H_ME W_RK
We never talk about God in the theatre. Or, spirituality. Why?
We first met in 2019 at a panel to speak about ‘Decolonised Futures through Arts and Culture’ at the National Institute of Dramatic Art (NIDA), Australia’s leading conservatory of theatre and performance. After the conversation ran its course during our pre-panel coffee, we landed at this question without any closure. It was one we stopped short of posing to students that day. We live in an Australia where performance pedagogy revolves around the White imagination. Here, syllabi are built on the Western canon and taught on a country that has not contended with its own histories of colonisation and ongoing displacement of First Nations peoples. Given this context, it felt too raw to open up such a personal dialogue publicly. But this question around theatre and spirituality in an expansive sense became the foundation of a friendship that now traverses many spheres. We are part of a collective called H_ME W_RK, we have an artist-producer relationship and we are also peers and friends in a sector built on competition rather than camaraderie.
The space for PoC artists in Australia is still emerging, and despite generations of clarion calls for change, such change is slow, intermittent and can sometimes feel like taking two steps forward, one step back. And now, perhaps more by necessity than choice, we are also often thrust into spaces to speak on topics of diversity, inclusion, equity and justice in the arts sector. This means we have to carve out spaces for ourselves that allow us to distill the essence of our selfhood beyond the pigmentation of our skin.
It means we have had to intentionally create space for ourselves for conversations on aesthetics and craft; practice and process; discourse and critical reflection. Our shared lived experiences of being Women of Colour (WoC), South Asian, spiritual, feminist, third culture kids and our divergent lived experiences of religion, nationality, politics, caste, class collide in our art-making practice which is pregnant with the possibility of imagined futures. Coming from a fragile subcontinent where Indo-Pak collaborations are still frowned upon by state machinery on both sides of the border (In 2016, Pakistani actor and superstar Fawad Khan was literally banned from Bollywood), our collaboration is in itself a provocation: a type of soft resistance that can only be imagined in transgressive space(s) such as the diaspora. We try not to lose sight of futurity and radical care. For us, these inform not just the interiority of our selfhood and relation to each other, but also the material conditions of our rehearsal rooms, the dramaturgies of our narratives, the aesthetics of our productions.
In this process of dialoguing, our friendship has grown deeper. It is sustained by a trust, which has laid the foundations for an artist-producer relationship. This trust is something that we have cultivated over time. It allows us to push and challenge each other to tell our stories on our own terms, beyond the trappings of ‘immigrant nostalgia' or ‘trauma porn’, which so often are the only notions permissible for marginalised artists to explore in Australian mainstream theatres. In part, this focus is made possible by our international exposure. Our upbringing overseas means we weren’t limited by a scarcity model even in countries where there were far lesser centralised resources. We’ve been privileged to come from generative spaces where our stories aren’t compromised to conform to Western palettes. So, we have the audacity to ask, to dream, to imagine other possibilities.
Zainab
Although both of us come from separate disciplines, why we make work and the kind of work we want to make – all about relationships and community – is the same. It's not transactional, but always attempts to be reciprocal. We constantly operate in spaces where we have to fight against a sense of transaction. But I think we have been able to transcend that reductive urge because we share a set of core values, and a deep friendship that predates our artist-producer relationship. I don’t know how to be a good producer if I don’t believe in the artist first. That’s why, when you asked me to explore this new artist-producer relationship, my initial hesitation was short-lived. I didn’t want to compromise our friendship, but in the years since I’ve realised it’s only strengthened our friendship. When you have trust, there is no room for doubt. So, I can push and challenge you when the work requires it. I can also hold space for you because I understand the pendulum of your emotions. This intimacy gives us insight into the mechanics of each other's hearts and minds. It then makes it easy for me to hold the faith for an artist when the rhythms of their creative process destabilises them. The role of the producer is to create the scaffolding for the idea to germinate and thrive. To take care of all the noise, so the artists can focus solely on the work – especially when the work is also seeking to address issues of culture or psychology that are incredibly personal. Emotional intelligence is key, compassion is key, and as I have realised, friendship is essential.
Even when it comes to curating a cast and the team of creatives, I deeply believe in the potential of people. I want to create conditions that are fertile crossings for them to step into their own potential, no matter how unnerving that might be. To create spaces that are generous, and kind, and allow people to thrive and grow. My work often takes place in the spaces in between where relationships are built and trust grows. You can have people who are incredible at their craft, but if, as an ensemble, they do not have a shared language to build from, it becomes hard to keep the intention alive. To remember why. We’ve started to take theatre so seriously these days, we’ve forgotten it comes from the most vulnerable part of us. And so, we as individuals must be nurtured through the process of making work. This labour of love cannot be quantified with a dollar amount. That’s why for me, it isn’t about a generic formula or just the craft of an artist. It’s about asking what does this work need, and who are the best people to nurture the seed of this idea into a flower that blossoms into fragrance. It’s what I did when we made Layla Majnun by Feraidoon Mojadedi. There were very few creatives of colour being afforded opportunities in Perth when we made that work in 2019. The first two years of seeding that work just focused on upskilling the artists in the creative process through mentorship and collaboration with established artists. It resulted in equal giving and receiving of craft and culture. I am also very aware that I don’t come from a performing arts background so if someone didn’t think outside the box and take a chance on me, I’d never have landed upon becoming a producer. Maybe I subconsciously try to do that for other people.
