2019 Recap: Quippings: Rebirth and Experimental Disability Arts
A recap of significant projects I undertook over 2019! Sign up to my Patreon to get early access to future recaps and other goodies.
Since 2017 I have been actively involved with Quippings: Disability Unleashed, a Melbourne-based queer & queer-friendly disabled arts collective. Quippings started out about a decade ago as an avenue for queer disabled artists to perform stories around sexuality, desire, and disability, given the common desexualisation of disabled people. It’s since grown to encompass all sorts of experiences and artistic forms, while still retaining a rugged, rabble-rousing, indie spirit.
My entry into Quippings actually ended up being ground-breaking. I was invited to be part of Quippings: Risky Business by long-time Quippings performer/producer and queer disability rights activist Jax Jacki Brown after working together on the Melbourne Festival run of Taylor Mac’s 24 Decade History of Popular Music. Early on, I was contacted by a former participant who had warned me about their poor experience, particularly as a person of colour in a majority White space. I asked the current Quippings collective about this, and they acknowledged that while they’ve had PoC participants before, they haven’t been good with racial diversity overall but are willing to accept critique to do better. I decided to give them a chance (bringing in more PoC with me) and it turned out to be a very positive experience: the crew were receptive to my feedback and together we were able to create strong group and solo numbers. My solo was a burlesque piece about my experiences with pre-menstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), which causes severe mood drops linked to one’s menstrual cycle.
(Note: the video below contains nudity)
Jax and Kath Duncan, founder of Quippings and producer of Risky Business, took a strong liking to me and invited me to co-produce their 2018 shows: their Midsumma cabaret Quippings: Not Normcore! as well as a commissioned reading at the Melbourne Writers Festival. I took this opportunity to bring in more queer disabled artists that were people of colour and/or trans (another category historically underrepresented in Quippings and in disability arts overall), which helped broaden both Quippings’ membership and audiences as well as the artists’ own platforms. This became the start of an enduring professional mentorship between myself, Jax, and Kath, who saw my potential in diversifying and further radicalising Australia’s disability arts sector.
Quippings - Not Normcore!
Back row: Kath Duncan, Kaitlyn Plyley, Kochava Lilit, Jess Gonsalvez, Creatrix Tiara, Gemma Mahadeo.
Front row: Jax Jacki Brown, Louise De Pino Priot, Erin Kyan
Photo: Polly Ticks
Quippings: Melbourne Writers Festival
Sonia Marcon, Rachel Edmonds, Miranda Sparks, Creatrix Tiara, Carly Findlay, Kochava Lilit, Tuesday Atzinger
Photo: Carly Findlay
Earlier this year Quippings was invited by the Victorian Premier’s PRIDE Events and Festivals Fund to submit an application, and Kath reached out to Jax and I to pitch a project for the fund. I suggested a project where queer disabled artists of varying artforms are paired up with each other to create something new incorporating both their forms. This was in large part inspired by one of my favourite genres of YouTube videos - people from disparate creative or professional backgrounds coming together to work on a joint project or a skill outside their comfort zone. Jubilee’s Between Worlds series is a great example of this format, with pairings such as a classical quartet and a mariachi band, a street dancer and a ballerina, and a caricaturist and a fine artist.
The disability arts sector in Australia, besides being rather homogeneous in demographics, also tends to be focused on very specific traditional artforms: writing, dance, music, spoken word, theatre, visual art. While there are definitely plenty of disabled people making art across various forms, including interdisciplinary art and modern experimental forms such as digital art or game design, they don’t tend to be represented as part of “disability arts”, especially if they make work that isn’t explicitly about their disability (especially “trauma porn” or “inspirational porn”). There also isn’t a lot of cross-collaboration outside shows the size of Quippings cabarets, but even those tend to be focused on one or two specific forms.
I saw this as a golden opportunity to widen the scope of disability arts, not just with my usual approach of bringing in people from marginalised backgrounds, but also in giving space for queer disabled artists to experiment and innovate the artform. Quippings already has a strong reputation of breaking conventions around disability and art: Rebirth was our chance to take that further.
