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Mind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA (QUT) Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for Doctor of Philosophy Queensland University of Technology October 2011

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Page 1: Mind Games - QUTMind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA

Mind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy

to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder.

Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA (QUT)

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements

for Doctor of Philosophy

Queensland University of Technology October 2011

Page 2: Mind Games - QUTMind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA

Abstract This PhD represents my attempt to make sense of my personal experiences of

depression through the form of cabaret. I first experienced depression in 2006.

Previously, I had considered myself to be a happy and optimistic person. I found the

experience of depression to be a shock: both in the experience itself, and also in the

way it effected my own self image. These personal experiences, together with my

professional history as a songwriter and cabaret performer, have been the

motivating force behind the research project.

This study has explored the question: What are the implications of applying

principles of Michael White’s narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret

performance about depression and bipolar disorder? There is a 50 percent

weighting on the creative work, the cabaret performance Mind Games, and a 50

percent weighting on the written exegesis. This research has focussed on the

illustration of therapeutic principles in order to play games of truth within a cabaret

performance. The research project investigates ways of telling my own story in

relation to others’ stories through three re-authoring principles articulated in Michael

White’s narrative therapy: externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living and rich

descriptions. The personal stories presented in the cabaret were drawn from my

own experiences and from interviews with individuals with depression or bipolar

disorder. The cabaret focussed on the illustration of therapeutic principles, and was

not focussed on therapeutic ends for myself or the interviewees.

The research question has been approached through a methodology combining

autoethnographic, practice-led and action research. Auto ethnographic research is

characterised by close investigation of assumptions, attitudes, and beliefs. The

combination of autoethnographic, practice-led, action research has allowed me to

bring together personal experiences of mental illness, research into therapeutic

techniques, social attitudes and public discourses about mental illness and forms of

contemporary cabaret to facilitate the creation of a one-woman cabaret

performance.

The exegesis begins with a discussion of games of truth as informed by Michel

Foucault and Michael White and self-stigma as informed by Michael White and

Erving Goffman. These concepts form the basis for a discussion of my own personal

experiences. White’s narrative therapy is focused on individuals re-authoring their

[ii] 

Page 3: Mind Games - QUTMind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA

stories, or telling their stories in different ways. White’s principles are influenced by

Foucault’s notions of truth and power. Foucault’s term games of truth has been used

to describe the effect of a ‘truth in flux’ that occurs through White’s re-authoring

process. This study argues that cabaret is an appropriate form to represent this

therapeutic process because it favours heightened performativity over realism, and

showcases its ‘constructedness’ and artificiality. Thus cabaret is well suited to

playing games of truth. A contextual review compares two major cabaret trends,

personal cabaret and provocative cabaret, in reference to the performer’s

relationship with the audience in terms of distance and intimacy. The study draws a

parallel between principles of distance and intimacy in Michael White’s narrative

therapy and relates these to performative terms of distance and intimacy. The

creative component of this study, the cabaret Mind Games, used principles of

narrative therapy to present the character ‘Jo’ playing games of truth through:

externalising an aspect of her personality (externalisation); exploring different life

values (an autonomous ethic of living); and enacting multiple versions of her identity

(rich descriptions). This constant shifting between distance and intimacy within the

cabaret created the effect of a truth in ‘constant flux’, to use one of White’s terms.

There are three inter-related findings in the study. The first finding is that the

application of principles of White’s narrative therapy was able to successfully

combine provocative and empathetic elements within the cabaret. The second

finding is that the personal agenda of addressing my own self-stigma within the

project limited the effective portrayal of a ‘truth in flux’ within the cabaret. The third

finding presents the view that the cabaret expressed ‘Jo’ playing games of truth in

order to journey towards her own “preferred identity claim” (White 2004b) through

an act of “self care” (Foucault 2005).

The contribution to knowledge of this research project is the application of

therapeutic principles to the creation of a cabaret performance. This process has

focussed on creating a self-revelatory cabaret that questions notions of a ‘fixed truth’

through combining elements of existing cabaret forms in new ways. Two major

forms in contemporary cabaret, the personal cabaret and the provocative cabaret

use the performer-audience relationship in distinctive ways. Through combining

elements of these two cabaret forms, I have explored ways to create a provocative

cabaret focussed on the act of self-revelation.

