Either high school productions have improved greatly since I last saw one nearly 30 years ago, or the drama students at Koonung Secondary are exceptional. The performance I attended on Saturday evening was terrific.
The small close-knit group of students ranging from Year 8 to Year 12 were brave to have a go at this show, and they were prepared to take risks. Those risks well and truly paid off and the company can be proud of what they have achieved.
Students composed music for the shows songs, and the music was a highlight of the night's performance. Bravo. My 13 year old companion thought the soundtrack created too cheerful a mood to complement the dark material the actors were working with, but I thought it was fitting and struck the right note of melancholy.
The simple staging techniques were well executed and effective. The absence of scenery and extensive costuming exposes the actors more than usual; the mood, the scene, all has to be conveyed by the actor, as well as the dialogue. Hard going, but the Koonung students pulled it off. The cast members, many of them experienced performers, were well equipped to cope with the demands of the script.
The Threepenny Opera is a bit “out there” and heavy and despite their youth the cast members handled the material with maturity and sincerity.
My only quibble is a technical one. I had trouble hearing the soloists over the piano, and I was seated in the second row. The majority of the theatre couldn't hear those lovely singing voices well enough to truly appreciate them.
Overall, a top show. 4 stars.
Sunday, June 12, 2011
The Tweetpenny Opera?
Published in the Koonung Secondary College newsletter 31st May 2011
The Tweetpenny Opera?
I heard a sample of Koonung Secondary College’s forthcoming production of Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at a recent Open Night at the school, and I was so impressed by the students’ performance I jumped online and booked tickets straight away, and you should too!
But don’t just take my word for it. I asked Casey Bennetto, who starred in the joint Malthouse Theatre and Victorian Opera production of The Threepenny Opera in 2010, why the Koonung Secondary College community should see this play. Here’s the response Casey sent in a series of tweets via Twitter.
“3Penny is one of the first musicals to attempt to turn the form on its head - where musicals are normally la-di-da and implausible romance and sugary ridiculousness, 3Penny breaks out the chainsaw. Everyone is corrupt, everyone has an angle. Full of sex and violence. And the school community will be seeing this? I object in the strongest possible terms!”
So there you have it folks - an evening of debauchery awaits you! I hope to see you there.
Leanne Shingles
The Tweetpenny Opera?
I heard a sample of Koonung Secondary College’s forthcoming production of Bertolt Brecht & Kurt Weill’s The Threepenny Opera at a recent Open Night at the school, and I was so impressed by the students’ performance I jumped online and booked tickets straight away, and you should too!
But don’t just take my word for it. I asked Casey Bennetto, who starred in the joint Malthouse Theatre and Victorian Opera production of The Threepenny Opera in 2010, why the Koonung Secondary College community should see this play. Here’s the response Casey sent in a series of tweets via Twitter.
“3Penny is one of the first musicals to attempt to turn the form on its head - where musicals are normally la-di-da and implausible romance and sugary ridiculousness, 3Penny breaks out the chainsaw. Everyone is corrupt, everyone has an angle. Full of sex and violence. And the school community will be seeing this? I object in the strongest possible terms!”
So there you have it folks - an evening of debauchery awaits you! I hope to see you there.
Leanne Shingles
Talk to the Hat podcast 1: Bec Kavanagh
After attending a session on podcasting at the Emerging Writers Festival I thought I would have a go at producing my own podcast. Here is the first attempt.
Talking to the Hat is Bec Kavanagh, Festival Director of A Thousand Words Festival.
Listen to Talk to the Hat podcat.
Talking to the Hat is Bec Kavanagh, Festival Director of A Thousand Words Festival.
Listen to Talk to the Hat podcat.
Tuesday, May 10, 2011
Five Formative Books
I woke up with a shocking cold and virtually no voice so I'm at home in front of the heater wearing red tartan ear muffs and warm fluffly slippers, thinking about formative fiction.
Inspired by Leslie Cannold's blog post The Books that Changed me, and with time off work due to illness, I've had a go at compiling my own list of the five books that changed me. If you visit Leslie's blog you'll see I have commented and republished my list there. The descriptions under each book title are shorter and limited to the book itself rather than going off on a tangent as I have below. It seemed poor form to fill Leslie's comments section with such drivel, but here on RToCM there's room for drivel a-plenty!
