Local stories

We are past the halfway mark of the Pyjama Girl’s premiere season at HotHouse Theatre and I’ve had word that the Pyjama Girl is the biggest selling show at HotHouse Theatre in six years.

Yes. Six years! Obviously I am utterly delighted, so I’ll take a bow now to get it out of the way.

Because the success of the show is not about my script. 

It’s due to two things: telling a local story, and community engagement throughout the development process. 

Why local stories matter
The murder mystery of the woman found in the culvert just outside Albury is an enduring part of the local history. No town, of course, wants to be known for an awful crime, so it’s a fraught history. It’s a story often told in hushed whispers, or left out altogether.

The nine actors involved in the show, all local and all under the age of 26, had never heard about the Pyjama Girl. At just a few years older than them, I had. I thought it was important that 79 years after the crime, we ensure the pyjama girl case doesn’t pass out of living memory. 

I don’t believe the murdered young woman ever got justice or recognition of her true identity. We forget also, the anguish that must have been experienced by her family and all the other families of missing people who are denied closure on what happened to their loved one, whether in the 1930s or today.

People often ask me why the play isn’t being performed in Canberra, where I now live. The answer is: the mystery happened in Albury. 

I’m not saying it’s only a story for the Albury/Wodonga region—in fact, we’d love to tour it—but I’m saying it is a story for that region first. 

In my day job, I work in public relations. Whenever I get a brief to write something, my first question is always: who’s the audience?

We often assume that one theatre audience is like the next. This is not true. Every performance is different, which is just one of many reasons why theatre is wonderful. Every audience brings their own perspective.

Touring a show to a regional city as a test run before opening in a major capital city, for example, won’t always be indicative of the audience response in the capital city audience. Also, it can be a little insulting, because it implies that the regional area doesn’t have its own stories. 

At the end of the day, the play is for the audience. That’s how we sell tickets and sustain theatre companies.

(In this case of course, the play is also about the actors, all young and emerging, who gained experience working with a writer through the workshopping process. But this ultimately is about them developing the skills to perform—on stage, to an audience, so you see, we are back at that argument again.)

As you can tell, they're a delight to work with.

This is especially the case when it’s a story the audience grew up with. Many people in the local region have a connection to the pyjama girl case, which makes them likely to come and see a play about the story.

The play has generated a huge amount of excitement for that very reason. 

The value of community engagement 
This is where community engagement came in. I was very aware when I began the project that many locals have a sense of ownership of the story. It wasn’t for me to take that story away and speak on their behalf. I wanted people to feel they had a bit of ownership in the play as well, and that meant hearing what people had to say.

I conducted innumerable interviews with local residents, historians, historical society members, and people connected in the case. 

At first, it was about research and gathering material. As the process continued, I realised that what I was doing was giving people the opportunity to tell their stories. 

So connecting with the community became an important part of the process. Jon Halpin, the Artistic Director at HotHouse Theatre also wanted to provide insight into the development process of a new work-in-progress, which worked hand-in-hand with this. 

We had public reading of an early draft of the script about a year ago. At the Q and A afterwards, a lady introduced herself as the granddaughter of one of the families accused (and later exonerated) of the crime. 

As part of the Write Around the Murray festival in September, we held another reading of the work in progress. 

I’d scripted a joke about Albury getting electricity before Wodonga (the rivalry between the twin cities is legendary). I’d been told this by an Albury based historian. A Wodonga-based historian wanted to correct the record and left envelopes with the theatre the next day, containing the news articles and legislation that proved Wodonga, in fact, had electricity first. 

I had another lady approach me because she wanted to talk to me about the depiction of Lucy Collins, the rather tragic local drunk. The audience member knew Lucy and wanted to make sure I knew Lucy had been a confirmed red wine drinker, because there was a line in the script about Lucy drinking beer.

I was stunned with the response and generosity of what people shared with me. People sent me newspaper clippings and old photographs. Historians squabbled over electricity. People made introductions to other people with stories to tell. I spent hours talking in a Sydney café with a film-maker who lent me his thesis. The author of book on the pyjama girl dug through his own boxes of archived research to find a list of names for me. Relatives of Lind Agostini emailed me personal documents. I got letters, advice, and emails. People spread the word and the community remembered the Pyjama Girl again. 

Engaging with the community gave me a wealth of material and helped establish an audience (because if you don’t know the community, you can’t know your audience).

It helped get this story onto the stage. 

And then it helped the show to smash the box office.

