This beautiful piece was written by Aggie Wolf Dimitriou, in response to visiting her dying sister Jenni. Aggie is a writer, marriage celebrant and cook. Thank you for giving us this to publish Aggie.
The FilmLife Project in conjunction with Donate Life Week 2012 (Sunday 19-26 February), aims to use creativity and film making to inspire and encourage young people to have conversations that ask and find out their loved ones wishes around organ and tissue donation.
In Australia, families are always asked to give the okay for organ donation.
You want to know the right thing to say when the time comes- and make sure that your loved ones know your wishes too so that they can give the final OK for you. It can be awkward talking to the people you love about death, but that’s where your creativity kicks in.
FilmLife is your chance to look past the words that people find it hard to say and share the stories that will inspire families to ask and know each others’ wishes. With around 1,700 Australians on the transplant list, the chances of us knowing someone who have been touched by organ donation is pretty high. You never know who’s going to need a transplant- your film-making could save the life of someone closer than you think.
Not only will entrants in FilmLife receive a specially-curated weekend workshop (worth $3,000) to learn essential film-making skills and talk with people impacted by organ and tissue donation, there is also a $10,000 prize pool to be shared between the winning filmmakers.
We encourage young adults personally affected by organ and tissue donation to consider submitting a film, so please forward this post to your networks. This way we will have maximum opportunity of reaching those 16-35 year olds who want to be involved (nationally!).
A child tries to explain death to a younger sibling as he persuades him to dress for their mother’s funeral. A young chef gives his all in a kitchen. An eight year old witnesses the end of a life for the first time. A young woman loses her faith and is banished from a family home. A youth addresses the body of his brother, as he wrestles with the reality of who that brother truly was. A teenager fronts a panel of the dead to put his case for elevation to the status of martyr, and asks: Is there any cause worth dying for, in this day and age?
Just a taste of some of the journeys taken by a range of voices in new monologues written by participating playwrights in this year’s Fresh Ink National Studio 2011 at beautiful Riversdale on the Shoalhaven River. The GroundSwell Project partnered with the Australian Theatre For Young People in resourcing this retreat for emerging scribes aged 18- 26, and it was my privilege to be present as one of the tutors-in-residence for the week.
Intensives like these are aptly-named. This one saw us hunker in for six days to unpack the theme of first death with these young writers and to support them in writing about it as they honed their craft. Aided and abetted by GroundSwell’s director Kerrie Noonan, and, in tandem with playwright colleagues Caleb Lewis and Ross Mueller, I was engaged to assist. Together we steered eighteen creative processes through a variety of discussions, masterclasses, workshops, tutorials and selected readings. The result? Eighteen new monologues, specifically written for performance by young actors, on the subject of theone sure thing.
Thanks to ATYP for welcoming The GroundSwell Project along this year, and to the wonderful young writers who brought all their curiosity, wit, and imagination to bear in responding to our theme. The next phase of the project will see a selection of their short works curated into a show to be produced by ATYP early in the new year, with the publication of selected monologues to follow. These pieces will, in turn, be available to senior high school Drama students who may elect to study and perform the texts for examination and audition in years to come.
On Thursday 21st November an audience of upwards of 70 people assembled in the beautifully appointed theatre at the National Library in Canberra to take part in a very special event. The pictures below tell part of the story.
Under the stewardship of Palliative Care Educator, Rachel Bilton-Simek, from Calvary Health Care, ACT, and in partnership with The GroundSwell Project, actors Katrina Berg-Howard, Peter Fock, Rachel Hogan and director, Justin Watson, presented a polished moved reading of Peta Murray’s 21-year-old play, This Dying Business.
This play reading marked the launch of what we have tentatively titled: The Two Lives Project. The project is, quite simply a bid to test the waters and see whether this play still “speaks” in any meaningful way about death and dying, about how we die here in Australia, and to ask whether it still illuminates the key issues that surround this subject matter (as it was intended to do, when written back in 1990, for a first Australian Conference on Hospice & Palliative Care.) This play reading also marked the beginning of an innovative community engagement project, in as much as it was open to all those who have a presence in the sector – be it in aged care, palliative care, the funeral industry, vocational education and training – as well as to any interested Canberrans who were prepared to come along and give their views about its relevance, or lack of…. In short, we posed the question does This Dying Business (a play) merit a second life?
The GroundSwell Project would particularly like to acknowledge Rachel’s drive and hard work in curating the evening, and to thank Justin and the actors for their extraordinary generosity in donating time, talent and expertise over many week’s of preparation. The success of the reading was entirely due to their efforts.