I'd love to read about the five books that changed you. Post away!
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A ripper yarn, beautifully told. The voices of the Price women/girls are so distinct from each other and the characters are richly drawn. The story structure is superb too. I remember taking comfort in the passage about a mother’s love for her last child, reading the book for the first time when my youngest child was only barely clinging on to infancy, and I knew there would be no more babies after her. “She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she has gone to sleep…She’s the one you can’t put down.” I went on to read most of Barbara’s other novels which were great stories too, but none of them affected me as much as this one did.
To Kill A Mocking Bird - Harper Lee
I read this at school in either year 6 or 7, and I remember being engrossed even though everyone in the class taking had turns reading passages aloud (with varying degrees of literacy) it took ages to get through it. As well as being a great story, reading this book provided our teacher and my classmates and I with the opportunity to talk about racism, justice and inequity in a way we hadn’t done before.
When Marnie Was There - Joan G. Robinson
Our family didn’t have a lot of disposable cash when I was a kid so instead of organising outings on school holidays to keep us occupied, Mum would take my brothers and I to the Opp. Shop at the top of Plenty Road and we’d stock up on books that were 5 or 10 cents each. My youngest brother was almost squashed in his pram by the boxes of books sitting on the awning above his head, and the base of the pram sagged from the weight of books underneath him. As a kid I didn’t have a strong sense of what I liked so Mum chose a lot of books for me, usually stories with great female characters - Cherry Ames, Sue Barton, Trixie Beldon - and this one. I wasn’t keen on it as it looked very dull, so I didn’t pick it up for ages. When I did read it I quickly became entangled in the beautiful, mysterious tale of the friendless foster child Anna who meets Marnie the sand dunes of Norfolk. This was the first book that made me cry, and the first novel-length book I re-read.
The World According to Garp - John Irving
I read this in my late teens, one of my first “grown up” books. I found it shocking, enlightening and funny, and although it was disconcerting to discover that adults perhaps didn’t have all the answers and could be just as confused as we teenagers were, it was also a relief. I looked at the adults in my life with new eyes and different expectations, and the pressure to develop into an “all-knowing” adult myself was relieved a little.
Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
It seems unfair to single out the first novel in this series of initially 6, and now 8 books, but I do so as it was my introduction to the folk of Barbary Lane, the free-wheeling uncompromising souls who became my fictional friends; I love re-visiting them from time to time and cheer when Armistead releases a new instalment. They are getting quite old now, particularly Mrs Madrigal. How the old girl hangs on is beyond me - I suspect it may be too traumatic for Armistead to consider killing her off. We have lost a few favourites along the way (sweet Dr Jon and corporate giant Edgar Halcyon) and some not-so-favourites (Norman Neal Williams, the creepy P.I. who lived in the roof-top apartment, and charming philanderer Beauchamp Day). All that pot smoking and sherry sipping has to catch up with Anna Madrigal at some point, surely.
I came to the book via the television mini-series that screened on ABC in the mid 1990s, twenty years after instalments were first published in San Francisco newspapers. I remember it was billed as a “controversial” television series, and it was certainly the first time I remember seeing gay and trans-gender characters taking centre stage, and being represented authentically, instead of the vacuous hyper camp all-male clichés of British comedy or the disturbed individuals of American dramas and novels. I don’t know if that makes it “controversial.”
The dialogue driven narrative of Tales of the City is funny and engaging, and for those of us that didn’t live in San Francisco in the 1970s, naïve nice-girl Mary Ann Singleton’s move from Cleveland to ‘cisco is the perfect vehicle for introducing us to that time and place.
In Australia, at the time I read Tales, John Howard was wresting the Prime Ministerial mantle from Paul Keating. From a period of hopeful optimism and burgeoning maturity (as well as a crushing economic recession) our country seemed to change rapidly and dramatically. Small-mindedness, meanness and bigotry dominated public debate, hostile racists were elected to our parliaments, and any attempt to honestly acknowledge our nation’s past and address some of the wrong doing was dismissed as a “black-arm band” view of history that shouldn‘t be entertained. Workers’ rights were under attack, as were the arts, and conservative men and women tried desperately to corral working women back into the home to have the required number of children. And if that wasn’t enough to put women in our place, the federal government deemed sanitary napkins and tampons were “luxuries” and we would therefore pay a goods and services tax on these essential items. (I believe this is still the case in 2011!). What does all this have to do with the book? Nothing really. But is it any wonder I preferred to spend time with fictional characters as big hearted and wise as Anna Madrigal and her Barbary Lane ‘children’ while all that was going on in reality?