The success of the Pyjama Girl is also strong proof for two funding arguments.

1. Regional arts funding cannot be underestimated. 
2. The importance of investing in the development of new work.

Without HotHouse Theatre, this story wouldn’t have been told. I wrote more about this in a ranty-pants letter last year.

So thank you HotHouse (and Jon) for programming the show and for all the support, including a director with a vision in Travis Dowling, and a cast of ridiculously multi-talented actors.

(Thank you for letting me have live music on stage, magic tricks, a magician’s box, tap dancing, a puppet show, and a hard-working follow-spot!)

Programming new work can be a risk for an arts organisation. Will the writer turn in the script on time? Will it be any good? Will it sell well enough to cover costs? New work is untested. It takes time to develop (in this case, about 18 months, which is on the short side). And of course, it costs money to develop, in a sector always cash-strapped.

The Pyjama Girl received a small amount of funding for its development. I think it’s well and truly proven the worth of that investment already. 

…Of course, I might be biased. 

Who was Antonio Agostini?

Antonio Agostini's tomb in Sardinia

While there are fictional elements in this dramatization of the Pyjama Girl mystery, it is based on true events, facts, and people.

I’ve put together these biographies from a variety of sources, including research by Richard Evans, Bruce Pennay, Alec Morgan, and Robert Coleman, as well as interviews, old newspaper articles and court documents.

Photos of Tony can be viewed here. Here's one of him on the beach with his wife Linda.

Antonio Agostini was born in Altivole, Northern Italy in 1903. He moved to Australia in 1927 and met Linda, who was to become his wife, the following year. He is remembered as a waiter, as that was his occupation when he confessed to murdering his wife, but in reality he was far more ambitious than that.

Tony worked as a journalist and started an Italian language paper in Australia. He was a well-regarded member of the Italian community.

He was also a loyal member of the Italian Fascist party and because of this, in June 1940, he was one of 172 Italians arrested in accordance with the detailed plan prepared by NSW Police Commissioner Mackay. Tony was interred at camps in regional NSW for 3 years and 8 months.

Tony had a girlfriend who he wrote to, but it seems they never saw each other again after he got out of the camps, because his freedom was brief. He got a job working at the exclusive Romano’s restaurant after his release, where he was previously worked as a cloakroom attendant. There, he came into contact again with a regular client—MacKay. The way the story goes, MacKay noticed that Agostini didn’t seem the cheerful man he had met some 10 years earlier, and on asking Agostini why he seemed changed, Agostini confessed to killing his wife.

Agostini was charged with manslaughter, not murder, which at the time, carried a hanging penalty. He served 3 years and 8 months in prison. He was apparently a model prisoner, described as a quiet, gentle man, and worked in the Pentridge Prison Library. On his release, he was smuggled out in the middle of the night and put on a cruise liner to extradite him out of the country on the orders of the immigration minister, Arthur Calwell.

Agostini first returned to Northern Italy, where he had grown up, before settling in Cagliari, the capital city of the island of Sardinia. Perhaps this appealed to Agostini, where it was unlikely he would have acquaintances who knew about his life in Australia. He opened two clothing stores and married a widow Giuseppina Gasoni. He died in 1969.

Playwriting odyssey

Half my lifetime ago (almost) I was in Year 10 at what was then called Wodonga High School and it was time for work experience. For some reason, I hadn’t organised what I wanted to do. This was out of character for me, because I was a disgusting overachiever. I was the kid with the waving hand who always knew the answer and had a ridiculous amount of extra-curricular activities—public speaking and debating, working on the school magazine, SRC, playing in three bands, doing speech and drama lessons outside school, performing in school plays and learning how to operate lighting, and writing in my spare time. Aside from my lack of interest in PE and my preference for writing poetry in my maths class—which eventually led to me being excused from maths lest I damage the bell curve—I was a good student and usually well organised. But here was something where I didn’t have the answer.

Work experience came around and I had no idea what to do. Some of my friends were doing practical things, like working at Target or McDonalds in the hope that it would lead to an after-school job. Others were doing glamorous things, like doing placements at the local TV station. Others had figured out what they wanted to do after school and were experiencing life as a vet or nurse or teacher.

The fact that I hadn’t yet figured out what I wanted to do with my life was probably behind my failure to act and find a work experience host in time. So, at the eleventh hour, one of my teachers put in a call to HotHouse Theatre. I was interested in acting, and had vague thoughts that if that didn’t work out, my ‘back-up career’ would be as a writer. I sometimes think I must have been equal parts arrogant and ignorant. And yet, for most of my grown-up life, I have made my living as a writer. And while playwriting takes priority, I still perform a bit too.

