14 minute read
MILK BY VAN DEN BERG
ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF COUNTRY
By Allan Sko
Advertisement
Actor and playwright Dylan Van Den Berg is a theatrical treasure. Scooping writing accolades such as The Griffin Theatre and The Rodney Seaborn Playwright Award winner, and recent winner of the Nick Enright Award for Playwriting in the 2021 NSW Literary Awards, Dylan also impressed with his excellent acting turn in Metamorphosis at The Street Theatre at the end of 2019. Now, with Milk, Dylan is finally able to present his most important work to date as both writer and actor. “I’m terrified,” Dylan confesses. “It’s been the longest lead up in history. And the added pressure is that this will be The Street’s return to life. So it’s double the usual anxiety!” Also fuelling Dylan’s healthy nerves is that Milk is a very personal story, and an important one. The premise is thus: On the precipice of something life changing, a young Palawa man plunges into an exploration of self and Country. Carried with the winds of a metaphysical Flinders Island, the land of his mob and the place where it all happened, he is drawn back to the dawn of colonisation. To a woman who bore the brunt of the oppressors’ violence, and then forward to her granddaughter, who buried the truth as a means of survival. Stirring up stories together, with parts both achingly sad and unexpectedly funny, what unfolds reveals by slow degrees painful but important truths. A compelling tale, no question. So, why the title Milk? “It exists for a number of reasons,” Dylan explains. “The story is about three Aboriginal ancestors from different periods of time converting in this metaphysical space, kind of Flinders Island. And each of them are grappling with the reverberations of colonisation; one of the characters is from first contact and another is from the ‘60s in Tassie. And another one is from the present day. He is a fair-skinned Aboriginal man. So the title Milk comes from the fact that at some point in the play, someone describes him as having skin like milk. “And there are references to motherhood and children, so there’s that connection as well. But the clearest one is around skin color, and with skin that doesn’t reflect his ancestors, this young man asks: do the stories of the past belong to him? “Funnily enough,” Dylan recalls after further chat, “the title of the play came to me before the story, about six or seven years ago. There was a comment, something overheard in a cafe or somewhere, that gave me a sense that it would be an interesting title. It’s just been with me for so long now that I’ve almost forgotten where it exactly came from.” With delicate themes such as race and identity, and the tricky idea of to whom a story belongs, Dylan went about his work with great care. “I think the big question of the play is: what are the stories we’re allowed to tell?” Dylan muses. “That we’re entitled to tell? It’s certainly something I grappled with a lot. And of course, the answer is, yes, you are entitled to tell the stories. “In the last few years I really started to explore what it means to be fair skinned and still be Aboriginal,” he says. “There’s a lot of privilege that comes with that; you haven’t suffered in the same way that your ancestors might have. However, there’s a great loss that you’ve suffered as well. It was the policies of the colonisers that resulted in us having light skin so there’s a real cultural deficit.” With the present day character being a younger playwright, one could assume an autobiographical element to be at play.
