THE HORSE’S MOUTH FESTIVAL

Straight from ten little horse’s mouths – or rather, some of Sydney’s finest emerging playwrights and performers – comes a festival of stories about their lives, their nanas, their pets and Pajeros, their hopes and dreams. Theatre company Bambina Borracha calls it a Festival of Autobiographical Performance Work and we don’t think they’re wrong when they say it’s a ‘first-ever.’ Longer form new works are split into themed nights such as ‘Bolted,’ while ‘One Trick Pony,’ is a night of super-short works from the likes of Nick Coyle and Alex Vaughan. The festival is rounded out by the Sunday night Story Club, free with your HMF pass.

We speak to Zoe Norton Lodge and Tim Spencer about their creations.

ZOE NORTON LODGE:

How do you go ‘Hell for Leather’? Well, I drink too much. Joking. Not really. Well…. No, really, for me going hell for leather is writing a play about my family in all their beautiful, horrifying truth, damn the consequences! Actually, my family are the best people I’ve ever met and the fact that they’ll be there on opening night, prepared to laugh at themselves and to a much larger extent to laugh at me is what makes me go hell for leather.

What is the meaning of your piece’s title, This is Not a Possum? Possums are about the only aspect of nature I feel I have any legitimate experience of commenting on. Which is why I can say with absolute confidence that the brush tail possum in the British Natural History Museum’s display of Australiana IS NOT A POSSUM. It’s looks like a giant cat’s body with the head of a terrifying teddy bear. Really. Anyway, this creepy anomaly freaked me out and led me to write a play about what I know about possums.

Is being autobiographical a bit icky sometimes? Yes! Definitely. My poor family, may they rest in Annandale. They’ll forgive me I’m sure. Icky is a certainty. I’m not afraid of Icky. It’s not like a house fire or climbing a tree. It’s just my Mum’s left boob hanging out of her dress in the paediatric ward of the children’s hospital.

How do you avoid it being boring for everyone else? In a moment of genius I manipulate extraordinary people to get on board. Emily Irvine, who writes and performs the music in my show is a Zoe Whisperer. It’s amazing. I’ll say ‘I want this bit to be really, you know, oooooh ahhhhh’ and she’ll know exactly what I don’t even know I mean yet and then she’ll play it on the violin. It’s incredible. Then there’s Vanessa Hughes, my director, editor and maker of media and all things wonderful. She has an uncanny ability to express the exquisite. the fascinating and the hilarious on film, in sound and in my writing. If you find yourself anything short of bored after my show, please locate Vanessa and Emily and buy them both a beer.

Your favourite autobiographical play? Seven Stages of Grieving by Deborah Mailman and Wesley Enoch – only partially autobiographical, but a phenomenal Australian work which changed the way I consider theatre, and autobiography.

TIM SPENCER

How do you fit into the theme ‘Bolted’? Uh, as far as I know the names of the programs were pretty arbitrary. There might be some over aching artistic vision that relates to horses galloping away into the sunset but I’m not privy to it I’m afraid.

What led to you interest in writing about the male sex workers of Sydney? I was interested in the line between empathy and pity. Also about what I could see in the world about people asking people to be victims, or painting people as victims for their own benefit or to feel better about themselves.  The world of sex work seems to be full of these alternating positions and anything that is difficult or hard to explain is interesting to me, as an artist and as a human. Which is a weird distinction I feel necessary to make. I dont know if that is an indictment against me or the artistic community. or both.

What did you discover? Well like any good little artist the touchy feel stuff of ‘oh, you’re just like me’ is present. But in surprising ways. I’m more and more curious about my own sense of victimisation. Going over the transcripts of our interviews in the past few days has been a really big wake up call about how i apologise for just about everything that I say ,sometimes the very moment that I say it. I want this show to be unapologetic, but it’s a challenge fighting against your nature. I saw a great quote today – ‘Make art, not friends’. It’s not a show that tries to piss people off or offend their sensibilities  about sex work, but it is one that questions why we make theatre, what right I have to put someone else’s story onstage and what the fuck we’re all doing there in the first place.

Nov 24-Dec 17, Old Fitzroy Theatre, cnr Cathedral & Dowling Sts, Woolloomooloo, $20-42 (3-night pass), 8019 0282, rocksurfers.org