Note: This is intended to be the ‘final’ post of the European leg of my fellowship. In an ideal world my writing reflecting on my experiences would be done, and I would summing things up so very neatly with this. Given that this particular post needed found it’s way out of my brain and onto a screen last night, and considering my writing is still in progress and will be for some time, I have decided to post this now anyway. Once the rest of my writing is finished I will adjust the publish date so it will sit in a linear order. The end.

There is an enormous value in looking outward. Out towards the other. Out towards things, people and places that you would not otherwise encounter. Looking in places where you ordinarily would not have the opportunity to be, and looking for a duration which guarantees experiences that refresh to the unknown and the unexpected. That is what this fellowship has been to me, a process of external investigation that continues to stimulate internal impulses and ideas.

I chose to carry out a program of activities that consisted of many short experiences, because that’s the way my brain works. I thrive on brief but dense bursts of inspiration. My brain refreshes regularly as I seek new stimulus. This may be a product of my environment that is typical to my generation, a generation for whom consuming on multiple platforms at any time of the day or night has become the norm. But this does not mean to say I am unable to deal with experiences of a more extended duration. I do read dense works of fiction and non-fiction when I feel the need or interest, I can and do spend extended periods of time researching specific subject matter, but in general my practice seems to revolve around small and profound impulses triggered by information that spiral into bigger dreams and ideas. 

12 weeks of travel consisting of short residencies, festivals and perhaps hundreds of hours of conversation about making art and directing collaborative processes might seem like a lot. It was a lot. I am pretty sure I saw 86 shows in that time, most of which have been buried in my mind to the deepest files of my subconscious, and about 5 of which I will never forget. By the time I was two thirds of the way through my trip, I thought I was utterly full. I had taken in so much, I had looked outwards for so long, that I was fatigued and felt unable to cope with any more input. Despite this, as planned, I continued and was remarkably able to take in what I needed to, leaving out the rest. I became excellent at filtering what was useful from what wasn’t. I tried to be open to all experiences without completely committing to any of them, unless of course I felt that there was something vital that would add to what I had already learnt. And what I have learnt is the sort of thing that cannot be anticipated when writing a funding application for a fellowship program.

With an experience like this, there is a big preconceived expectation placed on the project, a result of the process by which you gain the support in the first place. I was asked to write an application featuring a list of confirmed activities and respond to criteria as to how those activities would benefit my practice. I was asked to explain in detail how this artistic development will actualise, how the work I made in response would benefit my community. To write a good application I had to think big picture, believe in my potential enough to make significant claims on paper that not only will my fellowship activities deliver great things for me personally, but that I will then deliver great things back as a return on investment. Then there were the expectations from those around me. Being such an incredible opportunity, peers were understandably excited about the fellowship and quick to confirm for me that this journey was going to be an amazing experience. ‘You will come back a different person’ was one comment that someone (I cannot actually remember who) made. Of course I agreed, but what I didn’t realise before I left was that my own expectations for the fellowship, formed by my application goals and the encouragement of those around me, could potentially be a barrier. The thing is, at the end of the day, my application was nothing more than words on a page, and positive preconceptions are beneficial but not reality. These things were a record of intent and a guide for my journey, but actually isolated from of the experience itself. That part was yet to come. 

The experience, in all its joys and challenges, required a different approach. Not one that sought to tick items from outcome lists, but simply let things be. The things that I said I was going to do, for all I knew, actually might not exist. Once I realised that and was able to look at the opportunities before me for what they were, I was able to see their actual value. This became clear about half way through the trip, and things became easier. I needed to work hard to chase all the opportunities that were before me in the fellowship. I needed to be vigilant, to ask questions, to write, to think. I needed to put myself in positions that I thought would allow me to capitalise on potential learning. But then, on the other hand, I also needed to be honest and happy with myself in regards to what was manageable for me to take in. I had to find a balance between immersing myself in learning, and leaving for myself time and space for emotional and mental well-being. For instance, some days the best option available was to ride my bike through the city streets, or into the countryside to photograph the sunset. Experiences like these gave me time to process the situation I found myself in and appreciate the world around me in those moments. Often, making the most of my situation meant less stimulus and more space, leaving room for dreaming.

The thing is, that the value of looking outwards is only useful to me if it is balanced by an equal value of looking inwards. I have realised that outward stimulus can never be a muse greater than myself. I need to be my own greatest muse first and foremost. Perhaps consuming amazing art can be potentially destructive unless I myself know that inside you have I have the potential, the power and the ability to create something great and profound. I don’t want to let other people art disempower me from my own mission and my own journey. I will continue to be honest with myself, to challenge myself to do better and to be rigorous about my process and the work I make. I feel as if this fellowship process is now ongoing, and that looking inward and working hard to find what I am capable will be a lifetime quest. I also know that the point I have arrived at thus far is only part way in comprehending this whole experience. There is much more processing that needs to happen, and this will only happen with time.