[iii] 

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Keywords

Cabaret, depression, bipolar disorder, narrative therapy, persona, parody, provocateur, vamp.

[iv] 

Page 5: Mind Games - QUTMind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA

List of Figures

Figure 1: ‘The flying girl’  2009 ............................................................................................. 124 Figure 2: ‘The flying girl’  2010 ............................................................................................. 132 Figure 3: ‘The country and western singer’ 2010 ................................................................ 133 Figure 4: ‘Dame Hurry‐to‐Therapy’ 2010 ............................................................................. 134 Figure 5: ‘Jolene in 2010 ...................................................................................................... 140 Figure 6: ‘Jolene’ falling apart, 2010 .................................................................................... 141 Figure 7: ‘Jolene's’  disintegration continues, 2010 ............................................................. 142 Figure 8: 'Ms Rapid Cycling', 2010 ....................................................................................... 146 Figure 9 : You put my brain back the wrong way, 2010 ...................................................... 147 Figure 10:  ‘Jolene’, 2010 ..................................................................................................... 151 Figure 11 : 'Jo', 2010 ............................................................................................................ 153 

Photography credits: All photos by Jacinta King except for Figure 1(by Ben Knapton).

[v] 

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List of Appendices  Appendix One 1.1 Personal Journals (2008, 2009 and 2010) 1.2 Ethical Clearance Information 1.3 Personal Interviews 1.4 Audience Feedback 1.5 Program Notes (2008, 2009 and 2010) 1.6 Mind Games script May 2010 1.7 Personal thank-you letter 1.8 Analysis of audience feedback 1.9 Collaborators and the research cycles 1.10 Confirmation Document (2009) 1.11 Framing Document (2010) Appendix Two 2.1 Work-in-progress showing 2008 on DVD 2.2 Audience Feedback 2008 on DVD Appendix Three 3.1 Work-in-progress showing 2009 on DVD Appendix Four 4.1 Performance of the Mind Games cabaret, May 2010 on DVD

[vi] 

Page 7: Mind Games - QUTMind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA

Statement of Originality

The work contained in this thesis has not been previously submitted to meet requirements for an award at this or any other higher education institution. To the best of my knowledge and belief, the thesis contains no material previously published or written by another person except where due reference is made.

[vii] 

Page 8: Mind Games - QUTMind Games: Applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret about depression and bipolar disorder. Jo Loth BA (UQ), Dip Ed (QUT), MA

Acknowledgements

I would like to express my gratitude to the interviewees whose stories informed this research project and to acknowledge their generosity in sharing their stories.

I would also like to thank my supervising team: Dr Bree Hadley, Dr Christine Comans and Professor David Kavanagh. Thanks also goes to Dr David Fenton who was my supervisor for the first year of this project.

Development of this research project has been enhanced by my attendance at the following conferences. I thank all of the conference delegates who have participated in the development of this work:

• PSI Conference “Performing Publics”, Toronto, June 2010

Paper: Tension as inspiration: Performing depression and bi-polar disorder for a cabaret audience  

• ADSA Conference “Boom or Bust?”, Perth, July 2009

Paper: Mind Games and the cabaret persona: The challenges of manipulating persona within an intimate space

• Ignite Post graduate conference, QUT, Brisbane, October 2008

Paper: Singing the blues: developing a cabaret performance on depression

A work-in-progress presentation of the cabaret was also performed for the QUT post-graduate event Revealing Practices in October 2009. Thanks goes to the central organiser of Revealing Practices, Dr Clare Dyson, and to the attendees of this event.

I would also like to thank all of my creative collaborators, especially director Sandro Colarelli, workshop leader and therapist Margi Brown Ash, dramaturges Therese Collie and Kathryn Kelly, and pianists Wade Gregory and Philippe Klaus, for their contributions to the cabaret performance. Thanks also to The Brisbane Cabaret Festival for presenting a performance of the cabaret at The Judith Wright Centre, Brisbane on 18th June, 2010.

