2024

Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again. by Alice Birch

Directed by Megan Kenna for Bad Theatre Company

Contribution: Sound Designer

Dark, but playful, melancholy, but hopeful. Through a series of striking vignettes and nameless characters, Revolt taps into the legacies of twentieth-century feminist theatre: the institution of marriage, the bond between mothers and daughters, sisterhood/solidarity, the glass ceiling, the impacts of commodifying and sexualising the female body to satisfy male heterosexual desire, and how we are all impacted by language.

Image: Millie Crouch

2023

Queer Momentum, composed by Stevie McEntee

Contribution: “Always Becoming”, spoken word

“lutruwita/ Tasmania is home to a strong, proud and diverse community of LGBTQIA+ people and our allies. This new work is intended to explore the stories of people from a broad cross-section of our community; people of many different ages, sexualities, genders, cultural backgrounds and abilities.

Pre-recorded interviews, spoken word, poetry and yarns from queer lutruwita/ Tasmanians are layered onto a sonic bed of original jazz compositions from the pen of non-binary composer and conductor Stevie McEntee, performed live by some of the state's finest jazz musicians in the iconic surrounds of the Hobart Town Hall.”

“Always Becoming”

This is my voice, 138 days on T.

What does second puberty mean when in reality we are always becoming?

My voice has always been a core aspect of me, and the thought of that changing almost meant that I didn’t seek a hormonal transition into masculinity. In the joy and chaos of technology there is still so much that has been lost in the queer community on a global scale - including the non-existence of a stable voice or history.

To have an unstable voice means that in the past the voice or story has been silenced, misunderstood, rewritten, stolen - and yet to have an unstable voice is also a sign of transitioning, of rebuilding - of recollecting something that that once was known. When I feel alone in my queer hood I hold unto the knowledge that my queer elders knew joy. It’s often hard to forget when so little queer stories capture lives, or even moments, outside of tragedy.

The queer confusion that I feel is much like the complexity of my racial and national identity - seriously, what is a voice? Shaky voice from a second puberty, an Australian born Chinese-Filipino… my story, my lineage is yet to exist. There is no one I can look up to that has led a similar life - not even a glance. But the more I acknowledge this, the more I embody this - the more truth and learning I see in everyone that I meet. A new age of fragmentation, sure, a new age of mosaics… yes.

Queer liberation and pride is the knowledge that one can determine one’s own existence. It is a journey into futurism, a will to power, an absolute disregard for status quos that don’t serve growth and joy…yet I cannot put into words the heaviness that I feel when I am unable to turn to an elder, dead or alive, for guidance. This one follows me, what does it mean to lose elders, and what does it mean to hope to be a queer elder? How do I accept that living my life within radical queerhood means saving not just my life, but those who are able to see that queer joy burning bright from a mile away?

I spend a lot of time trying to imagine the joy that my forebears experienced. Amongst all of the grief and suffering that our queer lives are built from I try to remember that they were fighting for something that brought them joy - and lately queer joy has been getting me through more than anger or grief.

When I ask myself to cling unto hope I remember that I can lead by example. Indecisions that paralyse me with fear are resolved when I try to envision myself in the past and future - I hold these tenses in the present. Perhaps this is our greatest power. The power to dream within such sacred confines and to playfully expand the confines that I find myself in.

With this newfound voice I ask myself - if I am no longer comparing myself to others or against an institutional or societal yardstick then the comparison is with myself. It’s a development of new truths to understand what it is to be, here, now, with this voice. It means that I care for what matters. It’s like validating my worth and acknowledging that all those who struggled within these confines before me were enough.

Our voices will change. With age. With love, anger, fear, and pride. Our voices will change when we speak to ourselves, to another, and as we speak to the past and future. We can’t escape that. This story is fragmented, and incomplete - but so is my life, so is my journey. It is yet to be settled. Everchanging. Shifting not between labels but between ways of being.

This is my voice, 138 days on T.

domestic labour

audio-visual work in collaboration with Megan Kenna

The past was in a box of fragmented porcelain then swept away by a broom against concrete. Clean as a slate, polished to the void. In the back of my car, held in my hand, pressed against country wishing for embrace. Stifled and shuffled, spat and sordid - the fragments of our life together don't even make a mosaic. Labour to love to forget to forgive, to forgive in love, to fragment my forgiveness to who? Clean as a slate, polished to the void, my domestic labour serves as multifold in the demands of emotion. Projected on to sheets, distorted and twisted. The numbing violence as I hold those memories in my hands, but I've already forgotten as I hang up the line.

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YARNTHEA

live performance with pre-recorded audio Alex Chatwin-Dalglesih, Megan Kenna, and Gianni Posadas-Sen

Yarnthea is an experimental satire on the performing arts industry. It is an insistence on the importance of artists being present in spite of the challenges that artists are asked to overcome. It also embraces the joy and silliness of being an artist in this day and age as the visual and sonic world dips in and out of ordered, disordered and deconstructed gestures. The term yarnthea is a made up combination of “thea” taken from theatre, and “having a yarn” which this work is all about. Why not indulge in the chaos with us through laughter?

2022

Mermaids in the Basement, Dark Mofo + Constance ARI

Lychandra Gieseman + Gabbee Stolp + FFLORA + Caitlin Fargher + Eliza Rogers

Contribution: Performer

Bodies emerge from the depths of subterranean water worlds in nipaluna.
A forgotten river swallowed by streets sets the scene for a performative fashion show.

Once the performance concludes, sights and sounds will remain around the fountain until the festival is over, decaying into a wilted, slimy wreath.

Mermaids in the Basement is situated on the forgotten shoreline of timtumili minanya/Derwent River. Underneath trickles the rivulet, fresh water flowing from kunanyi, diverted through tunnels and drains, it flows ever onwards into its friend. When it floods, it remembers its old banks.

This is Muwinina Country. We pay our respects to the Muwinina People who cared for these waterways and this land, and we honour the Palawa/Pakana community as the continuing custodians of lutruwita/Tasmania, their Elders past present and emerging. This always was, and always will be Aboriginal land.