What I do know at this time is that I am desperate to keep actualising the ideas that float in my head. I have had time and space to refine several ideas to the point where I am now ready to share them with others and begin the process of resourcing them into being. The time that it takes for me to see my ideas actualised is frustrating, but I am hoping that in the next few years this will slowly change. 

In the meantime, watch this space to see what my next move might be. I don’t even know, so it will surely be a surprise for both of us, and that’s the way it should be.

Yes. I am home from 72 days of fellowship. I am awake at 5:07am feeling very jet lagged but happy to be sitting on my couch after such an incredible experience. I am realising just how much has happened, and noticing how different my headspace has been whilst away. I thought about many things, nearly all the time. There is something about being out of your everyday environment that invites new thought. 

I am now in a position to consolidate and extend these thoughts by continuing to write about my experience, as after all I have about two months worth of activity to catch up on. I am going to attempt to write a blog a day give or take the weekend, which should see me knock over everything in the next three weeks. 

At that point, I am leaving home again for 3.5 weeks, heading to Canberra for the Australian Theatre Forum (thanks Metro Arts for the bursary) before flying on to Adelaide to Assistant Direct for Rose Myers at Windmill Theatre for 3 weeks. 

A quick thanks to Brisbane Lord Mayor Graham Quirk and Brisbane City Council for supporting this astonishing program. It’s probably one of the best cultural investments council makes in this city, and I hope to bring my fellow citizens a steady return in the future. Thanks also to Carley Commons from council for being personally and administratively ideal in helping me with this whole thing.

Finally, I am having trouble clarifying what it is I am going to say to people when they ask ‘how was the trip’ other than the obvious responses. I will probably defer the answer by saying ‘so much happened, and it’s going to take me a little while to process it’. Or i’ll just say ‘read my blog, please’.

To those of you have have, thanks for reading it already.

With only a few short days of this trip remaining, it’s hard not to get sentimental. Despite the fact that I am very ready to go home to see my loved ones and get back to work, this trip has left me with some very fond memories of the places I have been and the people who I have spent time with. I have made some great friends, and got to know old friends much better. I have been steadily saying goodbye to them as I travel knowing that none of us actually know when we will see each other again. Having friends all over the world is amazing, but Australia is a long way away from most places and it’s a shame to think that it will be years before I see my friends again.

I have also been lucky to have had time to stay with my sisters in Berlin, whom have hosted me in their very smart apartment on the 20th floor of an ex GDR building overlooking Alexanderplatz. These two are getting married (to each other, Kath is my sister-in-law and Maria is her German bride) in June and I won’t be here with most of the rest of our family, which sucks, but it’s nice that I have had the chance to be here now. Also, Berlin is amazing. Thanks for choosing such a rad city to live in ladies!

Like some sort of fateful clockwork after three months of very good health, my body has finally given up and I have succumbed to the perils of the common cold just a day before I hit my long haul flight to Seoul. This is both inconvenient and unpleasant, both for myself and whichever poor people happen to be sitting in the same rocket powered tin can as me for the 11 hours I will be in the air tomorrow. 

So much writing to do, but any of you who follow this blog already know that. More from me in the coming days as I make my way home. 

Home. That’s going to be so very nice.

Thanks to the help of a friend a friend in high places, I was invited to present an 8 minute speech as one fo 4 panelists at the ASSITEJ Denmark Platform event during the Danish Festival, centred on the topic of ‘Great Ideas: Must or Maybe?”. This was a great honour, as any one of the internationals could have presented on this panel and been incredibly interesting. Despite being terribly nervous talking about my opinions and process in front of a room of international practitioners, I think managed ok. A transcript of the talk is below.

So, great ideas, must or maybe? Must, absolutely must. 

I want to preface some of my thoughts with talking about some of the qualities that might define what a great idea is. This is what I am thinking as a kind of criteria.

A great idea has the potential to make impact. Impact on a situation, time, place, community etc.

A great idea has the potential to transform. To transform preconceptions, practice, perspectives.

A great idea responds to something. Responds to a need, a circumstance, a context, an environment, an ideology etc.

A great idea is authentic, and it has purpose

So in a way we are in the business of great ideas. Ideas are our raw commodity. The idea is the item of value that we who work in the cultural sector have to offer with those around us. And like any commodity ideas are precious and vulnerable.