Thanks especially to Jason, Siall, Nic, Jacinta and my family and friends for supporting me on this research journey, through all the ups and downs!

[viii] 

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Table of Contents

Contents Chapter 1: Introduction ........................................................................................................... 1 

Introduction ......................................................................................................................... 1 

The field of cabaret .............................................................................................................. 5 

White’s narrative therapy .................................................................................................... 6 

The scope of narrative therapy within this study ................................................................ 6 

The research questions ........................................................................................................ 8 

Sub‐questions 1 and 2: White’s principles of narrative therapy and cabaret ................. 8 

Sub‐question 3: The research methods ........................................................................... 9 

Sub‐question 4: The tensions within the process .......................................................... 10 

Sub‐question 5: The challenges of the autoethnographic method ............................... 11 

Contribution to knowledge ................................................................................................ 13 

Key Terms ........................................................................................................................... 15 

Depression and bipolar disorder .................................................................................... 15 

Self‐stigma...................................................................................................................... 16 

Persona .......................................................................................................................... 16 

Parody ............................................................................................................................ 17 

Chapter Summary .............................................................................................................. 17 

Chapter Two: Framing the research ...................................................................................... 19 

Introduction ....................................................................................................................... 19 

Foucault’s games of truth .................................................................................................. 20 

Identifying games of truth about mental illness ................................................................ 22 

The stigma of mental illness .............................................................................................. 24 

Goffman on stigma and self‐stigma ................................................................................... 25 

Michael White and spoiled identity ................................................................................... 26 

My personal experience of self‐stigma .............................................................................. 27 

Foucault, the ethical formation of the subject and games of truth .................................. 29 

Principles of White’s narrative therapy ............................................................................. 29 

Principle One: externalisation ........................................................................................ 31 

Principle Two: an autonomous ethic of living ................................................................ 35 

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Principle Three: rich descriptions ................................................................................... 38 

An autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions in practice ................................... 39 

The work of Margi Brown Ash ............................................................................................ 40 

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 41 

Chapter Three: A method in the madness ............................................................................. 42 

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 42 

My research identity .......................................................................................................... 43 

Autoethnography ............................................................................................................... 43 

Autoethnographic performance and autobiographical performance ........................... 46 

Autoethnography within this study ................................................................................ 46 

Ethical considerations ........................................................................................................ 48 

The ethics of personal stories ........................................................................................ 48 

Addressing ethical concerns within the project ............................................................. 53 

The Process of Transforming Interviews to Cabaret Material ........................................... 55 

Practice‐led Research ......................................................................................................... 56 

Action research................................................................................................................... 57 

Action research within this project ................................................................................ 57 

Analysing the data .......................................................................................................... 60 

The three development cycles ....................................................................................... 61 

Allowing the practice to lead the research: My epistemological journey ......................... 72 

Conclusion .......................................................................................................................... 79 

Chapter Four: The personal and the provocative in contemporary cabaret ......................... 80 

Introduction ........................................................................................................................ 80 

The playful form of cabaret ................................................................................................ 81 

Personal cabaret ................................................................................................................. 82 

Provocative cabaret: Pleasing and teasing the audience ................................................... 83 

The history of the provocateur .......................................................................................... 84 

The history of the vamp ..................................................................................................... 85 

The contemporary provocateurs........................................................................................ 87 

The features of the contemporary vamp persona ............................................................. 92 

The use of parody in contemporary cabaret ...................................................................... 97 

Musical parody ............................................................................................................... 99 

Parodic versions of celebrities and divas ....................................................................... 99 

Polemic parody ............................................................................................................. 100 

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Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 101 

Chapter Five: Creating Mind Games .................................................................................... 102 

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 102 

Creative Processes ........................................................................................................... 102 

Transforming personal stories to cabaret .................................................................... 102 

Principles of narrative therapy, distance and intimacy ............................................... 103 

Externalisation ............................................................................................................. 103 

