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Connections with Australia, that which is upside down, reversed,
inverted, fresh and startling to the view, and other-footed were
the foci of Bloomsday 2000. The connections with Australia are quite
arcane and byzantine, and many of them known only to the committee
before Bloomsday, so it was a delight to follow the meanderful,
neanderthal footpaths as the day progressed.
Murray-Darling Embraces Anna Livia, and Everybody is Somebody
Else at 11am in the Food Court at Victoria Market
The first thread of the antipodean was unloosened in the opening
event. The script began under the sign of the fish and on top of
the subterranean river with the sounds of the morning on the Murray
River bank as the bushmen fished for what had not been seen for
10 years and listened to the talk of a Rigby whose language and
thinking is quite Bloomite. Then, another river came to life, an
antipodean one in Dublin, with its washerwomen discussing the exploits
of H.C.E. (a Humorous Character Example in Finnegans Wake). From
Anna Livia's ample estuary, we were taken upstream to meet the nymph
Poulaphouca at the Liffey's source, there to observe Bloom's discomfort
as he was subjected to accusations by sundry non-human creatures.
Returning again to the mouth, Anna Livia had metamorphosed into
the River and two older women danced erotically preparing for Anna's
tryst ('First she let her hair fal and down it flussed to her feet
its teviots winding coils. Then, mothernaked, she sampood herself
with galawater and fraguant pistania mud, wupper and lauar, from
crown to sole. Next she greesed the groove of her keel').
11.45am-1.30pm Collideorscape.
More transformations and the audience was conducted through North
Melbourne and Lotus Eaters by Calypso, a somewhat hippie-ish, Utopian
nymph, and Nellie M., a facts-and-figures tour-guide. They functioned
as an externalisation of Bloom's thoughts and the contested space
in his head where Bloom the idealist meets the hard-nosed realist.
This script achieved something we've always hoped: to locate our
study of Joyce in an urban reality and history circa 1904, and to
explore that historical landscape and sound its resonances with
Dublin 1904. It permitted the airing of much history: North Melbourne's
rise out of the swamps in the decades after the goldrush, the property
scams on which it was founded, the scandals of its hundreds of pubs
which were delicensed and relicensed with dazzling speed and at
the whim of local officials.
As usual, we attempted to find locations which spoke to sections
of the novel, and so Spinifex Press, a proudly Lesbian scholarly
press, was the ideal location for a dramatisation of Gerty's misplaced
and risible dreams (Cleo-inspired) of marriage to Reggie Wylie,
or the handsome and mysterious gazer on Sandymount Strand. There
was a certain satisfaction in putting Bloom in the shop window,
mannequin-style.
And St. Joseph's Christian Brothers' College, opened on 13 February
1903, with its enthusiastic boys and teachers, was the place to
enact several school-based scenes from the novels. The Legion of
Mary headquarters in Australia furnished perhaps the most spectacular
venue of all with its dark bluestone passage leading into its light-filled
space upstairs. Here, Stephen's repentance after his encounter with
the prostitute was enacted.
Lancashire Lane behind the Court House Hotel, with its spectacular
narrative anti-plumber graffito (who did what to whose lav, and
who was suable and for how much), was the locus of a boxing match
between Dublin's Pet Lamb and the rather larger Crown, intercut
with a narrative about the comings and goings of public-house licences.
A Rolls-Royce halted before the Bloomsdayers crossing to the Town
Hall, serving as a gracious block to traffic.
The Town Hall steps hosted two complementary visions, the midwives'
vision of Dublin from the top of the Nelson Pillar and Molly's rather
more nostalgic vision of Gibraltar when she was a girl. We swam
in roses let down from a higher level again. The walking tour ended
with a procession following the blind stripling into an optometrist
who had a grand piano in his consulting room. A medley of eye-songs
of the period were sung by Rod Baker and Maureen Andrew.
1.30pm Variety Meets at Cafe Hotel
Lunch was an occasion for a confluence of Australian and Joycean
literary readings on food, and outrageous collaborative party games
designed to test Joycean canniness. Bob and Dolly Dyer conducted
proceedings. The Joycean bits came from The Dead, Lestrygonians
and Shem the Penman; Australian writers weighed in with Lamb Dinner
(Winton), a Buddlecombe party (Henry Handel Richardson) and Marion
Halligan's panoptic version of what a gourmand might eat and drink
in a lifetime.
3.45pm Eine Kleine Word Musik on Elmstrasse (Uniting Church
Hall, Elm St.)