The question then for me is how do we realise the potential of an idea within our own working context? What support systems are around us, who can mentor, is challenge us  to help guide an idea, what is it about my idea that best serves those I want to share it with? In my context at Imaginary Theatre, a small independent company in Brisbane, we have no shortage of ideas. An ever evolving document which we call our ‘Ideas Bank’ is home to a suit of ideas for new project across multiple disciplines. Ideas for projects grow and evolve in theory in this central document, and not all of them are great ideas yet (in fact some of them are probably rubbish, but I think many of them have the potential to become great ideas given the right circumstance. A small company we have the capacity to make a new show perhaps once every 2-3 years, giving us time for research and development investigating the idea including consultation with the audience we are making it with, attract project funding and producing partners, to have creative development periods to develop out ideas, and to actually mount the production. So for us this means we have to choose carefully which of those ideas we want to prioritise and move forward with, given our context. We have to think very strategically about what the potential of our ideas are both in a business sense and artistic. I think that many of our ideas will never see the light of day because new ideas continue to grow, leaving old ones behind, but also because for us at this stage in the development of our company, there are ideas that are unable to be delivered into a cultural context that is willing and or able to receive them. So great ideas must be developed within a context that will allow the potential of that idea to be realised. 

 This creates a challenge though, as whilst we have to operate with the realities of our own context, particularly for Imaginary Theatre in regards to what presenters of theatre for children in Australia will accept as a ‘safe’ option for them in terms of selling tickets, we are also committed to creating work that is true to our own unique artistic vision, not just to fulfil the needs or criteria of these external factors. I don’t think great ideas are created in direct response to a check list of external criteria, they have to owned by the artists who have that idea, and they have to be authentic, despite the fact that sometimes artists and funders/venues might have conflicting priorities about what is a good idea for this time and this place. 

Another question for me is how do we nurture the development of ideas? When does an idea become a great idea and how? The process of research, development and consultation for us at Imaginary Theatre is integral to why we do. As I said before, out of necessity in order to find resources to create and tour our productions, we have lots of to think about new work. Part of our process is rigorous testing and consultation with our audiences. For instance, my performance , ‘Look’ was created last year for children aged 2-5, a completely new audience for us. ‘Look’ is the first outcome of a longer term research project called ‘Play Project’ which I created with the intention to throw aside anything I though I knew about children under five (which was very little) and start from scratch to get to know this audience. We were successful in gaining project funding to deliver a 100 hour research project in 3 nursery and kindergartens in Brisbane, with the intention of researching the mechanics of children’s play as a source of information and stimulation in learning about how young children think, learn and communicate through play. There were several outcomes of this research project for us. The first was a paper we called ‘Playscapes’, describing the mechanics to children’s play through a performative lens as a tool to be used in the creation of theatre for very young audiences. The second was a large volume of research materials including reflective writing from our creative team, photographs, videos and very raw theatrical ideas based on games that had been observed in the play ground. The third, and the most valuable is a deep embodied understanding of young children which has allowed us to create work that we thinks responds to a new dramaturgy based in the developmental attributes of young children. ‘Play Project’ was the preface to our ideas, and has given us a foundation and expertise from which to grow new ideas from. So for me the process of turning an idea into a great idea is based in rigour, depth and research. 

So whilst Imaginary Theatre are slowly but steadily making project over long timelines, there is no 1 way of doing things. I have been thinking about the potential, and need, for ideas to be spontaneous, rapid and ongoing. Making work in systems that need to be planned into long term does not encourage creative spontaneity, so in response to this we are now working towards a new project which at the moment is somewhat jokingly called ‘Art without Spreadsheets’ to attempt to bring some balance to our creative process at Imaginary. This project will be smaller, more spontaneous creative project being made more often, that will utilise resources already available and that won’t require much planning (hence the NO SPREADSHEETS rule). We will be inviting a range of artists from various backgrounds, some of whom may have not worked with children before, to individually work with us for a short and intensive period with no premeditated ideas with the intention of creating something, anything. There will be no expectations on outcomes, instead creating a space for potentially ideas to emerge in a more impulsive way. For me, I am interested in always adjusting the way I work in a process of evolution in the hope a great idea is just around the corner. 

So I suppose, it’s important to me that I set myself a personal criteria about what a great idea is for me, in relation to my own context, and to the audience I am making for. If I can make work that fulfils those criteria, hopefully realising the potential of my idea, then that truly would be great.”

I am currently sitting in Copenhagen International Airport feeling incredibly content, except in the area of sleep where I am feeling horribly deprived. I have just left 2013 Festival of Danish Theatre for Children and Young People taking place in the north west of Jutland, in the regional communities of Mors/Nykobin, Skieve and Thy. This festival is absolutely astounding for a variety of reasons that I won’t go into now, and I am simply staggered at the scale and diversity of children’s theatre in Denmark. For a population of 4.5 million, there are ALOT of companies making for for audiences in this country. It’s actually ridiculous  and wonderful. I saw some beautiful work, and I also saw what was perhaps the worst thing I may ever see. At least I hope it was the worst thing I will ever see.