My own living arrangements were similar to the Barbary Lane residents. I was in a large share house with a group of open minded big hearted folk, and at times we were like a family too. It's a time I look back on with genuine fondness and perhaps the way I associate those two households, one fictional the other real, has something to do with the fondness I feel for Tales of the City. Or maybe it's just a damn fine book.
Inspired by Leslie Cannold's blog post The Books that Changed me, and with time off work due to illness, I've had a go at compiling my own list of the five books that changed me. If you visit Leslie's blog you'll see I have commented and republished my list there. The descriptions under each book title are shorter and limited to the book itself rather than going off on a tangent as I have below. It seemed poor form to fill Leslie's comments section with such drivel, but here on RToCM there's room for drivel a-plenty!
I'd love to read about the five books that changed you. Post away!
The Poisonwood Bible - Barbara Kingsolver
A ripper yarn, beautifully told. The voices of the Price women/girls are so distinct from each other and the characters are richly drawn. The story structure is superb too. I remember taking comfort in the passage about a mother’s love for her last child, reading the book for the first time when my youngest child was only barely clinging on to infancy, and I knew there would be no more babies after her. “She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she has gone to sleep…She’s the one you can’t put down.” I went on to read most of Barbara’s other novels which were great stories too, but none of them affected me as much as this one did.
To Kill A Mocking Bird - Harper Lee
I read this at school in either year 6 or 7, and I remember being engrossed even though everyone in the class taking had turns reading passages aloud (with varying degrees of literacy) it took ages to get through it. As well as being a great story, reading this book provided our teacher and my classmates and I with the opportunity to talk about racism, justice and inequity in a way we hadn’t done before.
When Marnie Was There - Joan G. Robinson
Our family didn’t have a lot of disposable cash when I was a kid so instead of organising outings on school holidays to keep us occupied, Mum would take my brothers and I to the Opp. Shop at the top of Plenty Road and we’d stock up on books that were 5 or 10 cents each. My youngest brother was almost squashed in his pram by the boxes of books sitting on the awning above his head, and the base of the pram sagged from the weight of books underneath him. As a kid I didn’t have a strong sense of what I liked so Mum chose a lot of books for me, usually stories with great female characters - Cherry Ames, Sue Barton, Trixie Beldon - and this one. I wasn’t keen on it as it looked very dull, so I didn’t pick it up for ages. When I did read it I quickly became entangled in the beautiful, mysterious tale of the friendless foster child Anna who meets Marnie the sand dunes of Norfolk. This was the first book that made me cry, and the first novel-length book I re-read.
The World According to Garp - John Irving
I read this in my late teens, one of my first “grown up” books. I found it shocking, enlightening and funny, and although it was disconcerting to discover that adults perhaps didn’t have all the answers and could be just as confused as we teenagers were, it was also a relief. I looked at the adults in my life with new eyes and different expectations, and the pressure to develop into an “all-knowing” adult myself was relieved a little.
Tales of the City - Armistead Maupin
It seems unfair to single out the first novel in this series of initially 6, and now 8 books, but I do so as it was my introduction to the folk of Barbary Lane, the free-wheeling uncompromising souls who became my fictional friends; I love re-visiting them from time to time and cheer when Armistead releases a new instalment. They are getting quite old now, particularly Mrs Madrigal. How the old girl hangs on is beyond me - I suspect it may be too traumatic for Armistead to consider killing her off. We have lost a few favourites along the way (sweet Dr Jon and corporate giant Edgar Halcyon) and some not-so-favourites (Norman Neal Williams, the creepy P.I. who lived in the roof-top apartment, and charming philanderer Beauchamp Day). All that pot smoking and sherry sipping has to catch up with Anna Madrigal at some point, surely.
I came to the book via the television mini-series that screened on ABC in the mid 1990s, twenty years after instalments were first published in San Francisco newspapers. I remember it was billed as a “controversial” television series, and it was certainly the first time I remember seeing gay and trans-gender characters taking centre stage, and being represented authentically, instead of the vacuous hyper camp all-male clichés of British comedy or the disturbed individuals of American dramas and novels. I don’t know if that makes it “controversial.”