I was aware that HotHouse existed, if only because it shared office space with the Fruit Fly Circus, which friends of mine trained at. HotHouse management at the time was reluctant to take me on, because there had been an influx of work experience students so there were none of the usual type of work experience tasks left. But they agreed.

As it turns out, I was a terrible work experience student. I kept accidentally hanging up on people when I tried to transfer calls, and I was too shy to spruik the programs well at the matinee show I worked.

But then, on the third day, I was put in the theatre for the day. It was bump out time for the show that had just finished, Andreas Litras’ one-man show Odyssey.

Andreas Litras applying white face paint in his Odyssey. Sorry I did a crap job selling your programs Andreas.

I got to explore the fascinating backstage area of the Butter Factory Theatre and Andreas made conversation with me and showed how he had kitted out his prop suitcase—with white greasepaint that he applied mid show. I remember asking him how he put on the makeup without a mirror and he joked and said ‘with little success’. 

My supervisor that day was Rob. He’s still working tech at HotHouse, including for The Pyjama Girl. He doesn’t remember me from back then, but when I was on work experience, he tricked me into vacuuming and sweeping all of the theatre, and then tutored me in the invaluable craft of ‘wrapping leads’.

I loved it. I was already a believer in the magic of theatre, and now I felt I was entering a secret world that gave me a glimpse into a hidden world.

Little did I know that, 10 years later, I would finally discover what I wanted to do with my life—to inhabit that world and create theatre. 

Having The Pyjama Girl come to life on that very same stage I once swept so enthusiastically is therefore pretty special. 

Me, circa 1999. 

It has taken me a long time to figure out I want to be a playwright (when I grow up). Unlike my teenaged self, I don’t think I’ve got all the answers, and I’m glad I’ve had to take a journey to find this one.

The play-in-progress preview reading

After I visited the Pyjama Girl at the cemetery in Melbourne, I jumped on a train and napped all the way to Albury. Then, it was straight to rehearsals in preparation for the staged reading that was happening two days later. Being in the theatre, and seeing the immense amount of work that the director, Travis, and cast had done while I’d been away in Italy was really exciting, not in the least because I’d made some script revisions before I left Australia and this was my first opportunity to see the changes. 

On Thursday 5 September HotHouse presented a public staged reading as part of the Write Around the Murray festival. This was followed by a Q and A session. I, of course, was still jet-lagged, and arrived at the theatre an hour and a half before the actor’s call, because I got the time wrong. Continuing my habit of sleeping in things that are not beds: planes, trains, my Mum’s Winnebago, I had a kip on a couch in the dressing rooms, which as it turns out, is an excellent place for napping, especially when the delightful production manager turned off the lights and put on the gentle blue backstage lights instead. 

Everything moved quickly after that and before I knew it, audience members were appearing in the foyer. My Mum and sister came along, as did my Dad, who by amazing coincidence was in Albury that week. That was an exciting moment for me personally, as he has never seen a play I’ve written because he doesn’t live near me. (And also, he’s not really a theatre type. When I was 18 and told him I was going to university to study a Bachelor of Arts he said, ‘Why Emma? You can’t draw.’) 

The reading went very well—except for a technical hiccup. 

While the first reading held in December last year had been quite static, with actors sitting or standing in a row and reading from a script, this time, movement was included, and even live music. Travis read a few stage directions as needed, for example, when scenes hadn’t yet been fully choreographed, or set pieces (like a magician’s box) weren’t on stage. A few songs were even performed live, and keyboard and drums were used to underscore parts of the performance. 

The keyboard, which had worked in rehearsal and when it was tested 10 minutes before the performance, stopped working. The actors, kept going, as good actors should, and the MC even began singing the first song a capella before the technical director called a halt to the show. 

The pianist brought out a second keyboard—but this one didn’t connect to the same power supply. Rapidly, another keyboard was brought out (I think it might have been the first one coming back again) and there was some amusing slapstick as the two keyboards were swapped around) and then finally, a third, much smaller keyboard came out, which had the audience in hysterics. A lady sitting behind me whispered to her friend ‘Oh, I think this is part of the show.’

Finally the keyboard was connected, and technical director Rob took a bow to uproarious laughter and applause.

(As we all know, techs usually spent their time sitting in confined spaces in the dark, so I think Rob enjoyed his moment on stage).

