Shock treatment
Ahead of the opening of her play Big Heart at Theatre Works, playwright Patricia Cornelius talks political theatre and how audacious artistic choices will keep the medium relevant. By Jessica Bellamy
“There is nothing more delightful than what’s shocking”
PATRICIA CORNELIUS WANTS to make one thing clear: she’s not the “brave bloody hero” we think she is. If you’d really like to know, she was a “snivelling, shivering, miserable little shaking thing” on the night she heckled the Honourable Minister for the Arts at a gala dinner honouring Australian playwrights. Senator Mitch Fifield was guest of honour at the dinner held in July 2016, shortly after the Australia Council announced that, due to cuts of $120 million in the previous year’s budget, they would not be funding over 60 small to medium arts organisations for the next three years. As Fifield exited the stage, Cornelius decided to speak up: “There is not a playwright in this room that is not affected by the money that has been ransacked from the Australia Council. There is not a single artistic endeavour in the theatre industry that has not been impacted enormously by that ransacking. You want to honour us? You want to cherish us? Do not take the essential funds away from us!”
Reflecting on this moment a year later, Cornelius is matter-of-fact: “I just felt like: ‘You think I’m going to sit here and break bread with someone who has just robbed us blind and not say anything?’” She’s also aware she’s been around the traps long enough that it doesn’t matter whom she pisses off. “I’m almost fucked anyway,” she jokes. “What are they going to do to me?”
We spoke in early August, a week before rehearsals commence for the premiere production of her new play: Big Heart. This show is the next step in her 30-year collaboration with director Susie Dee. Both women come from a performing background, and as Cornelius describes it, “a tradition of actors who use their bodies well, and are powerful in the space. Both of us think of the audacity of the actor: how far they can take it. But you have to allow them to take it. Allow space, allow the language to lift them.” Cornelius and Dee also share a desire to shock. “There is nothing more funny, surprising or delightful to experiment with than the shocking. When it truly shocks you, and if you allow actors to [push themselves into new territory] both physically and in the language, you’re going to get some gorgeous stuff.”
Big Heart sees Cornelius attempting to skewer the fiction of a benevolent and very white Australia. The play’s central character, the Mother, has adopted a child from each continent of the world – “because she can,” says Cornelius. “There is a notion of imperialism [that I’m exploring], the sense that we can take from wherever and feel no responsibility for the impoverishment, in a global sense, that we in the West have caused.”
Cornelius’ body of work is a brazen, fearless, and – whether she likes it or not – brave call to action. “I love to remind people that we’re not all white, we’re not all comfortable, we’re not all fit and fucking pretty. Theatre is great when it can [remind us of] that. I honestly believe people want that.” Big Heart, Theatre Works, 14 Acland St, St Kilda 3182. 03 9534 3388. theatreworks.org.au. $30-$38. Sep 6-24.