Yielding - Creative Development @ Metro Arts

I hadn't lead a rehearsal room for close to 15 years and even then it was with friends who I'd studied with and formed a theatre company with the sole purpose of producing work we wanted to see.  Back then, I had a shared language and aesthetic with my cohorts.  Now - about to open the Sue Benner Theatre doors for Day 1 - I wasn't sure.

“DOT: I am sitting on the edge of my bed. She is behind me holding an eighty cent bucket and a wash cloth. Beside me is a towel and clean clothes. She is annoyed at me. I kept waking her through the night. I couldn’t get my arm in the right position. I was in pain. She is at my feet, taking off my slippers.”

— Yielding by Emma Workman

I'd written Yielding specifically for Cairns based artists Susan Prince and Kathryn Ash.  With Suellen Maunder, they co-founded JUTE Theatre in 1992.  They are fierce women, having a personal and professional relationship that affords great trust in each other’s creative choices.  They are both accomplished playwrights, facilitators and directors who are uncompromising in their desire to create work of integrity.  

Add to this, the last five or so years I have been working - insert occasionally seeing, more generally speaking over the phone - with Peter Matheson, one of Australia's leading dramaturgs. He challenged me to step up. "If you want to be a playwright, then bloody well write some plays"   He is resolute, questioning of artistic choices that appear too easily reached, and he sees straight through my bluster. 

These three and me? Would they see the merit in the work - the merit in me?

“LIZ: (thoughts falling out) I don’t have space. I’m full. Anything more is going to dribble down the sides. She’s showered, she’s dressed, she’s got breakfast in front of her and I’m standing at the kitchen window wondering if its August or April. I’m not showered, I’m not dressed and I think I had a boiled egg for dinner. I’m tired of being unseen.....”

— Yielding by Emma Workman

It appears they did.

The first three days were spent reading, discussing, breaking apart scenes and talking through the performance style I wished to see.  There was respect, humour and a true sense of this being bigger than one week.  We broke apart the tiered seating, dragging sections onto the stage.  I'd raided IKEA the week before for lamps, floor lights and a simple rug to create a welcoming, warm space.  Muscle memory returned and my gaffa tape skills were brought to the fore, but it was the unflappable Susan, high on a ladder, rigging a stage lamp with out a seconds hesitation who took out the 'gusto' prize.  

All Yielding images courtesy of Caco Photography - www.caco.com.au

The readings to carers took place on the Thursday and Friday mornings.  I had expected small turnouts due to the increasingly crappy weather so I was prepared for the 10 to 15 numbers that we got for each reading.  Responses were extremely positive and several mentions were made of 'thats my life'.  After the reading morning tea was laid on (provided by the gloriously kind Jue Wang). It was during this short time audience members actively sought out Susan and Kathryn to have close in, intimate chats.  The Conversations - the facilitated discussion on the truth to the themes - opened up some interesting ideas which aren't covered.  Namely financial concerns when dealing with long term caring and the pressures to keep up the facade of coping when out in the community.

Carers QLD expressed a desire to continue their involvement and suggested attending Carer Conferences and education events in the future.  Dr Siobhan O'Dwyer attended and found seeing her research and statistical findings represented through storytelling quite powerful.  I hope to collaborate with her on future scripts with in LSOTU as her studies ask bold questions.

What's refreshing about this play is that it doesn't pull any punches. It portrays a very real experience of caring - highs and lows, isolation and frustration, and the practicalities that we choose not to talk about - it's not every day that you see a scene in a theatre dealing with incontinence, for example.       

Hayley Carter.  First Magazine Winter 2015.  Carer's Queensland

 As luck would have it, the night of the public reading coincided with the worst storm Brisbane had seen since the floods of 2012.  The CBD was cut off, roads were under water and everyone's thoughts were on getting home safe and dry.  This meant the audience was made up of tenacious friends, soaked through Israeli tourists, Metro Arts stalwarts and foolhardy family.

The night ended with pasta and wine and a toast to crap weather.

Some ponderings on it all......

I'm still an unknown quantity.

But, sitting watching the BOM radar pulsate its orange and red blob of wet destruction all over my laptop screen, none of that mattered. I had my family driving, literally through hell and high water, to see something I'd written for the first time in over a decade. The carers, who I feared would see through the theatrics and call me out on my naivety, had all sat stunned.  Caught in the crosshairs of their reflected experience.  Beyond any measure, I ticked the credibility box when it came to the generous people who shared their stories with me.  Of that, I am most proud.

On reflection, I gave myself too much space.  Either I didn't believe that the script was strong enough to with stand the development process and I would be rewriting whole chucks of dialogue each night; or I expected continual questioning of the concept behind LSOTU and would be allaying big picture concerns at every corner.  When you break it down - I didn't believe I could do it, therefore why would anybody else? 

Self defeating toss. 

I can catch the Industry on the next go around.

Funding? - hen's teeth in a piggery - for now. 

Yielding - Professional Development @ Metro Arts

aka - Alone in a room with reams of butchers paper.

I don't know how anybody else works but I find that surrounding myself with space and paper and fat nibbed textas is very conducive to 'perfect world planning'.  

