SUN CATCHER Don’t try it at home (Photo: thehairpin.com)
A Writer takes on daylight saving.
FADING our curtains and keeping the cows awake, who does the sun think it is? Naughty sun, back in your box.
Yes, it’s Daylight Saving Time (DST) again, when even well-educated people are prone to believe the sun allows a whole hour of its light to be shifted to the other end of the day in some states, and not others.
Here in Queensland, I can see why many don’t want DST. In this climate, it’s cooler to fit a whole day’s gardening in before heading off to work, if that’s your thing.
Living north of the border, I am reminded of growing up in rural northern NSW, where there has always been a competitive spirit around rising early.
“Good afternoon!” was the pleasantly delivered breakfast barb to anyone who stumbled out of bed at the incredibly late hour of 6.30am, instead of being up before the first rays.
Incurable early riser and builder, Britain’s William Willett, gave DST legs in around 1907, and it had everything to do with window coverings.
“DST suits organised economies, it has nothing to do with the time your body clock tells you to rise.”
As the story goes, whilst on his early morning horse rides, Willett noticed many of his neighbours still had their blinds drawn, a situation he took it on himself to change by writing his self-published book, The Waste of Daylight. The impending First World War saw Willett’s vision embraced by the government as a means of saving coal.
Others will tell you the Romans invented DST, and here is the key to its purpose: DST suits organised economies, it has nothing to do with the time your body clock tells you to rise from your bed.
I suspect there’s more than a little state of origin competition behind the Queensland/NSW divide on the issue. NSW likes the feeling of being ‘ahead’ for six months. Queenslanders consequently dig our heels in, and will not be told what to do about our very own daylight.
Which is forgetting the facts: if you want to rise with the sun, you can do it all year, you’ll just have to keep your early morning activities short in the summer, before the clock tells you to scoot off to work.
And if you like to sleep in, you’re going to have to get some very heavy curtains.
Just don’t blame the sun.
Blame Willett and his builder’s view of the working day, and remember, builders down tools at 3pm, it’s a conspiracy…
WHEN journalist Margo Kingston described the existential crisis of journalism, and that she wouldn’t advise anyone to enter the industry, she expressed what very few media punters were willing to say.
Journalism dropped to the bottom of satisfying career lists during the last decade. In the 2013 ‘Jobs from Best to Worst’ survey, conducted for the past 25 years, CareerCast.com listed Reporter last, at number 200, with Editor not much higher, at 168.
How did we get here?
It’s hard to gauge, but things can hardly get worse. As advertising revenue continues to take a dive, and limitless access to social media fosters the expectation that content should be free, neither the mainstream or social media allocates much money to the creation of content.
On this score alone, Journalists have entered the career bracket previously inhabited by Artists, where remuneration is never guaranteed, product floats below the surface of a constantly uncertain marketplace, and validation is in very short supply.
To put things into perspective, the CareerCast.com survey ranked Artist at 148, Choreographer comes in at 156, even Actor, once considered the most marginal of careers with 99 percent unemployment at any given time, gets a higher ranking than Journalist, at 197.
On this advice, Journalists might be wise to start thinking and operating like Artists in order to change the ranking of our industry.
Depressingly, holidays are the hardest time of the year to do so. If you’re an Artist, the silly season can be anything from an inconvenience to a handy escape from the fact that it’s another year, another blank canvas.
“Journalists might be wise to start thinking and operating like Artists.”
Unless you’re a successful practising Artist of any stripe, it may have been devastatingly easy for you to take time off from your creative work and spend summer days with friends and family, joining in at the edge of groups of ‘real people with real jobs’: Web Developers (ranked at 24), Hair Stylists (83), Architects (61), Statisticians (20), and a host of other very sensible folk who listened to their parents and forged careers with prospects.
It takes plenty of self belief and a plastered smile to get through. Having even a shred of an official day job goes a long way to keeping you off most naysayers’ radars.
And you don’t have to be anything nearly as extreme as an Artist to raise eyebrows over the Christmas pudding.
Try adding something even slightly different or new to your repertoire (Citizen Journalism, for example), and notice how the occasion soon becomes like the dinner table scene in August: Osage County.
