Melbourne Writers Festival – Day 9

MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL: Edge of Comedy participants Tony Martin, Charlie Pickering, Catherine Deviny and Steve Toltz (Image courtesy of the Melbourne Writers Festival)  

DAY 9 - It’s wet and grey today in Melbourne – so to be out and about is impressive in itself. The Saturday Book Fair was back, filling the atrium with tables covered in second hand books and people were milling about nicely. I stumbled in, impressed with myself but only just managed to collect a caffeinated beverage before the session started.

It was a little horrifying to see what fine form Catherine Deviny was in this morning, apparently sporting no ill effects from the Melbourne Writers Festival 25th Birthday party last night. She was positively chipper as she introduced her panel for the session ‘The Edge of Comedy’ in oddly enough the BMW Edge. Perhaps that was because the topic was one dear to her heart – being offensive.

With her were the 7pm Project’s Charlie Pickering (Impractical Jokes), Tony Martin (A Nest of Occasionals) and Steve Toltz (A Fraction of the Whole) who doesn’t think he’s funny but other people think his books are hilarious.

The tone was set early on when having introduced her guests Deviny said so how do you like that, have I blown enough smoke up your arses. Pickering immediately, quipped back, ‘I may have cancer by the end.’

We laughed, and Deviny challenged, ‘Was anyone offended by that? It didn’t seem we were, but Pickering said, this was because it was a joke about his anus and if it happened his cancer and that was okay.

The colour continued with Deviny saying, so isn’t it that it’s okay to piss in your own tent but not out of your tent. This confused us a bit, hence Martin’s comment, that there’s a lot of that going on at the Byron Bay Festival, but he wasn’t quite sure it was here.

Hopefully, you get an idea of the pace. These were funny people and they were firing well for early on a Saturday morning. Under the joking though they all showed they were pretty clever too, and thoughtful about their process and practice.

Talk turned to the perceived power of the ‘offensartti’ to hem in comedy or what was called second-hand outrage, when people are offended on behalf of other people. The irony being, that often proponents of this outrage are mad about things that don’t involve them, that they haven’t directly seen and in their rebuttals are often more offensive that the origin ‘misdemeanour – the Chaser’s Unreasonable Wish Foundation sketch being an example. The main problem there though, said Pickering, was it wasn’t funny, it misfired.

This led to a discussion of the unspoken contract between a comedian and the audience – Pickering said, they want to see someone take risks. Which is true, isn’t it? If you go into a comedy club there’s a voluntary assumption of risk, that you may not like some of it, you may not laugh. The problem often comes when something said in a comedy routine gets out into a wide world, and is heard out of context.

There was some discussion too about why we are offended by jokes, or even if we should be. Toltz suggested we should really say ‘ you hurt my feelings’ as that exposes more clearly the childishness of the response. Given that he’s jewish he’s heard a lot of anti-Semitic jokes and yeah, he’s offended but ‘I don’t care…after awhile you just wish they were funny’.

Good humour has a point, it tells you something deeper. Being shocking isn’t enough. In much comedy, as Martin so perceptive explained, a comedian uses humour poked at others as a way to expose a vulnerability in themselves. You’ve got to make jokes at your own expense as much as you do of others.

Martin’s comments about revealing yourself, gave me pause. It’s should be just as true when writing a critique about other people and their work. But does the reader want to hear, you or the person, event, show you’re writing about?

Exposing yourself as a comedian, can also often expose those close to you, where’s the line there? ‘When a writers is born into a family, that family is doomed, quoted Toltz. For Pickering it was more about being honest about what you say, and being prepared to stand by your opinions. It’s easier in fiction, Toltz said, people can have extraordinary poor self awareness and not realise they are basis of unflattering characters.

All comediy is an experiment Pickering said, in answering the final question. A joke is like a tree falling in a forest, you don’t know if it’s funny until you say it to an audience.

As for the Edge of Comedy, Deviny’s final point seemed to sum up her feelings on the subject, comedy is about finding where the line is then stepping over it.

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A lot of effort goes into making writer’s festivals more than just panel chat-a-thons. So I took myself off to see what happens when you adapt a historical verse novel into a theatrical performance.

Ray Liversidge’s poetic monologue Seeking Fabled Waters is one of six pieces selected to be produced and performed by the Australian Poetry Centre (APC) through its Poetic Monologue series last year as a way to provide a new platform for poetry. It’s based upon Liversidge’s historical verse novel, The Barrier Range (2006).

This seemed to be a family affair. Many in the audience going into the ACMI Studio 1 space seemed to know each other or the Liversidge’s quite well. The tone of the piece itself seemed to hark to a personal journey. And Ray’s son Reuben Liversidge was the actor.

The story of the Seeking Fabled Waters combines a cathartic search for a lost ‘black sheep’ uncle as father figure and with an historical account of the Burke and Wills expedition and that of Charles Sturt. A variety of voices are brought together from real and perhaps imaged characters on the expedition and a modern man’s journey following the path of Bourke and Wills. These are told through letters, phone calls, news-like reports and diary entries. Time is distorted, with historic voices speaking in modern vernacular, swearing and the use of current day technology. Interspersed with dialogue were lyrical passages and description of Australia’s extraordinary landscape.

