I made my very first program in the mid-1980s. It was the time of gargantuan shoulder pads, John Hughes movies and elbow dancing. Thankfully by then I’d discovered ska music, black Levis and brothel creepers.
In my second year of university, one lunch time I stumbled upon an “extra curricular” workshop paid for by my Student Union fees. The good folk at the Union had kindly put it on for misfits like me, desperate for distraction from what I was finding to be less-than-fulfilling paramedical “yoonee” studies. Radio production and reel-to-reel tape decks it was!
Run by a guy called “Paul” (veteran radio trainer Paul Vadasz as I later found out), he was recruiting students to make rookie programs for a local public radio station with an “educational” license.
The “station” turned out to be 3RRR-FM, and the moment a major turning point in my life. I instantly fell in love with making radio, jumping at the chance to become a part of Melbourne’s alternative broadcasting scene, which at that very moment was becoming a force to be reckoned with.
Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
A boyfriend in a Japan-knockoff band had introduced me to 3RRR when I was 17. I’d not long been listening to this lavish wild-child of the Melbourne airwaves, an uncompromising, non-commercial FM haven of “alternative” and “punk” music. It was vastly different from the diet of predominantly commercial bombast that 3XY and EON-FM had fed me throughout my teens via my beloved Hitachi three-in-one.
I couldn’t get enough.
Fast-tracking my transition from Australian Crawl, ABBA and Leo Sayer (yes, Leo Sayer), to Talking Heads, Laughing Clowns and The Triffids, I’d happened upon an incredibly exciting, vociferous, world of opinion, art, culture, comedy and politics. It was far from anything I’d known growing up in the deep south of suburban bayside Melbourne.
All this. Without ads. I was a goner.
After throwing myself wholeheartedly into the workshop I careened into a five-year love affair with RRR, derailing my “paramedical career” in the process. For the next half a decade I would spend endless – countless – hours, late nights and weekends cranking out as many radio documentaries, live shows, stories, packages and programs as possible. Anything I could get my hands on.
All analogue. All as a volunteer.
I had my crap “day job” at a crap call centre. I had patience. And faith that ‘the long game’ would pay off some day, somehow. No plan. Just hope. That it would.
Both my parents thought I was nuts, bless their cottons. The fruit of post-WWII, Depression-era, struggle town upbringings, they were horrified at how I could chuck in my studies and “a good-paying career at a hospital” to work at a scungy radio station for free.
They spent the next five years telling me so, asking without fail each week whether I’d “earned any money from that radio business yet”.
With the arse literally hanging out of my pants, still no professional prospects on the horizon, yet a deep, unwavering optimism, in 1993 I decided the time had come to jump into ‘the real world’. I consummated my tenure at RRR by producing the comeback series of EEEK!, a much-loved, weekly, 90-minute live program with the guiding mantra, “Educate, Elucidate, Ejaculate”. Was there any other way to go out?
Hosted by trash and junk culture aficionados Bruce Milne and Philip Brophy (also old friends), it was underground radio of the highest/lowest order. My crazy, eclectic, immersive and illuminating DIY traineeship had finally come to an end. You couldn’t buy that kind of formative experience today – for love nor money.
EEEK! artwork by Philip Brophy. Image: Martin Macintosh/Outre Gallery
(Recently, while hosting his late-night music show on – believe it or not – 3RRR, Bruce affectionately (?!) likened my production style “to that of a dominatrix”. Such were the ‘complexities’ of wrangling this collective of darling misfits, I took it squarely as a compliment. That behemoth of a show MADE IT TO AIR EVERY WEEK: no mean feat. Bruce – you slacker! You only ever knew the half of it!lol)
It would of course take another five long years before a “proper” job came along and any remuneration to speak of. But my time at RRR taught me something that others – who’d perhaps had a swifter pathway into professional radio via stand up comedy, a trainee-ship or national radio school – didn’t have: Resilience. Oh, and a shit-ton of Resourcefulness.
And I was Resolute. So be the three ‘Rs’.
Plus, once in 1988 Joey Ramone walked so close to me that I almost fainted right onto RRR’s stinky, sticky carpet. (Smoking and drinking in the building were allowed in ‘those’ days.)
Right then, I knew: this must be the place. Home.
Since 1998 I’ve been more or less ‘on the books’, mostly at the ABC: first at triple j where I had the great privilege to be the incumbent film critic and commentator for a decade. (Oh, and an arts reporter.)
I worked really hard there too. (I work really hard at every job I do. Another corollary from the early days…)
Pretty quickly it led to regular spots across a ton of different shows across allABC networks: Local Radio, Radio National, Radio Australia, ABC Rural – even Classic FM, where I had one of my most fulfilling radio experiences ever talking for what seemed like hours (it was) about progressive film score music, on ‘New Music Up Late’. (Save for the latter, unfortunately 99% of those friendly “cross-network” specialist spots were very seldom paid. Yep. Volunteer work at the government broadcaster: alive and kicking.)
After being a full-time critic and commentator for ten years, I moved on to present my own programs on “grown up” radio (ABC Local) on networks in two capital cities (Sydney and Darwin), and one big regional one (Bendigo). Another “steep learning curve” when it came to learning the craft of presenting – and making – good radio.
After a wee break, my last ‘posting’ was at ABC Central Victoria (2013-2015) where for three years I rose at sparrow’s every Saturday morning (and a good number of weekdays), to broadcast “Breakfast” to great swathes of my home state. The hours were crap but it was a ton of fun, thanks in part to a big-hearted producer and a rare, kind-hearted manager. I fell in love with radio all over again.
A year on and I now find myself living in Berlin. I also find myself without a radio show. And I’m starting to miss it.
I look around and see every man and his Zoom is starting a podcast. “Yeah, I could do that,” I say. But what kind of ‘show’ do I want to make? I have no agenda, no broadcaster to work for, no “real” reason to.. What would it be about? What do I have to say? And who would care either way?
Turns out I know a bunch of very interesting people here, women especially – “wicked” you might say. And I’m in the right town to find them: Berlin, “Babylon on the Spree”, a city whose inhabitants once instilled “voluptuous panic” into the hearts and minds of Central Europe (as author Mel Gordon so deliciously coined its “Weimar era”). The grumpy, Deutschland capital where bohemians, punks and circus folk continue to flock, even as gentrification threatens to rot its historic hedonist foundations… Maybe they’d like to have a bit of a chat?
Unlike 1987, the hard work has been done. Now I have a voice – a point of view – and most importantly, experience. Fully formed. And somehow, most beautifully, as I come full circle, back to the starting point with nothing but a will to create, a makeshift studio, a laptop to edit on (instead of a reel-to-reel) and a drive to make something meaningful to listen to – IN A SEA OF NOISE – I find myself realizing that I can do it. With my eyes shut. I’ve spent over half my life making good radio and connecting with audiences. Listening to other people and what they have to say.
Still curious.
The hours are long again; the learning curve is steep, again. Frankly, it’s a massive undertaking, I’m a bit tired from all this ‘trying’, and just like 1987 it’s another ‘career gamble’… (My dear parents’ voices are in my ears again!) But arriving back at that place of possibility – to “begin again” – has its advantages. I now have the ‘long game’ perspective: I know what I don’t want to sound like. And I know someone who might want to co-pilot with me – hurrah! So much more fun than flying solo!
I can do it.
Radio’s my band: this is where I get to shred my instrument.
“The Wickeds”, Megan & Sam, presenters of Three Wicked Women (3WW), the podcast.
The thing I love the most about radio is the dance: the dance between freedom and format, the dance between “you” and “the audience”, between your voice and their minds. Between music and talk; playfulness and solemnity. In real time. The present moment. If you can nail that, radio can be a truly empathic, enlivening exchange – and vocation.
One day, working for the ABC and presenting Drive, I was “invited in” to the manager’s office. At ‘peak hour’ I’d played Joy Division’s ‘She’s Lost Control‘, urging people during the back announce to see “the mighty biopic about Ian Curtis and his tragic life cut short by his own hand.” (It was called ‘Control’ and had just come out on DVD). The manager scolded me, saying “you could harm the brand”. I got terribly upset: I thought she meant I was encouraging people to self-harm by playing Ian Curtis on the radio. When she finally explained what “harming the brand” actually meant – “Really?! That’s a THING?! OMG…” – I laughed in relief for FIVE SOLID MINUTES. Yep. I just wasn’t made for these times.
Maybe I can release my daggy, Sonic Youth-loving inner rock chick again. Dial up her volume up (instead of down). There’s been a Wicked Woman lurking behind that mic for years. Time to let her out with the aid of an articulate, audacious co-host – Samantha Wareing, a sister Wahlberliner who’s been embodying a kick-arse wicked woman of her own for several decades and just as eager to give her an airing.
So this is what we made: Three Wicked Women. We’re into it three episodes deep with another three to come. Lots of laughter, frayed edges and thoughtfulness. Seriously interesting people to chat to, listen to.. In our “bordello of pod” as I like to call it. One hour’s worth. Fully loaded, fully sick, fully voluptuous.
From my heart to your ears – and on behalf of my co-host Sam – I hope you have as much fun listening to this podcast, as we did making it.
“Don’t be afraid to start over, it’s a new chance to build what you want…” – Anonymous
“I love William Turner: that’s why I took ‘Turner’ as my performer name,” Stella Belinda Franke tells me as we walk down a busy Berlin street, looking for an impromptu photo shoot location.
Her eyes glint with inspiration as she speaks the Romantic landscape painter’s name. It turns out the artist now known as Stella Turner loves to talk about art, and music. As we dodge cars, dog shit and stinging nettles, she manages to cram a lot into our brief conversation. Her aliveness is palpable.
Stella Turner also loves to play music. I first saw her belt out a couple of well-honed originals late one open mic night in Berlin. While clearly in her formative stages, she had something special to share: a rich, confident voice, a flair for songwriting and connecting with an audience.
Which was just as well: gun shy from a misogynist spray by one comedian, hesitation had filled the room about “who” or “what” might come next (the blessed price of an open stage). Stella stepped up like a veteran, re-tuning the space with humbleness and an assured, graceful performance. Collectively we breathed a sigh of relief. Only later did I find out how nervous she was.
The next time I saw Stella play it was in front of a hundred fervent late-teens (quite possibly the entirety of her International School classmates), crammed into a club deep beneath a Kreuzberg street. She was support for rising teen alt-rock sensations Cardboard Hearts (also members of Stella’s school year.)
With her beloved ruby-red Epiphone in hand (“he’s called Aaron!”) she took to the stage in bare feet, smashing out self-penned ballads and the occasional cover (Radiohead’s discarded 007 movie theme ‘Spectre‘ being one on the upright piano against the wall). The place oscillated between vibrant cheers and hushed attention.
On stage at Junction Bar. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
Three encores later – and a piano pounded into submission – a would-be Tori Amos was born. It was a long way from the family Christmas at which Stella had made her performance ‘debut’.
Roll-calling her influences between songs (a good number of rock stalwarts among them), somehow I felt reminded of Nick Drake. Maybe it was the bare feet and over-sized guitar, or the vulnerability of her storytelling: that clear-eyed view of an inner landscape and the willingness to expose it to rooms across one of the grumpiest cities in the EU. I couldn’t help but be impressed by Stella’s courage.
“It is only when we are no longer fearful that we begin to create,” so said William Turner. Clearly it’s not only the artist’s namesake this young, British-Berliner has taken to heart…
Stella Turner. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
Circus Folk: You are a rare creature – a ‘native’ Berliner!
Stella Turner: Yes, I was born and raised in Berlin seventeen years ago, with my mother coming from London and my father from Saarbrücken, Germany.
I also have an older brother called Sebastian. We’ve lived in the same flat all my life – I’ve only ever moved rooms inside the flat!
I absolutely love Berlin and definitely will come back to live here when I’m older. I’m bilingual, so both German and English are my mother tongues. But I do like to speak English more as I go to an International School, which involves being in contact with all sorts of different cultures. The common denominator is that we all speak English.
