Stefo Nantsou

Hi. I might walk around, just to break up the sort of mode of delivery. Firstly, I'd like to say thanks very much for having me here and it's great to be back in Brisbane, lovely to be back in the hot. How to boil down what took place over a nine month period in 20 minutes, I will do my best.

Me and stacks of other people, who live in Melbourne, hate the direction this country's going in, hate it with burning passion, hate the economic rationalist approach, hate the economic trends and political trends, that are not shrinking whatsoever, but growing like fungus. I was in South Australia on Thursday and the front page of The Advertiser had this quote from a guy from the Chamber of Commerce, saying, "We need a Jeff Kennett in South Australia."

We wanted to deal with our bitterness somehow. A lot of people, either teachers or people that work in councils or people that work in the railways or people that work just about anywhere, have had a growing alienation with their own workplace, a growing alienation with the direction that their own work or industrial policies or wherever their workplace is heading, and powerlessness became the ever-increasing term that kept coming up - "I haven't got any more control with what I do. I don't know if I'll still be in my job next week." "They have changed things now. I'm now no longer a blah, blah, blah, I'm a blah, blah, blah." "I've lost this, I can't have overtime any more." "They don't give me holiday pay any more, blah, blah, blah."

The list was endless about how many people were being kneecapped, not because they were doing anything wrong but for the sake of restructuring and change. They were meant to swallow it and "be happy, because if you're not then piss off and we'll get someone else to do your job". There was a guy back in the middle 80s, early 80s, who wrote this wonderful little article about how you should wage war on your workforce. A lot of people thought that was really cool, "I'm going to wage war on my workforce. I'll make people not trust their mates," through a pretty heinous style of gossip and undercutting work that people had done, just so they can be shifted to another area or just so, "We need to cut that section of middle management so all this is happening." You get the general point, right?

A lot of us wanted to deal with that in some way. Me and another guy, Steve Payne, thought , "Let's do a community theatre project, pretty old-fashioned, traditional community theatre project, where you get a lot of different people together from different walks of life, who can come together and use the project as a platform where people can air their views and either be in it or help write it or help advertise it or at least come so they can feel a part of a growing dissatisfaction and, hopefully, out of that process, people can start to not only see what's happening to their own working lives but see parallels in other people's working lives so they don't feel so isolated; or they can see, "If that's happened to you, that's happened to me, mate, what can we do to stop it happening next time?" - blah, blah, blah. We were thinking in terms of what possible outcomes we could have with this project.

We didn't really know how to focus it, we didn't really know how to turn it into a play but to deal with it somehow was what was burning inside our guts. We made contact with the head of the Ambulance Employees Association in Melbourne, who gave us this wonderful story about how all the middle management of the ambulance drivers in Victoria, which is about 100-odd people, mainly men, mainly aged between 45 and 60, who were taken away on these weekend workshops, to build their self-esteem, to encourage the redirection, to encourage them to grasp the redirection in the ambulance service that was taking place. A hundred guys went away for a three day camp out in this wonderful place, they were given lots of grog, lots of food ...

We found that story - well, for me, being writer, director, actor, I go, "There's a good role in that. There's a good story there, it only happened over a couple of days. Yeah, we've got the goodies and the baddies." Do you know what I mean? Like, it all just sort of comes to you and you go, "There's the show there, that's the show there."

I go and talk to my cousin, who works for Commonwealth Bank in Newcastle. She says, "Yeah, I went on one of those weekend workshops, I took a package." I talked to my cousin who works in the planning department in Canberra. He says, "Yeah, I went on a weekend workshop and I had a nervous breakdown, my wife has left me and the kids don't want to talk to me any more." I talked to other people, that worked for Telstra, and they went, "Yeah, we had those weekend workshops too and I haven't really felt the same since," and then they'd start vaguing out, and you go, "Fuck, there's a good show here. There's a really good show in this."

We started talking with a good friend of ours that works for the Victorian Women's Refuges and Associated Domestic Violence Service and she said, "What these guys went through is exactly the same as what most women go through in a domestic violence situation; you are bludgeoned to believe that what you're doing is wrong and you had better wake up to yourself and follow orders or you'll get another smack in the face; and you learnt to accept that."

