAKER

“A person needs a little madness, or else

We were quite a trio, my mother, my grandmother

– Friedrich Nietzsche black diamonds. Beautiful, even though the sparkle

The road from normal

artists, writers and performers to ‘lunatics’. It’s no wonder

“Those who dance are considered mad by those who cannot hear the music”

Lyric Theatre, QPAC

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Australian Road Photo: Getty Images

Leigh Bowery file #1863 Photo: Werner Pawlok

Silhouette faces Illustrator: Jackie Elliott

Author and Illustrator: Maeve Baker

Physical spaces offer tiny glimpses, insights into the people who occupy them and the things that happen there.

Elements seen every day are seen anew by someone else’s eyes. A worn spoon is suddenly

Madness thrives on chaos.

are actually devoid of reality, but

Sanity depends on peace.

which eerily crawl into the zeitgeist to become a new reality.

more evocative, a sign more poignant, corners

Madness has different meanings

sharper or noises more acute.

for different people.

Although the research into the

I can only describe my own

of our current technology

developmental effects on children

What happens beyond the realm of the public

definition of it - one that has

gaze? What do you, say or value in private that you do not in public?

early days, in the studies already done, the conclusions are clear. A

us - particularly children - of the

Story invited friends who are resident at West End’s Common Ground to bring new ways of

expense of human interaction has a detrimental outcome for children.

Even an occasional opportunity for peace is better than none. But we live in a state of chaos, especially in cities, where the madness is magnified. Our environments are

Ways of Seeing

Mother

BEHIND THE SCENES

And while we try to do what we can to protect our children, our eyes are fixated on screens. We don’t make eye contact with each other. We’re trying to stay out of trouble, and working hard to pay off the debts

us from, or alert us to, news of

we’ve chosen to accumulate. And

imminent disaster.

there’s such a preponderance of

So what is it doing to our children?

BY NONI HAZLEHURST Children are growing up more engaged with the world than any previous generation. But they’re also clearly overwhelmed by the sheer amount of information that they’re not always able to assimilate

Daniel Keene’s deft and poetic work on a woman untethered from

or contextualise, given their limited experience. It’s almost impossible

the everyday. Using Mother as a starting point, we invited Noni to consider ideas of madness.

for our kids to find peace.

Ways of Seeing

The prevailing ‘popular culture’ experienced by children today focuses on reality shows which

BRISBANE OPEN HOUSE

all on our individual treadmills,

we go, we’re surrounded by screens and headlines, which either distract

The pressures of our world drive

and awarded for her work across music, stage, television and film.

self harm and worse are almost becoming de rigueur for younger and younger children.

greyness, with only perfunctory and confined examples of nature

adults crazy. We know that.

For several years she has been performing Mother, playwright

And the ever growing statistics show that anxiety, depression,

defined by constant bombardment of all the senses, hard surfaces,

to soften the landscape. Wherever

Noni Hazlehurst is an artist, educator and activist. She is beloved

dependence on technology at the

overly judgmental and reductive demands of our way of life.

seeing to some of the hallways, orchestra pits, nooks and crannies backstage at QPAC.

dominated lifestyles is in its

changed over the years. I’ve learned lessons about the effects on all of

horrifying news that we retreat to our fortressed cells and lock ourselves in to rest, before donning our armour to do it all again tomorrow.

The madness everywhere makes us fearful. We know there are people who’ve been driven to the point of craziness by the madness, and we try to avoid them.

It makes us feel overwrought, overcome, even paranoid.

Everything is a fight. It’s US v.

THEM. There’s no peace. It’s war.

That’s no way to live.

13 & 14 October

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43

QPAC and Brisbane wide

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48

49

PAG E 42 & 43

PAG E 44 & 45

PAG E 48

Backstage at QPAC. Photos: Residents of Common Ground Queensland

Backstage at QPAC. Photos: Residents of Common Ground Queensland

Noni Hazlehurst in Mother at Belvoir Theatre.