From all partners’ point-of-view the evening was everything we had hoped and more, and we extend our sincere thanks to all who attended, and responded so thoughtfully and candidly, via written feedback and discussion. Your responses are now being given close and careful consideration, and will guide us as we go forward into what we hope may lead to an extended creative collaboration, with a range of outcomes that may engage the community at large in continuing conversation. Watch this space.
‘Mostly for Mothers, an imprint of Wombat Books, is calling for submissions on the experience of miscarriage.’
When I first saw this shout out through the Victorian Writers’ Centre, the emotional intensity of my reaction startled me. My experience with miscarriage was nearly 20 years behind me, yet this announcement pierced a deep repository of grief. It also triggered other unexpected feelings ― irritation mingled with bitterness ― not for having a miscarriage, but for the sense of foolishness and inadequacy I felt at the time for being so devastated. It’s the classic adage: had someone told me then what I know now, things would have been different. Reading that shout out for miscarriage stories, I thought I might try to be that someone for other people, men and women both, who have felt as emotionally awash and isolated by miscarriage as I did.
I first fell pregnant in 1991 when I was thirty years old and working as a marketing executive in New York City. This was neither an environment nor era that tended to be sympathetic to perceived weakness of any kind. It was survival of the fittest: we strove to be hardworking, well-informed and prepared to undertake any challenge with efficient aplomb. A bit emotional and sensitive by nature, I often urged myself to be strong. I usually managed to hold a steady veneer. When it sometimes cracked, I rallied and repaired it.
But when I miscarried, that veneer shattered and I was amazed at how much I struggled to reassemble the pieces. While a few close friends were patiently sympathetic, the overwhelming pressure I felt was to silence my grief and carry on. After all, it was only a mass of cells, not even a real child. People experience far worse. The grief I felt was compounded by a sense of inadequacy. I was over-reacting, being a wuss. Attend a miscarriage support organisation? I’m not sure if they even existed back then. If they had, the associated stigma ― that only people too weak to sort through their own problems go to therapy ― may have prevented me from attending anyway.
In the nearly two decades since, I have encountered a surprising number of women who experienced the same magnitude of grief, and the pressure to contain it, as I did. I say ‘surprising’ because I had thought that my professional background and frustratingly sensitive nature were key reasons why I had felt pressure to suck it up and resume my life. I was a round peg trying to fit in a square hole. However, I have since discovered that the pressure I felt spreads across a diversity of cultures and socio-economic backgrounds. What’s more, despite the ready availability now of support organisations, the strength of that nasty social stigma about counselling still persists. As a result, too often women, and men as well, are shamed into staying silent about any emotional upheaval they’ve experienced with miscarriage.
At the time, the inadequacy I felt at responding so deeply made the experience so much worse than it had to be. There are women who respond quite matter-of-factly to miscarriage. They rightfully exist on what I now know to be a spectrum of reactions to miscarriage, all of which are widely shared, and none of which is less valid than the other. Whatever you have experienced, you are not alone.
You can enquire about and purchase copies of: “The Sound of Silence: journeys through miscarriage” from the Mostly for Mothers website.
Christine Darcas’s fiction and nonfiction have appeared in a variety of publications in Australia and overseas. She is the author of two novels published by Hachette Australia, Dancing Backwards in High Heels and Spinning Out. She lives in Melbourne with her husband and two teenage children. Her website is: www.christinedarcas.com
My name is Emilie Collyer and I’m a new member of The Groundswell Project team. I’m a writer and performer, living in Melbourne.
The work I love to create, see and collaborate on is work that delves under the skin of things – questions of mortality and humanity, who we are, how we live, how we face aging and death. So I am very excited about the ways in which The Groundswell Project seeks to make connections between the arts and the many stages and phases of life.
I will be writing blog posts and also sourcing articles from creative colleagues and general bits and pieces from the world around.
Looking forward to getting to know the growing Groundswell community.
We are proud to announce (busting with excitement!) we have won an Arts and Health Australia Award for Excellence 2011 in The Arts and Community Health for our Busting Cancer Project at this years 3rd Annual International Arts and Health Conference: The Art of Good Health and Wellbeing, held at the National Gallery in Canberra this week.
Heartfelt thanks goes to all the wonderful women involved (we did this together!), to Cancer Council NSW, The Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre and to all those that volunteer, support and encourage us at The GroundSwell Project.
And what a night to celebrate, as tonight also marks the launch of the Two Lives project, with a live play reading of Peta Murray’s This dying business at the National Library Theatre in Canberra.
There’s more great news coming, but for now, in the words of a small friend, I’m busted……
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