Let me preface this - too late I know - by saying that I have not professionally developed myself - ever.  So being taken through the  induction to the Metro  Arts space meant I did a lot of head nodding and 'oh ok's.  All I knew for sure was that a space was mine.  The deep basement space of cheap pine ply, industrial air conditioner drone and buzz key entry was going to feel like home with in 20 mins of me throwing down my bag - and it did.

My aims were

• to distill the recordings of the Carers QLD interviews into key concerns/topics to later weave into the script of Yielding. 
• create a concept brief for Let's Speak Of The Unspoken. 
• develop funding strategies.
• research Community Cultural Development projects.

Metro Arts offered great guidance in regards to CCD projects and contacts.  It felt strange at first to be articulating what it is I was wanting to achieve.  For so long, I had been having conversations in my head.  In those discussions I was alway succinct, witty and knowledgeable.  Somehow, when the conversation involved a real person, my thoughts would clang about, falling out of my mouth half-formed and spoken without taking breath.  I calmed down after the second day - I think. Metro Arts may have a different recollection.

At the end of the 5 days I had a clear vision of LSOTU. I could see the steps I would need to take.  I accepted early on that I would need to self-fund the initial stages, but knowing the direction I will take this project, I'm not too concerned (famous last works) that I won't be able to generate funding via small community grants.  

This is a long term project for me.  Generating my own work and providing employment opportunities for artists is high on my 'to do' list.

Yielding - The Interviews

A very tired and possibly hungover man I worked with early on as a Support Worker told me - "You're not a carer.  You're paid to do this shit."  A wise woman I worked for told me - "Don't eva call yaself a carer luv cos tha real ones'll rip ya a new one."

I get it.  I was paid an hourly rate, with penalties, sick leave, holiday pay, even salary sacrifice in some cases.  What I took home each week wasn't graded on the 'needs' of the clients I supported.  If I sat with a man for three hours and got soundly beaten in game after game of backgammon I was paid for my time. If I was sent to 24hr shifts where sleep wasn't an option I was paid - well. I've provided personal care that may take ten minutes - may take three hours.   It is accepted that to have support provided by an individual, the individual requires adequate recompense for their time and expertise.  

As a carer - its a totally different story.  You have to prove your worth and the value what it is you do to care for your loved one.  There are Carer benefit schemes and allowances provided by government, but it is by no means an easy or guaranteed process. For many years, I was privileged to be invited into people's homes and trusted to care for their loved ones.  It is something I never took lightly - more for the fact that no matter how hard and draining it may've been for me, I got to leave.

I approached Carers Queensland early on in the piece to gauge their interest in being involved in the creative development of Yielding. I had draft scenes, but felt the necessity to hear more from carers beyond the context of my observations as a support worker.  I knew from experience that many carer's are reluctant to give up their time to a random stranger coming with yet another new idea to get 'their story told'.  There were two ways I expected carers to react.  I'd either be told to sod off "what business is it of yours?" or the flood gates would open and several hours would fly by on tales of doctors visits, respite traumas, hurtful things family have said and friendships that have slipped.

Carers Queensland facilitates support groups through out the state and allowed me - after seeking permission from it's members - to speak to several groups around the Brisbane greater area.  I won't forget the experience in a hurry.  In Capalaba, Westside - Kenmore and Brisbane South, I was astonished by the generosity and openness of every person. I had a series of questions and topics I wanted to cover but most of that went out the window.  What I found most compelling was the self awareness of many in the meetings.  Their ability to articulate what it means for them to care for a person - who in some cases is nothing like the person they loved - was remarkable. 

"You can't explain it unless you've lived it"

"A front is put on.  Behind closed doors - you either sink or swim."

"You can't live in grief everyday"

What I took away at the end of each meeting was that a carer's time is as precious as air.  For each one of those people I met, talking to me cut into time they could've been spending on the thousand other tasks they needed to get done.  I was beginning to understand the depth to which I would need to take Yielding.  As a work, it would need to hover between the myriad of experiences of caring but retain a truth to which these people could see themselves reflected.

Oh, and after one of the meetings a carer approached me and said

"I knew you were a good egg as soon as you said you were a support worker, not a carer. "

So thank you tired, possibly hungover man and wise woman.

Yielding - The Seed

To be forgotten, passed over, even openly ridiculed for attempting to participate in a world that wants you to stay quiet and out of sight in crushing.  It isn’t until we are personally affected, when a loved one can no longer look after themselves, that we begin to comprehend the magnitude of the responsibilities taken on by these forgotten, unheard many.  Each deserves the respect and acknowledgement of us, the lucky few with energy still to shout above the din.

“There are 2.7 million unpaid carers in Australia.”

— ABS (2012) Survey of Disability, Ageing & Carers

“It is predicted that 1 in every 6 people in Australia will suffer a stroke in their lifetime”

— source - strokefoundation.com.au

I want Yielding to explore what these statistics mean when viewed through the prism of an ageing mother and her adult daughter - dignity, social isolation, personal autonomy, euthanasia and consequence, the repositioning in familial relationships after trauma.  

There is no discrimination to becoming a carer or suffering a stroke. There is no demographic, sector or group that remains untouched.