Alana Valentine

ARTIST AS CONDUIT © Copyright Alana Valentine 2022

Hello and thank you for inviting me to speak at the Opening Night of Fasstival.

The organisers from UTS asked me to speak about the benefits of working with industry and community partners and how vital that is to academic learning for students. I think there may be a number of those industry and community partners in the room and UTS would like them to know that quote ‘we appreciate them and the opportunities they give our students and academics.’

So tonight I am really an articulate, visually dynamic, hopefully a bit witty conduit between UTS and their industry partners. My job here is to let their intentions and aspirations flow through me to you, their precious students and you their much-appreciated partners and supporters. You might think that having the needs of others flow though oneself might be an uncomfortable or even strange sensation. But in fact, when I reflect on it, I realise that actually my life’s work, my habitual preoccupation is in being a conduit for all sorts of communities, personalities, dramatic premises, characters, situations, propositions and conflicts to flow through my brain, my imagination, and indeed my spirit to theatre, screen and prose-reading audiences.

So I did what writers do every day, they look up words. On Google, in a dictionary if you like to do that, but a means to define the word conduit. It is ‘a tube used to protect and route electrical wiring in a building or structure. Electrical conduit may be made of metal plaster fibre or fired clay. Most conduit is rigid but flexible conduit is used for some purposes.’ And I think I could do worse than to metaphorically describe artists and writers in our society as being as essential and fundamental as the electrical conduit that runs through the walls of this building and supplies the illumination, power and transformation of the space we are in. What is the value of the arts people ask? Well, from now on I am going to use the word conduit. We are the conduit which links, connects, routes and joins disparate parts of our world. Everyone and everything is spinning in its own orbit, we the communicators, the writers, the artists are the ties that bind.

This is a FASS Festival and we have industry partners here so I know don’t have to work the metaphor too hard. I think it appeals to me because my own brother is a qualified electrician. So real reason I want to use a sparky reference is because if performing arts workers and other arts workers could begin to gain the respect and financial benefits that are now enjoyed by literally our brothers who are tradies, we would be doing very well indeed. Maybe if we called ourselves conduits instead of artists governments might start to act as if we deserved to be valued in much the same way as people who wear fluorescent vests.  

In January this year I co-wrote with the visionary Stephen Page and Bangarra Dance Theatre a form of dance opera called WUDJANG: Not the Past. It was described as a new genre of dance/drama/music in combination. This was the culmination of eleven years of my work as dramaturg for that company, including on the Helpmann Award winning Bennelong. In March 2022 for the Adelaide Festival I co-wrote an oratorio with Christos Tsiolkas, music by Joseph Twist called WATERSHED: The Death of Dr Duncan. Commissioned and directed by Neil Armfield, it was about George Ian Ogilvie Duncan whose death at the alleged hands of vice squad detectives when he was thrown into the river torrens set off homosexual law reform in Australia. This year is the 50th Anniversary of that dreadful act. In April 2022 I worked with Belvoir Theatre to present Wayside Bride about people rejected by mainstream churches who married across cultures and denominations at the Wayside Chapel by the accused heretic Reverend Ted Noffs. I was very excited that more than seven thousand people saw the play as well as our new Prime Minister Anthony Albanese at the very last show.  And in September 2022 I collaborated with erth visual and physical theatre Company on arc, a children’s show for the Sydney Opera House and the Melbourne Arts Centre featuring the most astounding puppets of endangered animals. In all these works I was a proud and dedicated creative conduit between history, my fellow artistic collaborators and our cherished audiences.

Let me end by wishing you all a very wonderful FASStival. Cherish your collaborators, define success on your own terms, and be as curious, collaborative and dynamic a conduit as you dare.

Thank you.

(timecodes are approximate)

VOICE OVER:
Introduction to Alana Valentine, UTS 2021 Alumni Award recipient and Chancellor’s Award co-recipient, award-winning playwright, librettist and dramaturg.

