The main idea of this style of performance is to ‘act’ as oneself instead of representing another person. This is sometimes classed as a theatre practice called non-acting as it shows the everyday self, and as Govan explains, autobiographical performance sometimes mixes fictional elements to emphasise on certain aspects of the event. Due to this, audience members question if it can truly be autobiographical if fiction – the actor’s personality showing instead of the real person – with fact.

Through the chapter, the authors use statements made by Louis Renza, a critic specialising in postmodern works, to highlight their points. He argues the idea that the self is a coherent unity which might be called ‘authentic’ and sees autobiographical performance as creating a space in-between fact and fiction to create a more compelling piece.

An example of autobiographical performance is given by the authors in the shape of Class of ’76, a 1999 fifteen-minute piece for a theatre company named Third Angel where performer Alexander Kelly presented information about his former classmates from Chuckery Infants’ School and what they had become. Some of the information is made up due to the fact Kelly can’t remember or find or isn’t in contact with some of the people. However, this did help him recreate the piece after more research with the necessary information to truthfully tell the story of each of his classmates.

The authors describe how memory holds a key role when creating a autobiographical performance as the relationship of the past memory with how we live today makes a difference to how the testimony is formulated in the person’s mind. We explore how performing ‘the real’ can help bring audience member’s to the same status level the performer because some aspects of the testimony will help them recall a certain event that may have happened to them. Due to bringing back this memory because a link has been formed, witnessing such a theatre piece sets up a two-way communication with the performer and audience member as it makes the whole performance more personal.

To conclude, Govan, Nicholoson and Normington aid the reader see how autobiographical performance is labelled and how it raises questions about the relationship between truth and fiction.

Govan, E., Helen Nicholoson and Katie Normington, ‘Autobiographical Performance’ in Making a Performance: Devising Histories and Contemporary Practices. London: Routledge

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But at atyp, in a recent Fresh Ink/PlayWriting Australia event, playwrights Jane Bodie, Shôn Dale-Jones, Rita Kalnejais, Phil Spencer and moderator Chris Mead (Artistic Director of PlayWriting Australia) tackled how to take those very deeply personal events and make them into great theatre.

Admittedly I am not a playwright and even if my therapist or I happen to uncover 10 or 20 years from now that I have been secretly a repressed playwright for all this time, I can assure you, I’ll still not be a very good one.

I especially know that this is not the calling for me by the simple fact that I consistently misspell “Playwriting” with a “gh” in “writing”. I’ve done it three times already so it’s for the best really that I steer clear.

It’s probably why I am so fascinated by the writing process though and the unique craft employed to create such spellbinding work, with full knowledge that it is not the way in which I see the world.

Jane Bodie, head of playwriting at NIDA and the writer of Griffin Theatre Company’s This Year’s Ashes was asked why choose theatre over any other art form to express grief or investigate death and sadness. She answered that she thought in theatre terms and so it was only natural that it would be within this space that she chose to investigate it.

Shôn, currently performing Story of a Rabbit at the Opera House, concurred, stating that in trying to convey grief, the collective experience that is theatre offered the perfect environment. Having seen his show earlier in the week, it’s easy to see what he means. It is a show that is filled with generosity and multiple shared experiences, shaping grief and death for an audience and making it all much easier to digest, even providing a little hope.

What everyone agreed on was that it was important to bring the funny.

That’s not to say that there isn’t space for drama, but what the writers all specialized in was using these situations, often coming straight from their lives, to make people laugh.

Rita Kalnejais, whose beautiful piece Babyteeth is on at Belvoir in 2012, said that it was so nice to laugh in a big group of people and that the experience of theatre is about “pleasure and people coming together”. For Jane also, humor causes a release for an audience from such grief, boldly declaring early on in the discussion the romantic comedy be seen as high art.

“Time loses meaning when you’re in a relationship with death”

Common themes emerged across the writers’ semi-autobiographical pieces about grief and dying: order perching on the edge of chaos; loving when you have nothing to lose; the complexities of time and how in moments of grief and death and dying things speed up, slow down and become so personal that everyone’s memory is different. The biggest point to make was that all the writers present these potentially somber topics with hope, not despair.

“To grieve demonstrates great love” said Jane Bodie and to make people feel this love was Jane’s advice to playwrights, based on her experience of writing her father’s death as part of her recent work. Rita similarly discussed her exploration of the freedom and joy that could come at this mysterious point on the brink of life and death in Babyteeth.

“If you’re going to write about death, you’re really writing about life”

Grief though is of course an immensely personal thing. I’ve always thought that at any given moment you on some level have a future projection of the people and relationships in your life that you factor into all of your plans. Why I think grief affects us so profoundly is that it immediately shatters these projections and from that moment on, a comfortable assessment of our entire future must be re-evaluated, hence the profound loss. But how to make this personal experience accessible for others, and importantly valuable or useful?

For Shôn, it’s important to know when times call for the reality and facts of a situation or experience and when an imaginative world is allowed to take over. Luis Bunuel wrote that “fantasy and reality are equally personal and equally felt, so their confusion is only of relative importance” and the panel agreed that it’s not the goal of great art to simply show us an idea, but to feel it. In taking these personal stories and using them as a way to make people laugh, cry but give hope, something we all know to be true is illuminated in a shared positive experience.