The MC made a few jokes as laughter subsided and the show resumed from the start of the song. 

From there on in, everything went smoothly. Pleasingly, some audience members even joined in singing an old musical hall sing-a-long called ‘Oh Oh Antonio’ (link), which was exactly what I’d hoped for. People laughed in places we hadn’t expected, as well as places we had expected.

After this, I joined Travis, HotHouse Artistic Direct Jon, local historian Bruce, and some cast members on stage for a Q and A facilitated by Jenni Munday. We spoke about the development process and got some good feedback from the audience. We were even able to ask a few of our own questions to see what worked for the audience.

My Dad had asked me, the day before, why I was writing the play, and I said that I had remembered hearing him and Mum talk about it in the car when we were driving along the Howlong road when I was a small child. He said he didn’t think so. 

So either I misremember, or he does, but my Dad doesn’t think he was ever aware of the spot on the road where the Pyjama Girl was found. 

This means that much-used answer I give when people ask me while I’m writing this play may not be true after all. This is strangely fitting in a play that throughout its development, has led me to observe how our memories are so vulnerable to being eroded by mythology.

A grave pilgrimage - part 1

Earlier this year, I found out I’d been accepted into the La Mama Umbria playwriting retreat. I was quite excited about the prospect of 10 days to write and experience the Italian countryside.

 

(I could rave for days, but I’ll simply say that it was pure bliss and far beyond my wildest expectations. The people, the creative nourishment, the obscenely large home-grown tomatoes atop delicious food and the beautiful surrounds, in part mythic, rugged, and tranquil; all had me in a kind of mad bliss. Inspiration grows in the hills of Umbria. After almost two years working on the Pyjama Girl, and more than two years working on my play before that, Widowbird, I’d spent so much time on revisions, I wasn’t sure I could remember how to tackle a first draft. While I was with La Mama I wrote the first draft of a new play, and somewhere between Dubai airport and the train back to Albury on the way home, I finished the first draft of another project I’d been struggling with.)

At a creative development at HotHouse Theatre, I was talking to the Pyjama Girl cast about my plans for Italy and one of the actors asked if I planned to visit Tony Agostini’s grave. The thought hadn’t even occurred to me. Within a few days—after figuring out the difference between the islands of Sardinia and Sicily—I had booked my flights to visit Cagliari, the town where Tony Agostini lived the final years of his life.

Sardinia is a strange place. D.H. Lawrence thought so too:

 

“Cagliari: a naked town rising steep, steep, golden looking, piled naked to the sky from the plain at the head of a formless hollow bay. It is strange and rather wonderful, not a bit like Italy. The city piles up lofty and almost miniature, and makes me think of Jerusalem: without trees, without cover, rising rather bare and proud, remote as if back in history, like a town in a monkish, illuminated missal. One wonders how it ever got there. And it seems like Spain or Malta: not Italy. It is a steep and lonely city, as in some old illumination. Yet withal rather jewel-like: like a sudden rose-cut amber jewel naked at the depth of the vast indenture. The air is cold, blowing bleak and bitter, the sky is all curd. And that is Cagliari. It has that curious look, as if it could be seen but not entered. It is like some vision, some memory, something that has passed away." (D.H. Lawrence, Sea and Sardinia - 1921)

Closer to Tunis than it is to Rome, Cagliari, the port-side capital, is a melting pot of culture. North African street traders try to entice you to buy cheap sunglasses or knock off bags beneath ancient white buildings. The city is built into cliffs so steep there are elevators for pedestrians in some parts. Narrow cobbled streets sometimes have vast gaps where part of a building has crumbled away, allowing a view of the sky between tall stone apartments where people go about their lives. There’s graffiti, but not as much as Rome. Hardly anyone speaks English. The bus service is efficient and has live information on the next bus at almost every bus stop—far more sophisticated than public transport in Canberra. There’s a lively shopping strip where I stumbled upon a street band playing steel drums, banjo, cello and trumpet. Nearby, there’s an excellent gelataria I visited multiple times for lampone e limone—raspberry and lemon—gelato. At night, the moon hangs bright and enormous. From the top part of town, the ancient Castello area, it seems like the moon is lower than you are. The whole experience made me think vaguely of the Star Wars cantina where Han Solo blows off that guy’s arm. Bizarre and vibrant and otherworldly.

A street in Cagliari.