00:00: Alana talks about the world premiere of Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan, for the Adelaide Festival 2022.

In 2022, I'm co-writing a libretto with Christos Tsiolkas called Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan. Dr George Ian Ogilvie Duncan was the Adelaide University academic, who was thrown in the river in 1972, March. And he drowned. And there was a lot of discussion about the fact that, that it was - even the Premier Don Dunstan said that there was - a police cover-up; that they were members of the vice squad. And so we've written - it's the 50th anniversary next year - and Christos and I, with Joseph Twist, who's an extraordinary Brisbane composer, have written an oratorio for Dr Duncan.

Interviewer: What’s an oratorio?

So an oratorio is, I mean, the most famous oratorio is Handel's Messiah. So it's usually a - it's sort of like, an opera, but it's particularly in commemoration. It's more to do with, you know, valorising someone in death, and it has that sombre sort of tone.

When we spoke to the Adelaide Advertiser, I said that our oratorio was “Handel goes to Mardi Gras” because, obviously because of the gay content, and it's because, you know, we have updated it. But we also think it's quite radical, particularly at this time to use what is kind of known as a religious form to celebrate and commemorate the life of a gay man, who was murdered.

INTERVIEWER: In terms of the execution of the production, is it an ensemble piece? How many actors, how many performers, how does it work?

So an oratorio usually has principle singers so we've got five, as far as I know at the moment, five. It might be eight? And there's a choir of forty people. It's being directed by Neil Armfield, who's the Artistic Director of the Adelaide Festival. And he feels a particular cogency about this story because he himself is quite public about the fact that he was bashed at a beat in Sydney. So, you know, he's, I guess for him it's that kind of ‘there but for the grace of God go I’.

And Duncan was a very religious man. I use that, that religious term quite openly. He was a very devout man. And so it's kind of a really interesting and important time to kind of attack that… what, what might I call it?...  the binary of the LGBT community against the religious community. There are many LGBTQI+ people who are religious or have some sort of spiritual faith. And Duncan was murdered. His murderers unhappily have never been brought to justice either. So it's really important. And it's going to be, I think, I think, amazing yeah.

INTERVIEWER: Is this another example of a piece of work where you are collaborating with family? Family members of the person your story is about?

ALANA: Interestingly, Duncan doesn’t seem to have much family. We have found a woman called Dorothy who was an organist and who was a really close friend of his. And so we've included her story in the show, but, no, he doesn't seem to have many relatives.

The community there is the LGBTQI community in Adelaide. Because while it is a celebration, a commemoration of his death, it also looks at how that event triggered the homosexual law reform in Adelaide.

In 1975, they were the first state in the English-speaking world to legalize homosexual sex between consenting adults. So it set off homosexual law reform, not just throughout Australia, but throughout the world.

So you know, Duncan was the catalyst, and the tragic catalyst, for that. But yeah, the oratorio also looks at what the LGBTQI community in Adelaide did, and how they agitated to get this law reform, and how, you know, frankly Adelaide was this place that was visionary enough to champion that.
While it is a celebration, a commemoration of his death, it also looks at how that event triggered the homosexual law reform in Adelaide. In 1975, they were the first state in the English-speaking world to legalize homosexual sex between consenting adults. So it set off homosexual law reform, not just throughout Australia, but throughout the world. So it's, you know, Duncan was the catalyst, and the tragic catalyst, for that. But yeah, the oratorio also looks at what the LGBTQI+ community in Adelaide did, and how they agitated to get this law reform. And how, you know, frankly Adelaide was this place that was visionary enough to champion that.

05:14 – Alana Valentine talks about her 2019, Helpmann award-winning rock musical collaboration with Ursula Yovitch Barbara and the Camp Dogs, and the joys of collaborative creative writing.

Interviewer: Can you talk about your musical with Ursula Yovich, Barbara and the Camp Dogs?