CF: When did you first start playing music? Are there any ‘formative’ music moments or stories in your life that you can share with us?
ST: I started playing the piano when I was five. When I was six, I decided to start playing the cello and for a long time I wanted to become a cellist in the Berlin Philharmonic, where both my parents work. (My mother sometimes plays in the orchestra and my father is a producer for the Digital Concert Hall.)
Since I come from a musical family, music is second nature to me and I was brought up on great music such as the Beatles, Stevie Wonder, Joni Mitchell, Radiohead and many more.
I only started playing the guitar when I was 14, after I saw Jake Bugg at a concert here in Berlin. It was a strange moment: as I looked at him I thought, “I am going to do that someday”. I borrowed a friend’s guitar and obsessively started teaching myself.
Without ever having touched a guitar or playing anything non-classical, since that night, I knew I wanted to become a musician in the pop/rock field! I wanted to become a musician since I was tiny, but it was only then that I found the right way to express myself.
CF: When/how did you first start singing?
ST: I was always singing when I was younger – I joined the school rock band when I was eleven and sang lead vocals. I also loved singing in the school choir, however was quite shy about singing in front of people.
I only properly started singing when I began composing and playing the guitar. I felt much more comfortable singing my own songs. Ever since January 2016, I have been taking singing lessons to hone my craft.
CF: What instruments do you play – and do you have a favourite?
ST: I actively play the guitar and piano; I played cello for ten years, and [also] play the bass guitar in a band with friends of mine.
I definitely like the guitar the most: as it has not been taught to me by a professional, [this] let me develop my own technique, and gave me a lot more freedom than [what] I got from classical training.
It’s also easy to whip out at a party – everybody can sing along. It’s basically a ticket to a good time! Also, it doesn’t have the ‘snobbiness’ of other instruments. As the basics are simple to learn, everyone can play guitar.
To me, it embodies the spirit of music.
CF: Are there any particular music teachers, influences or mentors in your life, who might have helped you along the way? What have you learned from them?
ST: There have definitely been a few people who have majorly inspired me.
Of course my parents have had the most impact! They educated me on what good music sounds like and gave me the opportunity and freedom to choose whatever instruments I wanted to pursue, as well as encouraging me to practice and focus on my instruments in a way that others would focus on sport or school.
With “Aaron”. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
My jazz piano teacher Wolfgang Köhler opened me up to improvisation and trying out different styles of music, which has greatly improved my capacity for playing in situations where I am outside of my ‘comfort zone’.
Another major influence is my first guitar teacher: he educated me about loads of music, gave me feedback on my songs, and helped shape my style. His name is Mihai Iliescu and he is part of the Romanian soul group Zmeitrei.
Colin Brown and Rebecca Carrington [Berlin-based UK cabaret performers ‘Carrington-Brown’, also featured on Circus Folk] have been a huge influence on me too. We started working together in late 2014 after I saw their show ‘Carrington Brown’. I decided to ask them to teach me because I thought their show was just incredible.
Stella in full flight. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
They agreed and ever since have been helping me sort out my songs, taught me how to behave onstage, given me valuable advice in terms of singing techniques, and so much more. Colin has helped me work towards a full set of thirty songs and has been an incredible mentor in every sense of the word – I could go on and on and on!
My most recent influence has been my singing teacher Kristiina Hofmann Tuomi, who started teaching me in late 2015. She has taught me tremendous amounts about the voice and the body – I couldn’t believe there was so much to learn! I feel I have improved greatly thanks to her. Seriously – I don’t know what I’d do without them!
CF: You write and perform original songs – how would you describe your own music? What do you write about? And is it a process that you enjoy?
ST: I would say it is a concoction of my major influences, mostly [of] the Beatles, Radiohead, the Rolling Stones, Tame Impala and [English alt-rock band], The 1975. [It’s] definitely guitar-based and very melodic. I try to keep the harmonies interesting and love to play around with modulation, but I also love a good, simple song – the thing the Beatles were ‘masters’ at.
In terms of what I write about, I go through phases… For the first year or so I mainly wrote about concepts in a more abstract way, as I was afraid of directly speaking about things that were going on in my mind.
Recently – and especially since I saw The 1975 perform in Berlin – I have dared to directly address things. Matthew Healy’s lyrics greatly influence me as I believe he captures the ‘vibe’ of my generation in a genius way.
I absolutely love the process: it’s my way of coping with all that goes on.
CF: Who are some of your musical heroes – and why do you admire them?
ST: I would say forever my greatest musical icon – surprise, surprise – is John Lennon. I believe he made music that was a universal language: not too intellectual but still incredibly poignant and intelligent. But I can’t mention him without the rest – it wouldn’t have worked without Paul, Ringo and George.
Kevin Parker of Tame Impala inspires me massively in terms of his perfect production. Stevie Wonder for the soul. Matt Healy for the lyrics and sentiment. Freddie Mercury for the mojo and eccentricity. Thom Yorke for incredible emotion and atmosphere. Mick Jagger for stage presence and rawness; Debussy for the musical magic; Beyoncé for making me feel majestic and powerful. David Bowie for, well, David Bowie…
I wish I could name more women!
CF: What kind of ambitions or “dreams” do you have around your music? Is it something you would like to pursue professionally?
ST: I just want to be able to inspire good things in people: [to] make people feel okay to be who they are, make them feel ignited, feel alive. Make them feel how my musical heroes make me feel.
It would complete me to make it my profession. Fingers crossed.
CF: When did you start playing ‘publicly’ – and do you remember your first ‘gig’?
ST: I only very recently started performing publicly, and it was at open mic nights [Sunday Slips] at Lagari, here in Berlin-Neukölln. My first one must have been in February [2016].
However I also performed at my family’s Christmas party last year. I was extremely nervous as there were many very important musicians present.
(Don’t tell my parents, but there may have been some wine involved!)
Five leaves left: Stella Turner. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
CF: What has been your best gig so far – and why?
ST: The best gig so far was one of the open mic nights.. But I’ve had many great gigs – it really depends on the crowd! I once had someone compare me to Jesus – so there’s that!
One time I found out that some people waited for me to play at the open mic, as they had enjoyed my performance so much the last time! I was very last on the bill and it was past 1am on a Sunday evening: that was special.
CF: How do you think you have changed as a performer over the time you have been playing?
ST: I have become much more confident: at a performance in front of my school I basically cried and ran off stage because my legs were shaking so visibly. I’ve learned to be relaxed and channel my ‘inner Jagger’. I wish!
CF: What’s been your best moment as a musician so far – and perhaps your most challenging?
ST: My best moment was probably when I performed in front of my grandparents, who are extremely critical. They said they truly believed I was onto something – the biggest compliment they could have payed me!
My most challenging was actually to decide to perform in front of strangers. I’m extremely shy about showing my vulnerable side and like to act quite nonchalant.
My challenge at the moment is to let go of the notion that I must be ‘self aware’. I believe that it is necessary to look past your ego in order to create something truly beautiful.
CF: What do you enjoy about being on stage and performing? And what’s the most important or significant thing you have learned so far, about being a musician and performer?
ST: I love feeling the energy that I get back, depending on how much I give. The more I give, the more the audience responds. That is the most satisfying thing in the world.
The most significant thing, for sure, is that you cannot compromise your vision. You have to do what you want to, and what you feel you have from inside yourself – to give everything you have.
CF: Could you imagine your life without music?
ST: No! I definitely could not imagine my life without it. It has simply always been there and always will be. It is a fact that everybody understands it. I react to it as if it were a drug – I get rushes, goosebumps and extreme highs just through listening so certain songs.
Watching someone fully embrace themselves onstage is the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced. I could go on like a madman – my friends know this already!
Giving everything. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
CF: Who are you listening to at the moment?
ST: Well, mostly Tame Impala’s album ‘Currents’ – possibly the best album of 2015.
Also, ‘I like it when you sleep, for you are so unaware of it’ by The 1975. It speaks to me like few other recent albums.
I’ve also been listening to The Japanese House [20 year-old UK musician, 20 Amber Bain], Alt-J, Foals, Fleetwood Mac (song ‘Everywhere’), The Doors and Pink Floyd – ie, lots of psychedelic rock!
CF: Do you think Berlin is a good town for musicians and artists – especially younger artists, such as yourself?
ST: Yes, Berlin is great! Berlin is a young city, and more seasoned professionals are always offering help.
I’ve met so many fantastic, supportive people and have been given so many great opportunities in the short time that I have been performing in public.
Berlin has a great, supportive artists’ scene in which you can try out anything you want to with the certainty that someone will connect with you. That also means you see many things you cannot ‘unsee’… Many!
CF: Please finish this sentence: “in five years time Stella Turner will be…”
This is my music video tribute to ‘the present moment’, in all it’s authenticity, goofiness, love, humanity, beauty and ragged wonder…
‘Salted’ by Cooperblack stars “Cooperblack” (then Jeremy Conlon, Simon Kormendy & Oliver Budack), and a rag-tag group of Darwin friends with playfulness and courage in their hearts. Recorded in 2009, before I even knew what mindfulness was – and meditation for that matter (I now study and teach both) – I also layed claim to inventing a new genre: Music Video Diary.
Inspired 1000% by Jeremy‘s exceptionally beautiful song – such an exceptionally talented musician and composer! – footage for ‘Salted’ was (mostly) recorded on one infamous Darwin balcony, in the heaving, sweaty climes of Northern Australia. Channelling Warhol (one of my biggest documentary inspirations), I asked my willing ‘non-actors’ to sit together, listen to the song “and kiss when you feel like it.”
Furthermore, “I’ll leave the room once I hit record. Just be yourselves. The rest is up to you!” Such was my sparing yet golden direction…
The biggest challenge was getting the song playback to work and not tipping over the wee camera! (I’d bought a very cheap, crap tripod.) Some months later, one afternoon, my talented, kind filmmaker friend Tom Salisbury drove several hours to edit it on my kitchen table. For nix.
Looking back at ‘Salted’, I still find it such a funny, intimate, moving clip. A series of moments unfolding in real time of people just being: being playful, being thoughtful, being authentic in ‘the now’… And trusting the music to support them in front of the camera and me ‘behind’ it (well, in the other room), whatever the hell they thought I was doing! Some people have moved on from Darwin; some from each other… The beautiful dog Chio is no longer with us. Jack the galah flew off into the bush. Yet there they all are, perfect – and perfectly themselves – embedded in a sweet, living, present moment experience, together.
It’s a tribute to love, actually. While it might be difficult for some to watch now, I feel so grateful to have been allowed to submerge this moment (and song) in the river of time (and video) with such a bunch of bighearted people, to one of whom I’m now married.
I’m also reminded that impermanence is a constant and vulnerability only a kiss away. And while a great physical distance now cleaves us, I love that we’re all still in each others’ lives, somehow. This funny little clip unites us us together, forever. Much love and thanks to Jeremy, Oliver, Simon, Jess, Mega-Jess, Deb, Karen, Lauren, Aaron, Amy, Erin, Jack the galah, and vale Chio the dog.
Travelers, it is late.
Life’s sun is going to set.
During these brief days that you have strength,
be quick and spare no effort of your wings.
Join it, and feel the delight of walking in the noisy street, and being the noise.”
~ Rumi
Circus Folk + Flower Punks was a performance and portrait photography exhibition at the Australian Embassy in Berlin, a co-exhibition between myself and Berlin-based Australian music photographer, Kate Seabrook (aka “Flower Punks”). On in the foyer space for three months, it celebrated the various musicians and performers we’d both had the good fortune to photograph over the years, doing what they do best on the stages of Berlin and Australia.
I chose 25 colour and black-and-white photographs to go up on those dignified walls. Opening on International Women’s Day 2016 (March 8), it ran until May 27, which in my estimation officially makes this Embassy “the most rock on the planet”.