An autonomous ethic of living ..................................................................................... 104 

Rich descriptions .......................................................................................................... 104 

Parody .......................................................................................................................... 105 

Sharing my story .............................................................................................................. 106 

Externalisation: creating ‘Jolene’ ................................................................................. 106 

‘Jolene’: a provocateur and a vamp ............................................................................. 109 

My own autonomous ethic of living ............................................................................ 110 

Rich descriptions of my story ....................................................................................... 113 

The interviewees’ stories ................................................................................................. 114 

An autonomous ethic of living in the interviewees’ stories ........................................ 114 

Rich descriptions and the interviewees’ stories .......................................................... 119 

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 127 

Chapter Six: Analysing Mind Games .................................................................................... 129 

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 129 

Emphasising the constructed nature of the cabaret ....................................................... 130 

Externalisation ................................................................................................................. 135 

The construction of ‘Jolene’ ......................................................................................... 135 

Deconstructing ‘Jolene’:  the vulnerability of the vamp .............................................. 140 

The breakdown of ‘Jolene’ in relation to the other characters ................................... 141 

The combination of an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions ...................... 144 

‘Jo’: Rich descriptions and an autonomous ethic of living ............................................... 147 

Was a fixed notion of truth implied in the cabaret? ........................................................ 149 

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 150 

Chapter Seven: Findings ....................................................................................................... 151 

Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 151 

Finding One: Finding a balance between provocation and empathy .............................. 151 

Finding Two: The effects of my own desire for self‐empowerment within the cabaret . 152 

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[xii] 

Finding Three: A journey towards “self care” .................................................................. 156 

Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 157 

Chapter Eight: Conclusion .................................................................................................... 158 

References ............................................................................................................................ 164 

Appendices ........................................................................................................................... 172 

Appendix One on CD ROM: .............................................................................................. 172 

1.1 Personal Journals (2008, 2009 and 2010) .............................................................. 172 

1.2 Ethical Clearance Information ................................................................................ 172 

1.3 Personal Interviews ................................................................................................ 172 

1.4 Audience Feedback ................................................................................................ 172 

1.5 Program Notes (2008, 2009 and 2010) .................................................................. 172 

1.6 Mind Games script May 2010 ................................................................................. 172 

1.7 Personal thank‐you letter ....................................................................................... 172 

1.8 Analysis of audience feedback ............................................................................... 172 

1.9 Collaborators and the Research Cycles .................................................................. 172 

1.10 Confirmation Document (2009) ........................................................................... 172 

1.11 Framing Document (2010) ................................................................................... 172 

Appendix Two on DVD:..................................................................................................... 173 

2.1 Work‐in‐progress showing 2008 ............................................................................ 173 

2.2 Audience Feedback 2008 ....................................................................................... 173 

Appendix Three on DVD: .................................................................................................. 174 

3.1 Work‐in‐progress showing 2009 ............................................................................ 174 

Appendix Four on DVD: .................................................................................................... 175 

4.1 Performance of the Mind Games cabaret, May 2010 ............................................ 175 

 

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Chapter 1: Introduction

 

Discrimination on mental health grounds affects [sic.] millions because so many people fear being ‘on the wrong side of line’ and go to such pains to make it clear – not least to themselves – that, even when distressed, they are not ‘mad’. It is useful for anyone wishing to increase social inclusion for user/survivors to think through how they identify themselves and why. (Sayce 1999, 9)

The autobiographical and the political are interconnected. Who speaks? What is spoken? What sorts of lives are represented, contested, imagined? The vast majority of autobiographical performances have been concerned with using the public arena of performance in order to ‘speak out’, attempting to make visible denied or marginalised subjects, or to ‘talk back’, aiming to challenge, contest and problematise dominant representations and assumptions about those subjects. (Heddon 2008, 20)

 

Introduction

This project represents the results of my attempt to make sense of my personal

experiences of depression, and the way I think about my own personal experiences,

through the form of cabaret. I came to this research project with the aim to discuss

mental illness, specifically depression and bipolar disorder, within the public realm

through cabaret. As the study developed I articulated this further as the aim of

applying the principles of Michael White’s narrative therapy to the creation of a

cabaret on depression and bipolar disorder.