Reuban Liversidge reads large parts of the text without use of costume or props, showing instead vocal dexterity and simplicity. Letters from a writer accompanying the expedition are performed through pre-recorded voice over by Rodrick Cairns. On the screen at the back of the space Images representational of the journey of both the modern and historical accounts illustrate the story as it is told. There are historic sketches, watercolours and paintings, historic documents from the time photographs, maps and family snaps. Text is also incorporated as historical background and to mark out chapter headings.

With no theatre experience Liversidge was connected through, Paul Kooperman, Acting Director of the APC with Petra Kalive to adapt the piece to the stage. She acted as producer/director for the project, assisting with the editing of the script, and the incorporation of voice over and visual elements.

It has to be said this performance suffered some teething problems, largely because it appeared to be using powerpoint to drive the visuals. Cues were missed on occasion and slides with large quantities of text were flicked over far too quickly. Transitions were also not always attractive and drew attention to themselves, so the multi-media component detracted a little from the whole. The historic facts and research are a strong point but the well-known tragedy of the Bourke and Wills story was relied on a little to heavily to provide the narrative arc for 45 minutes.

The audience didn’t seem to mind though and there was lots of happy chatter as it finished. But I was off to see another arty side to the festival down at ArtPlay.

Seeking Fabled Waters is also being performed at several regional events in August and September as part of the 150th anniversary of the Burke and Wills expedition. See www.poetray.wordpress.com for more details.

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Art Play is a great place down on Riverside Terrace at Birrarung Marr that runs art activities for kids. This year they’ve teamed up with the Writers Festival for Wordplay@Artplay with a series author talks, story reading and art activities running over the weekends of the festival.

In a former life the ArtPlay building belonged to the Victoria’s Railways and was used as a training facility with locomotives able to be trundled in and out. Now it’s transformed into a high domed light filled art room with a mezzanine level for workshops and underneath a cosy reading space.

When I popped in there were kids busy at craft tables with glues and fabrics making their own books and cards with help from Victoria Ryle.

And down the far end, Carole Wilkinson was chatting with a group of kids and getting them to help draw a dragon on the whiteboard. Each of them got to imagine a different part of the beast so it was pretty wild. Wilkinson has a huge following for her award winning Dragonkeeper trilogy and when the session finished, the kids just like festival going adults, queued up to get their books signed.

The Children’s Book Council of Australia (CBCA) had just wrapped up a story telling session, but helpful people were on hand to pass me brochures and suggestions on great books for kids of various ages. There were cushions, books and space for kids to settle in. All pretty cosy. Wish there was one like that for adults.

Coming into contact with children’s writers is a lot like meeting a vegan collective, they’re so happy and virtuous and worthy and passionate. I’d kinda like to see Dylan Moran make an entrance or maybe I could be a fly on the wall at one of their boozy piss-ups just to get a different image in my head.

Sally Rippin, is the epitome of this image, always sunny and welcoming. She was sharing her skills in Chinese illustration, gained from three years of study in China, in workshops for the afternoon.

The children, and their enthralled parents were shown her four treasures. Her brushes made with big soft sheep hairs, and scratchy goat and fox hairs, rice paper, her ink stone and ink stick and her chock. I’d never known they made ink by grinding the stick on the stone with a little water, or that it was made from the soot of pine resin, how about that.

We were shown how to hold a brush in the Chinese way to attain the best flow of chi through the body, quite tricky. Then how to apply the ink with varying concentrations of water and ink to make strong and faint strokes.

‘Who’s seen Kung Fu Panda?’ Rippin asked, as she explained how Chinese concepts of Ying and Yang are applied to painting in finding a balance of light and dark, thick and thin, positive and negative space. As she spoke she did a painting of mountains and water, the concepts that make up the Chinese word for landscape. Paintings start from the bottom and work their way up to the top, from foreground to background, as this is they way they are read.

As she painted she talked through the story she was painting. She painted a house, which then needed steps to get down the mountain. Then she added some boats so they could sail across the water, trees for food, and some neighbours so they wouldn’t be lonely. When it was done, she printed her own chock mark on the side. She’d even carved her Chinese name on the chock herself.

Sally Rippin explained to us the Chinese approach to painting. Paintings are seen as representational rather than realistic, the artist painting as they feel not as they see. It was fascinating too, hearing about the traditional way she was taught. In her first week all she was allowed to do was paint straight lines. Students learn through copying every detail and brush stroke of master painters. We got to see a scroll mounted painting she had done toward the end of her training, a copy of a 15th Century picture, quite amazing.

Sally’s time in China has influence many of her books and her illustrative style. Her illustrations in John Marsden’s Millie are a great example of how she has adapted her Chinese training to her illustrative work. So everyone pottered imagining exotic mountains, rolling mists and making tales of distant lands, which was a rather nice way to spend a grey wet day I thought.

For more information on ArtPlay’s activities go to www.artplay.com.au

MELBOURNE WRITERS FESTIVAL
27 August to 5 September
For further information and ticketing go to www.mwf.com.au
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