"Facts have their importance – but that is where the biography comes to grief. The biographer cannot extract the atom. They give us the husk." – Virginia Woolf
What better place to crack open the husks and fill them with our imaginations than the theatre – the home of imagination. And what better writer than Joanna Murray-Smith!
Getting the opportunity to further develop and fine tune is a luxury not often afforded to new Australian work, but it is essential. Too many times new Australian work is here today, gone tomorrow, and not nurtured into growing beyond its first production. Stories evolve and mature when they are given the opportunity to sit inside actors, so seeing great performers like the national treasure that is Justine Clarke and the incredible Jessica Bentley return to this production is a real joy.
My early conversations with Justine circled around the generational intersection that Julia’s speech activated – it had become like a baton handed from one generation to the next. It felt right that in our production, audiences would not meet Julia fully formed, that we meet Justine as the narrator (an actor embodying every woman) who slowly becomes the imagined version of Julia and finally transforms into her entirely. We wanted to amplify the universal in the piece: what it means to look back on a life and examine your choices and the times in which you were born and the tide that carries you through. Justine also spoke of how she imagined mothers and daughters might come to the show and the conversation between generations that it might ignite.
I started to think of the waves of feminism and why they occur in waves. One generation ploughs the soil and the next reaps the seeds. I had a strong sense of a younger woman waiting silently, willing and waiting for Julia to make a stand – to make the speech that (it could be argued) opened the gates for the movement that followed. Julia’s ‘misogyny speech’ is a brilliant example of the power of words to open doors for us as individuals as well as collectives. It is endlessly fascinating how social movements, like schools of fish, can take form and suddenly change direction as one organism.
"Societies are shaped not by what is happening on the surface but by the great tidal movements underneath." – The Making of Julia Gillard by Jacqueline Kent
With this in mind, the decision to include Jessica Bentley in the production as a fluid presence on stage – at times the younger Julia, at times her conscience, at times a representation of future generations – was made. She became the witnesses and watcher – our younger selves – what we sacrifice on our way through life pursuing our dreams or fighting our fights, who we become in the process and what we leave behind. Designer Renée Mulder and I have worked together many times; her imagination and craft are extraordinary and I believe she is one of the best designers in Australia. Composer & Sound Designer Steve Francis and I also have worked together for many years and his ability to create sonic universes in which stories can live is unparalleled. Together with the brilliant Alexander Berlage as Lighting Designer and Susie Henderson as Video Designer, Maddy Picard as Sound Realiser, Ben Andrews as Video Realiser, along with Charley Allanah as Assistant Director and the brilliant Jennifer White as Voice and Dialect Coach, this has been collaborative theatre at its most exhilarating.
As a springboard, Reneé and I were inspired by the work of female video artists Pipilotti Rist and Angelica Mesiti and photographer Alex Prager. Susie Henderson pointed us toward Mesiti, whose piece Assembly was presented as part of the Venice Biennale. Her work really struck a chord for us about how we wanted to approach this piece – the power of space, voice, and youth.
Steve Francis and his composition is the texture we needed. We talked a lot about soil, growth, the earth, light and transformation – how even moments and events can transform in the hands of the next generation and listened a lot to Carolyn Shaw’s album Let the Soil Play Its Simple Part.
A huge thank you to Kip Williams, Paige Rattray, Dr Rebecca Sheehan, Ruth Little, Alice Osbourne, and the Stage Management and Production team at STC, and to STC and Canberra Theatre Centre for inviting us all to work on this new Australian work.