The psychology of what is happening to the workforce and the population of this country is really scary. We wanted to relate the psychology, that is what is happening to the workforce and in particular what happened to these ambulance drivers and middle of the line management, with, unfortunately, a great percentage of the community, women who are either survivors or stuck in a domestic violence situation. We wanted to relate that, theatrically, poetically, in the show.

Well, didn't people come out of the woodwork to support that? They might not have gone on one of these Camp Waco experiences but they've, sure as shit, had the shit bashed out of them and they wanted to come aboard. You had ambos, sexist guys, full-bore sexist guys, "You don't want any sheilas in your ambulance, only gonna let you down," those style of guys, working with workers and survivors of domestic violence, to make this play. It was so weird and yet so electric, because they both agreed that, hopefully, out of this process we can analyse where we are, where we're going on a personal level, on an occupational level and on a political level.

You get an idea of the project. I think it's very important that everyone understands the root of this project, because, what happened later, the shit hit the fan. That's where I've got to look at the time and be very careful because to tell you the whole story is a nightmare.

We put in a submission to the Australia Council, to the CCDF and we got very, very, very positive feedback and we got funding. We put in submissions to the Reichstein Foundation and a few other foundations in Melbourne and they gave us funding too; very, very, very interested and excited. We approached City of Port Phillip - and I'm glad to see there are some representatives of the City of Port Phillip Council here today - they were very excited, wanted to be involved...

The support for this project was mind blowing. You had all sorts of people ringing you up, saying, "I want to be in it, I want to help. When is it on?" We got good and very positive links with the City of Port Phillip Council. We wanted to put it on in one of their venues; ie, a venue that they own and that another organisation runs for them - so, council's sort of employees running a theatre called The Gasworks Theatre. They gave us an office, "Here's your phone. Sounds great. You can rehearse it here, you can have all your workshops here, all your group devising can happen here. It can be performed here in April, May. Go ahead. Go. This sounds awesome." We signed contracts in December last year, "Go. This sounds great."

The next year we start to group-devise, we start to do interviews with more ambos, do interviews with more DV people. We started to create a play that had two narratives, one about the ambos, one about a domestic violence strand and, you know, in theatrical terms, the two narratives come together, the ambo then goes to the woman's house who has been bashed at the end and you get the two main characters meeting. It all made sense to me, I love the idea.

Four weeks, five weeks before we were set to open, our designer comes up with a graphic.

Four theatres in Melbourne had a great idea, "Let's build our audience. You give me your mailing list and I'll give you my mailing list. Let's apply for funding from the Victorian state government arts minister, Jeff Kennett, to get an audience-building program going." So each of these four theatres had to nominate a play that would be their play for this audience development program. The Gasworks Theatre was so excited by our project, they nominated us for the year. Malthouse ran it, Malthouse is where Playbox Theatre live, and they're a large organisation, when you compare it to the pissy one I run.

Anyway, Malthouse took one look at this graphic and went, "No way. Your application to be involved in this project has been refused," on the strength of the graphic and on the strength of the synopsis of the play, which everyone knew about for ages. An emergency meeting was called by the council and by the people that gave us some funding that we had straight from our original brief and that "you are now focusing on the domestic violence side and not the ambulance side at all".

If we had had a character in the play called John, who was short and wore glasses and had not much hair, who was bashing the Christ out of his missus, we might have got into trouble for that, but we didn't, we had nothing like that in the play at all. We had a character called John Punch and his wife's name was Judith, Punch and Judy. That's quite simple, everyone can understand that. Surely, there's nothing major. We're talking, like, a month before we're on and up till now everyone has been really excited. All of a sudden you're called into a meeting and people tell you, "You've strayed from your original brief. You'd better rewrite your script and you've got until Tuesday to submit it to us, and then we'll tell you if you can proceed with your use of The Gasworks Theatre.