How do we think about mental health and mental illness? How is our thinking

affected by therapeutic concepts? How can therapeutic concepts be discussed

within popular culture? Can entertainment draw attention to our own thought

processes and the games that occur within our own minds? I have been exploring

these questions in relation to Michael White’s narrative therapy and White’s

application of Michel Foucault’s concept of “games of truth” (Foucault quoted in

Bernauer and Rasmussen 1988, 1), and have aimed to create a cabaret

performance that presents games of truth to an audience.

[1] 

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My investigation of Foucault has allowed me to investigate different kinds of truths

and to view an individual’s life as a complex, multi-faceted, constructed narrative.

My research into contemporary cabaret encouraged me to think more consciously of

the tools I am using to create a cabaret performance, and how each of these tools

impacts on the kind of truth presented at each moment. This project has been an

examination of the way I tell my own story to myself and to others, and the way I

witness myself and present myself as a witness of others.

Bringing together cabaret and mental illness

The popularity of cabaret and its emphasis on an intimate connection with its

audience makes this form well suited to discussion of mental illness, a health

concern within Australian society (Department of Health and Ageing 2010).

In the last ten years cabaret has experienced a huge resurgence in popularity in

Australia and the United Kingdom (Scott-Norman and Crotty 2002; Pollack 2010;

Brownell 2008). Scott-Norman and Crotty (2002) describe cabaret as a “thriving

movement in performance culture” and Evelyn Richardson, CEO of Live

Performance Australia, comments that the “number, variety and quality of cabaret

performances in Australia have grown significantly over the past decade, alongside

the establishment of cabaret festivals, new cabaret venues and cabaret

programming in many of the major theatres and events around the country” (quoted

in Pollack 2010). London cabaret artist Dusty Limits believes that the resurgence in

cabaret’s popularity is a response to the highly produced nature of most

contemporary entertainment, stating that:

It's a reaction to how overly produced, thoroughly edited and fundamentally contrived most popular entertainment is... We are so sick of the plastic iPod universe that we are forced to inhabit, we are excited to be in a room with a living breathing human being who is opening his heart and soul. (Quoted in Brownell, 2008)

According to the National Mental Health Report, mental illness is common in

Australia, with 20 percent of the population experiencing mental illness each year,

and thus “mental health issues reach into the fabric of Australian society, and for

many, into our own families” (Department of Health and Ageing 2010, 16). This

comment draws attention to personal experiences of mental illness as they affect

individuals and family members. The report states that the most common illnesses

are “anxiety, affective (mood) and substance use disorders” with “low prevalence”

[2] 

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conditions such as bipolar disorder and schizophrenia “estimated to affect another

2-3 percent of the adult population” (Department of Health and Ageing 2010, 16).

The Australian National Health Report acknowledges that mental illness “is widely

recognised as a major health concern in Australia” and, in 2008, mental illnesses

“accounted for almost one-quarter (24 percent) of the total disability burden for all

diseases” (Australian Institute of Health and Welfare 2008, 219, 224). The report

also noted that mental illness is associated with stigma in Australian society, “which

often leads to isolation and discrimination for those affected” (Australian Institute of

Health and Welfare 2008, 219).

This research project has focussed on using the “living”, “breathing” form of cabaret,

as described by Dusty Limits, to present therapeutic concepts and provoke

discussion about mental illness. The Mind Games cabaret has attempted to play

games of truth in the realms of personal identity and personal storytelling using the

cabaret form to present therapeutic concepts.

A background to the study

In 2003 I had a therapeutic session with therapist Margi Brown Ash. In this session

we discussed my tendency to apply very harsh judgement to myself and my actions.

