The Wheeler Centre

For Asia TOPA 2020, theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen presented SAIGON – a moving family saga tracing the paths of 11 characters across history and space. In this podcast, her translator, Nguyen Duc Duy, joins Australian writer Benjamin Law for a conversation about language, theatre and comedy, and this incredible play that places the art of translation at centre stage. They also explore the intergenerational, intercultural dimensions of their work – treasured by audiences, but largely missing from international stages. Hosted by Beverley Wang.

Photograph of Helene Embling, Nguyen Duc Duy, Benjamin Law and Beverley Wang at the Wheeler Centre — Photo: Jon Tjhia

People – families – of diaspora carry the traces of change: new circumstances, different languages, uncertainty and often trauma. How do the ghosts of history and geography affect the everyday experiences and identities of people today? And what happens when the places where your parents and grandparents lived no longer exist – or you don’t share a language with your parents because you grew up in different places?

For Asia TOPA 2020, theatre director Caroline Guiela Nguyen presented SAIGON – a moving family saga tracing the paths of 11 characters across history and space. In this podcast, her translator, Nguyen Duc Duy, joins Australian writer Benjamin Law for a conversation about language, theatre and comedy, and this incredible play that places the art of translation at centre stage. They also explore the intergenerational, intercultural dimensions of their work – treasured by audiences, but largely missing from international stages. Hosted by Beverley Wang, with translator Helene Embling.

Presented in partnership with Asia TOPA.

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Alexander Chee's third book, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, is a work of memoir – a collection of engrossing essays about Chee’s own life and about the mysterious alchemy behind full-length works of fiction. A revered ‘writer’s writer’, a tireless champion of other authors, and a blazing talent in his own right, Chee talks writing and life at the Athenaeum Theatre with Leah Jing McIntosh as part of our 2019 Mayhem series.

Alexander Chee's third book, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, is a work of memoir – a collection of engrossing essays about Chee’s own life and about the mysterious alchemy behind full-length works of fiction. A revered ‘writer’s writer’, a tireless champion of other authors, and a blazing talent in his own right, Chee talks writing and life at the Athenaeum Theatre with Leah Jing McIntosh as part of our 2019 Mayhem series.

Leah Jing McIntosh and Alexander Chee at the Athenaeum Theatre — Photo: Sophie Quick

‘Novels are accidents at their start,’ Alexander Chee has written. What causes these productive accidents? Who do they happen to? And what do novels become next?

Chee, the author of two masterful, award-winning novels – and a distinguished teacher, essayist and critic – has given a lot of thought to these questions. His acclaimed, reflexive autobiographical first novel, Edinburgh, was about a Korean-American boy from Maine. His second book, The Queen of the Night, was a radical departure – about a 19th-century opera singer in France.

His third book, How To Write An Autobiographical Novel, is a work of memoir – a collection of engrossing essays about Chee’s own life and about the mysterious alchemy behind full-length works of fiction. These essays describe episodes from the author’s own life, from the traumatic childhood events that fed directly into the writing of Edinburgh, to his AIDS activism in the nineties and his time at Iowa Writers’ Workshop. It’s a profound, enigmatic and charming book; a highly distinctive reflection on memory, identity and creativity.

A revered ‘writer’s writer’, a tireless champion of other authors, and a blazing talent in his own right, Chee talks writing and life at the Athenaeum Theatre with Leah Jing McIntosh as part of our Mayhem series.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kamila Shamsie's novel Home Fire won the 2018 Women's Prize for Literature in the UK and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Shamsie has twice won the prestigious Patras Bokhari Award in Pakistan for previous novels. Her body of work is characterised by in-depth research, and a preoccupation with the ways in which political events impact on individual identities and family ties. In conversation with Sonia Nair at the Wheeler Centre, the ingenious Shamsie talks global faultlines and torn loyalties.

Sonia Nair and Kamila Shamsie at the Wheeler Centre

With her seventh novel, Home Fire, Pakistani-British author Kamila Shamsie has pulled off an improbable feat.

Home Fire is a work of great ambition (it's a rigorously researched story of global terrorism, drawing its structure from Sophocles' Antigone) and it's also a gripping page-turner. It's a stinging, and often funny, indictment on our facile political debates about terror, security and religious extremism. And it calls on us to recognise the humanity of both the powerless and the powerful in its story of citizenship and conflicting loyalties. The book's cast of characters includes an Islamic State media recruit, his twin sister and a British Home Secretary.

Home Fire won the 2018 Women's Prize for Literature in the UK and was longlisted for the Man Booker Prize. Shamsie has twice won the prestigious Patras Bokhari Award in Pakistan for previous novels. Her body of work is characterised by in-depth research, and a preoccupation with the ways in which political events impact on individual identities and family ties.

In conversation with Sonia Nair at the Wheeler Centre, the ingenious Shamsie talks global faultlines and torn loyalties.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Patricia Cornelius, Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks have been making radical and confronting theatre together for decades, including the play 'SHIT', staged at the Venice Biennale in 2019. Join them as they speak with Alison Croggon about politics, performing arts and the power of making audiences squirm in their seats.

Alison Croggon, Susie Dee, Patricia Cornelius and Nicci Wilks at the Wheeler Centre

Warning: This recording contains some repeated coarse language.

Patricia Cornelius, Susie Dee and Nicci Wilks have been making radical and confronting theatre together for decades. ‘I’ve never believed the bullshit about how audiences don’t like risk,' Cornelius has said. 'They actually really do. I’ve seen it.'

Long-term collaborators, their work has more often found a home in innovative independent companies than in establishment state theatres. Yet their provocative Australian stories, dealing especially with issues of class and power, have brought them huge admiration among audiences and critics.

Their admirers, it turns out, extend far beyond Australian shores. In 2019, Patricia Cornelius was named among the winners of the lucrative Windham-Campbell Prize, administered by Yale University. Two of her plays – SHIT and LOVE – were staged at the Venice Biennale in July that year.

Those two productions were also shown in Melbourne at fortyfivedownstairs, directed by Dee and starring Wilks. Before they hit the road for Venice, we presented a conversation with the powerhouse trio at the Wheeler Centre. Join them as they speak with Alison Croggon about politics, performing arts and the power of making audiences squirm in their seats.

Support the Wheeler Centre: https://www.wheelercentre.com/support-us/donate

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In this edition of Double Booked Club, hear from two outstanding First Nations literary voices discussing dispossession and the ties that bind generations. Tara June Winch is a Wiradjuri author, now based in France, whose debut novel, Swallow the Air, and short-story collection, After the Carnage, have won many awards, critical acclaim – and the affection of readers. Her second novel, The Yield, is about an Aboriginal elder and his granddaughter. Tony Birch is a poet, activist and academic, as well as a much-loved novelist, short-story writer and Wheeler Centre regular. His new book, The White Girl, is about the Stolen Generations and is set in 1960s rural Australia. They speak with host Claire G. Coleman – author of The Old Lie and Terra Nullius.