We had what was laughingly called draft 55. I don't know how many people here have been involved in a community theatre project but, if you have been involved in any ones I have made, they will change every hour. You get a good idea, you go, "Shit, we're gonna put that in. Hey, great line, let's put that in." You tend to actually start cutting out all the stuff that is really blatant and actually, theatrically, shithouse. What you're then left is - too much becomes that thing that you put on and it became clearly obvious that no-one involved in the upper echelons of the council or The Gasworks trusted us. Once you lose trust, people will want you kneecapped as quick as possible.

Our - and I use this term loosely - mistake was to do the right thing and get legal advice. Bernard Bongiorno QC had a look at the graphic and he said, "There's nothing wrong with this. That's vague as." He read the script and he went, "Yeah, well, you got references, but that's all." A barrister calls in all the cast and he says, "Anyone can sue you any time for whatever they like, it's whether or not they will win that you should be concerned with" and, as far as I was concerned, no way. The play was about bigger things.

We had to submit a thing by next Tuesday, draft 55, what we called it, for our contract to be either positive or withdrawn, even though we had signed contracts 3 months before. Me, being the weak one, the spineless one, the sort of boy who is outside the principal's office, again, I was in that position, "I'm outside the principal's office, what will I do? I'll lie. I've got to get myself off here, otherwise we're in the shit." So I got draft 55 and I put texter all through that, I went, "No, cut that. No, cut that. That character's name is that, that better change. That little bit where he talks about this, that better change." I gave it to all the group of people that I was working with, all 30 of them, and they went, "You gutless bastard. How dare you self-censor this thing that wešre all really excited about and agree with, just so you can get the play on?" I was like, "All right, I'm sorry. All right, we'll leave draft 55 as it is and we'll give that to the Council and they can decide on that."

They decided on it and they told us to piss off, and sacked us, two and a half weeks before we were set to open. That graphic started the ball rolling, where people had nothing to do with the project, people that were of a certain class and of a certain circle of friends decided to put a stop to it. All they had to do was call a meeting.

Just before I finish, I'm sorry, we started rehearsing on the Monday three weeks before we were opening, we were told on the Tuesday that there was going to be an emergency meeting on the Wednesday, to see if we were going to get kicked out or not. We show up to the meeting on Wednesday. As I walk in to Council - I live right next to the Council. That feels really good now. I walk into the Council town hall and one of the Councillors, who I know, who gave us full backing, I might add, I can't tell you his name, said to me on the way in, "Is there anywhere else you can do it?" I go, "No. We're doing it at The Gasworks. This is a shit-hot show and you're going to be there opening night." He said, "Oh."

The argument against us going ahead was put forward, the argument for us to go ahead was put forward. They then told us all to go outside. An hour and a half later we all came back in. They voted unanimously to kick us out, because the play was possibly litigious.

There were 30 of us at this meeting. We all went back to my joint, right next door to the Council, sat around, "Well, what the hell are we going to do now?"

That was censorship. They censored us from going ahead. There are many examples that you probably all have - sorry, "Ding, ding, ding" - heard about that I'm not here to talk about, because I wasn't involved in the Serrano exhibition but, geez, the shit hit the fan about that and it was a lot worse than us. The irony of that is the Melbourne City Council were never involved really. Someone's neck was on the line for that and they decided, "Well, we better pull the plug on this." It's when someone's neck is on the line, some onešs neck, they usually decide, "We'll pull the plug."

No-one came and saw our show from the Council, no-one came and saw it from The Gasworks. We got full houses like a beauty, we extended. People love this show - I claim a lot of credit - because the idea of the two narratives meeting was a really good one and it wasn't litigious and we had a great review in The Age that said, "How could anyone believe that this project was litigious? How stupid?" But, when they want to get you and when you want to attack that ruling class in some way, they will get you. If the domestic violence thing was about migrants, working-class people, Once Were Warriors style, no-one would give a fuck, but when the domestic violence thing is about ruling class people, middle class, upper middle, they don't like that at all, "That is personal and we have the power because we are lawyers and have mates who are QCs and we'll crush you."

That's really all I wanted to say.

Forward: Elena Jeffreys