Alana: So Barbara and the Camp Dogs is a rock musical road trip on stage, that I co-wrote with Ursula Yovich who is one of Australia's greatest performers. She has a singing voice that I think rivals the best in the world. She plays Barbara who's a - she's a character who I think all of us have got a ‘Barbara’ in our life. They’re someone who creates chaos whenever you're with them. They're incredibly exciting. They're wonderfully vivacious, but they're also very chaotic and they've often got a lot of demons.

And Ursula said to me - I think it was the 2009 Helpmann Awards - and my play Parramatta Girls had been nominated, but I hadn't won. And as Ursula tells it I was sulking in the corner at the after party and she started performing this character called Barbara, who was just like the ‘tough love’ friend you need in that moment. And we were just, she was making me laugh so much. And we just talked about writing a part for Ursula as Barbara. She's sort of always calls her, sort of, her muse, a character that she carries inside her. And so we did, and it's just been one of the great joys of my life.

I mean, in recent years, actually, I have been doing more and more co-writing, particularly with Indigenous artists. I'm also, I've co-written Wudjang: Not the Past with Stephen Page after a 10-year relationship with him and Bangarra (Dance Theatre).

It's really interesting to abandon the idea of, I don't know, the kind of the ‘sole genius’, you know what I mean? Playwriting, making theatre, is very much more, and has always been for some time all through my career, about collaborating with other people who make theatre. But now even more, you starting to see co-writing and co-libretto writing. And, and yeah I do think that that is a trend that your students should, you know, do well to avail themselves of. 

Interviewer: What have been some of the great – slightly painful but great – moments in the learning process as you’ve been getting better at co-writing?

Look, it's, it's really interesting cause it's predicated on this idea that people always think that - and I speak to a lot of in schools and things - and people always will ask me, oh, you know, ‘who are the people who are trying to take away your vision or compromise your honour’?

I am always amazed by how quickly students go to that sort of the negative version of what co-writing is about. I mean, when I was with Ursula, we just like, honestly, we just used to laugh, make filthy jokes with each other, and pass the computer back and forth. And you know, that was the way Barbara got written. Now that's not to say that Ursula’s and my instincts after being theatre-makers for so long are not incredibly highly-tuned. Do you know what I mean? So it's not just about that, but I guess I always emphasize the notion of the play in playwright, right? Like that we do play. That we laughed a lot. Ursula would say something and then she'd say, “I can't put that in” and we'd go, “yes let's put it in! let's put it in!”

So it's always about like, co-writing sometimes it's about daring the other person to go to a place that their self-editor stops them from going.

And that's been the case with Christos (Tsiolkas) too. I mean, Christos is an incredibly provocative writer and it's like, he laughs, he says to me, “well, you're not exactly not (provocative) Alana”, but it's more just pushing each other's, knowing each other's strengths and pushing each other's areas of, kind of, tentative courage. Yeah.

It's been amazing.

I mean, I think you have to be temperamentally given to it. But yeah, look, it's something to think about and see whether it's you. Some people need to go into their own little cave and in fact, different projects will send you into your own little cave or not. So it's kind of horses for courses, yeah.

09:30 – Recollections from Alana’s time as a UTS student

Interviewer: Do you remember a time when you were forced to collaborate?

The moment at UTS that I can tell you about collaborating was on at 2SER when I worked in a collective called 12 Inch Shoes. And 12 Inch Shoes was based on a Fats Waller song called “Your Feet's Too Big” and he would sing it. And so we called the program 12 Inch Shoes, and that was the theme song.

And it was this incredibly - now that I think back on it - anarchic kind of thing where we would just create a subject. And then everyone in the collective - there are about sort of seven of us - would go out and do an interview or write a song, or just make some contribution, that was sometimes very tenuously attached to this sort of subject, to this idea, that drove it. But it made for incredibly innovative radio.