It’s amazing the amount of friends I made, from Denmark and from all over the world. There were over 130 international guests at the festival, and the ones I met were all brilliant. I also got to see a whole list of friends I have made in the past, including a few very special ones. I think that this phenomenon is actually my favourite thing about travelling to festivals, except perhaps for the goodbyes. There were a few tears shed over farewell hugs.

I think I am finally beginning to get some perspective on this trip and what it means to me. The first 9 weeks I was pinching myself daily that this was actually happening, and struggling to take it all in. This week at the festival I feel like I turned a corner and perspective is slowly falling into place.

All of the good habits and routine that I have been following on this trip went out the window as soon as the festival started, so I am now a month behind on posting my writing on this blog. I have a list of 18 posts that are either drafted or place marked so I will be trying to get back on the horse this week and get to it. I also have some photographs from Holland, Copenhagen and Mors/Nykobin to post. 

I am happy to be heading to Berlin now to stay with my two lovely sisters in their fancy new apartment in Mitte. Fratz Festival has just started and I will be attending a symposium today and tomorrow, as well as seeing some shows through out the week, also at Augen Blick Mal festival. My brain wants is excited about more learning, but my body wants to shut down. I am so very tired. Just one more week and some travel via Seoul before I am home.

I am feeling very ready to go home. I am also falling asleep at my computer in the middle of an airport. Literally.

Somewhat incredibly, somewhat unfortunately I was on television in Denmark today. More amusing than anything…

I am almost at the end of my time here in Copenhagen. I really do love this city, and my second visit has very much confirmed this. The architecture, the style, the culture, the people. There is something both classic and fresh that fascinates me. For me, it is also the best (though not the cheapest) shopping in Europe. I think there are more amazing men’s fashion stores here than in all the cities in Australia combined, and I was doing my best to visit them all, but I had to stop when my wallet starting bleeding.

So as my suitcase begins to swell it is occurring to me that I am nearing the end of this fellowship that embarked on back on February 19. It’s surreal that I have been away 52 days. Only when thinking of my loved ones back home has this trip felt like its measured length of 12 weeks. In all other aspects I feel like everything is passing me at the blink of an eye.

I am still trying hard to take my opportunity to enjoy every moment, though this ideal has had to be balanced with the reality that despite I am in Europe I am still partly responsible for the running of Imaginary Theatre back in Brisbane. By the time I get home I will have been involved with the writing of 6 funding applications, and responsible for a range of other time demanding company tasks. This is how we roll, so I knew that I would need to stay on the ball whilst overseas, but it’s difficult to force yourself to  refine a 3rd draft of a funding application when you would rather be cycling your bicycle around Copenhagen and eating crepes smothered in Nutella. I have found a balanced though, and cycling around this gorgeous city has been a great way to cover ground and explore with limited time allocations.

Most of the week of course has been spent with Christian and Pernille from Theatre Madam Bach, the amazing couple who are hosting me on my stay here. They have been performing their show ‘Wind’ in Copenhagen and working with the show’s Director Lisa Becker on rehearsing the show into English, which I have proved to be somewhat helpful with. It’s been wonderful to get to know this Independent company, how they work and why they do it. I have also managed to make my way to a new Children’s Art Centre which opened in February, and am heading to the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art north of Copenhagen tomorrow. Eventually, I will be posting more about all of this, but I have a significant amount of catching up to do before then. Grant writing has meant that blog writing has taken a back seat. 

Hopefully the next few days will see me get some writing done, as next week I travel to Jutland to attend the biggest children’s theatre festival in the world. There will be over 400 performances and 120 international delegates. From what I have heard between the shows and the social drinking I won’t have much time to be writing blogs. On Thursday I am also one of 5 ‘esteemed international guests’ presenting in a platform session with the topic ‘The Great Idea: Maybe or Must’. I am secretly terrified, but I am sure I will be able to find something interesting to say. I will post a copy of my 6 minute speech on this site when I get the chance.

Apart from that, it will be on my short trips to Berlin or Seoul, or from the comfort of my Brisbane Treehouse (aka where I live) before I get to finish the 11 half drafted or place-marked blogs that are sitting on my list at the moment. And that’s ok. 

And one last thing - I cannot help but post this shameless selfie of my new Copenhagen haircut that I got today. Needless to say I am happy with it, and with pristine hair I feel in step with the attractive Danish boys that are practically everywhere in this city.