Photo: Brett Boardman

Everyone needs and wants to feel

which triggers reflection on the status

while providing $250 million for

With Daniel Keene’s beautiful text,

connected. Separation and isolation

quo and on our own perceptions of

school chaplaincy programmes is

Matt Scholten, my director and

play a big part in madness. As nature

reality, which can lead to a desire

positively bonkers.

dear friend, and I have tried to

demonstrates, we need each other.

for change.

Not just children, but everyone fares

spend a little while in someone

better if the arts are a meaningful

a light into dark corners, which is the

component in their lives.

bleedingly obvious reason why arts

Without leaving the city altogether,

nature bestows, is exposure to and

budgets are being slashed, and artists

Surely it is the definition of madness

involvement in the arts.

commonly vilified. We’re now labelled

to ignore overwhelming evidence?

‘elites’, generally by people who fit There is overwhelming evidence

well and truly into that category

that a life lived without free access to

themselves. There is nothing elite

enjoyment of, and participation in, the

about being an artist in this country,

arts is a life severely compromised.

I assure you!

Without exposure to high quality art

Official State and National art is sanctioned, but for the tens of thousands of practitioners whose

there is little available to ameliorate

vocation is to make art, and who

the effects of the madness.

want to develop their skills through

The arts help us to live our lives.

There lies their wonder and potency.

Beautifully made art, when executed at the highest level, brings peace - it reminds us that we are not alone, that we share more similarities than differences, that the world doesn’t have to be the way it is, or might not even be the way it seems. The arts teach us that everyone has a story.

The arts allow us to reflect and consider. A work of art can have a palpable effect on our consciousness, and when it does, it stays in our memories forever.

Madness manifests in the brain.

Sufferers become detached from the real world. But what actually is the real world right now?

The arts speak to our brains, but also more importantly, our hearts.

They can restore and comfort tired spirits and help to address feelings of isolation and confusion. And God forbid, they can encourage a response

Yet part of the madness is that many of us are doing just that - choosing to ignore the truth in favour of expediency or the preservation of power and privilege. Anything other

in any or all of its forms - theatre, music, dance, painting, literature -

BY GUY RUNDLE

That’s the legend. In fact, several military experts had warned that

The Western border of Germany,

machine guns and barbed wire, new types of cannon, ‘scorched

this would not be a war like other European conflicts; they had

create a safe space where you can

The arts speak truth to power, shining

the only way to provide the sustenance for the mind, body and spirit that

practise, and who make a massive contribution financially and culturally to the country, the message is clear.

Go away and get a real job.

than the official view is deemed fake.

Which explains why the arts and artists are considered so damn pesky. Creativity doesn’t toe a line.

Who knows where great art comes from, but anyone lucky enough to experience it can attest to its power.

The character of Christie in Mother is

Most artists have a real job, and most of them work at it day and night.

They’re just not paid for their work.

In official terms, we have no value and are surplus to requirements.

the perfect example of someone not dealing with the madness and cruelty of the world. Hers is a life barely lived, due to familial and societal neglect, and through a lack of empathy and support. She is perceived as mad

And it’s a vicious cycle - how can we

because she is disconnected from the

argue for the value, the preservation

world and utterly alone. By choice.

and support of the arts when the public is constantly presented with ordinary examples, not the extraordinary?

With no advantages, no significant others, no education, and with her experience of life limited and compromised, she cannot and will not

Just as the knighthood for Prince

live in the so-called real world. She’s

Philip was deemed mad by many, the

one of the many people on the outer

recent further slashing of the ABC’s

peripheries of society who speak

budget to nigh on unsustainable levels,

the truth, and are called mad for

and the concurrent announcement of

their trouble.

nearly $50 million to commemorate Captain Cook’s arrival strikes me as gobsmackingly crazy. The removal of arts programs in schools, which all available evidence suggests are incredibly valuable,

looked at the US Civil War, which had seen the first use of ‘Gatling’

LETHAL

else’s shoes. Where you can hear Christie’s story and begin to understand and to feel empathy.