And I think it actually taught me really early that meaning is created by the collision of things, not just like, kind of what you're saying it is. And so, yeah, I think that radio is actually an incredibly collaborative medium, so that's the example I give from UTS.

10:44 – Studying communications and getting a job in advertising as a new grad

So I have a Bachelor of Arts in Communications and my majors are in radio production and professional writing.

Interviewer: Was Professional Writing the equivalent of Creative Writing?

It was creative writing. I think we did journalism. We did advertising. We did the full spectrum actually, of professional writing. We did some TV writing I think. I took quite a lot of poetry classes, but I also took some journalism classes. And luckily for me, I'd also think I did an advertising course. So because I went straight out the university into advertising.

Interviewer: How long did that last? The advertising work?

That was about eighteen months. So I got a traineeship from the Advertising Federation of Australia for nine months. And it was at Monahan Dayman and Adams, which was Phillip Adams’ small boutique advertising agency. And then in the nine months you went through the full spectrum of the company. So I started in media, which is the floor where they sell all the advertising, and then I went up into management where they, you know, deal with all the clients and take briefs.

In the last three months I was in the copywriting, in the creative area. And at the end of the nine months they offered me a job. So I stayed on in advertising for another nine months. So 18 months, nearly two years altogether.

12:23: Learning how to listen, take a brief and get creative

And it's really interesting because a lot of people I know went to film school and like they kind of learned to, if I can say that, they learned to find their vision and their voice. Whereas I learned in advertising how to listen to other people's needs, and to take a brief, and to use my creativity to express, well in that case, sort of commercially creative ideas.

But I profoundly believe that it was an extraordinary kind of grounding for a professional writer now. Because what I do is work with communities and I valorise their voices in kind of, I mean, a completely different way, but in a way that's about listening and thinking ‘how can I put my heart and my voice into this brief that I'm being given?’ So, yeah. So that's what happened.

13:18: Writing for the UTS student newspaper

Interview: You also wrote for the student newspaper?

I was the co-editor of the student newspaper, which at that stage was called NewsWit. And my co-editors were Amanda Collinge who has gone on to be the Executive Producer of (ABC’s) Q&A and a highly acclaimed journalist in her own right. And another student called Kerry Brown who also has been a trailblazer.

So, I loved being the editor of the student newspaper. It made me again have to be interested in things that I had, you know, some small interest in, but have to apply my skills and my intellect to that which was right outside my purview.

And that's one of the things I would also urge students to do - to not stick just to what you know, and what you think, because in some ways, stretching yourself into these - like you think: ‘do I really want to write about, you know, what's happening in Eritrea at the moment’? I mean, you know, I have a kind of moral interest in it but do I want to actually write about it?

Well, yeah, let's go in there and see what I can do and what I can write and how I can create a story that's not something that's, that's absolutely, you know, where I would have thought I would be interested.

VOICEOVER: Alana’s most recent project has involved collaborating with Artistic Director Stephen Page on a Bangarra Dance Theatre production.

14:44 - Alana’s collaboration with Bangarra Dance Company on Wudjang: Not the Past

So Bangarra (Dance Theatre) in the 2022 Sydney festival are presenting a show called Wudjang: Not the Past. And I've been working with Bangarra as a dramaturg for about 10 years. And people are always saying, what does a dramaturg really do with dance? And it's like, it's really interesting, because people do think of playwrights as writing the dialogue. And I always say, you know what? The dialogue is one aspect of the thinking that you do, that is about creating a structure. A playwright is basically an architect of dramatic action.

And so what you do when you're a dramaturg at a dance company is speak with the choreographer and the artistic director, which is in this case the incredible Stephen Page, and you sort of talk about how you're structuring the dance, and what it's saying. Even in really abstract form, you still need to have a structure.