My journey to visit Agostini’s grave was both simpler and more challenging than expected. My host at the Bed and Breakfast had helpfully printed me a Google map with stop locations, line numbers and schedules. Using my best Italian, I bought a daily bus ticket from the nearest Tabacchi (news stand/cigarette/bus ticket vendor on almost every corner) and jumped on the bus. There my Italian failed when I asked the bus driver if he could tell me when we reached Cimitero San Michele. It turns out I was mispronouncing the word for cemetery and he wanted to let me off at the San Michele markets a stop before. But, with the Google maps telling me I had another stop or two, plus a group of old Sardinian ladies carrying flowers and wearing black who figured out what I was trying to say, the whole bus agreed that I needed the next stop, taught me how to pronounce it properly (CHimitero), and we smiled and laughed, and then the old ladies walked me across the road to the Cimitero lest I get lost.

Cimitero San Michele, Cagliari, view from main entrance.

At the Cimitero, another challenge. I’d checked before I left Australia the opening times for the cemetery and the information office, but once inside the vast cemetery I couldn’t find the information office. Finally, I found the groundskeeper’s office, and inside, among 1970s décor, two men smoking and listening to the radio. Neither spoke English. One went off to see if they had a map for me, while I tried to explain to the other that I was looking for a grave. ‘Dove la tomba per Antonio Agostini-‘ I began while he waved his hands and shrugged and said something about a computer. I wrote down Agostini’s date of death on a piece of paper, because I never really managed to learn how to count past 10 in Italian. He pointed to a piece of paper. The computer with grave locations was in the information office. They didn’t have a computer here (of course they didn’t have a computer. It was still the 1970s in their office). And the information office was only open lunedi, martedi, mercoledi, giovedi and venerdi.

And today was Saturday.

Bugger.

(Now that I think about it—that was probably the perfect opportunity to use a new Italian swear word I’d learnt a few days before, but I didn’t).

I said okay and explained (with the aid of universal pantomime) that I would just go looking. He shook my hand and wished me luck.

So, slightly panicked, I set off to look for a needle in a haystack, anxiously checking my watch, and kicking myself for poor scheduling. For some reason, even though it was the most important activity—indeed, the very thing that had brought me to Sardinia, I had left it to my last day. I’d already toured pristine aquamarine beaches along Sardinia’s rugged south coast, visited Phoenician ruins near the town of Pula, seen wild flamingos in a lagoon near a windmill farm, and eaten sardines in Sardinia at a fancy seafood restaurant. Now, I had six hours before I needed to go collect my bags and get to the airport and I had no idea where to start in the huge cemetery. If only I’d come yesterday!

I told myself to calm down. ‘It doesn’t really matter if I don’t find the grave. It’s about the journey. I’m still here.’ I tried to be Zen about it. At the playwriting retreat, which I had just left the day before, Erik Ehn, playwright, facilitator, sage, had told us that we were always in the middle of the process of writing a play. We learnt to embrace ‘being in the middle’ (again, I could write a thesis on this, but I utterly agree. As a playwright, my creativity shrivels when I spent too much time thinking about the end point, rather than being busily engaged in the creating).

I started walking. In the centre of the cemetery are large walls of tombs—an outdoor mausoleum, in some sections two stories high. Early on, in an L-shaped wall, I noticed the tomb of a woman called Guiseppina, which was the name of Agostini’s second wife, a widow he had married upon settling in Cagliari. I wasn’t sure if she had the right surname, but her date of death was just three weeks from his. (I later found out that it was the wrong Guiseppina after all.)

Certain he would be interred nearby, I started exploring all the nearby walls. I found many tombs from 1969, but there also didn’t seem to be a logical order of dates.

‘Surely he won’t be far away,’ I thought. But he wasn’t in that large L-shaped wall, nor the next, nor the next after that. My neck began to hurt from craning to read inscriptions. I was sweating (it was about 35 degrees that day at 11 am) and I was starting to get sunburnt. I was starting to worry that he wasn’t in one of the mausoleum walls at all but in the vast burial grounds, where I’d seen handmade crosses and graves that weren’t marked at all. But then, 45 minutes later, having resigned myself to the possibility of not finding him, and after covering about a third of the walls, I found myself looking at the name Antonio Agostini. My B and B host, who I’d told about my quest, said that Agostini was not a Sardinian name, so he would be easy to find in a cemetery. She was right; I didn’t see anyone else called Agostini. Now, I did a double take to confirm I wasn’t imagining it. It was him. Strangely, I felt like I was about to start crying.