Empathy is in very short supply, or so it would seem. The arts remind us that it is in fact everywhere. We are all born with it. No child is born a bigot - it’s adults who create intolerance.

And the arts, particularly theatre,

a summer night in 1914; grey clad troops cross the border, establish their forward defences.

The twentieth century and the

human beings, showing us a way

a week too early. The Germans

visible to those waging it, and running it, carefully hidden from

had to back off somewhat. The

Daniel Keene writes about people

MAGICAL

who fall through the cracks, those for whom hard work will never be rewarded by prosperity, and who need our help and compassion.

At its bottom line, the play’s message is a plea for kindness

be part of stories that are worth

women patients: phobias, paralysis, screaming fits, anxiety, the

the erasure of its identity; coming. It was not a war crime,

skirmishes, and exchanges of

telling, that add something useful

territory, everyone knew that.

And the gift of Mother is the

One way or another, it would

perfect vehicle for me to nail my colours to the mast.

THINKING

I’m grateful for the opportunity to perform it in my home state, and I look forward to your responses.

The response to the play has been

valiant heroes baring their wounds bravely found mad man-rabbits consumed with the hysteria usually associated, in that era, with

the term ‘shell shock’ and used behavioural and physical techniques

war would be a series of strategic

to the sum of human existence.

general publics. By 1917 that was no longer possible. The stream of wounded coming back to the major cities of the belligerent powers, weren’t merely torn up, they were broken. Those who expected

embarrassment was not about

but a breach of manners. The

and empathy, and I look for that in all the work I choose. I want to

a patch of brown earth. By now, the war had become an insanity,

the invasion of another country, everyone knew the war was

be over by Christmas.

"For Freud, the willingness of millions of men to kill strangers could not simply be explained by patriotism, propaganda, punishment or the will to kill; there was a will to die, as well, an embracing of death"

mantraps, where shells rained day and night, and men went mad, twisted and dying in the wire and mud. In 1916, the first day of the Somme series of battles, saw twenty thousand men killed on

Luxemburg a week ‘early’, and

through the madness.

eventually become multi-levelled systems, the line of defence of sovereignty. By 1916, they had become not protection, but

First World War had begun – had crossed into neighbouring

can touch us in a way nothing else can, and connect us to our fellow

earth’ destruction of cities and understood that something else was coming. By mid-1915 it was there. Across Eastern France, both sides dug trenches from Belgium to the Swiss border; they would

works. In Britain, the military psychologist Charles Myers coined – including electric shock – to get patients up and running, and back to the front, where they fell apart again immediately, losing all government over themselves.

But in Vienna, as the entire Austro-Hungarian empire came apart, another physician was having more success at putting people back together. Sigmund Freud, founder of psychoanalysis as a total system, had been viewed with suspicion by the anti-intellectual and

bourgeoisie of middle Europe had thousands of damaged men, and the resources of the military hospital system at his disposal. This would have two major effects: Freud’s thinking on the nature of

to every corner of social life. Psychoanalysis had already staked a claim in literature and the arts; now it would be applied en masse

sometimes for the first time.

included screeds against the theory

which both the madness of human

as ‘degenerate Jewish pseudoscience’;

destructiveness and the theorisation

in 1935 Alcoholics Anonymous was

of it came together. To say that the

propaganda, punishment or the will to

founded, with a religious content

Holocaust was mad is to speak of only

kill; there was a will to die, as well, an

– surrender your will to God,

one dimension of it of course, and

embracing of death. Our destructive

however you see him – but with a

many object to such a characterisation

drives would thus take centre stage

psychoanalytic form, surrendering the

of an event that was radically evil,

internal ‘superego’ control of behaviour

committed by participants who knew

things like irrationality in personal

to a more concrete belief, in order to

they were doing such. But it was mad as

relations, sexual and emotional

allow the ‘ego’ – the meaning forming

well, the idea that the glory of Germany

masochism, addiction, dependence.

