Audiostage

"When you're trying to deconstruct the dominant structures, it's not going to happen politely, is it?"

- Jade Lillie

Welcome to the final episode of the season on race, womanhood, and belonging - and you're in for a real treat. To close a season created in partnership with Footscray Community Arts Centre, we speak with two head ladies of FCAC about the ethos that guides FCAC's work. Departing Artistic Director Jade Lillie, and Head of Programming Lydia Fairhall, discuss white privilege, their personal history with both feminism and decolonisation, and what it really takes to create a community.

"I don't know that spending my life attacking power structures is going to be as of much benefit for me, in this life, as trying to cultivate peace and forgiveness. (...) It's a hard thing to think about. I'm the first woman in her family to keep her children. I have that luxury. My mother never did. Should I just be out there? Fighting the big fight? I don't know. It's a constant tension for me."

- Lydia Fairhall

This conversation was not programmed for WOW Festival Melbourne, but instead was recorded separately a few months after the festival had ended, amidst the news that Jade had won this year's Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship and would be leaving FCAC at the end of 2017. We jumped at the opportunity to speak with these two leaders, crucial in the running of FCAC and in shaping the community arts space in Australia. It is an intimate conversation, a reflection on practice informed by years of conversations and collaboration, and a deep, informed closure to a season of uncompromising conversations - a season which, in this year of shocks and instability, has so often grounded us in what really matters.

Jade Lillie is a recognised leader in community arts, with a practice grounded in the philosophy that arts and cultural development can bring about systemic change when there is sound engagement with social justice frameworks. After years of work in government and non-government agencies, in Australia as well as South-East Asia, Jade's practice has been recognised with numerous prestigious awards - including Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship.

Lydia Fairhall is the Head of Programming at Footscray Community Arts Centre. Starting out as a singer/songwriter, she has worked as a writer, academic, cultural community development worker, festival and event producer, and has worked in a variety of settings, including in family violence and suicide prevention, housing, dance, music, theatre and comedy.

Colleagues, friends, changemakers and community builders - Jade and Lydia sat together in the Footscray Community Arts Centre where they have both worked for years to delve deeply into their practice, their work at FCAC, and what it means to belong.

Discussed in this episode:

what is home after two centuries of displacement?, Stolen Generations, the logical family, sphere of influence, doors that open are twofold, John Howard, lineage, Queensland as the canary in the Australian political coal mine, being homeless but not knowing it, glass ceilings, James Baldwin, big fat asterisks, being a queer woman, dismantling privilege, Buddhist nuns that take us under their wing, righteous anger, decolonisation and breaking bread, hope and solidarity, and how theatre is a vehicle of social justice.

Jade: "You were saying this morning that this will be a time that we look back on, when we're older, as being a time of significant change."

"In Timor, in the school, we have to learn about the Portuguese language, because it's the official language, in our country."

"That's not your mother tongue, is it? What's your language?"

"Makasai. And my husband's is Fataluku."

"Can you two understand each other?"

"Yes."

"And what language do you speak at home?"

"Tetum."

In the fourth episode of the season, we speak to theatre director Leticia Cáceres, and performer and writer Lena Caminha, about language and its relationship to belonging. What happens when your mother tongue is not your country's national language? What happens when your husband's mother tongue is not your own? What happens when your teacher cannot pronounce your name? What happens when you migrate to a country whose language you resisted learning in school, because it was the language of the coloniser?

"Some places in this country have been bleached white. And it's places where we don't recognise Italians and we don't recognise Hungarians, we don't recognise Argentinians, that kind of make up that whole fabric of this land, and that we're been here for quite some time, building this country together. There's only one culture that's recognised, and one name that's easy to pronounce."

- Leticia Cáceres

The fourth episode of this season brings you a conversation that was not programmed for WOW Festival Melbourne, but instead was recorded separately a few days before the festival opened itself up to the world. In a large warehouse space around the corner from the festival mainstage, artists from Bangladesh, Timor-Leste, India, Indonesia and Australia were busy developing new collaborative works, critical conversations and creative exchanges to be presented at the festival. This international residency program, called Women, Art & Politics, is facilitated by Footscray Community Arts Centre’s Collaborate Asia Program and Asia TOPA.

All the artists had spent the last few days working together and working a part on their respective practices all exploring the intersection of the concepts within the theme Women, Art & Politics, in their local and global contexts and how they impact their practice and communities. Two of the resident artists, Lena Caminha and Leticia Cáceres, took a break from their rehearsal to record in a small room, just out of reach from the group, but just close enough so you can hear magic being created in the background.