Tony Agostini’s tombstone is simple, unadorned, and almost illegible. The engraved letters in the rock haven’t been filled with gold or lead like most of the other inscriptions, so in direct sunlight, the stone appears blank. I pulled a ladder across and climbed to get a better look, although I stopped a few rungs from the top, because I’m scared of heights and I was more than 10 feet high, because it was windy, and because the ladder was on wheels and I was on a gentle slope.

Mausoleum wall. Agostini's tomb is third from the top, near the centre of the photo.

I left a small piece of metal that my Mum had given me before I left Albury—an offcut from a plaque, I think—engraved with one word: Australia.

Then I caught the bus back to the B and B to collect my camera.

‘Did you find him?’ my host asked, ‘Did you find your man?’

She was delighted I had. I felt shell-shocked. I think because I had spent so long talking about, writing about and reading about this man that he had passed into mythology for me.

After some time sightseeing and eating gelato, I went back to the cemetery again and found my way to Agostini’s tomb easily this time.

I wondered if I was doing the right thing by leaving the small Australia badge. Would he want to be reminded of his time here? Would he want to be remembered?

Antonio Agostini's tomb.

 

 

 

Jet-lagged video blog

I'm sure I meant to post this earlier. Anyway, here's me, talking about a new word I learned while in Italy.

Another post to come soon on my quest to Sardinia to find Antonio Agostini (well, his tomb) and the recent public staged reading of the Pyjama Girl that HotHouse put on as part of the Write Around the Murray festival.

A video blog

 

Turns out I'm hopeless at keeping up a blog, so here's a video of me talking about where I'm up to with this project. I've just finished another wonderful creative development with the HotHouse ensemble, and after a research binge, handed in a fresh draft of the script.

While driving back from Albury I had an unfortunate side adventure when my car ran out of petrol because a major service station on the Hume Highway, which shall remain nameless, was already closed at 10 pm. As someone who regularly travels the highway, this was a surprise to me.

As someone who has completely memorised the statement of Antonio Agostini, the man who confessed to murdering the Pyjama Girl, who details how he had taken a tin of petrol with him when he drove the body from Melbourne to Albury because he knew he wouldn't be able to get petrol overnight, the irony wasn't lost on me. Also, because y'know, it's not the 1930s any more. Luckily we have mobile phones, so I was able to phone a friend to rescue me.

Nontheless, I spent some post-midnight hours in my car, on a lonely, pitch black country road (to Binalong, not Howlong, as in the Pyjama Girl case) I decided to use my time sensibly by taking in script revision while I waited for assistance. After I got my car started again I discovered I had been parked on a culvert (a drain under a road).

The Pyjama Girl was found in a culvert on the Howlong Road, and I can now imagine, much more clearly, just how lonely that place must have been and the sheer luck that the body was discovered as soon as it was.

Why writing a play is like finding a door in a fairy tree

I’m writing this well-overdue post from the Winnebago at my Mum’s place, on the banks of the Hume Weir. It’s where I stay when I’m in near Albury, at the site of what used to be a railway station long ago. 

 Earlier, on the way to the toilet block (things are basic here: no connection to the town water supply, next to zero phone reception, and if I can get enough electricity to charge my laptop and my phone I consider it a good day*) Mum showed me a little project she’s been working on.

It’s rather delightful and it’s also a cute (possibly twee) metaphor. There’s a tree near the picnic area of the reserve that has a knot in the trunk that resembles a door. It reminded Mum of something from a fairy tale. So she and her partner found an antique door knob and attached it to the tree. It was a simple thing, but it made Mum happy. The excitement of some visiting kids sparked her off on another mission—to source a small ceramic fairy and a set of toadstools to add to the tree.

One day a lady came up to the house to ask Mum if she knew who had adorned the fairy tree, and if they’d mind if she made her own contribution. A few weeks later, another set of campers asked Mum if the owner of the fairy tree would appreciate some landscaping.

The fairy tree now has some solar lights, a cross-bar of branches in the ‘window’, a path of pebbles around it, and geraniums planted around the trunk. It is inhabited by four fairies, an ornamental worm that reminds me the worm from the Labyrinth, and a hedgehog. 

It continues to grow and change. One of the fairies fell out and broke its wings a few weeks ago. Mum glued the wings back on, and it is sitting on a lower branch temporarily, while Mum figures out where to put it. This is exactly what I’ve been doing lately while I puzzle over how to put this play together.

At the tree, some of the pebbles have disappeared from the fairy’s garden, changing the boundaries, but someone will probably replenish them soon.