So in 2017, I think it was, Stephen and I have been working together for a while, and he decided he wanted to do the story of Bennelong. People will know he was a man from the Sydney Eora region. And, we, I started - sometimes we would have long sessions talking about the show and rather than send him notes, I would like send him a poem, like, because it was like, he's a busy man, you know? So I'd send him a poem, sort of like summarizing what we talked about. And some of those poems found their way into the show as lyrics; like Stephen showed them to the composer, who's the incredible Steve Francis.

And so this time we thought, well, why don't we not do it as a, sort of just a, an accidental use of text? Why don't we try and have some – this is Stephen's vision, of course - why don't we have performers on stage? We're going to have Elaine Crombie and Justin Smith and the incredible Jess Hitchcock and Kirk Page. And there's, there's others, there's five musicians and there's 18 Bangarra dancers. So it's, it's going to be beautiful.

But, you know, it's really interesting at the first production meeting, Stephen described me as a dramatist, a playwright, a dramaturg, and the keeper of Stephen's thoughts; which I think really that's my most cherished description. Because, you know, again I don't have the cultural knowledge. I don't have, I'm not writing it in the same sense as I would be - it's not, it's not my ideas or my vision. I'm working as a tool for Stephen to help shape it. And I love that. It's actually sometimes harder to do that, to be the tool that somebody uses.

The Dharug word for ‘to dig’ is ‘kama’ (also ‘gama’). And so I, in the Bennelong program, I said I was Steven's ‘kamaturg’. Like I was his digging tool, not his dramaturg. So, you know, again, for students, I think, try to get involved in situations where your - it doesn't have to be your vision. It can actually also be about you facilitating with your crafts, someone else's ideas.

17:50 – Most valuable lesson in working with communities and individuals as a creative collaborator

I've worked in this form ‘verbatim’ which people will know is like about working with community. One of the definitions I give about verbatim is that you bring the community along with you. I usually have the community there on opening night.

I have actually written a whole book about this called Bowerbird (Bowerbird: The Art of Making Theatre Drawn From Life) if anybody's interested in reading it, because people used to say to me, ‘how do you do what you do Alana?’ and I would say, ‘well, I actually need more than five minutes to tell you’. But to answer the question of, you know, what has been the most valuable lesson learned? The one I would mention to students is look to the community or the person themselves as your way to cope with the trauma of what some of these stories can uncover.

So when I did a show called Letters to Lindy which was about the 20,000 letters held in the National Library of Australia, written by members of the public to Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton since 1980. Some of your students may not know the name ‘Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton’ but they will know ‘the dingo took my baby’. Everybody knows that saying, they know that story.

And so I made it a theatre piece using some of the 20,000 letters and interviewing Lindy Chamberlain-Creighton, and putting a monologue through the centre of the work, which was her voice. And, you know, for a story that's been told by so many other people, Lindy used to laugh at me and say to me this, I mean, I can say it, she said it to me; “this is the most, this is the closest to my story because it's my version of it. It's my, literally my words.”

19:40 - Coping with traumatic stories as a creative collaborator

But what I started saying was that I learned from Lindy how to deal with the horror of parts of that story. So in the archive, about 95% of it - people would be surprised - most of it is supportive of Lindy. The 5% that's not is the kind of the bottom of the birdcage of human nature. It is the horror. Pornographic images sent to her. Nasty, nasty letters. Red texta. ‘Murderer’. You know, that kind of horrible, horrible stuff, but only a very small percentage of the collection.

But I still looked at it and Lindy said to me, “oh yeah, that's the comic relief”, you know? And she said, she used to laugh at it because, you know, people would send her Bible verses - and Lindy is an extremely religious woman - but she said it got a bit sort of, you know, “it's just a bit the same”. And she'd say that the nasty letters, she would treat as this, “oh, look, this is a bit, this is a bit different. Look at this dumb person. They've actually put their name and address on the back”. And they'll send her a Christmas card, ‘Dear Lindy, you're a witch and you should be hung’ kind of thing.

It would be like - she taught me how to deal with it. And it was the same when I wrote my play about the Parramatta Girls. Those women, they taught me how to deal with the pain and the horror.