The images I included enthusiastically embrace those among us who venture into the world high of spirit, with something delicious to say, dressed in the accoutre of the unabashed and the fearless. Regardless of which city they call home, the individuals pictured below share fascinating everyday stories that speak of the passion, inspiration and courage cultivated by their artistic calling. They beguile, bewitch and enrich our lives; they entertain and engage us in the ‘tough’ conversations, often without much in return. They are a community of marvellous misfits, whose calling it is to connect us all, through moments of empathy, insight, beauty and mirth.
I’m grateful to all those I documented, and to the staff at the Australian Embassy in Berlin for the opportunity, and support. Many thanks also to my collaborator Kate Seabrook, my husband Oliver Budack for his endless encouragement, and to everyone who came along and supported the exhibition.
Click: on the photos for titles and complete credits.
Copyright: all images are subject to copyright and may not be republished or reproduced without express permission of the copyright owner, Megan Spencer.
Feel free: to link to the images, but please don’t steal!
I first stumbled upon Carrington-Brown as ‘civilians’ at an open mic night in Berlin-Neukölln.
As professional comedians, Kabarettisten and amateur storytellers came and went on that tiny stage (myself in the latter category), a giant baritone laugh filled the room.
During the break the owner of that laugh came over and introduced himself. Having only just arrived in Berlin I was horribly jet-lagged; in all likelihood I shouldn’t have been anywhere near a stage let alone jumping up with a somewhat serious, heartfelt, wordy tribute to one of my music heroes.
That night at least, it really was a comedy stage, and if I was up there it should have been to make people laugh. Clumsily broadcasting songs from my mobile phone speaker through the microphone only added insult to injury. I had no business being in show business – or so it felt.
But this friendly stranger came forward nonetheless. “My name’s Colin. I really liked your piece about Patti Smith,” he said with a broad smile.
“So did my wife – have you met Rebecca?” Her beaming expression also made me feel welcome – and as if the applause that had greeted my stage contribution that night wasn’t so ‘polite’ after all…
They turned out to be two of the hardest-working people in show business: English-born, Berlin-based music comedy duo “Carrington-Brown”, aka cabaret performers Rebecca Carrington and Colin Griffiths-Brown.
Avenge me not: “Carrington-Brown live” double CD cover art. Photo: supplied
Theirs is a love story underscored by a deep mutual affection for music, and of course each other. First meeting as performers at Edinburgh Fringe Festival, fittingly they have made their home in Berlin, Europe’s historical – and some might say spiritual – cabaret capital.
This year they celebrate a decade together as professional partners. Prolific in output, since officially forming as a “duo” their performance tally has yielded around 1200 shows (that’s 120 a year), with appearances on stages across Germany and Europe, and further afield to South Africa, America, India and Canada.
Executed in English and German, their shows take audiences on high-octane rides through real life and popular song. Their individual talents knit together perfectly: Rebecca is a gifted cellist, pianist, singer, humourist and beat-boxer, and Colin an equally talented dancer, singer, raconteur, actor and comedian.
They also share the gift of mimicry: Rebecca’s impersonation of Canadian screen composer Howard Shore – front and centre in their show Dream A Little Dream – was hysterically funny (and accurate). Recalling her time working as a cellist in TheLord Of The Rings: The Two Towers film score orchestra, she summoned the genius composer’s distinctive slow-motion drawl and hilarious hesitancy with spooky accuracy.
Ditto for Colin’s reanimation of tormented jazz legend, Nina Simone. Clad in a luminous caftan and fluffy feather boa, only someone who’d studied her tragic life story could enact her historic disdain for audiences so palpably (and hilariously). Glowering at us from the stage as we laughed and gasped in fear, he narrowed his eyes and launched into ‘My Baby Just Cares For Me’ as if he had resurrected “Miss Simone” from beyond. (I laughed so hard every cubic centimetre of air left my lungs.)
Suffice to say Berlin is lucky to have them – and I got lucky when they agreed to spend some time inside the Circus Folk big top, recounting more of their story…
Circus Folk: Could you please give us a ‘snapshot’ of your respective musical and performance backgrounds?
Rebecca Carrington: I come from a musical family. My grandmother was a cellist who was very influential in my choice of instrument. My father became a professional singer, founding and touring with the UK A Cappella The King’s Singers for 25 years. Since 1994 he has been a full time choral conductor and became a professor at the New England Conservatory in Boston and Yale in Connecticut, US. My mother is a pianist and my brother a singer/songwriter.
As the story goes, when I was born I came out singing. I started on the piano at four years old but after my parents realised I was not going to be the next Mozart, I started the cello at age six (which my grandmother was hoping I would do!)
I continued piano studies till I was 22 and studied the cello up until 26, when I became a professional cellist performing with orchestras in the US, UK and Europe. I very much enjoyed my freelance years in London where I got to perform with the London Symphony Orchestra and London Philharmonic. I also recorded on [film] soundtracks Lord of the Rings II, Harry Potter II, Gangs of New York and Hannibal.
When I was studying for a Masters in Classical Cello in Houston, Texas, I stumbled into comedy on a visit to New York. Somebody dared me to do a stand up comedy ‘open mic’ night as they thought I was funny! My first ever performance was without the cello; but when asked back to do a professional night I thought, to give my act a slight twist, I would take my cello “Joe” up on stage with me…
As I loved lots of different types of music I’d always had problems just focusing on classical music, [and] had always had the urge to perform on stage rather than in an orchestra. Comedy gave me a chance to do something different on stage, and also to explore a variety of musical styles, which became the basis of my music comedy.
After performing my one-woman show “Me and My Cello” at the Edinburgh Festival, since 2004 I have been a full-time music comedian!
Rebecca with her beloved cello and Colin with his beloved “dudelsack” (bagpipes). Photo: supplied
Colin Griffiths-Brown: I guess I would have to say that I secretly harboured the desire to be a performer all my life – right from the start. My mother – after initial doubts – encouraged me, saying that I would regret it if I did not take the opportunity when it finally presented itself.
My earliest memory of performing on stage – apart from the usual ‘nativity’ – was a solo spot in the school assembly singing a Welsh song (thankfully not in Welsh), with a Welsh accent about a Welsh steam engine. I became a celebrity in school for a few hours. I remember being quite hesitant at first, but I had always been the class clown – “the joker” if you will. Encouraged by my teacher Christopher Robert Seaman, I took my first steps towards becoming the ‘world star’ that you now know me as…
The ability to entertain and make people laugh I no doubt inherited from my father (Wilton Melezan Brown): he was and remains to this day the funniest man I have had the good fortune to be near, dear and associated with (and call “Dad”!) He could reduce the whole family to tears with stories and anecdotes, effortlessly. He had a phrase for everything and was quite simply hilarious.
At secondary school I met the next big inspiration for my performing career: my music teacher Vivien Geraldine Brooks (née Smith), who I am thrilled to say I am still in contact with to this very day. Throughout my entire time at school she got me singing in the choir, performing in school concerts, musicals and performances. I had some talent and she nurtured it, supported me, and gave me the confidence to go on and ultimately have a career.
Around the same time I started to learn to play the bagpipes in a pseudo military organisation called “The Boys’ Brigade”. For two years previously I had heard this sound and it was love. I have seldom been so sure about anything in my life: this instrument captured 1) my attention, and 2) my utter enthusiasm.
I started relatively late but over a 25 year-plus period I have been involved as a performer in film, television, voice over, musical theatre, theatre, radio, comedy, music and comedy, opera and A Cappella. Unlike Rebecca, I didn’t come from a musical family – it wasn’t “written in the stars” that I would become a musician! I had flirted with the recorder – as we all do! – but had little luck.
Enter John Howard Shone & Ian Reid Fleming: with inspiration and support from these two gentlemen – and the chance to be the first negro piper in the history of the 5th Croydon Boys’ Brigade band – I was determined to succeed. I achieved my aim inside one year and still play today some 40-plus years later.
English actor, director and writer Simon Callow gave me my first ever job in musical theatre. For 25 years or so he has been ever-present at pretty much every stage of my career. We are great friends and have done numerous jobs together over the years, including ‘Carmen Jones’ at The Old Vic Theatre, ‘Les Enfant Du Paradis’ at The Barbican Theatre and television production ‘Trial & Retribution’.
On stage and in full flight: Carrington-Brown. Photo: supplied
He has always been a great supporter of mine with all the twists and turns my career has taken over the years!
So I must here and now thank him in print: Thank you Simon! He’s been a great inspiration and is the one to “blame” for my 25 career on stage, and as a performer…
CF: Colin and Rebecca, how did you both meet? And come together as musical partners, Carrington-Brown, ‘cabaret duo’?
Colin: I first met Rebecca in 2004 at the Edinburgh Festival. It was immediately clear to me that perhaps one day we would do something together artistically. Who would have thought that in less than three years we would achieve this with a good deal of success?!
Rebecca: I was performing my own show [Me and My Cello] and was trying to see as many other acts [at the Festival] as possible within the four weeks I was there.
I went to a show that made me laugh out loud and a guy behind me at the end said, “If you like this show you will love The Magnets.” So I went along the following evening not knowing ‘who’ The Magnets were. It was fantastic: six men singing A Cappella with microphones. One of them was an incredible beat boxer, and another a sexy bass singer (Colin). I was blown away: having grown up with my father who was in one of the most well known A Cappella groups around, these guys reminded me of a modern version of them!
After the show I didn’t want to go straight up to “the sexy bass singer” as I was feeling a bit shy! But later I saw Colin at the opening of the Festival party alone at the bar, so I thought to myself “You only live once!” So I walked up to him and the rest is history – well not quite! We talked, laughed and danced all night long. It was very clear that there was a special spark between us. We both realised it was love at first sight! We even discussed on that first evening doing something on stage together.
I invited him to my show the next day, which he came to. It happened to be a performance that was being recorded for CD. Colin has a wonderful infectious laugh that you cannot mistake and luckily he found my show very amusing, as we have a very similar sense of humour. So he is actually featured on my first CD before we even joined forces!
Colin: Rebecca’s career to this point had been relatively successful and she was building quite a name for herself on the English cabaret/stand up scene. But often as is the case, talent coupled with a new idea is often despised, not applauded and embraced. In my opinion, she was not getting the attention or appreciation she deserved.
Our first step towards [working together] was with me as co-writer and director of Rebecca’s solo show.
I introduced Rebecca to the two agents from Germany for and with whom my A Cappella group had done a lot of corporate entertaining and solo shows. I presented her as someone who spoke German and whose act, in my opinion, would be perfect for the Kleinkunst [performer] scene in Germany. (Kleinkunst refers to the “independent” scene in Germany, not “small” as it is sometimes misinterpreted.) She joined and within one year she was winning important prizes; there seemed to be a real appreciation for her brand of entertainment.
Rebecca: In 2006 Colin was asked to go on the [Close Encounters] World Tour with Robbie Williams as a backing vocalist. This was a very exciting time for us both: for him it was a once-in-a-lifetime kind of a job, and I got to visit him on some of the tour. When it finished, the question was “what to do next?” Throughout the tour he’d still been directing my show but we both decided that we should perform together as he was too good to just be ‘behind-the-scenes’.
Colin: On returning from this tour, we decided we would work together for a number of reasons – not least of which was that we were now romantically involved!
Rebecca: Colin had never actually performed comedy but was a natural comedian. He’d had a lot of experience on stage as an actor in theatre and musicals, as well as the years with the A Cappella group and “Robbie”.
It was also something I had been wanting; having performed alone for eleven years, I’d found it quite a lonely life.
Colin: Having discussed our future – and the fact that Rebecca no longer wanted to work alone – “Carrington-Brown” was formed. Our first show was in early 2007 in a village hall in Kent, England, and was titled The Urban Myth. It was a mix of ideas from previous shows by Rebecca, and new sketches written for our first show together.
“Joe”, Rebecca’s 18th century cello. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
Rebecca: Our show was getting booked more and more in Germany and Austria, so in 2007 we decided to make the move over here to Berlin.
