Comments on: Theatre, culture, art and the Sydney Gay and Lesbian Mardi Gras Festival

By: Jude Bowler

Jude Bowler — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 03:53:02 +0000

I too think you raise very valid points. My show “Working Class Sheilas” was part of the Mardi Gras Festival this year, and dare I be so bold as to say, as a piece of theatre it addresses a good number of your issues. It’s a life story more than a ‘gay’ story, but as a gay woman and the fact that that is mentioned in the text, I fit into the queer festival category. I self-produced; audience response was great (though numbers could have been better) and the show will likely go on to Feast Festival Adelaide in November.

I was also very involved in Mardi Gras the organisation some 15 years ago, when the festival was curated and not ‘umbrella’ style as it is today. The nature of Mardi Gras as an organisation/movement/season has changed markedly over the years, successfully or not as some may see it, in maintaining its relevance to community and social evolution. Certainly stereotypes remain, resources are fewer and the battle for the buck rates high amongst ‘event’ patrons that are increasingly fragmented, distracted and complacent. This, like much of contemporary society as a whole, equates somewhat to appeasing the obvious masses rather than challenging them, or even directly addressing them.

By: Noëlle Janaczewska

Noëlle Janaczewska — Tue, 08 Mar 2011 00:13:29 +0000

I think some of your great questions, Gus, apply more broadly to the kinds of stories we tell not only on stage, but also on screens. When Seems to me that we keep on and on telling the same story when it comes to romantic love, and it’s essentially ‘the prince and the maiden.’ The couple can be 16 or 60, gay, lesbian or heterosexual, but we seem fixed on that first flush of falling in love/getting together/etc beginning of the story. It means we’re exploring only a tiny percentage of the diverse human experience of love.

The gay or lesbian coming out/coming of age story is almost its own genre. Of course it has a place, and an important place, but I’m interested in what happens next. Sure, biography and autobiography (and these coming out/coming of age tales often have a strong autobiographical element) are the places from which marginalised voices first speak and are heard, but this is Sydney, 2011, and perhaps it’s time to, as they say, ‘move on’?

OK, we’ve done the story where the princess chose the frog and not the prince. But how about what happens to the princess and the frog 5, 15, 35 years down the track? Love in all its wolfish mess and glory … ?