“How is that going for you?” cousin Peter (let’s imagine he’s a Financial Planner, snug at ranking number 5) asks, topping up your glass with his wine, and you have no answer, because you’re really not sure, exactly, how it is going for you, you only know you’re drawn to spend your life doing something different than he.
As the summer days lead us from parties and fireworks back to the working week, friends and family in the great good workforce drift back to their routines.
The mainstream media fills this period with an array of self-help articles of the New Year’s Resolution stripe (purchased from syndicated news sources for a pittance), the perfect panacea for people who only ever dream of pursuing their heart’s desire.
But Artists generally have no back-to-work start date. We need to make one for ourselves. Of course there may be an app for that, but is there anything to inspire the independent Artist into resolutions to sustain our dreams?
During the holiday I read some alarmingly depressing ideas about being an Artist: apparently it doesn’t get any better than it already isn’t.
I hasten to add that this comes from a very successful UK-based Author (a profession ranked at 156) of many published books, who may well be having to fill 2014 with checking over the proofs of her latest release as it hits the shelves in another edition, poor thing.
HANDY ADVICE Georgia O’Keeffe, hands 1918 (Photo: Alfred Stieglitz).
Lest this all get too negative for words, let me redress the imbalance with some inspiration from working Artists who’ve been there, done that, because Artists learned, long before Journalists came on the scene, that the only solution to negative situations is to just keep creating.
“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.” Oscar Wilde
“Don’t think about making art, just get it done. Let everyone else decide if it’s good or bad, whether they love it or hate it. While they are deciding, make even more art.” Andy Warhol
“Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing.” Georgia O’Keeffe
“Everyone has talent. What is rare is the courage to follow the talent to the dark place where it leads.” Erica Jong
And one for the Citizen Journalists.
“Writing is a struggle against silence.” Carlos Fuentes
Working in the lowest-placed profession for nothing ranks you as a legend.
LINDEMAN’S LEIGH Australian actress Susie Lindeman as Vivien Leigh in ‘Letter to Larry’.
A Writer’s review.
BRITISH actress Vivien Leigh (1913-1967) may have felt rather independent when she toured to Australia in 1961 with the Old Vic theatre company.
Divorce from Sir Laurence (‘Larry’) Olivier the year before had seen her separated from the theatrical powerhouse she was one half of – the international stage and screen duo known as ‘The Oliviers’.
Australian actress Susie Lindeman recently returned home with her production of Letter to Larry, a play by Donald Macdonald which captures Vivien Leigh in this pivotal moment of her life and career, and has already been acclaimed in London, Paris and Los Angeles.
“I was attracted by the role, and Donald Macdonald’s script,” Susie says. “We knew we had something special from the response to the first reading – here and in London”.
“We always wanted to present the show during Vivien Leigh’s centenary year. The early London performances were previews, and then we created a new version as the world premiere season for Paris in 2013.
“From that we received interest from New York. It was our intention to play in places significant to Vivien, so I also performed as part of the 100th celebrations in London and took it to Hollywood.”
One of those places of significance in the life of Vivien Leigh is Sydney’s Independent Theatre, a venue she played in the late 1940s and in 1961 (recreated in the bookends of Macdonald’s play), and the venue where Letter to Larry played on February 23, 2014.
“It’s the sole surviving Sydney theatre that Vivien herself knew. She and Laurence Olivier used to dodge the press and send a decoy somewhere so they could enjoy seeing shows at the Independent. This was when Olivier was also scouting Australia for talent – actors whom he felt could form Australia’s first national theatre.
TREADING THE BOARDS Actor Trader Faulkner with Susie Lindeman.
“When Tyrone Guthrie, the legendary London director, came to scout also, he went to the Independent to see a show, and he discovered young Aussie actor, Trader Faulkner.
“Trader went on to work with John Gielgud and the Oliviers and many more, he was not only a co-star but also a friend to Vivien, and he will be with me sharing this performance.
“He is the show’s special guest and will stand again upon the stage of his 1947 triumph. He is a legend himself – he was a protégé of Peter Finch and wow, he has some great stories!”