We both love living in Berlin, and have created a wonderful life here.
CF: Cabaret seems to be having a resurgence around the world.. Do you agree that there is an upswing happening? Why might that be so?
Colin: I think you’re correct in Europe but not necessarily England. On the whole Europeans tend to be more open to crossing, mixing, fusing and producing new artforms within a given genre.
However the ‘hybrid’ artform has not yet been born in ‘the old country’. There is still a very puritanical approach to performance art, so you do not see – apart from at The Edinburgh Festival for example – new, innovative artforms that would attract an already pretty-single minded group of people. For a country with so many different and diverse cultures, it is surprising.
Rebecca: “Cabaret” is funny word: it means different things in different countries. In the UK many people think “cabaret” is burlesque – people doing the can-can wearing very little, or somebody singing songs from musicals.
I have always called myself a ‘music comedian’ who does ‘music’ and ‘comedy’. That is one reason we’re here in Germany; it was hard in the UK to be marketed as people were not sure which genre I fitted into. ‘Theatre’ was separate from ‘comedy’ which was separate from ‘classical music’ and so on.
I hope that cabaret is having resurgence: they always told me that in the UK. But I didn’t see much of it. Even in all the “going out” magazines there was never even a section named “Cabaret”. Berlin was the capital of cabaret in the 1920s – I think you could still say that it is!
Colin: I can honestly say that we would not – or could not – have had the careers we have had in Germany or Berlin if we had stayed in England. We’ve had more work in Berlin and Germany than we anywhere else! It was a new experience to play in Berlin and see your posters all around the city. With the help and support of others and various venues, we have managed to carve out a reasonable career. The Bar Jeder Vernunft & Tipi have been our main supporters over the years, and unlike various bookers and agents along the way, they never questioned us working together.
Architecture of a new show: “10”. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
CF: So has it been a ‘challenging’ road getting to where you are now, as ‘Carrington-Brown’? I’m guessing you had to work hard to overcome a ton of hurdles, and cultivate tenacity and resilience in the job and on the circuit. Is that where working as a professional duo and life partners can help with the struggles performers encounter along the way?
Rebecca: Yes, it has been a challenging road. I started off here in Germany as a solo artist; [so] in the beginning it was not that easy to be accepted as a “duo”. We also got told by quite a lot of people that being a duo “is not easy” (what is?!)
Some people said I was better off alone: for example it’s an easier “sell on TV”, with the TV ‘formula’ being more focused on solo acts.
Colin: The road has been extremely challenging but rewarding. Learning how to work together as professionals and as a couple was the first real challenge. We have overcome this by being patient and allowing the passage of time to educate us about each other and allow the necessary space required artistically and personally for us to express ourselves without judgement. Knowing that we have each other’s support is so important. There were those who initially were not thrilled about our union professionally or personally and it is hard to speak about one aspect without the other, since they are so intrinsically entwined.
I think our personal relationship has definitely helped our professional one. What we have done is create an environment where we can actually do what we love as a profession, and get remunerated for it. There are not too many people who can say that!
Rebecca: Working on our fourth show [“10”] together it has certainly made us stronger – having also performed with a big band and an orchestra too! There is no doubt that I love sharing the stage with Colin, and would not have it any other way!
CF: What are the challenges facing cabaret performers in Europe?
Rebecca: Well you are always up against the more mainstream performers who can sell out the big venues, as generally they are ‘TV names’.
Colin: To my mind the main challenge facing cabaret performers today in Europe is finding a base [in which] to live, whilst having enough work to sustain your life and lifestyle. It’s one thing if you want to spend your whole life touring, but ultimately you want to have ‘a life’ at some point.
Rebecca: But having toured Europe over the last 10 years there are certain places where [you can] also have a bit of a following. Last October we performed in a 1000-seater [venue] in Hannover which was very exciting – although we still love playing in the more intimate venues like the Bar Jeder Vernunft here in Berlin.
Colin: The challenges differ from performer to performer: the physical artist knows they have a finite time, then they must find an alternative revenue stream because the body can only take so much – injury is also a constant concern! And the ‘non-physical’ artist must constantly come up with new ideas to stay competitive in the market.
CF: Who do you both look to, for inspiration, nowadays? Are there any ‘shining lights’ who keep you inspired?
RC: Yes – the grandfather of music and comedy, Victor Borge, my hero! He was a fantastic classical pianist but also a very funny comedian. His delivery was genius! He was originally from Denmark but made his name in the US after Bing Cosby discovered him. At one time he was the highest paid entertainer in the world! (As a marketing gimmick in the UK, people used to promote me as the “Victor Borge of the cello”).
Thank god for Victor!
Colin: My/our inspiration/s come from many different sources. We always start with music when looking to write a new show. People like Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, The Beatles, Bach, Joni Mitchell, Nina Simone, David Bowie, Michael Jackson, Seeed and Madonna.
The stories are often tales from our own lives with a little embellishment for entertainment value. Then there are events from more recent times to which we give the same treatment – the “Carrington-Brown treatment”! From old folk songs, nursery rhymes and self-penned lyrics to songs that everyone knows – basically anything that we think will serve the work.
The list is endless – it’s always an assortment of ideas. Fragments from here a lyric from there… A full pallet of colours, you might say!
CF: As you say, in your shows you often take stories from your own lives, then translate them into cabaret texts using popular songs as the soundtrack to those real life ‘moments’. How long does a show take to write? And can you give us a bit of an insight into your process as you put a show together?
Colin: From inception to premiere a show will take about a year-and-a-half to write, rehearse and present on stage. It is important to let ideas breathe and develop organically. This is not possible without the necessary time. When I think back to my musical theatre days, a show would take five weeks to rehearse – Monday-Friday, 10am-6pm, pretty full on and intense! But that’s due to investors, premiere dates, ticket sales, producers and so on.
We are “all of the above”, so we work to our own schedule – hence the term Kleinkunst: “independent art”.
Comfy cushions and laughter: Carrington-Brown. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
Rebecca: Since living in Germany we have become a lot more organised in our creative, writing, rehearsal process! We now have two people we work with who have helped us write, create, structure our ideas and direct.
In the last two months we have done some amazing work with a fantastic lady from Holland called Amber Schoop. It is the first time we have worked together but she works very well with the both of us. She is a wonderful performer, singer and actress herself, but also a great director. She has helped us enormously to structure our ideas and write the script. She even studied in Amsterdam at a Kleinkunst Academy.
Our other director, Arthur Büscher, is German but lives in Vienna. He will help us translate everything into German as at the moment it is written in a mix of English and German! He is also a wonderful choreographer and will be working on our ‘choreo’ and staging.
As a married couple it is very important to have someone who can work with the both of you but also ‘in between’ you. Plus it helps us structure our rehearsal times so that we have to do it rather than putting it off until tomorrow!
As Colin said, the most important part of our show is always the music. The musical process is often me having to see what might work with a cello, two voices, a keyboard – and in this new show, a loop machine!
CF: The relationship to the audience, especially in cabaret and music comedy, seems particularly intimate and intrinsic to what’s done on stage, in perhaps ways that might be less so if you were ‘simply’ a rock singer or a theatre performer. Do you have any memorable stories you could share that might illustrate that special relationship between audience and performer?!
Rebecca: They say in Kleinkunst that “the fourth wall” is removed – that is the wall between the performer and the audience…
Colin: Ah yes, breaking through “the fourth wall. Well we have been relatively heckle free down the years – it sounds like a disease, and for some it can be! The Germans in particular can be very vocal at times during a cabaret performance – and not necessarily is the spaces set aside for such ‘appreciation’!
We once played in Berlin and the people were so loud and vociferous in their screaming and clapping it caused one blessed fellow to call out vehemently that he found it ALL TOO LOUD! The same evening, another gentleman collapsed! It all happens when you come to see Carrington-Brown, such is the atmosphere we create…
Rebecca: I’ve always loved making people laugh, and having the direct connection to the audience can add even more material to the show!
I’ve had to really work on not reacting to the way that some of the audience look at you as you’re performing – it can be quite off-putting! Some people look bored or even close their eyes and go to sleep! But at the end those people can come up to you and tell you how much they enjoyed the show.
I remember once when I was performing solo at the Quatsch Comedy Club in Hamburg there was a rather gormless guy sitting in the first row with his mouth constantly open, almost drooling. I kept trying to ignore him but inwardly I was laughing; it was such a funny image. There I was on stage with the intention of making people laugh; it was generally working, apart from this one guy in the front row.
In the end I actually said (improvising in German), “That isn’t funny: I’m in a comedy club trying to make people laugh but all I get is this reaction in the front row,” (imitating his face). People started laughing and looking at him. After this realisation his face slowly turned from gormless to a smile, then to a full on laugh! That was satisfying: when the connection from the performer to the audience works, it’s a lot of fun!
CF: We’ve lost some BIG names in music this year. If you could each bring back one (deceased) musician, who might that be – and why?
Rebecca: Definitely Victor Borge, my biggest inspiration! I even once dreamt that I met him and he helped me with some ideas for music and comedy. I watch him still from time to time when I need a little inspiration!
Colin: The people I would love to bring back are Louis Armstrong & Ella Fitzgerald. They worked together a lot and had a very special relationship on stage – that doesn’t happen by accident and you cannot manufacture it. I am not sure if they were ever romantically involved, but they produced magic on the stage. I would love to question them both about how it was working together.
Weapon of mass entertainment: “Joe”. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2016
CF: What’s next for Carrington-Brown?
Colin: We are preparing our new show to celebrate our ten-year anniversary on stage. It will be titled “10” and premiere in Köln on the 22nd of September.
Rebecca: We are performing it for three weeks in Berlin from November at the Bar Jeder Vernunft.
Colin: We will [also] perform a school programme for a music festival in June, Ludwigsburger Schlossfestpiele –
Rebecca: – With a class of 9- year-olds! Then touring around the area and recording this school show with the kids for a CD.
In April next year we will be performing our orchestra show at the Tipi in Berlin with The Swonderful Orchestra – we are really excited about it as this has been a big dream. The orchestra is made up of some friends who are very fine Berlin musicians, some of whom perform with the Berlin Philharmonic, KomischeOpera and Potsdam Kammerorchester!
We have also been commissioned to write and compose our own operetta that we hope to get started after our new show premieres. And next year we would like to record a studio CD of all our favourite songs we have performed over the last ten years. It will be titled “Carrington-Brown: 100% music”.
Colin: So Carrington-Brown will be coming towards you in various different formats over the coming years. “Come one come all, come Carrington-Brown”!
A thousand thank you’s to Rebecca Carrington and Colin Griffiths-Brown for their generous interview and photo shoot!
Interview: Rebecca Carrington & Colin Griffiths-Brown
It’s spot on. And characteristically again, just as humble.
Since beginning her photography journey in 2009, Kate has had work published in a slew of Australian and international publications (Mess+Noise, Berliner Morgenpost, Tagesspiegel, Couch, Tip and the Sydney Morning Herald’s ‘Good Weekend’ among them.) And her epic, independent ‘Endbahnhof’ passion project (photographing the iconic underground stations of Germany and Europe), was recently featured in Berlin-based, literary travel publication, ‘Elsewhere: A Journal Of Place’.
In addition to ‘rockumenting’ music stages on two continents, Kate has a soft spot for photographing shelter cats, sausage dogs (especially when they’re racing), oversized strawberry huts, gaudy buildings and couples in their colourful living rooms. Her ‘eye’ is distinctly eccentric.
Kate is self-taught. She is married to one of the best punk rockers in Berlin and favours fabulous vinyl coats and sweet vintage frocks for her wardrobe, making her a pillar of colourful style in a city known for its glum hues. She also owns possibly the most-coveted pair of second-hand cowboy boots in Berlin (the kind you need to keep an eye on at parties if you’re in a “shoes off” household). And her hard-drive bulges with such an overwhelming back-catalogue of photographs it can only attest to her passion for the medium.