self – to reassert its integrity and

could be restored by throwing small

The techniques of psychoanalysis

stabilise its boundaries.

children into a gas chamber at Treblinka, lethal magical thinking,

modern psychological marketing by

This would all reach its apogee in

for which a Freudian approach could

Edward Bernays (Freud’s nephew), in

the 1960s and 70s, with the self-help

supply an explanation: the total

his 1928 book Propaganda; surrealism

movement and the ‘me’ decade,

surrender by a whole nation, of their

was saturated in it; by way of Germany

whose dominant fads – from the hit

moral judgement to a fuehrer, who

it would come to popular cinema

book Games People Play analysis to

would give them a fully meaningful

destructiveness – unjustly neglected, though credited by Freud

in the film noir genre (Freud had

‘primal screaming’ – all had roots in

existence – a world without doubt –

– convinced Freud that our drive towards non-being, towards a

popularised cocaine use in the 1880s;

psychoanalysis, however mutated the

in exchange.

he is truly the father of Hollywood);

branching tree became. But before

Cremorne Theatre, QPAC

50

others. For Freud, the willingness of millions of men to kill strangers could

would be ‘reverse engineered’ to create

to social life – often in reductive and simplistic forms – from the 1920s into the 1980s.

daughter Sophie, and the work of Sabina Spielrein on sadism and M OT H E R 7 to 18 August 2018

that, there was the Second World War, a completion of the first, and one in

from the 1920s on in explaining

the psyche would change dramatically, and this new approach – in which the sexual drive was seen as being partnered by a new ‘death drive’ – would now be carried by state hospitals and health systems

mass death factory of the military system, the death of his

moves many people to feel empathy for all the lost souls in the world,

fascists would use it to hone their propaganda techniques – which

not simply be explained by patriotism,

anti-Semitic Habsburg regime. By 1917 they would try anything, and suddenly the advocate of a talking treatment for the bewildered

The new theory would match the century. Immersion in the

humbling. We have somehow managed to create a work which

state beyond the eternal lack of desire, issued in destructiveness, of self and

53

Unamplified

PAG E 40 & 41 Author and Illustrator: Maeve Baker

STORY: IS OPERA MAD?

brother-in-law was an opera virgin and one time he came

LISA: Opera is not mad. But it can promote madness in

along to a performance with my sister and he absolutely

performers. If you’re not mad to start with, you will have periods of madness.

hated it. Hated it, thought it was the most naff drivel he’d ever seen, and for years he didn’t come back. Then we managed to convince him again to come when I was

I was living out of a suitcase for 18 years. That’s pretty

singing in Tristan und Isolde, singing Isolde, which you

mad, anyone who would do that. Even when I was at

would think that’s a hard ask, he absolutely loved it!

home the suitcases were always on the floor, always open.

You’re living out of a suitcase constantly. You’re subjecting

So I can’t tell you what the magic formula is but if you’re

yourself to people who have no personal interest in you,

going to try and switch someone on to opera, it’s got to be

so you’re just a commodity or a circus animal for them

different enough from what they’re used to getting to be

to thrash. You have incredible highs and huge lows. The

of interest to come back. And I do think free tickets help!

WITH LISA GASTEEN

lifestyle, the travel, the loneliness. Who else is going to

Madness is almost immediately dramatic and can play out on stage in multiple forms. The madman unhinged from reality and railing against things others don’t see, the heroine unravelled by betrayal, the collective main of the village mob. These may manifest as a frantic dance solo, a soaring aria that punches you in the heart or the pathos of Shakespeare’s King Lear: ‘Oh let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heavens!’

a mad person. We do it for the music, for the love of

In the joys and sorrows of opera, the raw power of unamplified voices, there is fertile ground to examine the human experience.

Indeed, there is a long interconnection between the opera and madness.

for example, you can go and see opera on the beach,

subject themselves to that sort of punishment? Only

Story spoke with internationally acclaimed Wagnerian soprano Lisa Gasteen AO about some of the delights and challenges of opera and the work of the elite opera coaching school she founded in Brisbane in 2011, the Lisa Gasteen National Opera School.

the music. When it comes down to it, that’s really what opera’s about, it's about music.