Within this session, Brown Ash asked me to name this tendency and I called it my

‘inner critic’. Through a series of exercises, Brown Ash engaged me in the act of

personifying this inner critic and I drew a picture of a tall thin woman with an

accusatory pointing finger. In the session we explored other possible ways of

viewing and relating to my inner critic, and ways to adjust ‘her’ power within my life.1

I later found out that these were principles of narrative therapy as discussed by

Australian psychologist Michael White (1989, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2007). Brown

Ash is a therapist and creative practitioner working in a social constructionist

framework who has been strongly influenced by the work of Michael White (Brown

Ash 2009). From 2003 to 2008 I engaged in further sessions with Brown Ash that

combined creative expression and therapy. Chapter Two will include a discussion of

Brown Ash’s practice.

                                                             

1 References to Margi Brown Ash in this exegesis are approved by Brown Ash following a process advised by the QUT Ethics committee. See Appendix 2.1 for further details. 

[3] 

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In 2003 I also produced a performance Black Christmas, a pantomime-inspired

cabaret in which I explored the darker side of Christmas. I was captivated by

cabaret’s highly performative approach, by the use of popular song forms and direct

address to the audience, and by this form’s ability to discuss potentially polemic

issues in an entertaining format.

I first experienced depression in 2006. Previously, I had considered myself to be a

happy and optimistic person. I found the experience of depression to be a shock – in

the experience itself, and also in the way that it affected my own self image. I

experienced a strong sense of self-stigma (that is a sense of personal shame in

relation to feeling abnormal or inadequate) and found relief in: sharing my story with

others; hearing other peoples’ experience of depression; and through the techniques

of narrative therapy.

The decision to do this research project has given me the opportunity to engage with

public and personal perspectives on mental health, and to explore techniques of

autobiographical research and performance within the field of cabaret.

During the first year of this study I experienced a number of episodes of depression.

These episodes often made me feel isolated, and it is this sense of isolation that

motivated me to interview other individuals for this study. The interviews allowed me

to connect with other people suffering depression, and even to ‘compare notes’

about our experiences.

These experiences have been the motivating force behind this research. As a

cabaret writer and performer I was interested in using the form of cabaret to

represent issues of mental health, and present my own personal story in relation to

others’ stories.

In this project I have investigated the ways in which the principles of White’s

narrative therapy can be applied to the creation of a cabaret performance on

depression and bipolar disorder. This therapy uses the principle of externalisation,

enabling me to explore a dialogue between myself and my ‘inner critic’. This

therapy also focuses on developing an autonomous ethic of living and rich

descriptions of life stories (White 1989, 2003, 2004a, 2004b, 2007).

Through this research project I have had the opportunity to more fully reflect on my

experience of having depression and my personal strategies for working through

[4] 

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depression. I have also met individuals who have suffered from both depression and

bipolar disorder. These individuals generously shared their personal experiences

with me and had a huge impact on the development of the research project.

As a cabaret writer and performer this study has given me to the opportunity to

delve into my own experience to explore new methods of performance making and

to interrogate my own creative process. Specifically, I have investigated my process

in response to the field of contemporary cabaret performance, ethical

considerations, and theoretical concepts regarding the construction of truth.

The field of cabaret

The term cabaret is currently used to refer to a broad range of performance styles

including: circus, burlesque, stand up comedy, magic shows and singing. For the

purposes of this research project I have chosen to focus on cabarets in which

performers sing songs and directly address their audience in a musical and comic

performance. This choice reflects my own performance style and my background as

a singer/songwriter. Thus my definition of cabaret is: a performance that combines

comedy and song performed in intimate settings and that directly addresses its

audience (Friedman 2008; Appignanesi 2004; Harrington 2000). Furthermore

cabaret is a form that focuses on a sense of playfulness and emphasises the use of

popular song forms. The use of direct address within cabaret exaggerates the

‘performativity’ of this form. In directly addressing their audience, a cabaret

performer acknowledges that they are presenting a constructed performance

created for a specific audience rather than pretending to portray ‘reality’. Within this

form, however, some cabarets do aim to present a sense of truth to their audience.

