Behind The Scenes: Roisin Maeve & DECAMERON 2.0

Written by Roisin Maeve

Image Description: Four people are standing in a row, all are looking to the right except for one person. They are looking at the camera, head still turned to the right. Three of the four people have a hand held to their heart. Photographer: Laura Franklin.

“Good things can happen too.”

You say to yourself half-convincingly, as you dwindle awkwardly in the rickety elevator creaking past the first floor. You are on your way to the first of ten queer writing workshops. Admittedly, you have no idea what you’ve been asked to be part of… except that it involves The State Theatre Company South Australia (epic!!), and something about The Black Plague, or was it The Bubonic? Weren’t they the same thing?! You’re not sure, you never expected to have to know so much about pandemics. You wonder if you know more now, having just lived through one.

It is Wednesday the first of July and you haven’t been in a room with more than four people (including yourself) in over four months. You must remember not to shake any hands tonight, not only is it embarrassing for a twenty-(something)-year-old to go around shaking hands like a middle-aged man but it is now practically illegal. You’ve just had your hair cut, after resisting the urge to cut your own bangs all quarantine. I’m proud of you for sticking it out, but you won’t be able to brush off all the itchy, loose hairs stuck to your face. Although, I know you will try in the warped reflection of the elevator doors. Moving so slowly, you begin to worry you will be trapped suspended here all evening. Eventually, the doors slip open with a jolt and you step out and into MakeSpace at ActNow Theatre. You are greeted with the familiar air of magic contained within these small, unlikely rooms, only dedicated to art-making at certain times of the week. The corporate carpet, bare walls, and faint smell of feet remind you of the room where you first fell in love with acting. You were nine, one of about five kids who would show up to a ‘by donation’ class in Sellicks Beach, run by someone’s mum with floral arm tattoos and fisherman’s pants. In that community centre you learnt how to be brave, pull your imaginary world into this one, make joy with nothing but cardboard and your body. There you learnt to use art not only to express but to construct yourself. 

You’re about to re-learn that it is the making you love more than anything else. Although the stories you spill into yourself quietly may feel the most sacred before you share them, it’s the reaching out that the next few months will be about. Remember the reaching inward is how we begin… but I’m getting ahead of myself. You’re just about to meet a room full of people who will trust you by sharing, care with the kindness of listening, and together you will brew confidences; slowly steeped until you realise that your stories have reached beyond the fluorescent-lit room swaying above mid-week Hindley Street. 

I don’t want to sugarcoat the entire experience, because finding your place sometimes isn’t as easy as walking into a room full of ‘your people’ and blissfully making art. Actually, I want to suggest that it is the places where you wrestle with the discomforts of being and the fears of making, that may have a greater impact. No, I am not a high school speaker giving you a lecture about “stepping out of your comfort zone”, because I know we are still trying to decipher the difference between anxiety and discomfort. 

I’ll be honest, this room at times will make your fingers wriggle in their skin and your lungs may pinch as you grapple to find the right words. You will question yourself, you will wonder if that second of silence signified that you had offended everyone for some minute reason. You will wonder if you are queer enough, or if you are talented enough, or hardworking enough. But I want you to know, that you will find something larger than the self-doubt. It will extend beyond this unlikely room. It may begin as the smallest of glimmers, maybe no larger than moments where you can sit with yourself a little lighter, speak to yourself a little kinder, and appreciate the people around you, who are just as mutually obsessed with what you are capable of creating. And maybe, the cardboard cutout stories of your bodies will leave your hometown confines. Maybe, they’ll become backlit, bigger than life and be met by someone who needs a story from who they haven’t been able to be yet. 

Image Description: Roisin is throwing a peace sign up at someone off camera. They are wearing a bright orange-red blazer and a shirt with the word ‘Golden’. A person is out of focus behind them and a person is in focus in front of them.

Image Description: A line of people sitting and smiling off camera. In focus, and a few people back, is Roisin.

Before that, you’ll have to combat the contagious queer angst, those jitters that ripple through us when we are beckoned into spaces where we aren’t marginalised or hidden. There will be a voice in your head, sometimes so loud you will think of picking up your canvas tote bag to trudge your Doc Martens out of there, worried you’re an imposter. But I want you to look around, nearly everyone in this room carried their timidness from home in their tote bags and found enough confidence to put on their button-ups to show up. It’s the showing up that matters, even if you show up badly, show up on days with a 2/10 rotten rating. Show up like a disgruntled queer going to a family luncheon, when they would much rather be wearing that muppet outfit to brunch. You will feel better being here, and at some point, vulnerability will move into your body. 

So, open yourself up and see what happens. Ask what does it mean to love? And what kind of queer stories are we missing? Do they look a little something like yours? And how can we find faith in a world that seemingly doesn’t have much left to believe in? Ask what will we be passing on to those after us, will it be different to what you’ve been given? Would you like it to be?

What if, the cultivating of sacred spaces is in your own hands and it's the trying where growth happens? I know you’ve been wondering how to expand into the space of your best self that you’ve been carrying around, sometimes you wonder if you’ll ever be able to embody that person. 

I want you to know, that while I admire your determination to improve, take a moment and notice the way memories in the making glow as you slowly become who you want to be. 

Maybe, one day, you’ll be able to love and accept all of yourself. Even, no, especially the parts that don’t fit so neatly.

Yours sincerely, 

From future you. 

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