21:15 – Checking that the people who share their stories with you are ok

So I caution students sometimes when you speak to someone who hasn't talked about something traumatic for 30 years or whatever, there's this thing that happens and it's called ‘transmitted trauma’. I mean, you know, your students might be more aware of it now, but if you talk to a Vietnam veteran or someone who's been in an institution, or even someone who's just telling you something that they may not have told their closest friend, you need to take strategies to know that they're going to be all right, because we're not counsellors, we're storytellers.

So make sure they're connected to other people that you know; that when the - I call it - the horrors in the middle of the night come, sort of telling them ‘should I have said that?’ or whatever, that you know that they've got someone to talk to.

But also for yourself, watch how they deal with their trauma. Do they talk to a lot of other people? Do they talk to one special person? You know, take your cue from the community is my biggest lesson.

22:11 – Student radio at 2SER

Interviewer: Can you tell us about the different radio programs that you did at 2SER?

So I loved radio. I loved radio much more than, oh, well, not much more than, but as much as writing. I had three programs on 2SER that I can remember. One was called Night Owls, which was another student and me on a Wednesday night and it was like at 10 o'clock and we just basically used to play punk records for three hours. Her name is Tracy and she was right up to the minute. She had every sort of import from England particularly but also from America. And it was just fun.

And then I have spoken about 12 Inch Shoes, which is kind of what I would call a documentary drama program. One of the earliest I can imagine. And there were a lot of collaborators with students involved, but also we kept it going once we stopped being at UTS.  

And then the one that I'm probably most proud of was a program called Fable Follies, which was, we used to get children's books from Australian children's book publishers. And we would come in on the Sunday morning and we'd mark it up and work out - I had a little team of volunteer actors - and we'd mark up who was going to read what, and the sort of funny voices that they were going to do.

And we used to do, you know, Foley sound effects. Like we'd just bring in this little bag full of things that we could use as sound effects. And it was incredibly, like we didn't do lots of planning, we would just come in at nine o'clock on a Sunday morning. And I think we'd record the program by 11. So we gave ourselves two hours to sort of gussie up the story to find all the funny voices and we did that every week for years, and it was a children's radio drama program, you know? 

You know, you asked me what funny sounds we could have. I mean, I can't remember now. I know there was a lot of funny mouth noises and things with carrots and things with vegetables. Vegetables turned out to be incredibly noisy things. Because kids just like noises that sound like farts and things like that. So, you know, like when we were really scraping the barrel we’d just make fart noises! Honestly, we really had a lot of fun.

But I think that it showed that radio could be a medium which at - because at that time children's television was much more dominant - and radio was considered this thing that had happened in the old days and children didn't really listen to it. But now of course we see the explosion of podcasts for children and they love it. So it's always about as a student kind of looking at, I always think, take what somebody's saying you can't do and then do it.

One of the other things I did for 2SER was a marketing campaign. It was called Radio with a Point, which was a slogan that I came up with. And I commissioned a visual artist to do this beautiful picture of an echidna. It was kind of a graphic, like almost like a screen print like that I would do today. And, yeah they put it on stickers and it was fun. It was really about convincing, trying to convince people outside just the student group to listen to 2SER. Which of course now, I mean, 2SER is this community leader in terms of the kind of groups and the voices that it has on there. So I'm very proud of the work that I did on 2SER.

So after UTS, as I said, I went into advertising for quite some time, but much later I went and worked at ABC radio in the radio drama department. So that spontaneous creativity that I did at 2SER really stood me in great stead. I was never a fussy control freak kind of producer. I would be like “let's try something!” And if it works hey, that's great. And if it's not, yeah, let's just do something else. So, you know, I think that's, that's really good grounding.

OUTRO: You can catch Alana’s upcoming plays at the 2022 Adelaide Festival and find Alana’s website at http://www.alanavalentine.com/.