uni

Okay that's the mawkish youth and childhood stuff out of the way. Now for the embarrassing student years. 

There's a writer called Andrew McGahan who wrote the book (later a movie) called Praise. In his detective novel Last Drinks he described 'Old Brisbane' - a disheartening place - very different to the green, latte-society it is now. Old Brisbane was unfriendly to outsiders, foreigners, basically anyone different.....

Most of the books I read came from the northern hemisphere. 'It was one of those fine May days', I read, and wondered what that possibly could mean.
Brisbane had just two seasons. Hot and PutyourCardiganon.


There was a sense of unreality about the life in Brisbane. It's not the real world. It's not sung about like London town or San Francisco. We are somehow substandard. And we don't speak properly.

I longed to hear foreign languages. My french boyfriend and his wonderful family introduced me to wine (I drank my first glass holding my nose) and music and furnishings that were not covered in vinyl or laminated. There were playful conversations around the table, and poems by Prevert being read out loud. Eric took me to see films by Antonioni, Visconti, Zabriski, everyone with an i-ending name and more. He had me reading Genet and Boris Vian.

At university I learned French (I had studied German up till then) and took French Drama. We did the Absurdists. Artaud, Adamov, Ionesco, Jarry. My major was Drama. There was a practical component. There was a hall half-way along Sir Fred Schonell Drive where we danced to Mars by Gustav Holtz, and impersonated tea bags being immersed in boiling water. Two teachers. Maggie Collins - an English woman in middle life. Black-framed glasses, black and white permed hair. She would lead the classes in a dress and panty hose, taking off her street shoes and slipping on little elasticated slippers that came in a see-thru carrying case called Jiffies. We did the Greeks.....Oedipus. 'It's not dread, it's DRE-E-E-E-E-A-A-A-A-A-D', she resonated from her core.

She had a fantastic teaching technique for Restoration. She dropped a plastic sack full of opaque panty hose on the floor. 'Men you will put these on your legs and roll your trousers up. Women you will bind your upper arms to your ribcage. Now walk!'

We read Endgame and were asked to write a short play in Beckettian style. 

I searched haberdashery stores for fabric samples for costumes I designed for Twelfth night. 

Despite the warm-ups and tea-bag improvs there were no productions. I signed up for a lunch-time production based on the works of William Blake. The project leader lost steam and the rehearsals stopped. I attended workshops led by another student who had us walking around the room 'like we were in warm chocolate'. Or improvising dialogue on chairs.

Then, lo and behold, the amazing Salvatore Marrucci was hired to direct a play called 'Precious Moments from the Family Album.' I think. There was a discussion and most people wanted it to be wild and anarchic and extreme.

We had a giant radio with a scrim that doubled up as a Punch and Judy theatre. There were mad scenes interspersed with random interruptions: men in drag sang Andrews sisters numbers: a liontamer cracked the whip at a deliberately crap-ly costumed lion and men in fishnets and cropped nun's habits (of course) ran roughshod through the audience. Salvatore did the best with us he could and he respected the company in that he took care to serve his brief.

We performed in the 'Cement Box' under the theatre I had seen Greg Rush in. In that theatre I once saw a French company who performed for an audience of four people. The show was good and I was impressed by the privilege of the experience (it helped me know in the future years that performing to a small audience, when it happened, was still a thing of worth and validity). A production of Much Ado was hilarious and the 'we're Australian and can't do it properly so it doesn't really matter how we do it' created a production that was bouncy, imaginative and vibrant. A production of the Bacchae was overinflated, a bit camp and un-intentionally grande guignol. 

In that same theatre, I saw Trevor Stuart (then Trevor Smith) later of Circus and Lumiere company perform Kaspar by Peter Handke. A tour de force. very exciting.

At the QTC I saw Eqqus and loved the horses on their high metal platforms. The more recent London production was not as well-realised in design.

And upstairs in the proper university theatre, I saw a quirky piece of music theatre called Childhead's Doll by Ralph Tyrrell.