I started this thing in May, with no plan for much beyond a couple of weeks of content. It’s been a mad year, but I’ve always been grateful for the support the blog has received. Comments from you guys mean the world, and I’ve also enjoyed receiving private messages and conversations. And, of course, receiving a steady trickle of paid subscribers has given me the momentum to keep going. We’ve never missed a week.
So, I’ll take a break over the new year and return in the first week of January. For a quick review, here are the top posts of 2023.
The Queensland Problem, June 19
Winner by a country mile. This thing took on a life of its own. Six months on, and little has changed. The latest round of four-year organisational funding from Creative Australia has greatly impacted Brisbane theatre organisations such as Metro Arts and La Boite Theatre. The internal and external prejudice against Queensland talent persists. Will write more about this inevitably in 2024. But this blog is also a rationale for what became my job at ArtsHub.
How not to write a memoir, Oct 19
I’m a little shocked to see this so high. It reflects on my first published book, How to Be Happy. It’s also the first post to include a full-length play for subscribers (because I adapted it into a play). Subscribers will get a new full-length play first up in January.
Stop telling artists to ‘say yes to everything’, Oct 2
A guest post from Emily Burton, I was very lucky to witness the conversation that emerged from this post. It builds upon Em’s extensive work with the health and well-being of performers. It’s a topic that requires urgent and meaningful action.
I’m slowly learning what resonates with you guys. This post and the next one were written as wild vomits on the keyboard. I didn’t have anything planned, and I needed to get a post out. At a different time, I would’ve just taken the week off. Instead, these are the posts that have tended to resonate. Combining this post and the others sends a pretty clear message: you guys feel overwhelmed and want to take a breath! I hope you find it over the holiday season.
Things we do in grief, Sept 11
In the middle of the year, there was a sudden uptick in personal tragedy. It was bewildering in the literal sense of the world - it drove us wild. It felt untamed and impossible. There are a couple of people I want to mention in the year's final post who are a part of that.
The first is my remarkable colleague and friend Kate Cantrell, who lost her darling niece this year. Kate’s an amazing writer, and I urge you to read her post about the passing of ABC here.
The second is to acknowledge the passing of an extraordinary young woman and a prior student of mine (and I know a friend of many readers), Zoe Hulme-Peake. Zoe was a lightning bolt of a human being who passed suddenly this year. One of the greatest losses is that so few people will now get to read her extraordinary writing. She had a lifetime of prose ahead of her.
Here’s part of a poem from Zoe. See you in the new year. I wish you peace and rest.
I spoke into the morning light
A calm ocean floor greeted pulses
Yearning for
One last kiss amidst the breaking dawn of insurrection
I spoke through a pale light mist
in the morning
A curtain of fog concealing the worst
This brief shoal of history is so fleeting,
I steel myself for everything, I let you all in
I spoke into a bottle, sent it downstream, wrote poetry by hand to save you, save me
I wonder what stories they will tell when the sun sets
The brackish horizon, a thunderstorm warning:
our friends, their fingertips, entangled in tomorrow
There are mornings that grief chokes me
As I encounter all the meanings of our stolen lives:
Some people remember a time before the empire,
Some people will build gardens with its remains
- I know a battalion is empty if it is made up of ghosts -
But there are mornings I don armour
And am nothing more for days
It takes all of us, it takes it all from us…