“Sometimes in a moment close to death, people can be living so completely.”

Phil, currently Co-Artistic Director of, and performing in The Horse’s Mouth festival of autobiographical writing at the Old Fitzroy, mentioned the feminist proverb that the personal is always political. Shôn Dale Jones also stressed theatre as the beginning of a public forum where something is presented for a purpose and can from then on be a point of discussion. Both work with their own stories but ensure that they are entirely theatrical. Phil works with cakes and dramaturgs and Shôn uses the character Hugh Hughes in whose imaginative world everything is ‘brilliant’. For both, this was a way that their autobiographies were able to emotionally affect people in the realm of the fictional with a powerful outcome.

It’s safe to say that it was never the goal of really answering all the big questions surrounding this discussion. The only human panel who could come close to doing that would involve 8 more people at the table, one of whom would be a prophet, all of whom would inspire a Dan Brown novel or two.

But there was a beautiful sense that for all, the immediacy and bonding nature of theatre was prime for starting a public discussion and contemplation of these big questions in a really positive and often funny way.

Rita may have summed it up best when she mentioned that the closer we come to death, the closer it brings us to life.

And I would have to agree.

Moderated by PlayWriting Australia Artistic Director Chris Mead.

Follow the discussion on Twitter at #atyp or through FreshInkATYP and PlayWriting Australia.

Date and time: Friday, 2nd December, 1.00 pm to 3.00 pm
Venue: atyp, Studio 1, The Wharf, Hickson Road, Walsh Bay
Admission: Free

Panel

• Jane Bodie Head of Playwriting, NIDA, playwright, This Year’s Ashes
• Shôn Dale Jones, Artistic Director, Hoipolloi, performer, Hugh Hughes
• Rita Kalnejais, Playwright, Babyteeth (opening at Belvoir, 2012)
• Phil Spencer, Associate Artistic Director, Tamarama Rock Surfers

Biographies

Jane Bodie

Jane Bodie is a playwright, screenwriter and theatre director. She is the current head of the postgraduate playwriting course at the National Institute of Dramatic Arts (NIDA) in Sydney. Her plays include A Single Act, RIDE and Still and have been performed worldwide from Australia to New York and Brazil. A Single Act premiered at the Hampstead Theatre in London and had its Australian premiere at Melbourne Theatre Company in 2006, and won the Victorian Premier’s Award for Best Play. Jane has also written extensively for television and radio, including the series The Secret Life of Us and Crash/Burn. Her most recent work, This Year’s Ashes, a co-commission by PlayWriting Australia and Griffin Theatre, was recently staged to acclaim at Griffin Theatre and the Riverside Theatres in Parramatta.

Shôn Dale Jones

Over the last seventeen years Shôn has made his own original work for his company, Hoipolloi. Over the last five years he has focussed his work on writing and performing his own material, creating the comic persona of Hugh Hughes, the emerging artist from Wales. In the guise of this character he has made three very popular award-winning shows, Floating, 360 and Story Of A Rabbit, the latter playing from the 29th November at the Sydney Opera House.

Read Shôn on his practice and more about Story Of A Rabbit, here.

Rita Kalnejais

Rita Kalnejais is an actor, playwright and screenwriter. Since graduating from the Victorian College of the Arts in 2001 she has appeared in numerous productions for Sydney Theatre Company, Company B Belvoir, Malthouse Theatre and Griffin Theatre Company and in a variety of short films. In 2007 Rita won the Inscription scholarship to study at Sydney Film School and recently completed Great Acts of Kindness: Acts 2 and 4, a short film starring Alice McConnell and Joel Edgerton, which she wrote, directed and co-produced. B.C., Rita’s first play was developed with PlayWriting Australia at the National Script Workshop 2009 and produced in late 2009 by Full Tilt at the Arts Centre, Melbourne in association with the Hayloft Project.

Rita’s newest work, Babyteeth, opens at Belvoir in 2012. http://www.belvoir.com.au/productions-1/babyteeth

Phil Spencer

Since graduating in 2007 from the University of Glasgow, Phil has worked professionally as a writer, director & performer in both the UK and Australia. His Theatre credits include – Boxing Day (Tin Shed, MakeBeLive & TRS. The Old Fitzroy Theatre, Sydney), Bluey (Sydney Theatre Company, The Old Fitzroy Theatre. Battersea Arts Centre, London. The Arches, Glasgow), Mike (ATYP, Sydney), Kansas (The Home Brew Festival 2010, Sydney), Yolk (Brand Spanking New, Sydney), Fit For A King (Brand Spanking New & The Arches), Cardboard Castle (Imagine Festival, Sydney, The Arches & Edinburgh Fringe Festival), Shop Lifters of the World (Carriageworks, Sydney), and Collisions Can Be Painful (West End Festival, Glasgow). Phil is co-artistic director of Tin Shed Theatre Company and Associate Artistic Director of Tamarama Rock Surfers , whose festival of autobiographical writing, The Horse’s Mouth Festival, runs from 24th November to 17th Dec.

See: www.rocksurfers.org