Kate and I ‘e-met’ when I was a Wahlberliner-in-waiting. As the storage boxes in Australia filled up with a lifetime’s worth of stuff, Kate was one of the helpful ex-pat souls kind enough to fill my inbox with answers to queries about navigating the Orwellian black hole that is German bureacracy.
In addition to providing priceless information (“as a freelancer you’ll need to start accumulating bits of paper”,) she also tried hard to convince her elderly, alt-Berliner landlord to consider my husband and I as worthy tenants for their soon-to-be-vacated wohnung. (Unfortunately it was not to be.)
After overcoming the worst of my jetlag we finally met in situ over several coffees in Kate’s beloved north-Berlin kiez. We unraveled a mutual love for ‘in the moment’ performance photography and found some synchronicity between our respective practices. Some months later, when the opportunity arose for a local photography exhibition, it was a ‘no brainer’ for me to invite Kate to co-exhibit.
On International Women’s Day 2016, our collaboration was officially launched: Circus Folk + Flower Punks, held at the gallery space of the Australian Embassy in Berlin. (Sorry, “E\m/bassy”.)
Kate is not only a strong visual storyteller, she has a way with words plus a great sense of humour. Girl to the front, if you please…
Kate Seabrook (Supplied).
Circus Folk: What is your ‘Berlin story’ – how did you come to be here?
Kate Seabrook: I first visited Berlin in the winter of 2006. It was one of those “quarter-life crisis”-induced whims. I had no plan and very little money. At first I didn’t even really like the city. It was so bleak and grey; I couldn’t get my mouth around the word Entschuldigung (“excuse me”) and the Berliner Schnauze (“gruff Berliner attitude”) was a bit of a shock to my angsty, thin-skinned, twenty-something self.
In the first place I stayed, the gas heating broke for two days and I have never been so cold and miserable. Then I was struck down with the most hideous case of food poisoning and was too sick to move to my next planned destination (Leipzig). [Friend, DJ] Jimmy Trash kindly let me recuperate on his couch for a week after I overstayed my welcome at my previous crash pad.
“Berlin is just such an interesting city. I don’t think I will ever get bored of just wandering around observing the theatre of street life.”
In lieu of paying rent, I was assigned the task of unlocking the door at some ungodly hour when Herr Trash came home from whichever club he was DJ-ing at that night. He had a wonderfully peculiar Bavarian housemate who used to make instruments out of children’s toys.
Despite all the shitty weather and misadventures, something about Berlin intrigued me enough to return twice more on holidays and then finally move here with my husband Simon, in December 2011.
CF: What do you like about living in Berlin? And the community you have found here?
KS: Berlin is just such an interesting city. I don’t think I will ever get bored of just wandering around observing the theatre of street life – with or without a camera in hand. Also the fact that it is smack bang in the middle of Europe offers a dazzling array of travel opportunities. On Tuesday Simon and I are catching a flight to Budapest, just because we can.
Of course there is no shortage of interesting folks to meet here and everyone is generally pretty supportive of each other’s pursuits, whether creative or otherwise.
Courtney Barnett, East Brunswick Club. Photo: Kate Seabrook (c) 2010
CF: What do you like about taking photos in Berlin? What kind of opportunities does it offer you, as an artist? And has it been easy to find photographic work?
KS: Berlin is a real double-edged sword as a photographer. It is an endlessly fascinating place, but most of the stories have been told many times over. This is now forcing me to look in less obvious places for inspiration. I’m still not sure how that is working out!
I have certainly had opportunities here that would never have presented themselves back in Australia. Like my relationship with the Australian Embassy, who are hugely supportive of creative Australians trying to make their way in a new country.
Elise Bishop, ‘Elise & Jem’, The Tote. Photo: Kate Seabrook (c) 2009.
CF: What first attracted you to taking photos – as opposed to say getting involved in another mode of expression, like writing or drawing or making music?
KS: Mostly a complete lack of natural ability in any other form of expression!
I was obsessed with grunge and metal in high school and tried to play the drums very fleetingly, but did not have the co-ordination or patience to pursue it.
Writing is my profession, but when it comes to creative writing, I still flounder a bit.
What drew me to photography is that it allowed me to indulge in being a silent observer and to hide behind the lens, which is where I feel most comfortable. It also gave me a reason and purpose to be present in places that I otherwise did not feel cool enough to be!
CF: What do you enjoy the most about making photos? And the least?!
KS: I have a pretty terrible memory. Photography allows me to preserve moments both for myself and to share with other people.
I love lining up either obviously amazing or seemingly mundane visual elements in a frame, so people can see things they might have missed or otherwise forgotten.
What I really dislike about photography is the editing process. I have so many photos languishing in my image archive that I have not even looked at!
CF: There’s usually a story behind every photo: can you choose one or two faves from your Flower Punks series, and share them with us?
KS: The photo of Courtney Barnett (bottom left) was taken in 2010 at the East Brunswick Club in Melbourne. I had been hired to cover this particular event, which I later found out is where Courtney’s manager discovered her.
As a rookie photographer trying desperately not to screw up the task at hand – and only partially succeeding – her music was kind of the perfect soundtrack to that. What struck me was her knack for telling the tales of socially awkward dreamers in such a clever and disarming way. I got the sense that it was only a matter of time before the rest of the world caught on. The rest, as they say, is history.
The photo of Elise Bishop (above) was taken in 2009 at the much-loved and revered Tote Hotel in Collingwood. Elise is an amazingly talented musician – like a female Blixa Bargeld – as well as being a generally excellent human being. The sounds she can create using a bass guitar and a hacksaw (or any other number of random household objects) are quite gloriously unholy. She played in a number of respected noise acts around Melbourne including BadCopBadCop, Auxiliary Assembly and Elise & Jem.
Elise used to live in Ballarat and organised cellar gigs in a pub there. I once stayed overnight at her house after a gig and recall that she grew the largest squash in her vegie garden that I have ever seen. The last I heard, Elise was living in a lighthouse on a remote island making pottery and rock sculptures.
Kate’s Igor tattoo, Sofa Salon. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
CF: Kate, not long ago your and your pet cat were photographed for Swedish magazine, ‘Pet People’. It was a feature about you and your “rescue kitten” Igor, who sadly lost his battle with cancer just as we were about to open the ‘Circus Folk + Flower Punks’ exhibition in March this year.
Both you and your husband Simon shared a very special relationship with your cat; Igor put up an incredibly brave and surprising battle against his illness. He’s also possibly one of the most photographed cats ever! Would you share with us a bit about his story – and his relationship with your camera? Was he a part of your photographic life or “practice”, so to speak?
KS: Simon and I adopted Igor in December 2012, almost a year to the day after we arrived in Berlin.
Igor was rescued from the streets of Marzahn-Hellersdorf and had a tough time early in his life. He had a broken tail and a couple of scars on his face. We knew that if he could talk, he would have some pretty amazing tales to tell.
Many people remember Igor as our magical sitting cat, because he would sit on command like a dog. We can thank his foster mother Sophie for teaching him that trick!
Igor was such a bratty, demanding and hilarious cat with a very expressive face. As a first-time cat parent/photographer, I could not resist telling his life story through the lens. Things got pretty rough in the [European] summer of 2015 when Igor was diagnosed with a very aggressive form of lymphoma. He battled the disease very bravely for more than eight months and was mostly a very happy and normal cat during this time. He fully recovered from the initial emergency surgery to remove the tumour and well outlived his initial prognosis of just weeks.
But at the beginning of March 2016, the cancer returned and there was no more fighting it. We said goodbye to Igor the day before this exhibition was installed. Igor was just four years old, but we like to think he had a lifetime of cuddles in the few years he spent with us. I had one of my photos of Igor turned into a tattoo portrait of his face on my arm. You can see this in Issue 02 of ‘Pet People’ magazine [and pictured above.]
Kate & Igor in ‘Pet People’. Pic: Kate Seabrook
After everything that happened, I am so grateful I documented his story. Igor was a truly exceptional cat and taught us so much about life and love and death.
We might even write his memoirs one day…
With thanks to Kate Seabrook!
Circus Folk + Flower Punksis the performance and portrait exhibition at the Australia Embassy in Berlin, which features work by myself and Kate Seabrook (March 9 – May 27). This is a series of interviews I did with some of the artists.
Imagine: you’re not long out of high school and barely a whisper into your twenties. Your star is on the rise as a cabaret artist in your home city of Melbourne, but instead of staying put, you take a giant leap of faith by moving lock, stock and barrel half way across the world…
After a brief OE (“overseas experience”), you decide to throw your entire life into a suitcase and join the diaspora of countless artists who, over the century or so before you, also emigrated to Europe’s unequivocal cabaret capital: Berlin.
Sporting a wide smile (and a colourful dirndl) you get a job in a traditional German restaurant (serving pork knuckles and sauerkraut to traditional German diners), teach singing on the side, and in a resolute effort to get your on-stage ‘flying hours’ up, lug your 15-kilo keyboard on the U-Bahn to as many open mic nights as humanly possible.
In the meantime, you start to become ‘a performer to watch’…
That’s more or less the long and the short of Hannah Day’s story so far, in her adoptive hometown of Berlin, a place she has determinedly lived for nigh on 18 months. With a voice as big as Ella Fitzgerald’s, and a knack for writing insightful, bluesy comedy, you’d be forgiven for thinking she’s been on the planet far longer than her 25 years.
A dead ringer for a latter-day “Sally Bowles”, Hannah might just be an old jazz soul trapped in the body of a neue-Kabarettisten. She certainly wouldn’t be out of place in the pages of a Christopher Isherwood novel, nor on the stages of his beloved Weimar-era haunts dotted around his old stomping ground of Schöneberg.
I photographed Hannah on stage at Koffer Bar and at the Kookaburra Club – the latter for which she was accompanist for friend/mentor Amelia Jane Hunter, performing her 2015 one-woman “divulgence of autobiographical atrocities, feminist failings and other delectable flaws”, ‘Elegant Filth’. (Two photographs from it feature in Circus Folk + Flower Punks.)
After a break, 2016 sees Hannah back on stage with a renewed vigour for writing and performing. Surely a new one-woman show of her own is in the offing, and not too far away…
Circus Folk: What initially inspired you to become a performer – and cabaret artist? What do you love about the stage – and about the relationship with the audience?
Hannah Day: I’ve been a musician for as long as I can remember. I started playing the piano at 4, the bassoon at 12 and taught myself guitar during high school.
It has always felt ‘a given’ that I would work in music. I didn’t start singing until I was 16, but it was an expression that was so natural, like I was always supposed to emote that way.
I discovered cabaret when I was studying Music Theatre at university. We did a unit on cabaret, where each of us devised a 10-minute piece. I wrote about a woman who falls in love with a man she sees in a supermarket aisle, and convinces herself they will get married.
(It was inspired by a certain door-to-door subscription salesman from a very prominent Australian company, who did a little ‘stalking’ of his own after trying to sell me a newspaper…)
Anyway, I bought a $20 wedding dress from Savers, almost passed out before performing and on the night had never made people laugh so hard in my life. I was hooked!
It just so happened that the artistic director of The Butterfly Club was in the audience and he asked me to write a 60-minute show for them. Since then I’ve written, marketed, produced, directed, loved, hated, bled and performed three full-length, one-woman shows on their stage.
I love performing on stage because I love words. I love taking delicious sentences off a page and expressing them with all the passion I can muster. I’ve always been a huge book worm and working on stage has taken me right inside these little worlds of words; from Victorian London, to the French Antilles, to the late Roman Republic.
I live and breathe music and I love sharing that with an audience. I’m passionate about ‘effective communication’, and I’ve dedicated my life to the study of how I can effectively bring this to the stage.
I want my audience to feel – and share – this passion and I hope this evokes a story in them too.
Hannah Day in ‘Weill Creatures’. Photo: Ange Leggas/3 Fates Media
CF: What is your concept of home? And why did you make Berlin yours?