Two major trends can be observed within contemporary cabaret. I describe the first

as personal cabaret and the second as provocative cabaret. Both forms use music

and comedy, popular music forms, direct address with the audience and

performance personas. Personal cabarets are created when a performer strings

together well known songs around a theme, and links them through telling personal

anecdotes. In this style of cabaret the performer aims to create an atmosphere of

intimacy or closeness with an audience. My descriptions of this form of cabaret have

largely been drawn from Bob Harrington’s The Cabaret Artist’s Handbook (2000).

This is a ‘how to’ book for cabaret performers, and as such clarifies the

characteristics of this style. The term provocative cabaret describes cabaret that is

marked by intellectual, political and/or sexual provocation. This style involves a more

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dynamic performer-audience relationship, in which performers are constantly

moving between a sense of distance and intimacy with their audience. Both

personal cabarets and provocative cabaret have influenced my show.

White’s narrative therapy

Narrative therapy, as discussed by Australian psychologist Michael White, is a

technique designed to allow individuals to ‘re-author’ their own stories and overcome

dominant normative discourses that have affected their interpretation of their life

stories. In other words, this therapeutic method focuses on individuals finding new

ways to tell their own stories. This process moves truth from a fixed notion, into a

‘state of flux’, and allows an individual to overcome a sense of ‘spoiled identity’. This

approach is based on a post-structuralist and social constructionist approach to

therapy. In his discussion of epistemologies in therapy, Dickerson (2010) describes

post-structuralist therapy as viewing a ‘person’ as “ ‘constituted’, rather than as

essential, as dependent on context, and as having access to multiple identities”

(355). Furthermore therapists working within this epistemology “consider ‘problems’

as constructed in response to, or as supported by dominant discourse, as not fitting

what is considered “normal,” and as therefore somehow aberrant. And they think of

‘change’ as a collaborative endeavor [sic.] with therapist and client in conversation

with possibilities and preferences” (Dickerson 2010, 355).

In articulating his method, White refers to Michel Foucault’s discussions of truth and

power within discourse. I have further related Michael White’s concept of spoiled

identity to Foucault’s discussions of the pathologisation of mental illness and to

Foucaut’s “ethics of care” (Foucault 2005). In addition, I have linked White’s concept

of spoiled identity with Erving Goffman’s discussions of the stigma that can occur

within one’s own ego identity (Goffman 1963). I have termed this kind of stigma as

self-stigma. A sense of self-stigma, or personal shame, is related to feeling

abnormal or inadequate in relation to cultural norms. These concepts are discussed

in detail in Chapter Two.

The scope of narrative therapy within this study

In the early 1980s, influenced by Jerome Bruner’s theories of narrative, Michael

White developed his own style of narrative therapy with collaborator David Epston

(Angus and McLeod 2004a, ix). Narrative-based therapies have been developed in

North America, Europe and Australia, often incorporating narrative concepts into

existing forms of cognitive and constructivist approaches and psychotherapy (Angus

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and McLeod 2004b, 367). These include the combination of narrative and cognitive

therapy (Gonçalves 1994) and the use of narrative techniques within psychoanalytic

therapy (Luborsky 1984, Hermans and DiMaggio 2004). Luborsky (2004) uses a

narrative approach to understand “the theme of the patient’s wishes, needs, and

intentions in regard to the main people, including the therapist, with whom he or she

interacts during the psychotherapy” (Luborsky 1984, 6 ), while Hermans and

DiMaggio (2004) use narrative approaches to explore the “multivoiced” nature of the

self, and the way that this “multiplicity of voices ... and their mutual relationships

characterize the self as a ‘society of mind’” (2). The approaches of these theorists

are a sample of the many traditions within narrative-based therapies, and

demonstrate that Michael White’s narrative therapy is by no means the definitive

style of narrative therapy. The choice to exclusively focus on White’s narrative

therapy within this study reflects my own personal experiences with this therapeutic

method, and my personal interest in this approach.

White developed much of his early work in collaboration with David Epston and was

also strongly influenced by Cheryl White (Denborough 2009, 95). As a movement,

narrative therapy emphasises collaboration and White acknowledges the influence

of others on his practice, including fellow practitioners and his ‘clients’ (White 2007,

292). The term ‘White’s narrative therapy’ has been used within this study for the

purposes of clarity and brevity.