Considering her acting career in mainstream theatre and film in Australia and Europe, I am keen to ask Susie how she approached the role of producer.
“I’m just an actress taking roles and opportunities when they present themselves,” she says.
“As an Australian, social media has allowed me to retain my identity here as I work in other places. It’s all on a page, the whole world, we could be everywhere and anywhere.”
“However, when I think about it, I suppose that I also became an independent artist when I met Yasmina Reza, the great French writer, and through this personal and independent encounter, she entrusted me with the world rights for her play, Hammerklavier.
“Performing it internationally meant I performed independently; here, London, Edinburgh, Paris and even a performance in Singapore. Now, I guess I’m lucky enough to be asked to perform independently by several theatres themselves, rather than theatre companies as such.
“The decision was simply to be all I can be, to play Yasmina seemed a wonderful chance, and to make it happen I simply had to create it independently.”
What part does the social media play when independently producing a piece of theatre?
“It’s actually how I started using Facebook, I mean really using it, and for this show, we started to tweet,” Susie says. “But I think Letter To Larry having its own Facebook page is great to spread the word. Sometimes 600 people will like a status, which is wonderful, especially being such an indie creation”.
“As an Australian, social media has allowed me to retain my identity here as I work in other places. It’s all on a page, the whole world, we could be everywhere and anywhere.”
So where to from here for Letter to Larry?
“We want to have the Australian premiere season soon,” Susie says, “but I think because I’ve worked a lot in London and Paris, it seemed easier to get a theatre in those cities, so we do have the London premiere in the pipeline, a hoped-for season in New York, and a return to Hollywood”.
“But of course we’d love the chance to do an Australian season and tour, especially as the play opens and closes in the setting of Vivien’s 1961 Old Vic tour to Australia.”
I am interested in knowing how audiences respond to Susie’s interpretation of one of the world’s most beloved movie stars.
PLAYING PASSION Vivien Leigh as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Names Desire (1951).
“I was absolutely astonished at the love Parisians have for Vivien. I mean, I knew that in London we would have an audience, but I was swept off my feet by the passion of the public, and the press, for this show,” she recalls. “Every night after the show there would be people waiting to tell me their thoughts and memories of Vivien, and they truly lit up when speaking of her. That’s why its such a pleasure to play her, she has a magic and spirit which is still tangible in the world.”
In the five decades since Vivien Leigh’s death, a result of chronic tuberculosis, public attitudes to mental health have changed enough that her now widely known about manic depression, explored in Macdonald’s play, can emerge from the shadows. I ask Susie about this aspect of her interpretation of Leigh.
“Vivien was passionate and often cast in passionate roles, whether mad for her loss of Lord Nelson as Lady Hamilton, as Ophelia, or most searingly as Blanche DuBois in A Streetcar Named Desire,” Susie explains. “She never performed ‘madness’, she just felt so deeply the emotions and passion and loss”.
“Gielgud said: ‘The extremity of Vivien’s performance was extraordinary, and frightening. She elevated the text and the emotional intentions’ .
“It’s true that Vivien suffered with un-diagnosed bi-polar, and that her infinite energy and passion for life grew into manic phases,” Susie says. “In Letter to Larry I play Vivien from deep in her soul and heart, feelings magnified by her loss of Larry”.
“I believe there’s a fine line between insanity and inspiration. Vivien, as so many who knew her have told me, was such a free spirit, but also spiritual, so she was in touch with the source of sorrows as well. Someone said Vivien didn’t break down as much as stand up and fight back.”
INDEPENDENT ARTIST Actress, producer and director Susie Lindeman.
And what does Susie think are the main challenges for performing artists working in Australia?
“I think funding, and the swiftly sinking press coverage, oh and sometimes the celebrity culture, which means sometimes actors who are so right for a part don’t even get a chance to read.
“I know theatre is a risky business, so theatres need to be careful,” Susie says, “but being careful has never been a way to create.”
With a nod to one of Vivien Leigh’s most memorable roles, Susie says: “Art isn’t intrinsically commercial anyway, and knowing that after a show, so often the audience will buy you a drink, so if you’re not paid properly, there’s always the kindness of strangers!”
And one for the Citizen Journalists.