It mystifies me why theatre directors, or drama directors, are attracted to opera. Let’s face it, the stories, they’re not gripping plots generally. They’re not great drama. The libretti are often very weak. Without the music it’s just bad, most of the time. It’s really about the music and I do wish that the music was given its due in modern day.

I think we’re losing what is actually special about opera.

By trying to make it popular, we’re actually losing what’s special about it. Not always but often.

STORY: WHAT IS SPECIAL ABOUT IT? LISA: The quality of the music. If you amplify an opera, and I did it, it was fun, it really was fun. But the music suffered, the art suffered, but it was a fun event. I think as long as those sorts of things are balanced, with true acoustics and with an orchestra and conductor and everybody in the same room, it works. You know, what does it do for the art form when the orchestra is located a block away? There’s no cohesion and if it’s all amplified then it’s all on one level so you don’t have the nuance.

That’s what’s special about it. So as long as we’re mindful of what we’re taking from it.

STORY: HOW WOULD YOU CONVINCE SOMEONE TO TRY OPERA AS AN AUDIENCE MEMBER FOR THE FIRST TIME? LISA: Here’s a story…years ago I was going down to Melbourne to sing a lot with the Victorian State Opera and Opera Australia on tour, I was doing Carmen (not singing Carmen, I was Frasquita). At the time, my

It really comes back to music again. The music has to be really, really of a very high quality because that’s what touches people, it’s the music, it’s the vibrations, it’s the quality of voices unamplified. That has a really profound effect on some people and they can’t explain it away.

It’s appealing.

People are affected by the vibrations and the sound wraps around you. It’s not like it’s just a big wall of amplified noise. There’s something else about it. It affects your body. It has an effect on people. It transforms them, it takes them out of their ordinary existence. These days our ordinary existence is full of electronic, amplified and artificial sound.

STORY: WHAT DO YOU LOVE MOST ABOUT TRAINING OPERA SINGERS? LISA: I love it when they come and they’re absolutely hungry for knowledge, hungry for input, hungry for experience. I love it when they’re receptive and open to instruction and they run with it and they feel the difference and you can see their persona change.

Walking down the corridors, at the end of the first week, some of them are quite transformed because they’re having an experience that they have not had before.

It’s what they’ve been hungering for, but just haven't had access to the right people to experience it until now. That’s really, really gratifying.

Then for them to make the contacts and travel overseas and be introduced to things as students, to be in contact with people who can get them into dress rehearsals and free tickets, and they get to see a lot of high, high quality music and singing, that’s a great thing. That’s very broadening and not something you have access to in this country.

59

54

PAG E 51

PAG E 52

PAG E 55

PAG E 58

Noni Hazlehurst in Mother at Belvoir Theatre.

Photo: Brett Boardman

War Mask Photo: Getty Images

Timeline Illustrator: Sally McRae

Singing illustration Illustrator: Jackie Elliott

W H AT ’ S T H E M A D D E S T T H I N G YOU’VE EVER DONE? Written my new podcast which talks very honestly about my family, my dad’s closeted sexuality, my mum’s victimhood, my lover’s death. I don’t know why I’m dragging it all out.

Well, it’s the writer’s eventual destination. Memoir.

FIVE MINUTES WITH

John Cameron Mitchell John Cameron Mitchell is a writer, director and actor that

Perhaps some healing is coming.

W H AT ’ S T H E M A D D E S T T H I N G ABOUT HEDWIG? That something so damn queer has infiltrated uptight (but gorgeous) cultures like Korea and Japan. I’ve actually been chased down the street by gangs of fans in Korea.

I F YO U R L I F E WA S A P E R F O R M A N C E , W H AT G E N R E W O U L D I T B E ?

I hate genres. They were invented by marketers. Life is a comic, tragic, romantic, melodramatic, mysterious, farcical, porn film.