The dialogue driven narrative of Tales of the City is funny and engaging, and for those of us that didn’t live in San Francisco in the 1970s, naïve nice-girl Mary Ann Singleton’s move from Cleveland to ‘cisco is the perfect vehicle for introducing us to that time and place.
In Australia, at the time I read Tales, John Howard was wresting the Prime Ministerial mantle from Paul Keating. From a period of hopeful optimism and burgeoning maturity (as well as a crushing economic recession) our country seemed to change rapidly and dramatically. Small-mindedness, meanness and bigotry dominated public debate, hostile racists were elected to our parliaments, and any attempt to honestly acknowledge our nation’s past and address some of the wrong doing was dismissed as a “black-arm band” view of history that shouldn‘t be entertained. Workers’ rights were under attack, as were the arts, and conservative men and women tried desperately to corral working women back into the home to have the required number of children. And if that wasn’t enough to put women in our place, the federal government deemed sanitary napkins and tampons were “luxuries” and we would therefore pay a goods and services tax on these essential items. (I believe this is still the case in 2011!). What does all this have to do with the book? Nothing really. But is it any wonder I preferred to spend time with fictional characters as big hearted and wise as Anna Madrigal and her Barbary Lane ‘children’ while all that was going on in reality?
My own living arrangements were similar to the Barbary Lane residents. I was in a large share house with a group of open minded big hearted folk, and at times we were like a family too. It's a time I look back on with genuine fondness and perhaps the way I associate those two households, one fictional the other real, has something to do with the fondness I feel for Tales of the City. Or maybe it's just a damn fine book.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Having a larf
I’m just home from seeing Eddie Perfect’s performance of his show Misanthropology for the Melbourne International Comedy Festival at the Famous Spiegel Garden, and it was brilliant. He's such a talented man. Go see it if you can, there are only 4 more shows (and may even be sold out by now). I was entertained, challenged, made to feel mildly uncomfortable, and laughed my guts out. You can’t really ask for more than that!
But that’s not what I want to write about.
I went to the show on my own, running a wee bit later than I’d planned, and managed to walk through the door bang on start time. One of the glamorously attired front of house staff quickly ushered me to the remaining empty seat in the house, I dropped my bag on the floor, whipped my jacket off and sat just as the house lights went down. Timing!
The opening to the show is fairly spectacular, with dramatic lighting and a voice over intro from Eddie before he makes his way into the performance space to sing the first number. The intro, like everything else in the show, was funny. Not side-splitting guffaw funny, but worth more than a mere titter.
The woman sitting next to me laughed, along with most of the people in the tent. But her laugh rang out much louder than everyone else’s (not just because she was sitting right beside me - it was definitely a volume issue). And that was ok.
What made me really notice her laugh was the sound of it. It sounded like a fake laugh. Forced. The sort of laugh you might whip out when you’re trying to make someone feel like they are the funniest person in the world when in reality they are not in fact funny (which of course backfires because it is so obviously fake). Again, that was ok. It’s not unusual for some comedy patrons to bring out the fake laugh early in a show - maybe they want to be supportive of the artist, maybe they’re trying to encourage others to join in - who knows? But it’s not an altogether unusual occurrence.
As the show went on though, the woman’s fake sounding laugh continued to ring out. She was laughing in all the right places, but still I worried about her. It must be really hard work maintaining a fake laugh for so long.
I found myself stealing glances at her to check that she was ok. After all, fake laugh can be an indication that you’re not having a good time, maybe a sympathetic smile might make her feel as though she didn‘t have to try so hard. Maybe a smile from a stranger could help her relax a bit. I saw other heads turn her way, so I’m fairly confident I wasn’t imagining things.
But to my surprise, every time I looked at her she appeared to be genuinely having a great time. It didn’t add up.
And then the realisation hit me. She wasn’t fake laughing at all. She was laughing for real, only her real laugh sounded fake.
What an absolute curse! What a terrible affliction! To spend your life with the sound of your laugh causing suspicion, doubt and concern, when actually all you’re doing is having a giggle.
And it got me thinking about the sound of laughter. Anatomically, we’re all doing the same thing when we laugh, but in the same way that our voices sound different when we speak, I think I can generalise and say we all make slightly different sounds when we individually laugh. En masse though, it can be really difficult for your ear to discern the sound that each individual is making, unless there’s someone with a really distinct laugh in the group.