“It’s certainly inspired by my experience, and stories of my family, but also Tasmanian Aboriginal history more broadly,” Dylan explains. “I was born, and grew up in, Tassie; that’s on my Dad’s side. On my Mum’s side, I’m English and Irish. I always knew about my Aboriginal heritage, but it wasn’t until later when I started to realise what that meant.” While he has been wrestling with the scope and ethics of this weighty story, there’s one aspect Dylan had set since the start. “I was lucky enough to work through The Street Theatre’s First Seen program,” he says. “And in the very first development, the ending is one of the earliest things that I wrote. And it hasn’t changed a word throughout the process. In the last few years, I’ve always known where it was going. It’s both an ending with a full stop and the beginning of something as well.” With an ending, a title, and a purpose firmly in place, Dylan engaged a collaborative spirit - both during its creation and on stage - to help tell not only his story, but one of a wider culture. “I’ve been fortunate enough to work with Aunty Gaye Doolan, who is an incredible Palawa woman. And we’re related,” Dylan says. “It’s been amazing to be able to shape this story that’s inspired not just by my family history, but by an Aboriginal history of which Aunty Gaye is across. It’s been a great process to be able to collaborate with someone who has such knowledge.” Dylan has the same gratitude and praise for his fellow actors: the terrific Roxanne McDonald and Katie Beckett. “They’re incredible,” Dylan effuses. “They’ve contributed to developing the work along the way. Both were part of its creation at different stages; Katie a couple of years ago, Roxy last year. And I’m really excited to get to work with them on it. It’s not often that you start working with actors who’ve had input in the material. So we’re not starting at square one. “It’s also adding to my anxieties working with such great performers!” Dylan elaborates further of the significance of their input. “It was great to have Indigenous women contributing to those characters,” he says. “It’s an experience I’m not familiar with. It was really important to have them in the room; the characters as they exist now are a living combination of bits and pieces that were shared, from their own experiences of the world.” The telling of this story, and its potential impact, expands even further, encapsulating not just Aboriginal people, but all people of Australia. “My view is that, if you’re writing a story for the community, it’s their story as well. I do feel that responsibility,” Dylan states. “A big thing that drove this - from my research and from stories that I’ve heard - is that a lot of Australia considered Tasmanian Aboriginal people to be extinct. There were films made about this in the ‘70s. So for me, in the back of my head as I’m writing this play, I was saying to myself: ‘We are still here, and I want people to know that we are still here’. “I see Milk as an invitation to audiences to consider their own pasts and histories, and the part they’ve potentially played in ongoing colonisation. And also reflect on the responsibilities that everyone has to contribute to reconciliation.” A weighty and worthy work indeed! Milk by Dylan Van Den Berg is on at The Street Theatre from Thursday, 3 June (Preview) - Saturday, 12 June. Tickets range from $32 - $45 and are available via thestreet.org.au/shows/milk-dylan-van-den-berg
“It’s something
ED KUEPPER
WHAT’S OLD IS NEW AGAIN
By Dan Bigna
As you would expect, those strange times in 2020 created the opportunity for individual sensibilities to get a good workout. Prolific Australian musician Ed Kuepper decided time well spent in isolation was to perform a number of live streaming shows, and also to pull out a bunch of early Beatles records and re-connect with finely attuned song craft channelled through basic instrumentation. The thrill of those records had made him want to pick up the guitar and blast out some chords from an early age, and revisiting them proved a welcome distraction from the chaos happening outside. “It was a weird kind of time. It went by very quickly and also very slowly,” Kuepper muses. “Everything was blurred from one day to the next. I listened to Beatles records that I hadn’t listened to for decades. It was fascinating how good those records were, and the nine year-old in me came back when listening again. It was a pleasant experience and I think sometimes it’s good to go back to the very beginning; it’s easy to get a bit jaded and cynical in the music business.” Once upon a time, Kuepper and vocalist Chris Bailey embraced a cynical sneer and invented Australian punk rock in The Saints circa 1976. But Kueppers’s urge to push musical boundaries even further became crystal clear in post-Saints group Laughing Clowns and the head spinning number of solo and collaborative recordings he made since. One particularly appealing group was The Aints, a Stooges and John Coltrane influenced outfit Kuepper formed in the early 1990s. In 2018, Kuepper revived The Aints!, with the added ‘!’ to the name to distinguish it from the earlier incarnation, and recorded The Church of Simultaneous Existence, made up of songs and “various musical and lyrical elements” he had written many years before. Promo material called it a “surprise success” but I consider it one of his greatest albums; a striking blend of best bits from his past work. Time moves on and in a good sign things are starting to happen again in live music, Kuepper will be teaming up with adventurous percussionist Jim White [known to many for his imaginative work in The Dirty Three] for a string of shows comprising songs from Kuepper’s extensive back catalogue. The tour coincides with a number of CD and vinyl releases including a collection of singles Kuepper recorded between 1986 and 1996 when people were still buying singles.
Kuepper has always picked his accompanying musicians with care and I want to hear about Jim White’s appeal as a performing partner.
But before we get to Jim, I am interested to hear a bit more about the genesis of The Church of Simultaneous Existence.