W H AT A R E Y O U R R I T U A L S B E F O R E Y O U G O O N S TA G E ?

20 minute meditation, vocal warm up, brown rice salmon sushi, kissing my stagemates. Oh, and the ‘show dump’.

Must clear the passages.

we’ve seen on stages and screens from infamous New York City night clubs, Broadway theatres, HBO and Sundance Film Festival.

He is the co-creator of the cult musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Celebrating 20 years in 2018, Hedwig

allows me to be spontaneous and instinctual. And reminds me I’m not alone. But in a safe way, as I’m on stage!

started out as a drag show at New York City club

DISCOVER MORE - READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AND OTHERS, AT QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

Hedwig grew into an off-Broadway hit and eventually a

OUR VENUES

(07) 3840 7444 | qpac.com.au/story ABN: 13 967 571 128

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT The Queensland Performing Arts Trust is a statutory body of the State of Queensland and is partially funded by the Queensland Government: The Honourable Leeanne Enoch MP, Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, Minister for Science and

QPAC has four theatres suitable for a range of performance styles:

Minister for the Arts Director-General, Department of Environment

Lyric Theatre (2,000 seats) is designed primarily for opera, ballet

and Science: Jamie Merrick QPAC respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Lands across Queensland and pays respect to their ancestors who came before them and to Elders past, present and emerging.

comedy and presentations; Playhouse (850 seats) is primarily designed for theatre and dance; and Cremorne Theatre (277 seats) is an intimate and versatile black box theatre space.

CONNECT

him Best Director at Sundance Film Festival and a

68

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

(1,600 seats) is a versatile space, designed primarily for orchestra

film co-written, directed and starring Mitchell, earning

Tony Award after reprising the role on Broadway.

the best in live performance – the world renowned alongside the heart of each production. Through the warmth and expertise of our

performances and also used for contemporary music, stand-up

mid-90s, in a time when there were still small pockets of

Golden Globes nomination. In 2015, he received a special

C O N TA C T PO Box 3567, South Bank, Qld, 4101

leading centres for live performance. Welcoming over 1.3 million visitors to approximately 1,200 performances each year, we embrace

and large-scale theatre events such as musicals; Concert Hall

SqueezeBox, located in the far west of the Village in the

Manhattan not yet shiny and gentrified.

A B O U T Q PAC Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) is one of Australia’s

emerging, local and new – and connect to the stories and ideas at the

W H AT D O E S B E I N G A P E R F O R M E R MEAN TO YOU? I’m a very premeditated, slow-moving, tortoise-like Taurean writer. Performing reminds me I have a sensual body and

@ ATQ PA C

Story is published by QPAC. Printed in Brisbane, Australia. Contents of Story are

@Q PAC

of the publisher is prohibited. The publication of editorial does not necessarily

subject to copyright. Reproduction in whole or in part without written permission

THE ORIGIN OF LOVE – THE SONGS AND STORIES OF HEDWIG 17 July 2018

constitute an endorsement of views or opinions expressed. The publisher does

@ ATQ PA C

not accept responsibility for statements made by advertisers. All information was correct at time of printing. Story welcomes editorial contributions or comments.

Q PAC T V

They should be sent by email to story@qpac.com.au. Printed in July 2018.

Concert Hall, QPAC

PAG E 68 & 69 John Cameron Mitchell Photo: Matthew Placek QPAC Photo: Darren Thomas

67

W H AT ’ S T H E M A D D E S T T H I N G YOU’VE EVER DONE? Written my new podcast which talks very honestly about my family, my dad’s closeted sexuality, my mum’s victimhood, my lover’s death. I don’t know why I’m dragging it all out.

Well, it’s the writer’s eventual destination. Memoir.

FIVE MINUTES WITH

John Cameron Mitchell John Cameron Mitchell is a writer, director and actor that

Perhaps some healing is coming.