Discussed in this episode:

speaking English, not speaking English, the women who came before us, learning English in Canada, learning English in Queensland, contemporary feminism, Melbourne vs Sydney (but the West is the best!), how providing a platform for women is not the same as belonging to contemporary feminism, our husbands, our children, our accents, giving our children unpronounceable names, and what it means to be understood.

"I certainly identify as a feminist. I am constantly challenged by feminism. I respect many people who are resisting it, particularly women of colour, and queer folk who have found many problems with the feminist movement, and I am constantly trying to keep up with all of the ways in which we can make the thing more inclusive, and more sensitive to, or more aware of, the inherent privileges that are embedded in that movement, and have been in the movement for some time. But I can't deny the overwhelming sense of pride that I feel being associated, and standing in solidarity, with women like Lena, and feminists that have come before me, and have achieved the incredible things that they have achieved. And I am also incredibly aware of the enormity of the scale of work that needs to be done, still."

- Letitia Cáceres

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In our third episode of this season, moderated by RMIT Deputy Dean of Media Lisa French, our guests writer and performer Candy Bowers, artist and filmmaker Amos Gebhardt, and playwright and theatre-maker Chi Vu discuss decolonising ourselves, Jill Soloway, inclusivity and being included, very small paths, being the Best Female Performer for playing a straight man, what is cultural safety?, how bilinguals are not like two monolinguals in the same body, Back to Back Theatre, creating little worlds, what's wrong with make-up artists in Australia?, and the female gaze.

Paola Balla and Carly Sheppard talk about white women explaining things on behalf of black women, sitting with conflict, giving birth at 21, postnatal depression, contemporary feminism, life as a white-presenting blackfella, not understanding the conflict you're born into, the oppression of being ladylike, what does it even mean, having it all?, how sometimes you need a safe landing, and listening to the silences of trauma.

Welcome to season 5 of Audiostage where we explore what it means to belong. Episode 1 is Alia Gabres is in conversation with Elaine Brown at the Women Of The World Festival Melbourne 2017, recorded at Footscray Community Arts Centre. They discuss being a mother vs being a revolutionary, how words are beautiful but actions are supreme, how every woman needs her own football team, wanting to be white, the mirroring moment, you can't be a vegan in the 'hood, clicktivism, white supremacy, parenting in the Black Panther Party, not knowing how to braid your daughter's hair, and how revolutionary women don't cook.

Jana Perkovic chats to Matthew Todd about the Wizard of Oz, 'the gay play', the role of fantasy in coping with trauma, Chem Sex the infamous documentary, Byron Bache, George Michael's spending sprees, challenging sex positivity, rape and consent, Brokeback Mountain, bullying and Prince William, the role of gay media in a changing world, the gay equivalent of Bridget Jones' Baby?, the role of community in overcoming depression, and how perhaps we need to talk more about the LGBT realities.

In the episode four of season four, on queer performance, Jana and Beth are joined by the extraordinary Emma Valente of the performance collective The Rabble. The conversation explores

queer as advertisement or queer as a political project, our visual commonplaces, violence against women as always true and inevitable, Rihanna and Rosie Batty, masculine and feminine ways of making art, having an ensemble, cages and liberation, Alison Croggon, the 'fuck it' moment in making art, the rise of the Melbourne indie scene, rolling pins, how pornography can be so, so boring, having a coffee with anyone who asks, Story of O, the importance of context in staging a provocative work, and how backing an artist means giving them three shots.

In our last episode of season three, on dance and value, Jana and Beth are back in the studio together, this time joined by co-host Audrey Schmidt, to talk with choreographer Matthew Day about affect, physical touch, and how we can be queer outside of queer theory.

Aboriginal Australian artist Sarah-Jane Norman joins Jana Perkovic and Angela Conquet in a discussion of cultural trauma, queer identity, and how there is no context for racism except racism.

Playwright Declan Greene and performer Ash Flanders, who together make up Sisters Grimm, Melbourne-based queer performance collective, join Jana Perkovic and Bethany Atkinson-Quinton to discuss what is and isn’t queer performance. Discussed in this episode: 'Fuck Howard' as a theatre genre, the queer canon, RuPaul's Drag Race, the use of rage in making theatre, the treasure trove that is YouTube, the role of Judy Garland in Stonewall riots, Pygmalion, how all theatre used to be shit, diva worship, Susan Sontag's Notes on Camp, Sisters Grimm' entire oeuvre, that time Declan Greene did drag in Berlin, Lilith: The Jungle Girl, why gay men love theatre, Australia's colonial myths, cross-racial, -gender, and -everything casting, and how to fold a fitted sheet.