“When I did an album a few years ago called Lost Cities [2015] which, depending how you count them, is sort of my 50th album, I was thinking for a little while it should be my last one,” Kuepper says. “But then I had all these melodies pop into my head, and a lot of these were melodies I had written when I was really young. So I had this brief idea that I would turn these melodies into a Lost Cities-style thing except make it more orchestral, but that didn’t happen. Then there was an offer to do a tour to commemorate some anniversary, or something The Saints had done. That was an offer for The Aints to do this. Initially I said no, but then a year later another thing came through and I said: ‘Look, ok, but on the basis that it’s not just going to be a cheap, nostalgic kind of thing’. Kuepper goes on to point out: “The Saints were never in Australia for very long. We played in Brisbane while @bmamag
we were developing and not many fans of the band [in Australia] saw the original line-up and were not really exposed to what was a rapid development; three albums in 18 months and then split up. “But there was a back story to the band, and I had all these songs and bits of songs, so I said I would do The Saints commemorative tour, or whatever it was, but I was going to introduce new, yet old, material. There was a worried silence on the promoters’ part but I was pretty sure hardcore fans were going to like this and that turned out to be the case. “That album was road-tested. I didn’t want to force the material if it wasn’t working live. I didn’t want to record if we played to an audience and they responded negatively. But the opposite happened and it really galvanised people. And somewhere along the line a decision was made that we should actually record it. And that’s what we did.” In 2019, The Aints! played a show at The Street Theatre in support of The Church of Simultaneous Existence and it was energised, creative, and just straight up good fun. Now in June, Kuepper will return to The Street but this time without the full band, instead opting to perform with the great drummer Jim White. I ask Ed the motivation for touring as a two-piece. “I really like him as a drummer,” Kuepper says. “He cites The Saints and the [Laughing] Clowns as early, major influences on what he’s done, so we have some musical shared history. Basically, he’s played in bands who have supported me and I’ve done shows where I’ve supported bands he’s played in. It’s something I’ve been thinking about for many years and it will be a unique run of shows. We don’t have plans beyond what we’ve advertised at the moment. We’ll just see how it goes. “I like the idea of adding and subtracting rhythmic elements at times,” he continues. “I did an album of guitar, voice, and drums in 1990, Today Wonder. But this is different. It’s electric for starters, not acoustic. I think you have to experiment a bit from time to time. Solo shows were very important to me for developing as a musician, but I also think there is something about interacting with a musician like Jim who is a really good interpreter. He has a sort of spontaneous approach to his playing but is also really solid”. Ed is also keen to pursue the notion of spontaneous creation in these shows so that any one performance could turn out to be quite different to those before or after. This will be dependent on a range of factors, including the mood of both performers on any given night, the level of interaction with the audience, and the general vibe of the venue. “We are starting with discovering everything I’ve done in terms of a time span kind of thing and there will be some new things in there,” he says. “But it’s more the way the songs are going to be played. Every night is going to be different to the night before. “In a way, the material is secondary to the performance. It’s more of a musicians’ kind of interpretive, spontaneous night by night thing. Given how everything is recorded these days, it’s nice to do things that are kind of one-off, that are there for people who are there in that moment.” To coincide with the shows, three albums will be released. The Laughing Clowns compilation Golden Days: When Giants Walked the Earth, originally released in 1995, will be making its first appearance on vinyl. There will also be The Aints! Live at the Bowlo, and a singles collection Ed Kuepper - Singles ‘86’ ‘96’ that will be his first ever collection of 45s and CD singles. There is little doubt that all three will sound great and become significant additions to Ed Kuepper’s lengthy discography. Referring to the Laughing Clowns compilation that I first picked up in the mid 1990s on CD at a time when vinyl had been consigned to the historical dustbin, Kuepper says: “It’s important to me to have the material available again. It’s an ongoing, slow process, but we are getting there. We are testing the waters with this collection. It is a good compilation. The actual mastering is truer to the original releases and we’ll see how we go.” The singles collection will sit nicely alongside existing Ed Kuepper compilations and remind music fans that a long, long time ago singles made significant musical statements. “That was the era in which I released singles, that decade between the mid 80s to the mid 90s”, Kuepper says. Beyond that this is the first time those particular songs have been collected together. At first I was a little dubious about it. But once we actually started doing it and I listened to it, it seemed to work”. Ed Kuepper With Jim White perform at The Street Theatre on Thursday, 24 June at 8pm. Tickets are $50 via the venue. Jim and Ed