W H AT ’ S T H E M A D D E S T T H I N G ABOUT HEDWIG? That something so damn queer has infiltrated uptight (but gorgeous) cultures like Korea and Japan. I’ve actually been chased down the street by gangs of fans in Korea.

I F YO U R L I F E WA S A P E R F O R M A N C E , W H AT G E N R E W O U L D I T B E ?

I hate genres. They were invented by marketers. Life is a comic, tragic, romantic, melodramatic, mysterious, farcical, porn film.

W H AT A R E Y O U R R I T U A L S B E F O R E Y O U G O O N S TA G E ?

20 minute meditation, vocal warm up, brown rice salmon sushi, kissing my stagemates. Oh, and the ‘show dump’.

Must clear the passages.

we’ve seen on stages and screens from infamous New York City night clubs, Broadway theatres, HBO and Sundance Film Festival.

He is the co-creator of the cult musical Hedwig and the Angry Inch. Celebrating 20 years in 2018, Hedwig

W H AT D O E S B E I N G A P E R F O R M E R MEAN TO YOU? I’m a very premeditated, slow-moving, tortoise-like Taurean writer. Performing reminds me I have a sensual body and allows me to be spontaneous and instinctual. And reminds me I’m not alone. But in a safe way, as I’m on stage!

started out as a drag show at New York City club SqueezeBox, located in the far west of the Village in the mid-90s, in a time when there were still small pockets of Manhattan not yet shiny and gentrified.

DISCOVER MORE - READ THE FULL INTERVIEW AND OTHERS, AT QPAC.COM.AU/STORY

Hedwig grew into an off-Broadway hit and eventually a film co-written, directed and starring Mitchell, earning him Best Director at Sundance Film Festival and a Golden Globes nomination. In 2015, he received a special Tony Award after reprising the role on Broadway.

68

THE ORIGIN OF LOVE – THE SONGS AND STORIES OF HEDWIG 17 July 2018 Concert Hall, QPAC

A B O U T Q PAC

C O N TA C T

Queensland Performing Arts Centre (QPAC) is one of Australia’s

PO Box 3567, South Bank, Qld, 4101

leading centres for live performance. Welcoming over 1.3 million visitors to approximately 1,200 performances each year, we embrace the best in live performance – the world renowned alongside the emerging, local and new – and connect to the stories and ideas at the heart of each production. Through the warmth and expertise of our

(07) 3840 7444 | qpac.com.au/story ABN: 13 967 571 128

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

staff, we have become a trusted curator, presenter and host; a place

The Queensland Performing Arts Trust is a statutory body of the

to come together to relax, reflect, share stories and celebrate.

State of Queensland and is partially funded by the Queensland

OUR VENUES

Government: The Honourable Leeanne Enoch MP, Minister for Environment and the Great Barrier Reef, Minister for Science and

QPAC has four theatres suitable for a range of performance styles:

Minister for the Arts Director-General, Department of Environment

Lyric Theatre (2,000 seats) is designed primarily for opera, ballet

and Science: Jamie Merrick

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

QPAC respectfully acknowledges the Traditional Owners of the Lands across Queensland and pays respect to their ancestors who came before them and to Elders past, present and emerging.

comedy and presentations; Playhouse (850 seats) is primarily designed for theatre and dance; and Cremorne Theatre (277 seats) is an intimate and versatile black box theatre space.

CONNECT @ ATQ PA C

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

@Q PAC

of the publisher is prohibited. The publication of editorial does not necessarily constitute an endorsement of views or opinions expressed. The publisher does

@ ATQ PA C

not accept responsibility for statements made by advertisers. All information was correct at time of printing. Story welcomes editorial contributions or comments.

Q PAC T V

They should be sent by email to story@qpac.com.au. Printed in July 2018.

MAYBE THE GREATEST MADNESS IS TO SEE LIFE AS IT IS, RATHER THAN WHAT IT COULD BE.

MIGUEL DE CERVANTES, DON QUIXOTE

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 P U B L I C E N G A G E M E N T & L E A R N I N G S T R AT E G Y

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