Declan, Declan, Declan, I am so sorry.
I got Covid.
It ate my brain.
I thought I'd published it.
A good reminder of a lesson best remembered: that we should be questioning every part of the traditional theatre-going ritual.
Declan Greene
Artistic Director Griffin
Thinks he looks like Crispin Glover, but I don't see it
What theatre/art/creative experience did you love the most in 2021?
It feels a bit rude writing about this amongst all Melbourne artists, ‘cos in Sydney we weren’t quite as locked-down over the last two years... So let’s start with the online stuff, which was all Melbourne-based ‘cos frankly no-one did it better than Melbourne in 2021.
Among my faves: Lou Wall’s That One Time I Joined The Illuminati and Louisal the Musical were seriously, compulsively watchable works of musical-Youtuber-autofiction-investigative-journalism (my favourite new genre). Marcus McKenzie’s The Crying Room turned my tender brain to soup; he is a clever, clever boi. Stephen Nicolazzo and Monash CTP’s Body Horror was startling and trippy.
IRL here in Sydney, I had two favourite shows –both by indie companies. There was Dinosaurus’ production of David Henry Hwang’s Yellow Face, directed by Tasnim Hossain at KXT. Then Green Door Theatre (with Darlinghurst Theatre Company) gave us Shari Sebbens’s playful-but-lacerating production of Jasmine Lee-Jones’s Seven Methods of Killing Kylie Jenner, with two towering central performances. Moreblessing Maturure was mind-blowing; she had you scream-laughing one minute and choking back tears the next.
Then... at the other end of the scale, Kip Williams’s one person adaptation of Oscar Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Grey was exactly as thrilling as you’ve heard. The bombast of the video design was matched beat by beat with Eryn Jean Norvill’s superhuman feat of transformative performance. As president of the Marg Horwell fanclub, I was also in giggles at the details she snuck into the set design of this polished prestige production. My favourite was a lush floral bouquet, which, when you looked closer, was made of $2 fake flowers, plastic fruit, and one or two rubber zombie hands.
What surprised you about finding new ways to make art in locked-down worlds?
I was really inspired seeing how a lot of people responded to these new parameters. There were the online shows I mentioned , but also the alternative models of presenting shows IRL. I couldn’t get to see Malthouse’s Because the Night, but, from afar, I think what they did was by far the bravest, boldest, and most successful gambit of any mainstage theatre company in Australia making work in COVID times.
To toot Griffin’s horn, when we realised we could only fit 20 people in the SBW Stables under COVID restrictions, we figured out a way to stage a work outdoors in 2021: Elias Jamieson Brown’s Green Park. This was staged in the real Green Park – a site of huge historical (and fraught) significance to Sydney’s queer history, the ghosts of which rattle around in Elias’s play. We really didn’t know if any of this would work. None of us had ever done a play outdoors before, and we also didn’t know if our very-theatre-going audience would be into it. So, it was incredible to see patrons (some of whom had been coming to the Stables for 20 or 30 years) bringing picnics and lawn chairs to watch a Grindr hook-up play out in this grimy, beautiful little urban park. A good reminder of a lesson best remembered: that we should be questioning every part of the traditional theatre-going ritual.
What did you do to stay connected to your arts community?
While our theatre was dark, Griffin basically became a script development workshop. We channelled a big chunk of our disaster funding into seeding projects from artists, including new works from Melbourne icons like Sarah Ward and Bec Matthews, as well as Jean Tong, Lou Wall and James Gales.
Socially, over the lockdowns I wasn’t as good at remaining connected to my community – neither my old one in Melbourne nor my new one here in Sydney. I really missed Melbourne a lot. Even though in most theatre foyers I’m a slime-coated rat eyeing for a crack in wall to squeeze out of... I missed those spaces a lot. You hold an unexpected number of important relationships in the foyers or courtyards of places like La Mama, Theatre Works, Dancehouse ... with people who you really miss when you’ve spent two years away (like you, Anne-Marie!)
What are you looking forward to in 2022?
I’m REALLY looking forward to finally delivering a Griffin season where all the plays actually happen!!!
....But apart from that wild pipe-dream...
Here in Sydney there’s a ton of stuff I’m looking forward to - because there are so many new plays premiering! OMG. It truly feels like we’re out of the European-Canon-But-In-ASOS era. KXT
Bakehouse’s 2022 program is super strong. I’m really looking forward to Charlotte Salusinszky’s Little Jokes in Times of War; Saman Shad’s The Marriage Agency; Kenneth Moraleda and Jordan Shea's One Hour No Oil. At Ensembl: Brittanie Shipway’s A Letter for Molly. At Belvoir: S. Shakthidharan and Eamon Flack’s The Jungle and the Sea, and Vidya Rajan’s adaptation of Looking for Alibrandi, directed by Stephen Nicolazzo. At STC: Glace Chase’s Triple X. It’s wild, but there are SO MANY MORE I haven’t mentioned here.
And then hoping I’ll get down to Melbourne... I’m really looking forward to Carly Shepphard’s Chase and Aran Thangaratnam’s Stay Woke at Malthouse (I’ve read Stay Woke and it’s WILDLY, WILDLY funny and smart). Philip Adams and Ryan New’s SICK! at Temperance Hall, as part of Midsumma. And Arts House has shows by my favourite Australian theatre-makers of all time... the Rabble’s YES and Daniel Schlusser Ensemble’s Hercules. Oh god, and I’m fkn desperate to see something at the new La Mama ASAP...