Our PRIDE Events and Festivals fund application was successful, so Jax and I (with Kath as consulting producer) got to work with executing the project. As this particular format was so new to Quippings, and to both of us individually, there were a lot of things we had to tackle for the first time. For instance, we hardly ever had to turn someone away from performing in a Quippings show as we’d usually have just enough applicants to cover all our spots as well as account for last-minute dropouts without compromising the show. However, this project was budgeted for exactly 6 participants (3 pairs), so we could only pick 6 out of over double the applications.
Jax and I prioritized applications from Indigenous people and people of colour, and also made sure that we selected a wide range of artistic backgrounds that still complemented each other and fit the participants’ wishes. There were a few people we wanted to accommodate but couldn’t: for instance, one participant really wanted to work with a drag performer, but we didn’t have a drag performer apply so we couldn’t pair them! While selecting our 6 was a very challenging process, we did at least have a good database of performers for future shows, so they still had opportunities to participate.
Jax and I had planned on a biweekly check-in system, leading up to a group meeting before the show to share works in progress as well as a tech rehearsal. We would let the participants coordinate their own communication with each other, checking in on them every other week to track progress and give directorial feedback if needed. However, this ended up being way trickier than anticipated. Some participants had dropped out of communication, leaving their partners unable to proceed. In one case, a serious issue cropped up with a participant leading to the difficult decision to remove them from the project; their partner was willing to work solo, but that wouldn’t work with our project aim - thankfully another duo was able to incorporate them late game. There were points where Jax and I were concerned that we wouldn’t have enough material or people for the final show; we considered postponing, cancelling, or bringing in guest artists to do solo spots.
About a week before the actual show, though, everything came together like magic. The groups (now one duo and one trio) managed to resume communication and create amazing innovative work that showcased the best of each participants’ skills. The tech rehearsal was especially heartfelt for me as I finally got to see my idea come to life - and it blew my mind.
Quippings: Rebirth was fully sold out. We experimented with higher-priced “Support the Artist” tickets and actually had a few takers; a sign that this could be a very successful model moving forward. We also added a Q&A with the artists after their performances as an opportunity for them to talk about their collaborative process as well as their own experiences as a queer disabled artist.
Spencer Burgess, Erin Kyan, and Nat Harman made a “live zine” about chronic illness, combining poetry, sound design, and visual art. As the “pages” of the zine (Spencer’s surrealist art) were flipped, all three of them recited poetry about chronic illness, death, and rebirth, with Erin mixing music and sound effects live on stage. Each audience member was also given a copy of the zine on paper with all the images (which created a larger image when unfolded) as well as excerpts of the text. Part of their Q&A included discussion on adapting the project to include Nat (who lost her original duo partner) and Spencer talking about his first time performing (there was a lot more but I can’t remember them all alas!).
Quippings: Rebirth
Spencer Burgess (flanked by his art), Erin Kyan, Nat Harman
Photo: Sarah Walker
Charlotte Sareño Raymond and Elijah Eastley combined live music, spoken word, and pretty epic costuming, walking through a week of dealing with one own’s death and rebirth through mental health. I knew Elijah from the Melbourne games scene and had hoped that the pair would make a game - which they actually nearly did, but that idea was dropped when life issues cropped up. As they were both people of colour, the three of us had a great discussion about the ways race intersects with disability and queerness, how we’re often siloed into specific demographic categories and don’t often get to express other parts of our identity, and how powerful it can be to work together with other people of similar life experiences when you’re marginalised along multiple axes.
Quippings: Rebirth
Charlotte Sareño Raymond (sitting on a pink chair, wearing a sparkly sequined outfit, with a white fur coat on the chair) and Elijah Eastley (playing electric guitar)
Photo: Sarah Walker
Quippings: Rebirth was experimental not just with the art it produced but also in its own format and structure. We were certainly not the first ever project to involve pairing artists of disparate backgrounds together, but it’s still uncommon enough that each iteration brings so much innovation to the table. As mentioned before, there were some things we would have done differently in hindsight and a few times where it seemed like the project would fail, but the response from the participants & audience have been overwhelmingly positive and the project was a huge success.
This show marks a new era both for Quippings and for the Australian disability arts sector as a whole: recognising experimental and new art forms, facilitating collaboration, boosting perspectives from people within the margins of the disability community. I look forward to finding more opportunities to create projects like this, for Quippings and beyond!