And in this case, poor old fake-sounding laugh lady was definitely discernible.
It reminded me of another distinctive laugh I heard a while ago. I was in a cinema with a friend and although the movie we saw could never be described as a comedy, it had a few funny moments in it.
A fellow sitting a few rows in front of us was a honker. Whenever he laughed he made a sound that can only be described as Demented Goose. HONK.
I was so alarmed when I first heard it, and wondered if perhaps he was choking. But he was still sitting up right, still moving a little, didn't seem to be jerking (as I imagine he might have if he had been choking) and I settle back to watch the movie. Next funny scene there it was again - HONK!
I exchanged a bemused glance with my friend.
Then it came again - HONK!
And I couldn’t help myself, I started to laugh at his laugh. So did my friend.
Appreciating that we were probably being a bit rude, and being women who tend to throw our heads back and laugh with gusto, we struggled with it but in the end successfully reigned in our mirth.
Until the end of the movie that is. We stayed in our seats while the rest of the patrons filed out, including the honking man. And then we laughed and laughed until we had tears streaming from our eyes.
And there wasn’t anything fake about it.
But that’s not what I want to write about.
I went to the show on my own, running a wee bit later than I’d planned, and managed to walk through the door bang on start time. One of the glamorously attired front of house staff quickly ushered me to the remaining empty seat in the house, I dropped my bag on the floor, whipped my jacket off and sat just as the house lights went down. Timing!
The opening to the show is fairly spectacular, with dramatic lighting and a voice over intro from Eddie before he makes his way into the performance space to sing the first number. The intro, like everything else in the show, was funny. Not side-splitting guffaw funny, but worth more than a mere titter.
The woman sitting next to me laughed, along with most of the people in the tent. But her laugh rang out much louder than everyone else’s (not just because she was sitting right beside me - it was definitely a volume issue). And that was ok.
What made me really notice her laugh was the sound of it. It sounded like a fake laugh. Forced. The sort of laugh you might whip out when you’re trying to make someone feel like they are the funniest person in the world when in reality they are not in fact funny (which of course backfires because it is so obviously fake). Again, that was ok. It’s not unusual for some comedy patrons to bring out the fake laugh early in a show - maybe they want to be supportive of the artist, maybe they’re trying to encourage others to join in - who knows? But it’s not an altogether unusual occurrence.
As the show went on though, the woman’s fake sounding laugh continued to ring out. She was laughing in all the right places, but still I worried about her. It must be really hard work maintaining a fake laugh for so long.
I found myself stealing glances at her to check that she was ok. After all, fake laugh can be an indication that you’re not having a good time, maybe a sympathetic smile might make her feel as though she didn‘t have to try so hard. Maybe a smile from a stranger could help her relax a bit. I saw other heads turn her way, so I’m fairly confident I wasn’t imagining things.
But to my surprise, every time I looked at her she appeared to be genuinely having a great time. It didn’t add up.
And then the realisation hit me. She wasn’t fake laughing at all. She was laughing for real, only her real laugh sounded fake.
What an absolute curse! What a terrible affliction! To spend your life with the sound of your laugh causing suspicion, doubt and concern, when actually all you’re doing is having a giggle.
And it got me thinking about the sound of laughter. Anatomically, we’re all doing the same thing when we laugh, but in the same way that our voices sound different when we speak, I think I can generalise and say we all make slightly different sounds when we individually laugh. En masse though, it can be really difficult for your ear to discern the sound that each individual is making, unless there’s someone with a really distinct laugh in the group.
And in this case, poor old fake-sounding laugh lady was definitely discernible.
It reminded me of another distinctive laugh I heard a while ago. I was in a cinema with a friend and although the movie we saw could never be described as a comedy, it had a few funny moments in it.
A fellow sitting a few rows in front of us was a honker. Whenever he laughed he made a sound that can only be described as Demented Goose. HONK.
I was so alarmed when I first heard it, and wondered if perhaps he was choking. But he was still sitting up right, still moving a little, didn't seem to be jerking (as I imagine he might have if he had been choking) and I settle back to watch the movie. Next funny scene there it was again - HONK!
I exchanged a bemused glance with my friend.
Then it came again - HONK!