The best thing about the fairy tree is that it’s organically evolved into a collaborative art project, and there’s just as much enjoyment in the process of making as there is in viewing.

In today’s workshop, I worked with a combination of new actors and actors I’d worked with on the previous draft of this script. With my director Travis, we had a table read and then started the feedback portion by going around the table and hearing each actor’s contribution. From this gentle start point the conversation built up until we were throwing around new ideas, finding solutions to problems, finding problems, finding opportunities—and finding things we hadn’t seen before. Things that, like the door in the tree trunk, were already there, just waiting for someone to add a doorknob. Most pleasingly, Travis and I were quite literally on the same page; comparing notes afterwards, we’d marked the same parts to cut or move.

It was one of those workshops that makes me realise why I do this—and why I enjoy collaboration so much.

Mum’s motivation to put that door knob there was simply because it seemed like fun. ‘I just had to,’ she said. ‘It was perfect. How could I say no to the opportunity?’ (Insert pun about opportunity knocking….)

For me, it’s the same thing—writing a play seems like a good idea. We all think that to start with, then inevitably hate the project for a while. But more to the point, we do it because—well, why wouldn’t we? We are compelled to create. Just as my Mum couldn’t keep walking past that tree, I cannot deny my urge to write.

And while we can do it alone, there’s so much to be gained by collaborating. In fact, that’s what has made me focus in on playwriting as a form above others.

So, the moral to this story, if there is one, is this:

Building a play can be a lot like making a whimsical fairy tree. All it take is an idea and imagination.

(Sometimes a suspension of disbelief.)

And as people get involved and share your vision you create something that can be shared and enjoyed by others.

And that feels pretty good too.



*I actually wrote this post on Saturday, but haven’t had an internet connection since then. Or reliable electricity.

A letter to Arts NSW

Update: Stoked to hear that common sense has prevailed. Arts NSW is giving HotHouse Theatre transitional funding for 2013 (at the amount originally requested) so HotHouse can continue making and presenting locally and nationally significant work. Also goes to show that writing rantypants letters (see below) can help.

It was amazing to see the surge of support from across the country and the good folk at HotHouse reckon the enthusiastic and widespread letter and email writing campaign to Arts NSW and Arts Minister George Souris had a definite impact on this decision. They sincerely thank the local community in Albury Wodonga and the national industry for their support during this tumultuous time.

Well done to everyone at HotHouse and chookers for the 2013 season launch next week!

I am writing to express my outrage at the appalling decision of Arts NSW to defund HotHouse Theatre in 2013.

Beyond the concerning absence of fair process and transparency from Arts NSW, this decision further undermines the value of the arts in Australia and isolates people living in regional Australia.

Wayne Swan said no Australian should be disadvantaged because of their postcode. Growing up in the postcode of 3691, I experienced the isolation, social exclusion and lack of opportunity that the federal Government has worked so hard to tackle in the past few years.

I wasn’t good at sport, so I didn’t fit in. I was so shy and socially undeveloped that my primary school had me tested for autism. In secondary school, I felt acutely disadvantaged because even with distance education, my school of 1000 students was unable to offer the same curriculum as metro schools.

Then I discovered drama. Through the arts, I learnt how to express myself, think critically, interact with others and other crucial life skills; I wouldn’t be where I am today without theatre.

At 16, I did work experience at HotHouse and saw how it was doing so much with so little. Telling local (and national) stories, providing emerging artists with their start, and building an organisation of influence and high regard. Transforming a tin shed into a significant arts venue.

The effect of arts may not be easily quantifiable or tangible and that is precisely why government funding is so vital.

Denying funding to such a key organisation is not only emblematic of the recently popular myth that the arts don’t matter in a country where sport is king—it’s heartbreaking.

The fact is, HotHouse has experienced sustained growth and remains a valued institution, by the local community, by artists, and nationally.

Art is not fat that can be trimmed. 

If you’re not willing to put a price on it, then how can artists? By devaluing the work of a vital Key Organisation you set a dangerous precedent for a slide into a cultural wasteland. A far call from the vision for a creative Australia that had bi-partisan support at the Australia 2020 Summit.

Here’s my stake: I’m an emerging playwright who has spent 2012 developing a new work through the Australia Council JUMP Mentorship program.

HotHouse, which remains one of the few remaining companies specialising in the development of new work and supporting emerging playwrights, was to produce this new work.

In fact, just a few days ago, I was delighted to proofread the publicity artwork.