Nithya
As an artist, I genuinely enjoy Vikki Reynold’s proposition in her 2019 publication Zone of Fabulousness of people-ing my rooms. I like the mechanics of assembling a creative team together. The things I’m looking for in collaborators beyond certain skillsets are a shared sensibility, a lack of ego and an ability to share an instinct-led response in a room. Some of this is hard to garner in the first instance and this is why I like slow, long-form collaborations so I also have the ability as a lead artist to infuse a room with meaningful reason to be there and psychological safety for everyone in it...and I do think, of course, all processes are hierarchical to a certain extent and someone needs to call that final shot in a room at the end of the day. But I work to empower the agency of all the collaborators in a room, particularly in light of their specific craft, in how I facilitate space. Like, if I'm inviting a composer or designer into the process, I really think about who would be tantalised by engaging with the seed of an idea from the beginning and interpreting it through their medium, with their point of view. I know the world of the work will become fuller for it, rather than be like, ‘this is what I need to happen at this point.’ I feel like that ‘auteur’ mode of making work so prevalent in the West is quite reductive and rather archaic. It may work for some people, but personally, I'm more interested in, ‘what can this group of humans coming together collectively orchestrate.’
I have to admit I still have all of the self-doubt that comes with making work, but I certainly feel like taking a break from my practice and coming back to art-making after years buried head down in a PhD had a profound impact on me personally. Having those years of pause and reflection means I know my point of view at least, and a sense of my voice as an artist. I feel really grounded in that. The creative process is so intangible. You can make decisions in a room, but the breath that you give it in-between is what really allows a work to become what it needs to be. The small-to-medium sector does this naturally in Australia. Although it is a direct outcome of funding pressures, it also enables richer work to see the light of day.
The civic duty of the artist is something that is central to both our practices and we are invested in art as a tool for reform. We believe that new works or re-visions of existing works are the clearest ways to get there while bringing others along their own journeys. In our own cultures, all art exists in the realm of a larger philosophical debate. Art is also realised via an inherent porosity between disciplines. Influences on our art-making are also cumulative. Art, like our cuisine, adapts influences by the many who passed through, ruled over or lived alongside our ancestors in the subcontinent. We apply these methods to shape our processes which are hugely influenced by our bioregions. We try to be actively decolonial in this inquiry. And there’s always delicious food in our studios – we hash out everything from design decisions to touring budgets over a meal. In our culture, the language of love is often expressed through food. Not the food you just pick up in a supermarket, but meals that you make with your own hands. It signifies love, trust, care, time. It is seen to not just nourish hunger, but our souls. We cook with rose, with pistachio, with spices: whole fragrances that don’t just anchor us to lineage, but also to culture and history. We eat with our hands. There is no pretense. There is no ego. We eat, and we share, as we create, as we practice our art, as we mean to live: with generosity.
We think a lot about who we make work for, and indeed who gets to be the ‘primary audience’ on this continent. This is a complex question riddled by centuries of colonialism, capitalism and heteropatriarchy. There is still a privileging of the White gaze in our underfunded arts ecosystem. The system’s baseline sustainability is maintained by the deep pockets of institutions and funding bodies.
Federal funding for the arts in Australia is complex. This is exacerbated by the changing climate of state funding, a philanthropy and subscription model reliant on the old guard, conservative governance structures and cultural gatekeepers who overstay their leadership positions. These roadblocks decelerate a propensity for change.
As settlers, we believe that we have a duty to hold the labour and advocate for change through acts of solidarity from both within and outside the system. And one of the ways we do this is by continuously interrogating who we make work for, how we invite them in and in what ways we can ensure this relationship is not transactional. There is a clear financial incentive for organisations to care about the diversity of artists. But this imperative does not extend to care about the diversity of audiences and certainly not in a way that allows them to bring their full selves into view. Considering most work in Australia is made with taxpayer dollars, this is completely unjustifiable and curatorial correctives are urgent.
Table of Contents
Part One
We never talk about God in the theatre. Or, spirituality. Why?
On thinking about audiences at an abstract level
On taking work to audiences outside of traditional spaces
Zainab shares her process of producing Black Brass
Nithya on co-creating Outwitted! for Happenstance festival
Part Two
In conversation with Jay Emmanuel
In conversation with Ravi Jain
In conversation with Shahid Nadeem
In conversation with Jacob Rajan
In conversation with Durga Bishwokarma
