Van Badham, venerable TINA veteran and all-round crack-shot is bringing one of the highlight performances for the festival. Resident crackhound Rowan McDonald tracked her to distant Edinburgh and harnessed the power of social media to crack wise with her about theatre, writing, football and the ghosts of TINA past.
DISCLAIMER: Given the time-space differential that comes with asking interview questions both before and after said answers are given, be warned that some of the following exchange may be subject to the rules of non-sequitur and lack of sleep.
CRACK: Hi Van, I was wondering if I could ask you a few questions -
VAN: ROWAN. INSOMNIA. USE THIS.
CRACK: I have a distinct memory of you there wearing blue and red ribbons in pigtails the night Newcastle won the NRL Grand Final. Do you think the Knights are in with a shot this year?
VAN: Actually, I’m Roosters-til-I-die, but out of eternal deference to Marcus Westbury and Lisa Ronneberg, I’ll proxy to the Knights if the Roosters aren’t playing. Had a lovely evening in Newie last year at the end of the festival, watching my beloved chickens go down to the Dragons in the mud. Marcus and Lisa were very supportive, despite the loss. I’ve one thing to say, and that’s Todd Carney, work your 12-step. Enough.
CRACK: We’re pretending that 2011 never happened as far as the Roosters are concerned, but thanks for the reminder. You’re adamant the local footy team doesn’t stand a chance in the finals, what other forms of excitement do you expect to find happening in Newy that weekend? Or is it unwise to form expectations of TINA before going?
VAN: Don’t pack expectations – you’ll lose them between the Festival club and the hostel on your first night with your lipstick, tampons and pen. The great thing about TINA is the random encounters that forge fast friendships – I met Benito Di Fonzo smoking a cheeky cigarette outside the Festival Club in 1999 and a decade later I still can’t get rid of him.
CRACK: I have the same problem, except I think I met Benito at the Hunter on Hunter, having a cheeky beer.
VAN: There’s an anecdote about John Birmingham and a cake which is shared by many old timers.
CRACK: Was that the year he was “researching” Dopeland? I recall very little of that season.
VAN: My defining memory of the Festival is Linda Jaivin giving a panel on erotic fiction and concluding it with “now I’m off to practice what I preach” and a young handsome man. The only way to “do” TINA is to rock up. Hang around. Engage. And don’t show any sympathy to the performance poets – they’re just going to hassle you for free drinks.
CRACK: I know you’ve been in and out of the country for the last decade or so, what are your thoughts on how much the creative community has changed in Oz?
VAN: Actually, I don’t think the creative community has changed, as much as events like TINA have brought a lot of those people together, and given them a space to talk to one another, collaborate, pick up, make out, be the cool kids they universally weren’t in high school. For first-timers, TINA is like discovering you’re not the only kid in Hurstville who likes the Ramones.
CRACK: Is it better or worse for emerging artists in the UK?
VAN: The great thing about the creative community in Australia as opposed to here in the UK is that in Australia we have DIY culture, where you can whack together a zine, or throw together a show, or make something happen just through time, the miracle of temporary unemployment and sheer force of will – and the broader professional culture will give you respect for that. Here [in the UK], you essentially need rich parents and/or the backing of an institution for people to take you on board. I tell people here about Chris Gregory getting a book deal because a publisher from Penguin picked up one of his zines in an independent bookstore and they actually gag with disbelief. In the UK, everyone begs and waits around for institutional approval and it makes the culture very conservative, the writing, in particular, very safe. My boyfriend is British and I brought him to TINA last year and he was amazed. He just couldn’t believe all you had to do was call yourself a writer and turn up. You learn by doing and having the means to just do is the very great privilege of being Australian – whereas in the UK if you’re not loaded you have no means to do anything on your own. Sad fact.
CRACK: Yes. I agree with that completely. Why theatre? Why not, say – a series of fantasy novels about adolescent witches? Surely there’s more of an audience in teenage anxiety than semi-satirical-socio-political comment… There were way to many hyphens in that sentence.
VAN: I write everything. I am not exclusive. I make theatre because it’s dynamic and social and I write books because they are detailed and intimate. I write film reviews because I love genre movies, oh god, and analysing something you love keeps your senses sharp. I write radio drama because it forces the audience to do the most imaginative work of any media, I write musicals because I like to sing in the shower. I write across different literary forms on the principle that having stuff to say about the world is fundamentally entertaining – I pick my audience, choose my form and proceed accordingly.
CRACK: Would you say theatre can be considered a ‘global’ art form, or do the format’s limitations make that impossible?
VAN: Of course theatre is global – it’s the language of bodies in space, and, with effort, if you can’t translate what’s going on, you’ll be given enough material to invent your own narrative. I’ve had this experience a couple of times – I was one of 8 playwrights who had work translated for a performance in German for the State Theatre Company of Bern in Switzerland. Great premise – except when it came to watching eight back-to-back hours of theatre in a language I don’t speak. Amazingly, for most of it I was able to piece together an understanding of what was going on from the images on stage – until they got into that hardcore German stand-in-a-line-facing-the-audience-and-shout form of drama, of which I could translate “An apple is not an apple!” and no more. Then my brain started to hurt.
CRACK: So, despite the language barrier, there are still ways to express theatrically through form and staging that transcend culture?
VAN: I was in China recently and saw some Kunqu opera in Suzhou – very beautiful, very formal performance. I could not understand a word (my Chinese is even worse than my German), but the performance is so strictly stylised and the technical demands of the performers so exacting (they have to play a range of musical instruments as well as engage and recite) that it was a delight just to revel in their artistry. What was the question? I travel a lot, I’m so way cultured, etc etc etc
CRACK: Given that most theatre productions have a highly localised, short-term lifespan, what are the challenges for artists trying to create work that operates on a global level?
VAN: Ha – actually I was making this point earlier today; the best plays, the most universal ones, are those that are most intimately focused on the time and place of their construction, that communicate most clearly the values, protocols and paradoxes of their own moment in social space. Shakespeare, Brecht, Ibsen, Chekhov, Ionesco, Caryl Churchill – all of these playwrights, for example, have a profound understanding of their own world and what governs it that the lesson becomes one of appreciating how we also are governed.
CRACK: So wherever we are, whenever we are, we write from the context of the same humanity, the same global power struggle?
VAN: If you think about it, what on earth does 16th Century London, 1950s Soviet East Germany, Thatcher’s Britain of the 1980s, turn-of-the-century Norway, post-war France or barely-post-industrial Russia have in common with contemporary Australia? Well, everything – because all of these societies contained people who followed rules or broke them, just like our own does. The challenge is not to write THE world, but to write YOUR world. That’s the easy, near-impossible trick of a great play.
CRACK: I can’t let the opportunity pass without asking if we can get a hint of your plans for Malthouse? What can we expect for 2012?
VAN: Hell, my immediate plans for my new job in Melbourne is to find somewhere to live, work out how to buy a ticket for a tram and get to work on time. My plans for 2012 are to make plans for 2013, as I’ll be arriving just as the most recent season has been announced. As for what I’ll be spruiking to the company for the 2013 season, that’s a closely guarded secret – but if you think you can write a Kunqu opera, let me know.
CRACK: I’ll google it and see what I can do… Thanks for your insights, Van, looking forward to catching up again in a few short weeks! See you at the festival club.
Van Badham performs her black comic post-structural feminist meta-theatrical critique of auteur culture: How It Is or As You Like It at the CrackHouse, Friday, 7:15 pm
for more about Van see www.vanbadham.com
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Sep 26 2011