HD: I’ve had so many different places where “my stuff lives”. After moving out of home at 19, I lived in eight different share houses before I settled anywhere for longer than a few months.
When I finished uni, I worked for a year and then decided it was time for me to take a typical Australian ‘right of passage’ and backpack around Europe – a cabaret ‘pilgrimage’ if you will.
I’d heard about Berlin as an arts hub, but I didn’t really know anything about it. I set aside two weeks so I could see as much as I could. I was instantly in love. This was a city that was different. This was a city that was special. This was a city that enticed me with its glitter and feathers, shared it’s bawdy secrets, and enveloped me in rage with its injustices.
A city built on a shocking history, it bursts into ‘the now’ with mascara, lights, spray paint and a glint of what’s been (a little like myself!) Co-incidentally, it’s [also] a wonderful hub for cabaret and many other art forms.
A few days into my stay I went to a show and met the artists – and the rest is history! We shared such a love of the stage; we exchanged details and for the next week they introduced me to whoever they could.
In ‘Elegant Filth’ we trust: Hannah Day. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
I was soon back in Australia, buzzing over what I had seen. I’d made my mind up even before I hit home-soil [that] Berlin would be my home. A few months later the bags were packed, and my life into a suitcase or two. I have a complex concept of home, as there have been few places where I felt I have belonged. But Berlin really feels like the real deal. I love the way the city moves, its oozing charm and grungy petulance.
I’m still finding my way here, but every now and then it still takes my breath away – as it did on my first day here – reminding me that this is a place I love, and I’m excited to call home.
CF: Cabaret is having a resurgence, but I feel it’s still seen somewhat as a ‘niche’ art form. Would you agree? And what motivates you to do cabaret?
HD: I think cabaret is having a resurgence – but I do wonder why it needs one? It’s a timeless and changing art form, that is so broad. But yes, it is still seen as a ‘niche’. I have a lot of people coming to me after shows and saying, “you’re very ‘cabaret'”. I wonder what they think I was attempting?! (I also feel inclined to direct them towards this video..)
I love cabaret because it incorporates so many things that I love to do: I get to write, sing, play an instrument, direct, live in another era, interpret and emote in my own way, and sometimes wear a fabulous dress! It’s an art form with such a rich history and there are simply no limits.
CF: Could you tell us about one or two of the best gig/s you’ve ever done? And perhaps even the “worst”?
HD: I have very sketchy memories of what I do on stage. I try very hard to turn off the ‘judgement’ part of my brain, as an audience can read the effects of self-judgement very quickly.
I think one of my best performances wasn’t even a gig! I was singing a song during a repertoire class, and you could barely hear me at some points because of the reaction from my class mates. That still makes me proud. I’m also still on a high from the first cabaret show I put together: the reaction from the audience was what made me realize, “this is it”!
My worst gigs involve a lot of memory loss. When I get nervous, words are the first thing to go. During opening night for the last show I did in Australia, I could not remember the words to a very dark piece which I’d decided to perform in the original French, so I had very little hope of making it up! I tried to act my socks off as I froze… Thankfully my accompanist cottoned on to my blackout and played on into the next section!
Another time I forgot the opening words to Goldfinger, which to this day I find hilarious. My worst times cause me a lot of pain in the moment and [in] the days after, but thankfully I tend to grow from them!
Life is a cabaret: Hannah Day, Kookaburra Club. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
CF: Who inspires you, especially to keep going?
HD: Thankfully, I have so much that inspires me: my performing friends Amelia Jane Hunter and Rebecca and Colin who make up Carrington-Brown; my teachers and friends in Australia who I could list at great length (they know who they are!)
I have an incredible group of cabaret artists and musicians from around the world to look up to: Meow Meow, Camille O’Sullivan, Pink Martini, Tim Minchin, Ute Lemper, Kate Miller-Heidke, Ben L’Oncle Soul, Billie Holliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Louie Armstrong, Carole King, David Bowie, Björk, Dave Brubeck, Diana Krall, Joni Mitchell, Liza (!!) – the list is endless!
Also actors like Helena Bonham Carter, Meryl Streep and especially those who write like Amy Poehler and Tina Fey; Monty Python; playwrights, composers and authors like Kurt Weill, Bertolt Brecht, Shakespeare, Tolstoy, Dvořák, Chekov, Mozart…
But to be honest, seeing someone live inspires me the most. Live theatre and live music gets me so riled up, I feel I could do anything! Hearing other artists play and succeed drives me.
Whenever I feel like I’m ‘done’ or can’t continue, a live show reminds me that I want to be there; I have to be there.
CF: In five years time, what would you like to be doing with your performance career?
HD: I have some pretty grand dreams, but I’d just love to be living off my art. At present I work several jobs to stay afloat, but I only want to be one place, and that’s wherever the stage is hot and the audience is keen!
I’ve always loved having my fingers in several pies, so I’d like to be writing in various languages, playing music, moving, and singing.
Thanks Oh Hannah Day, for the interview!
Circus Folk + Flower Punksis the performance and portrait exhibition at the Australia Embassy in Berlin, which features work by myself and Kate Seabrook (March 9 – May 27). This is a series of interviews I did with some of the artists I photographed.
“Destroyed, divided and held captive during a century of chaos and upheaval, borderless Berlin has yet remained a city where drifters, dreamers and outsiders can find a place — and finally run free.”
– Stuart Braun, ‘City Of Exiles’
It’s no secret that for decades Berlin has become famous for attracting bohemians, artists and performers, from the world over. Many put it down to the Berliner Luft: a certain freedom of spirit and dirty glamour that infuses the air, and sounds a siren to the seekers, the playful, and those adventurous of heart.
Former mayor Klaus Wowereit echoed this idea when in 1994 he famously described Berlin as “poor but sexy”. As he was recruiting potential tourists and tech industry investors to help save the city from financial ruin, its incumbent artist constituency shook their heads, loudly drew back on the luft (and cigarettes), and collectively exhaled a cloud of “tell us something we don’t know.”
The luft may sound like romantic twaddle, but the penny certainly drops on a night like Sunday Slips! Held weekly at Lagari in Neukölln – and MC’d with dazzling aplomb by American-Colombian Liliana Velásquez – on any given Sunday you’ll find a dozen performers from as many different countries taking the stage, immersed in a genuine spirit of play, open-mindedness and wild-at-heart entertainment.
A cabaret performer, dance artist, comedienne and self-described “muse”, Liliana took over the weekly open mic night just over a year ago. Affectionately describing it as “low fidelity vaudeville”, she’s worked hard hard to uphold that historic luft manifesto, making it a space and place for everyone – be they up on stage or in the seats below.
Such is its reputation for experimentation and adventure, it’s not unusual to find a touring A-lister comedian trying out new material alongside a first-timer. (Nor a performance poet alongside a latex-clad fetish storyteller.) Comedians flock to Slips! and a community has been built: it’s a safe room for artist and audience alike.
It’s an easy place to make new friends too, which is what Canadian poet Molly Pope and Liliana have become, since Molly first found her feet on Liliana’s stage, unexpectedly performing one of her elegant, smiting pieces to an appreciative crowd. Both are long-time Berlin residents and tireless supporters of the local comedy scene.
For Circus Folk + Flower Punks, I asked to photograph them together, away from the stage and in Liliana’s kitchen, the site of their regular catch ups. In my head I pictured these two women of words, united by cups of coffee, like minds, and the warmth of friendship.
As the beautiful, white afternoon light began to lower and dwindle into the premature nightfall, I hurriedly took a bunch of shots. The image above is the very first of the session – the very one I had secretly hoped would be its signature…
Circus Folk:Liliana, you’re a “Colombian in Berlin”, and Molly, you’re a “Canadian in Berlin”: would you give us a snapshot of your your backgrounds? And how you wound up not only on the stage, but on the stages of Berlin?
Liliana Velásquez: My mother calls me her little guerillera street princess. It’s funny because Berlin is the city that gave me the closest connection to where I was born. I am an ‘anchor baby’ and the first-born of five – also the only one born in Weehawken, New Jersey, USA. This was strange for me because people say a lot about Jersey and I never really connect.
I visited a few times to see my grandmother and aunt but at that age I only had eyes for Manhattan. My grandmother is a couture seamstress and a devout Catholic. I grew up between the warm sandy beaches of Miami, Florida, and the land of blossoming fruits and flowers, Medellin, Colombia. I never felt I fitted in anywhere. I had not understood that these two wonderful places are different countries that actually have a huge internal battle!
All I knew was that my father cried when he got his citizenship and I had never seen him cry. But he didn’t cry from joy – and this was a big lesson in nationality.
I left home at 18-ish for NYC to be a famous fashion designer (hahahahahaha! Thank you Grandma!) This was where I built my independent self. The path was definitely my own but I have had the good fortune of walking side by side with many guides.
The stage has never been foreign to me: I would charge my parents one dollar per night to watch ‘EL SHOW DE LA MANDARINA’, my first daily production. It started with my brother introducing me in a Burger King hat. I was too young to pronounce “ballerina” correctly, so I have forever been called the “Mandarina”.
In my late 30’s Berlin found me through a long story that starts as a fashion and art model in NYC. I am thankful to all the wonderful reasons I came to Berlin, and above all the peace of mind it gives me to explore new cultures and continue learning to accept myself.
Circus Folk: And for you Molly?
Molly Pope: I was born on the island of Newfoundland (nestled in between Greenland and New York). I grew up in a small fishing village called Flatrock but because I wasn’t Catholic and Newfoundland had the last denominational school system in North America. So I got to go to school in the “big city” of St. John’s. That’s why I don’t have much of a Newfie accent b’y.
I ended up in Berlin at the end of a long European trip. Some friends from Halifax, Nova Scotia, where I’d gone to university, had a theatre troupe called Dapopo, and they were coming to Berlin to perform. I was bumming around western Germany at the time, so I thought I’d tag along and see the city. I’ve never really liked cities, especially big ones, but Berlin broke that rule. It was supposed to be the last stop on my trip, then back to Canada. That was almost seven years ago!
Circus Folk: And Liliana – your performance background, is incredibly varied and diverse; it includes cabaret, MC, comedy, acting, modelling…
Liliana: Aahhh, thank you… I started dancing young: my first style was Flamenco. In one of our shows at age 5, I came off stage and asked my mother if my pirouette was strong enough to lift the layered flowered folkloric flamenco skirt above my face and continuously show my panties. She took me out of flamenco shortly after…. My childhood brain has a lot of issues with this.
We grew up on a budget and moved around quite a bit. I thought we had everything, not knowing how hard my immigrant parents’ struggle was. They continued to support my desires in a low-income manner, so I joined all the school dance theater and performance groups possible.
Dance was always the leading beat in my heart. My family was supportive – I was learning all the art forms, but not considering them a career. After being abruptly uprooted from Miami at age 15 for making out with a girl – also my best friend at the time – I was punished and sent to Colombia.
Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
That is where the streets, exploration and the earth guided me. I studied dance and theater and naturally began moving around in the circles of artists. To this day I think “wow”: all the power that ever was, and all the power that ever will be, is here now. What I learned to appreciate? Now! People!
I started modelling in Colombia for fashion designers and bartending at PLATAFORMA, a gay bar in Medellin. And as many Almodovar movies go you can imagine the rest of my training was fabulous. In NYC I modelled, acted, danced bartended, managed tattoo shops, became a Dominant Female Alter Ego and lived every minute, mistake and pleasure to the fullest.
Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
Circus Folk: Molly, what inspired you, to step away from ‘the chair’ and onto the stage to perform your writing? And then move into comedy?
Molly: I’ve always surrounded myself with performers: theatre folk, musicians, and now in Berlin, comedians. I like the energy, the highs and lows. I guess after years of people asking me why I never went up on stage, I thought I should give it a try. I knew I had no interest in doing stand-up, but I’ve been writing my whole life, never a time do I remember when I wasn’t writing. So I thought it would be nice to get some feedback.