And I couldn’t help myself, I started to laugh at his laugh. So did my friend.
Appreciating that we were probably being a bit rude, and being women who tend to throw our heads back and laugh with gusto, we struggled with it but in the end successfully reigned in our mirth.
Until the end of the movie that is. We stayed in our seats while the rest of the patrons filed out, including the honking man. And then we laughed and laughed until we had tears streaming from our eyes.
And there wasn’t anything fake about it.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Vale Sandy Kirby
The first time I met Sandy Kirby was over coffee at Café 101 opposite the Victorian Trades Hall building in Lygon Street, Carlton.
A couple of weeks before we were due to start working on a project together, Sandy had called me to arrange this meeting. It all felt very organised, which was a fairly alien concept to me - mostly my life was shambolic, often chaotic. But Sandy was a very organised woman, and she also understood and appreciated the importance of relationships. She was determined to forge one with me.
At that café I was pleased to encounter a warm humorous woman who was thoroughly intelligent and disarmingly frank. Sandy was softly spoken, and in the time that I knew her I never heard her raise her voice, even in moments of anguish or frustration, preserving her vocal volume for moments of laughter. And there were many of those moments during our time working together.
We worked together on a project celebrating the 150th anniversary of the achievement of the Eight Hour Day in Victoria, sharing office space first in the Melbourne Museum then later moving into the grand Trades Hall building in Lygon Street Carlton.
On day one of the project Sandy’s top priority was joining the CPSU. She’d always been a union member, but never a member of that union. The CPSU were located in Trades Hall at that time, so she raced up and grabbed a couple of forms for us both and got our membership sorted. Once that important formality was out of the way we started work in earnest.
Sandy was the project curator and she created exhibitions and found iconic (and unexpected) images with which to brand the project. She took delight in aesthetics and I remember the way she sighed delightedly upon seeing our re-worked logo “Look at those eights. Such exquisite curves.”
She was right, they were exquisite. And kudos to Melbourne Museum designer Luisa Laino for her meticulous work on the logo.
It was hard going sometimes, convincing trade union officials to support and embrace the arts & cultural programme of events the Eight Hour Day committee had developed, but we persisted. For Sandy, this was not new territory. She had encountered the same hesitance from some unionists in the 1980s while working on the Art and Working Life programme.
This programme encouraged and assisted cultural activities in the Australian trade union movement, including a project that enlisted artists to work with unions on the creation of banners. The union I currently work for, the Finance Sector Union has one of these banners; created by Megan Evans-Griggs for the then Australian Bank Employees’ Union in 1988.
The Victorian union movement in conjunction with the government of the day celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Eight Hour Day with 22 events staged over most of 2006, and Sandy and I were involved in most of these to varying degrees. Sandy was heavily involved in the exhibition of trade union banners at Melbourne Museum and an exhibition that travelled around the state called It’s About Time!
The research, writing, and location and selection of images for these projects fell to Sandy, and it was Sandy who suggested we track down and use images created by Melbourne photographer Ponch Hawkes for the overall branding of the project. It was an inspired suggestion, and although it wasn’t a popular suggestion in some quarters of the union movement I still believe it was the right one.
There was so much about this project that was fun that it’s quite difficult to nominate a favourite event or moment, but I do have fond memories of Sandy and I travelling around the state scouting exhibition locations for It’s About Time! In particular I recall an overnight stop in Albury where much wine was consumed, much laughter occurred and much shit was spoken. How either of us managed to drive a vehicle the next morning is unfathomable. We took turns, but both felt equally seedy. It was a pretty quiet drive to Shepparton, that’s for sure.
During the latter part of the project, Sandy became ill with cancer, and began treatment.
She continued to work throughout her treatment, even though it was clear that chemotherapy and radiotherapy were taking their toll and sapping her energy. The treatment worked though, and Sandy entered a period of remission and regained her energy and zest for life.
By then the Eight Hour Day project was over, and Sandy and I went our separate ways in search of our next challenges and adventures.
The last time I saw Sandy she was being cared for at the Caritas Christi hospice. A new cancer, this time a brain tumour, had invaded her body. Her left ear could no longer hear and left eye could no longer see, but when I visited she was listening to Radio National with her good ear and working on The Age crossword using her good eye. Her bed was draped in colourful scarves; artworks and images covered walls and shelves. Sandy’s room overlooked a garden courtyard and she was at pains to point out that it wasn’t a bad place to die, especially as the staff were keeping the religious crap to a minimum.