Today, I was devastated to learn that once again regional Australia has been sidelined. The message seems loud and clear: you don’t matter.

Regards

Emma Gibson

What I'm doing now...

No, this blog hasn’t gone dark. I’ve come to the end of my Jump Mentorship, so have been allowing the dust to settle post-acquittal.

Thus I reach the end of phase 1 of this project. More on that later.
First, I want to acknowledge the great support I got throughout the Jump mentorship process, particularly from Jan and David at Canberra Contemporary Art Space, and of course, my mentor Colette, who warned me of the Dark Side but then trusted I had enough of the Force to be able to decide myself whether or not to cross over. She’ll shortly be rewarded with an utterly heinous Scandinavian snow globe, which I expect will take pride of place on her mantelpiece.

Not this snowglobe though, sorry Coda.

Here’s what I’ve learnt:
• Dream big
• Work hard
• Have integrity
• Take up every opportunity you can
• You can’t please everyone all the time (so instead: write a good play).

Yes, they’re all platitudes and yes they’re things I already knew. Not to sound like a know-it-all. I think they’re things most of us know—but putting them into practice is often a different story.

The biggest accomplishment for me this year is the way I view my craft. I still want to be more disciplined and structured. I keep telling myself that I want to write for at least an hour a day—but that often doesn’t happen. Instead, I’ll spend hours on the laptop researching, editing, planning —because often, those types of things consume more of your time.

So I’ve learnt to write when and where I can. I’m very fond of 30-minute creative bursts. In fact, on my lunchbreak today I jotted out an early draft of a scene in my notebook sitting in the grass at the park across the road from work.

I also feel like I’m getting more involved in the arts community, and I’m definitely spending a lot more time at the theatre. That’s where I’m headed tonight.

So I no longer view myself as a hum-drum dabbler. I don’t think I’ll be getting Nobel prizes anytime soon either, but I do feel like I’m slowing clawing my way out of the metaphorical womb to one day become an ‘emerged’ (past tense) playwright. Though I don’t think the development journey is ever really done.
So, where to from here?

I’m still researching and am meeting an interview subject this weekend. Following a successful reading in Albury in October, and good feedback from actors and audience members, I’m working on the third draft as we speak.

I’ll be workshopping that with some actors and a director and then we’ll be having a reading at the Street Theatre in Canberra, in front of an invited audience.
From that—well, I’ll then start work on draft 4.

Early next year, I’ll start development activities with HotHouse Theatre, which will produce the pyjama girl play almost exactly 12 months from today.

It seems like a long way off, but part of the beauty of writing plays is the collaborative aspects and partly because of this, the development process can take time. For me, the average length of time I spend writing a script is a year on average. The last one was closer to 2.5 years. It was an epic though, to be fair, and what I’m terming my ‘apprenticescript’.

I learnt a stack from that. I’m learning a stack more from this one, and I know there’s more exciting stuff waiting for me next year.

Hearing voices

A few days ago, I sat in HotHouse Theatre's studio space and heard the play read aloud by actors for the very first time, which is always a thrill. It’s also terrifying. Much like an amusement park ride (including the sensation of butterflies in my stomach immediately before).

Hearing other people give voice to the characters has helped clarify the story for me—and more importantly, the voices that are missing. I know I have more work to do on the script. I know this gives me wonderful opportunities.

And while I couldn’t stop myself from making some small revisions, I also know that it’s important to leave it with the actors for now and see what they find in the script, without the writer in the room.

While I’ve shot back to Canberra for a few days, director Travis Dowling has been working with the HotHouse actor ensemble and the delightful Susie Dee, as well as HotHouse artistic director Jon Halpin, to prepare the public debut of The Pyjama Girl play.

It’s a great opportunity for audience members to see something so early in its development and have their say on it—and this is important to me because many people in the community have expressed a sense of ownership or connection to the story.

At the same time, the talented emerging actors taking part in the read are getting to learn more about the process of developing and workshopping a script.

When I hit the Hume Highway on Friday night (the same road travelled by the Sydney detectives in 1934 when they were summoned to investigate the murder of the woman found in the culvert) to travel the familiar road to Albury/Wodonga, it will be with a great sense of anticipation.

So, if you’re in the area, head along to the Butter Factory Theatre (Gateway Village, Wodonga) to hear HotHouse present a rehearsed reading of The Pyjama Girl. Twice! 3 pm and 7 pm. Entry is a gold coin donation, going to Betty's Place Women's Refuge.