Liliana’s was actually the first stage I ever got up on, and it’s where I regularly perform. It’s still quite new for me, just a year now.
Circus Folk: And what initially drew you to the stage Liliana?
Liliana: I was born with this urge to entertain. I never really accepted – even today – that I have to separate dance from comedy, from film. I was inspired by Broadway stars and musicals, so to me you had to be a “triple threat” to even begin to be considered. Dance saved my soul in my twenties and comedy saved my soul in my thirties.
Circus Folk: And what do you both enjoy the most about the stage – and about the relationship with the audience?
Liliana: Art heals us – and others. Talent is natural, and training takes desire patience and perseverance. And I love the exchange – the possibility of opening someone’s perspective
Molly: I enjoy the challenge – of taming that excited energy and being truly present in that excitement. I’m still figuring out the relationship with the audience – I spent so long being an audience member, I feel a bit uncomfortable on the other side, but I’m learning.
I like it when I perform something, and I get totally different reactions from people for the same piece. That feels good.
Circus Folk: Both of you have worked at a good number of venues around Berlin, both performing and backstage, helping to run things, supporting the community, and keeping things ticking over… You’ve both been on stages and watching others at work: is Berlin a good place for comedy? What could you say characterises the ‘scene’ here?
Molly: [It’s] the freedom – the lack of ‘mainstream’, the genuine exploration of something different… There are multi-lingual/multi-cultured audiences open for something new. Here you can get stage time everyday of the week and you can test out your material on people from all over the world. There is a community of performers who are genuinely trying to help each other.
The people who are pushing the production aspects are motivated for multiple reasons, they are not just outsiders trying to pick up the profit – they are performers themselves who want to see better comedy, more opportunity.
I’ve met quite a few visiting comedians – some big names from big cities – whose jaws drop when they see our crammed basement shows. I’m told in New York that you pay to perform at an open mic, you pay to perform to a bunch of other comedians and no real audience! Or in London, I hear that you work on your ten minutes and then you beat it to death doing it over and over and over again.
The comedians here write. All the time, they write. New material. And this city is great for new material. Berlin makes me laugh all the time because it’s such an honest city, and the truth is hilarious.
Liliana: Is the world a good place for comedy? I mean really it does not matter where you land if your passion guides you, and you really can’t do ‘9-5’ etc etc… Then the world is your oyster, and we do comedy on corners, behind bars, in parks… And then hope one day, whatever the part of the world were are in at the moment (“we” being me, myself and I, the corporation in my head!), hopefully there is a booker on vacation there too.
I’m at a point in my life where I no longer believe the “right path” is “to be in the right city”. Berlin is great for all who want to make it home. NYC is better for comedy, and yes of course so is LA… But Berlin is best for me at the moment; so I will keep doing my comedy here day after day…
Circus Folk: Who makes you laugh? And/or inspires you, especially to keep going?
Liliana: Children make me laugh, as do bitter old people. I love the spectrum: the way my family raised me is what keeps me going. Life is life: keep going, and keep it simple if you can.
Molly: Cliffy [English comedian in Berlin, Caroline Clifford] makes me laugh. All the time.
A lot of people have inspired me to share my writing: a lot of late-night conversations with good friends in dark bars about life, the universe and everything. These things inspire me.
My partner Peter is a beautiful writer; he really inspires me to create beautiful things.
The city of dreamers… Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
Circus Folk: Geographically speaking, you’re both ‘a long way from home’. As long-time travelers and ‘ex-pats’, what is your concept of home now? And what is the hardest thing about living far away from ‘home’?
Molly: This question tears me up (and I mean that in both senses). I love being in Berlin and I love my friends here; I have built a real community around me of amazing people. But I want a magic portal between the two places.
My heart belongs to the ocean, specifically the North Atlantic coast. The hardest part of living away from Newfoundland is not being familiar with the landscape, the weather, the sky, the wind. I miss looking out at the horizon and knowing what to expect that day.
Liliana: Home is basically in my suitcase. I can turn any place into home with one candle a silk sarong, a photo of my parents and a little bit of my favorite scent. A kitchen always helps.
Circus Folk: Molly, as a performer, what’s the most important thing you’ve learned, to ‘do’, and ‘not’ to do?
Molly: To be present, in that moment. Absolutely the most important thing.
And not to do? I guess when someone gives you a compliment, don’t question their judgement, take the compliment and be grateful.
Circus Folk: And Liliana, what do you think you’d be doing with your life, if the stage and performing hadn’t called you? And where might you like to see yourself say, in five years’ time?
Liliana: Hahahahahahahahahahahhaha! I’d probably be a language teacher who was very dramatic… In five years I see myself living the same life, but better, bigger and with more family around me.
Grateful thanks to Liliana Velásquez & Molly Pope.
Circus Folk + Flower Punksis the performance and portrait exhibition at the Australia Embassy in Berlin, which features work by myself and Kate Seabrook (March 9 – May 27). This is a series of interviews I did with some of the artists I photographed.
Sam Wareing and I first met when I visited Berlin in July 2014.
It was the height of a stinking hot summer, extremely humid, and glorious as Berlin summers are wont to be. I remember being shocked that a Central European city could have such capacity for a ‘Darwin summer’, a place I’d also lived, with weather I’d been equally astonished by.
My husband Oliver and I spent 10 days soaked in sweat zooming around the cobble-stoned streets, getting to know the city. At the back of our minds we were scoping it out hopefully, as a potential place to live. Meeting Sam, and listening to what she had to say about it, helped clinch the deal.
I was also there to write an article for Double J about Australian musicians in Berlin. A musician herself, Sam was one of the helpful people who’d shared names, and spoken with me. It was a great interview but a long list: unfortunately I was unable to fit her story into the piece. So I wrote a secondfeature elsewhere, highlighting Sam and her solo artistic project, “Wasp Summer”.
A few months after Oliver and I returned home to Central Victoria, Sam visited. Born in England, raised on the Gold Coast and studying in northern NSW, later she became one of the Melbourne indie scene’s stalwarts: those people who work tirelessly in the background, keeping it ticking over without a great deal of recognition. She honed her performance skills there too, fronting “soundtracked spoken word” band, “The Mime Set”.
It was the first time she’d been back in five years: Sam organized a slew of gigs up and down the East Coast and played an “unexpected reunion” with her old band.
In Castlemaine I photographed Sam as Wasp Summer onstage at The Bridge Hotel. She howled at the moon, sang up a storm, and regaled us with cheeky stories about life in Berlin, including her brut ‘initiation’ by a Berliner barfly, who within minutes of Sam’s arrival began skeptically quizzing her about whether she possessed the gumption to last a Berlin winter.
“Do you have a project?” the woman groaned, exhaling a heavy cloud of smoke and rolling her eyes wearily.
But Sam’s Wahlberliner status is assured: years on she’s still here with no plans to leave. She’s worked hard at making Berlin home, and at finding a tribe not so distant from the one she left in Australia – musicians and artists mostly, also doing their ‘thing’ with similar commitment and courage.
We’ve even started a podcast together: Samantha Wareing enjoys a fab turn of phrase, you’ll see…
Howling at the moon: Wasp Summer (c) Megan Spencer 2014
Circus Folk: Could you give us a bit of a snapshot about how you found your way to the stage – and how you found your way to the stages of Berlin?
Wasp Summer: I’ve been singing, performing and getting lost in music ever since I can remember, and I started my first band at 15. We were a glam rock covers band called Decadence, and even though I’d done quite a bit of musical theatre, I knew rock was my first love and path.
When I moved to Melbourne, after studying singing at University, I had a year off performing. In that space, I started to see the delicate connection between audience and performer more clearly. I came to the conclusion that it has very little to do with ego and mostly to do with holding open a true channel between the message, the givers, and the receivers. This started me writing my own songs.
After performing for 10 years in Melbourne originals bands, I knew I needed to find myself – and my own voice again. I needed to become a rounded musician, not just a singer fronting a band. I wanted to learn another language, live in an old city, travel, learn to play solo, and find a home for all the songs that didn’t fit into bands. In the summer of 2008, in Berlin, “Wasp Summer” was born.
CF: What do you love about singing and performing? What keeps you motivated to do it?
WS: I know! Partly, it’s habit. I’ve been doing it for so long it’s intrinsically part of who I am. But I search always – or hold myself ready for – that connection, that alchemy that happens when the song is truly coming through me and I’m no longer hands and strings and amps and chords and lyrics – but when I’m a song and people are receiving that song.
It’s an ephemeral moment, performing live. It happens and it’s gone. I know it, and trust it.
Wasp Summer at The Bridge (c) Megan Spencer 2014
Stories by Wasp Summer (c) Megan Spencer 2014
CF: What kind of ‘freedoms’ does Berlin offer a singer/songwriter such as yourself, that Australia does not? And vice versa?
WS: Hospitality, and an unquestioning acceptance of your right to be travelling as a musician – and the chance to play every two hours by road, instead of every twelve hours [as you do in Australia.]
Berlin was my laboratory. It allowed me to play bad guitar in public until I learned my style. It allowed me to test themes or emotions that were, apparently, too difficult for Australian audiences.
But Australia gave me my road-worthiness – my ability to get to any show, under any circumstances – and still pull out something good to witness.
CF: Would you share some of your “best” and “worst” gig stories with us – both from Europe and performing in Australia?
WS: The hospitality I’ve experienced as a touring musician in Europe has been lovely, sometimes overwhelming. Sleeping in people’s beds, eating home-cooked meals, being picked up and dropped off at stations, introduced to people’s friends… People respect music-making in Europe, and are always happy you came to play.
It can be difficult to be a woman in the music industry. I was playing in Grafton, Australia, when the captain of the local rugby team decided that I was his prize for winning the Grand Final, and tried to drag me off-stage mid-song and out to the carpark. No-one helped me, not the band, not security, not the audience. I literally beat him with my mic stand to get him off me.
CF: Which other artists inspire you, and why?
WS: People in Berlin like Emperor X and Mute Swimmer keep making record after great record and touring independently. Through my running of house concerts here in Berlin [Sofa Salon], these kinds of independent musicians – who are running their own businesses as well as pushing their sound and storytelling creatively – are my heroes.
On a larger level, people like Björk, PJ Harvey and Neko Case who make the records they want to make, for audiences primed for whatever journey these artists want to take them on.
More than success, having that kind of open-minded audience, album after album, is my dream and inspiration.
CF: If you weren’t a singer, what do you think you’d be doing instead?
WS: I’d be a flight attendant, or concert promoter: something that kept life varied and moving but allowed me to come home each night.
One day I’d like to have a commune/venue/sauna/kitchen where we could teach each other how to make healing food, sing healing songs, and steam the health into our bodies.
CF: What is your concept of home? And why did you make Berlin yours – what attracts you to it?
WS: Berlin is a laboratory for all your wildest ideas. I’ve had 6 ½ years of experimenting with my art and life. I have a community here, and a vast amount of interesting options to increase my knowledge of myself and my world.
Also, we’re in the middle of Europe, in the capital of a key country that has some big decisions to make about how it treats people here and across the world.
These are very interesting days to be alive and living here…
Thanks to Sam Wareing for the interview!
Circus Folk + Flower Punksis the performance and portrait exhibition at the Australia Embassy in Berlin, which features work by myself and Kate Seabrook (March 9 – May 27). This is a series of interviews I did with some of the artists I photographed.
A long distance relationship made it possible for Hanna Nordqvist to leave her home country of Sweden for Berlin – plus a few magical nights when as a teenager, she visited the ‘City of Dreamers’.
Hanna is one of the women featured in my photo series for Circus Folk + Flower Punks, the photo exhibition put together by myself and Kate Seabrook. It opened this week and Hanna was at the vernissage, along with around a hundred other people…
Living in Berlin as an adult, she has moved through academia and publishing to find her way to studying the Grinberg Method, a particular bodywork therapy currently on the rise in Europe and the US. This year she will to graduate as a practitioner.