Sandy trained her good eye on me and it pierced through my façade as it always had done in the past. And just like she had done in the past, Sandy asked me the questions I didn’t want to be asked, on all the things I didn’t really want to face. Are you still in the same job? Are you still painting? How’s your love life?
The period I worked with Sandy was one of the most tumultuous of my life – marriage breakdown and divorce, regular separation from my children, a new relationship, lost friendships, new friendships, developing as an artist. I consider it my very good fortune to have spent this time in the company of such a wise, funny, good natured, challenging and caring woman as Sandy Kirby.
Sandy was a life partner to David, a mother to Alexander, a feminist, a writer, an historian, an artist, a teacher, a researcher, a builder, a communicator, a unionist, and a helluva woman. She was my colleague and my friend, and I feel blessed to have known her.
She taught me a lot and introduced me to ideas and artists that I may not have encountered otherwise, and she put up with me when I was being bitchy or tiresome. She encouraged me, in fact she never doubted me. I liked the way she questioned my reasoning when it needed questioning, and the way she gently steered me in a different direction rather than telling me I was wrong. And she infused me with a passion for Sudoku that I am yet to shake.
Sandy impressed upon me that cultural pursuits and art were integral to organised labour’s aim of communicating and engaging with the wider community, and I still passionately believe this to be the case.
It would be a fitting tribute to the life and work of Sandy Kirby if the Australian union movement made more of an effort to celebrate and promote union culture and to never forget the significance of union history or that history’s relationship with current struggles.
Vale Sandy. Rest in peace.
A couple of weeks before we were due to start working on a project together, Sandy had called me to arrange this meeting. It all felt very organised, which was a fairly alien concept to me - mostly my life was shambolic, often chaotic. But Sandy was a very organised woman, and she also understood and appreciated the importance of relationships. She was determined to forge one with me.
At that café I was pleased to encounter a warm humorous woman who was thoroughly intelligent and disarmingly frank. Sandy was softly spoken, and in the time that I knew her I never heard her raise her voice, even in moments of anguish or frustration, preserving her vocal volume for moments of laughter. And there were many of those moments during our time working together.
We worked together on a project celebrating the 150th anniversary of the achievement of the Eight Hour Day in Victoria, sharing office space first in the Melbourne Museum then later moving into the grand Trades Hall building in Lygon Street Carlton.
On day one of the project Sandy’s top priority was joining the CPSU. She’d always been a union member, but never a member of that union. The CPSU were located in Trades Hall at that time, so she raced up and grabbed a couple of forms for us both and got our membership sorted. Once that important formality was out of the way we started work in earnest.
Sandy was the project curator and she created exhibitions and found iconic (and unexpected) images with which to brand the project. She took delight in aesthetics and I remember the way she sighed delightedly upon seeing our re-worked logo “Look at those eights. Such exquisite curves.”
She was right, they were exquisite. And kudos to Melbourne Museum designer Luisa Laino for her meticulous work on the logo.
It was hard going sometimes, convincing trade union officials to support and embrace the arts & cultural programme of events the Eight Hour Day committee had developed, but we persisted. For Sandy, this was not new territory. She had encountered the same hesitance from some unionists in the 1980s while working on the Art and Working Life programme.
This programme encouraged and assisted cultural activities in the Australian trade union movement, including a project that enlisted artists to work with unions on the creation of banners. The union I currently work for, the Finance Sector Union has one of these banners; created by Megan Evans-Griggs for the then Australian Bank Employees’ Union in 1988.
The Victorian union movement in conjunction with the government of the day celebrated the 150th anniversary of the Eight Hour Day with 22 events staged over most of 2006, and Sandy and I were involved in most of these to varying degrees. Sandy was heavily involved in the exhibition of trade union banners at Melbourne Museum and an exhibition that travelled around the state called It’s About Time!
The research, writing, and location and selection of images for these projects fell to Sandy, and it was Sandy who suggested we track down and use images created by Melbourne photographer Ponch Hawkes for the overall branding of the project. It was an inspired suggestion, and although it wasn’t a popular suggestion in some quarters of the union movement I still believe it was the right one.