This event began with an original a capella rendition of the phrases,
noises and exclamations taken from the Sirens episode composed and
sung by Rod Baker and Trish Shaw (Judy Pile and Stephen Grant made
up the quartet of singers). In three movements, it explored sound
and the percussiveness of language, Bloom's pathos, and finally,
its ideas via intertextual allusions, especially those with institutional
referents. It was a witty and accomplished piece, and one that bears
repetition. The second item on this program was a synopsis of Finnegans
Wake, focussing on the 'fall' of HCE (Hirsute Canine Epic) which
was run in parallel with an account of the life of Hugh Culling
Eardley Childers, man of Empire, and the first Auditor-General and
Inspector of Schools in Victoria, and also prototype for HCE. His
story was told by a recent Auditor-General of Victoria, Mr. Ches
Baragwanath. Further intercutting of relevant sections of Ulysses
made clear how the idea of the fall was germane to Joyce's writing
from the earliest texts. There was much doffing of hats (bowlers,
boaters, top hats and some delicate noddings of feathery hats in
an Edwardian style). Mick Harvey heavily punctuated the four acts
( I The Courteous Act; II The Unspeakable Act; III The Reen- Act,
or The Re-Act; IV The Act) with a bass drum and piano, and a Highly
Complex Entertainer with variations on the names of HCE.
5pm Live-It or Cricket, North Melbourne Town Hall
Read the Papers .
(PDF 60KB)
Auditor-General ended with a cricketting metaphor for The
Act, and this conceit was further elaborated when the Antipodean
1st Eleven spoke of how and why they read or fail to read Joyce.
They were Barry Jones - polymath, Colleen Isaac - writer, David
Mushin - psychotherapist, Trish Ni Ivor - Consultant, Jack Hibberd
- playwright, Jill Kitson - broadcaster, David Sornig - student
and writer, Gillian Hardy - actor, Shane Conway - doctor, augmented
by the spirits of Shane B. Warned and Mark Beware, who couldn't
be with us due to corruption allegations and are currently writing
their autobiographies, and Paddy Dignam as absentee Twelfth Man).
Many speakers made much of how Bloomsday had enhanced their understandings
of Joyce and their motivation to read; one unlikely speaker talked
about how she much preferred hearing the novel to reading it; several
felt that they weren't sure it was worth the effort, but kept trying
anyway; the actor talked about how being forced to embody the prose
was her most secure route into understanding; the psychotherapist
spoke movingly about how he related to Bloom's Jewishness and outsider-status
because he identified with both; Barry Jones linked his reading
of Ulysses to his entry to the Labor Party (both 50 years ago) and
to his sense of the excitement of European letters in the 'twenties,
and his sense that Australia in the 'fifties was utterly different,
and Shane Conway was eloquent on how his reading of Joyce and Proust
had almost cost him his career. Jack Hibberd related how different
the novel seemed on the three widely spaced occasions on which he
had read it. David Sornig invented a fictional alter-ego, Molly
of Avila: who understood all and died, whereas he was content, like
Trish Ni Ivor, to live and read other writers and write himself,
and perhaps never fathom all the nuances of Ulysses.
7.30pm The Seven Ages of Joyce, SOKOL, Czechoslovakian Club.
This cabaret-style script was written by a committee. Taking Jacques'
'seven ages of man' speech from As You Like It as a spine,
it married Joyce's life with the fictional 'life' of the works,
and threw in songs from a variety of genres to amplify its meanings.
Peter Finlay's Joyce/Stephen was agile, subtle and intelligent.
His Molly/Nora, played by Gandharvo Seaborn was earthy and savagely
undercutting of her partner. Simon McGuinness's vocal variety made
him a very moving Narrator, especially in the closing sequences
in Wakese. And Bill Johnston and Maureen Andrew, in a variety of
noisy and melodramatic roles, filled out a raft of characters. Jim
Howard was a very Jewish Bloom. There were dozens of bit parts and
singing roles (thanks to Jamie and Brendan of St. Joe's, Geoff Baird
and Greg Rochlin (piano and voice), Rod Baker (Irish? tenor), Ted
Reilly (Fr. Conmee, Raving Irish Expert), Roslyn Lord (an exquisitely
pained Lucia), Eugene O'Rourke (many priests), Philip Harvey (J.
Alexander Dowie), Graeme Anderson (pathologist), Sean Armistead
(many, many young men), Di Silber (Martha Gifford), Frances Devlin-Glass
(Sylvia Beach), Peter Jones (Shakespeare) and Jack Hibberd as himself.
The technical team (Elissa Anson and Matt Miller) were indefatigable
throughout the day.
— Philip Harvey |