Hanna also loves to tell stories: it’s in her bones. So is theatre.
Hanna is part of Berlin’s Fischell Kollective, a “fragmentary – literary – biographical – musical – rhythmic” theatre group which “researches new material in new spaces and contexts”. She also gives solo readings, with one of her favorite storytellers being Tove Jansson, author of the beloved, beautiful Moomin series of children’s fiction.
I first met Hanna in July 2015, when she enrolled as a participant in Deep Storytelling, the two-day storytelling and empathy workshop which I co-presented. As part of the program I produced a podcast, interviewing the participants about the revelations they discovered about themselves (and the work they did), during the weekend.
What struck me about Hanna was her deep level of empathy, especially when she spoke about her passion for her Grinberg work, and the clients and colleagues with whom she collaborated.
Some months later I asked if we could do a portrait shoot in her rooms which, as it turns out, are located just around the corner from the Australian Embassy, our venue for ‘Circus Folk + Flower Punks’.
As the late morning sunlight filled the space I snapped away, asking Hanna to “try and get lost” in her favourite Moomintroll book which she’d brought along with her. Time went quickly; it was fun.
The resulting images reflect what I found to be Hanna’s kindhearted, graceful and thoughtful nature.
Hanna Nordqvist, Körper Raum, Berlin. Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
Circus Folk: “A Swedish woman in Berlin”… How did you find your way to Berlin – and to call it home? Could you give us a snapshot of your journey?
Hanna Nordqvist: It is quite a long story…
I was in Berlin for the first time in 1998, when I was 18 years old – I was living in Moscow with my family at the time (my stepdad worked for the Swedish Embassy), and going to an International School. A Danish classmate had moved to Berlin a few months before, so a small group of friends and I were going to visit him for a few days. We had a really good time – it was autumn and dark and rainy, so my impression of the city was rather gloomy, but somehow also intriguing with all building sites and alternative places.
Many years later – in 2006 – one of my brothers, who studied art in Göteborg, had his final exhibition with his class in Berlin, and I went to see it. Again I found it really intriguing with all the interesting ‘spontaneous’ bars, cafés, galleries and project spaces – the feeling that this was a city that offered opportunity and spaces to expand on ideas. In some way it reminded me of Moscow the way I had experienced the city as an expat teenager it in the 90’s – a certain feeling of freedom.
It was also summer this time (in the middle of the World Cup), with loads of people on the streets and in the parks. It had the excitement of a big city, but at the same time so much more relaxed and friendly. It made me feel at home in a particular way, and I had a really strong feeling at the time that this was a city I would like to live in at some point.
One year later I went to Bologna, Italy, for Erasmus study exchange, and there I met my partner, Massimo, who has Italian parents, but was born and grew up in Germany. He also was in Bologna for university exchange. After we both left Bologna we had a long-distance relationship, travelling back and forth between Sweden and Germany, for almost two years. But I also started learning German and looking for a way to move closer.
Massimo studied in Hildesheim – a small town close to Hanover, but I was set on moving to Berlin, which meant not exactly moving to the same town, but at least the same country – and only a couple hours train-ride away from each other.
At just about at the same time the Swedish chain of bookshops that I was working for parallel to my studies, happened to open a shop in Tegel Airport in Berlin, and I was offered a job there. So that made the move even easier – knowing that I had a job from the beginning!
What I found in particular when I arrived – in February 2010 – was how natural it felt to live in this city; it really did feel like home very quickly. And now six years later I have difficulty imagining living anywhere else.
Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
CF: What kind of writing and performing do you do – and how would you describe yourself as a performer?
HN: I feel I am still in the very beginning of my work with writing and performing, and at the same time I have realised that I have actually loved to write and perform since I was very little!
I have difficulty remembering names and dates, but I was always quite good at learning song texts, and I used to memorize texts from my parents LPs and sing them to whoever wanted to listen. When I was 6 or 7, my mother got me to sing at a feminist party for International Women’s Day (I think that counts as my first ‘big’ performance!)
When I got older I got more shy and nervous. I would start to shake, sweat and go red when I had to speak in front of the class, and this embarrassed me so much that it stopped me even thinking about voluntarily performing anything more than I absolutely had to. It is only in the last five or so years that I have realised that the reason I get so nervous is because it really excites me to stand in front of people. It is still a challenge, but I also really love it.
What I really like is to tell stories, in words and in gestures. I don’t enjoy so much going into dramatic roles (maybe that is because I am not so good at playing roles), but I love walking the line between reality and fiction: to experiment with telling a story almost as myself, but maybe still not entirely.
And also retelling my memories and impressions: trying to make them come alive, but at the same time playing with them – turning them around, painting them in different colours, trying out different perspectives… Both my writing and performing also often are in themselves reflections on memory and imagination – how we remember and how our imaginations bring things to life and give them form.
What also fascinates me is the possibility of using the body and semi-abstract, poetic gestures or movements to transmit certain atmospheres, moods, and emotions – and even sometimes to use gestures in order to contradict what is being told in words. This is something I would like to experiment more with.
I think I try to do something similar also with words when I am writing: to catch something abstract by finding the ‘right’ words and order of words: to taste, feel and play with them in a very concentrated way.
In my performances I want to see how I can combine words and movement in this way – maybe as a sort of abstract, poetic, realism… And as I write this, I am thinking that maybe what I like doing both in writing and performing is a kind of imitation or ‘cover’ – in my own way, re-telling something I have heard or seen.
Maybe it’s a bit like singing the songs I learned from my parent’s LPs…
CF: How would you describe your relationship with ‘words’? Is it some kind of love affair? And, have you always loved words?
HN: Yes it is definitely a love affair! But a complicated one…
For a very long time – and sometimes still! – I was blocked by the feeling of there is only one correct way of using words within a language, and that anything else is ‘incorrect’. I think this is something we also learn in school, what is ‘correct’ language and grammar… And maybe because I left Sweden when I was 14, and never finished school in Swedish, but instead started having to move between languages. There was always a kind of insecurity there in relation to language.
Swedish is my ‘mother tongue’ and the language I am most at ease with when writing – the language where I can most easily feel and play with the different nuances. Even so, there are still so many parts of the language that I don’t know or have control over. For example there are some expressions that I was sure was a natural part of written language, and only after years of using them also in formal letters, found out that it is actually more of an ‘informal’ spoken language! These kinds of discoveries can make me very embarrassed and shake confidence in language. I get the sudden daunting feeling that I don’t have any control at all of my language – that I don’t have any feeling for it!
Cover art for the first edition of ‘Moominvalley in November’, by Tove Jansson (1970).
Generally in the past I have very easily become insecure by people telling me that my way of expressing something is wrong. But over the years I have also discovered that people sometimes have very strong opinions about what’s right and wrong in language, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean that they have the monopoly on deciding what is allowed, or is not.
I have loved words since I was very little: the magic of words describing something or building up a story. My grandfather used to tell us stories, and I remember the way he seemed to pick out each word very carefully – with a lot of attention and love. Each word received its own deep value and weight in the story. Words were important. And my mother translates books from Russian to Swedish – a work that requires a constant ‘tasting’ and feeling for words and expressions.
So this concentrated relation to words has always been a part of my life; it is a base that I continue to build on.
CF: You are a Grinberg Method practitioner – mine as it turns out! As a therapist you work a lot with people’s bodies, and their experiences of body: how do you think this relates to your interest in performing, and writing?
HN: My interest for working with the body started through my fascination for theatre and dance. First as a spectator and researcher: noticing how deeply movements and expressions on stage touched and moved me, and trying to figure out very theoretically how this worked. Later this lead me to start trying out different forms of dance and theatre practices for myself.
My first encounters with the Grinberg Method gave me a new sense of freedom and lightness for my physical expression. I learned in a deeper sense to go with my body and use whatever flow or intensity was there, instead of trying to force it into a certain form or direction.
Through the three years of Grinberg studies that I recently completed, one of my big realisations has been how connected my writing and creativity are to how I am feeling in my body. For example, the feeling of being ‘blocked’ or ‘restricted’ in my writing is more or less directly connected to the certain way of tensing and holding myself – and that I can affect this feeling, by moving or changing something physically.
For example, my writing is very different after I dance a bit around a room… Or that I can consciously move between a state of focus and de-focus, and that this helps me to stay lighter and more easily bring flow to whatever I am working with, without having to push or force myself so much. It means I am able to better keep my initial joy and motivation for the work.
In my work as a Grinberg practitioner I notice that, for a lot of my clients, the subjects they are battling with can also often be connected to the urge of wanting to bring something into expression – to allow their own voice and needs to be heard and take space. The physical tension and pain that people come to me with almost always are partly connected to consciously (or unconsciously) the pushing down of something, or holding something back.
Many times for me, working with clients during a session also feels a bit like putting them on a ‘stage’ – through touch and instruction, trying my best to give them the space for whatever is needed to be expressed, be that through words, sound, or intentional or unintentional movements and impulses. And in this way helping them to reconnect to and again feel their bodies, instead of only trying to keep them under control.
Seeing how I can be a part of giving back others more of their freedom of expression, also inspires and gives me courage for my own writing and performing.
Cover art for Tove Jansson’s ‘Tales from Moominvalley’, 1962.
CF: Who inspires you, especially to keep going in both your Grinberg work, and with your own creative pursuits?
HN: I keep finding new sources of inspiration. At the moment I am very actively searching for new impulses, ideas and directions within body work, writing and performing.
For my performing however, I keep coming back to the Tanztheater works by Pina Bausch, and also the director Frank Abt, who has made a series of theatre pieces that touched me very deeply, based on interviews for Deutsches Theater.
For my writing, one of my absolute favourite authors is Tove Jansson, the Swedish-Finnish author who wrote the Moomin books. They keep pointing me back towards the ‘serious playfulness’ that I would love to arrive at in my own writing.
Another huge source of inspiration for me – both for my work with clients, and in my writing and creating – is my teacher during the last couple of years of Grinberg studies, Vered Manasse. Her way of teaching showed me again and again the possibility of going towards where there is intensity, and daring to stay there, instead of avoiding, controlling or numbing it.
Writing and performing brings a lot of intensity and fear for me, because it is something that means a lot to me, and I have a thousand different strategies of distracting myself away from it! Vered has inspired and encouraged me to find ways to always bring myself back to what is significant – and, to dare to acknowledge it.
CF: What is your concept of ‘home’? And your feeling for your ‘adopted’ home, Berlin?
HN: I think for me it is a certain feeling, certain elements coming together: some you see and recognise, and some are more abstract.
I think you can almost make yourself at home in any place, if you are forced to – bringing whatever elements you need to it. It is when you move away from them you notice the effort you had to make.
Then there are certain places you just have the feeling of ‘home’ right from the beginning – as if just being able to let yourself ‘drop down’ and ‘breath out’, while at the same time something starts ‘pulsating’ and ‘beating’. It’s a bit like something hits your frequency, and makes it ‘swing higher’…
I think feeling at home in a place is a bit like falling in love. Meeting someone you are really attracted to and excited by, while at the same time you have the feeling that you know each other already, since ages!
This is the way I feel about Berlin.
Beloved Moomins… Photo: Megan Spencer (c) 2015
CF: Finally, would you share with us one of the most inspiring books or works you’ve read – perhaps one you keep coming back to? And that you think may inspire others too, if they read it?
HN: Again I would say Tove Jansson’s Moomin books, especially Moominvalley in November and Tales from Moominvalley.
Even though these are books for children, I keep going back to them again and again for inspiration. They are so funny, yet with such deep philosophical and psychological observations.
They help me to reconcile myself in a deep ‘felt’ way, with my own particularities, hang-ups and hysterias – and others’ too!
Many thanks to Hanna Nordqvist for the interview!
An illustration from ‘Moominvalley in November’ by Tove Jansson, 1970.
I had my crap “day job” at a crap call centre. I had patience. And faith that ‘the long game’ would pay off some day, somehow. No plan. Just hope. That it would.