There was so much about this project that was fun that it’s quite difficult to nominate a favourite event or moment, but I do have fond memories of Sandy and I travelling around the state scouting exhibition locations for It’s About Time! In particular I recall an overnight stop in Albury where much wine was consumed, much laughter occurred and much shit was spoken. How either of us managed to drive a vehicle the next morning is unfathomable. We took turns, but both felt equally seedy. It was a pretty quiet drive to Shepparton, that’s for sure.
During the latter part of the project, Sandy became ill with cancer, and began treatment.
She continued to work throughout her treatment, even though it was clear that chemotherapy and radiotherapy were taking their toll and sapping her energy. The treatment worked though, and Sandy entered a period of remission and regained her energy and zest for life.
By then the Eight Hour Day project was over, and Sandy and I went our separate ways in search of our next challenges and adventures.
The last time I saw Sandy she was being cared for at the Caritas Christi hospice. A new cancer, this time a brain tumour, had invaded her body. Her left ear could no longer hear and left eye could no longer see, but when I visited she was listening to Radio National with her good ear and working on The Age crossword using her good eye. Her bed was draped in colourful scarves; artworks and images covered walls and shelves. Sandy’s room overlooked a garden courtyard and she was at pains to point out that it wasn’t a bad place to die, especially as the staff were keeping the religious crap to a minimum.
Sandy trained her good eye on me and it pierced through my façade as it always had done in the past. And just like she had done in the past, Sandy asked me the questions I didn’t want to be asked, on all the things I didn’t really want to face. Are you still in the same job? Are you still painting? How’s your love life?
The period I worked with Sandy was one of the most tumultuous of my life – marriage breakdown and divorce, regular separation from my children, a new relationship, lost friendships, new friendships, developing as an artist. I consider it my very good fortune to have spent this time in the company of such a wise, funny, good natured, challenging and caring woman as Sandy Kirby.
Sandy was a life partner to David, a mother to Alexander, a feminist, a writer, an historian, an artist, a teacher, a researcher, a builder, a communicator, a unionist, and a helluva woman. She was my colleague and my friend, and I feel blessed to have known her.
She taught me a lot and introduced me to ideas and artists that I may not have encountered otherwise, and she put up with me when I was being bitchy or tiresome. She encouraged me, in fact she never doubted me. I liked the way she questioned my reasoning when it needed questioning, and the way she gently steered me in a different direction rather than telling me I was wrong. And she infused me with a passion for Sudoku that I am yet to shake.
Sandy impressed upon me that cultural pursuits and art were integral to organised labour’s aim of communicating and engaging with the wider community, and I still passionately believe this to be the case.
It would be a fitting tribute to the life and work of Sandy Kirby if the Australian union movement made more of an effort to celebrate and promote union culture and to never forget the significance of union history or that history’s relationship with current struggles.
Vale Sandy. Rest in peace.
Friday, February 4, 2011
Cooking: Swedish Meatballs
I hadn't made this dish before but it was so easy and tasty that I'm sure I'll be making it again and again.
Throw a handful of chopped fresh herbs, like flat-leaf parsley, dill or chives (or all three!) into a bowl with 300g of fresh pork mince and 300g of fresh beef mince. Add 75g of breadcrumbs, 100 ml of milk, one egg and a teaspoon of allspice. Mix together with your hands. To make “elegant meatballs” I rolled half the mixture into a sausage shape and then sliced it up before rolling the meatballs (keeping hands wet as much as possible).
Lay the meatballs on an oiled tray, cover with cling film and refrigerate for an hour.
Heat some olive oil in a pan and gently fry the meatballs, rolling them around the pan until browned and transfer cooked meatballs to a plate.
Drain the oil from the pan and add the juice of half a lemon, a tablespoon of plain flour, 60 ml of double cream (I used regular cream and increased the amount I added), and 300ml of beef stock. The recipe I was following also called for the addition of a heaped tablespoon of berry jam, but I dispensed with that.
Bring to the boil, then simmer until the sauce thickens enough to stick to the meatballs. Return meatballs to the pan and stir until they are well coated.
I served the meatballs with some baked potatoes and a crunchy salad with lettuce, sugar snap peas, cherry tomatoes, grated carrot and spring onions.
Yum yum!
I found this recipe in Jamie Oliver's book Jamie does Spain, Italy, Sweden, Morocco, Greece and France.
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