I have used three specific principles of White’s narrative therapy: externalisation, an

autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions (White 1989, 2003, 2004a, 2004b,

2007). White discusses other principles that are not a part of this research project.

Within each therapeutic session White uses a series of questioning techniques to

enact these principles (White 1989, 2003). My cabaret has applied the principles

behind these questioning techniques, not the questioning techniques themselves.

These principles are discussed in Chapter Two. It should also be acknowledged that

I did not use any of these questioning techniques when interviewing my interviewees

as I am not a psychologist, and my intention with the interviews was not therapeutic.

Rather, the interviewees offered to share their stories for performance in a cabaret,

with no expectation of experiencing a therapeutic outcome.

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The research questions

This study has explored the question: What are the implications of applying White’s

principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret performance about

depression and bipolar disorder?

This question has been explored through the creation and performance of the

cabaret Mind Games and a written exegesis. There is a 50 percent weighting on the

creative work and a 50 percent weighting on the written exegesis. The Mind Games

cabaret explored female experiences of depression or bipolar disorder with a focus

on the characters of ‘Jolene’, a personification of my own inner critic, and ‘Jo’ the

representation of myself within the cabaret performance. Five other characters in the

cabaret performance were created from interviews that I conducted with four women

who had experienced depression, or have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder.

The sixth character, ‘the mother’ was drawn from research information on individuals

who have cared for people with depression.

In order to tackle the research question, the following sub-questions were addressed:

1. What is the benefit of applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the

creation of a cabaret performance?

2. How can the aesthetic forms of cabaret be harnessed within this process?

3. What research methods can be utilised to enact this process?

4. What are the tensions within this process, and how can these tensions be

managed?

5. What are the challenges of using an autoethnographic method within this

process, and how can these challenges be managed?

Sub-questions 1 and 2: White’s principles of narrative therapy and cabaret

A goal of this research was to create a self-revelatory cabaret that questioned fixed

notions of truth. White’s narrative therapy helps individuals to re-author their own

stories and address dominant normative discourses. This process moves truth from

a fixed notion, into a state of flux. In other words, White’s narrative therapy allows

individuals to play games of truth. The form of cabaret is marked by a heightened

sense of performativity through its use of direct address and exaggerated

performance persona. This performativity draws attention to the form’s constructed

and artificial nature. These characteristics make cabaret well suited to the

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exploration of the constructed and artificial nature of truth, and the act of performing

a ‘truth in flux’.

I have observed two major trends in contemporary cabaret and have termed these

personal cabaret and provocative cabaret. Personal cabaret features a solo

performer revealing aspects of their lives to an audience through personal

anecdotes. This style of cabaret uses self revelation to portray the concept of a

single, unitary truth. I applied techniques from personal cabaret without taking on the

identity position implied in this style. In contrast, provocative cabaret uses

techniques of parody and persona to challenge notions of a single, unitary truth but

does not emphasise personal revelation. The application of principles of narrative

therapy to the creation of a cabaret performance has allowed me to combine acts of

personal revelation with the performance of a truth in flux. The characteristics of

personal and provocative cabarets will be explored in detail through a contextual

review of contemporary cabaret in Chapter Four. My application of the stylistic

features of these two forms is discussed in Chapters Five and Six.

Sub-question 3: The research methods

This project is based in the methodologies of autoethnographic research, practice-

led research and action research. Autoethnography has been used as the primary

research method in order to reflect a focus on subjectivity and personal revelation.

Auto ethnographic research is characterised by close investigation of assumptions,

attitudes, and beliefs(Reed-Danahay 2007; Richardson 2000; Ellis 1999; Spry 2001;

Etherington 2005).This research project follows the method of ‘evocative narrative

autoethnography’ as described by Ellis and Bochner (2000). According to Ellis and

Bochner (2000) “evocative stories activate subjectivity and compel emotional

response. They long to be used rather than analysed; to be told and retold rather

than theorized and settled...” (744). The mode of the personal narrative requires

social scientists to “take on the dual identities of academic and personal selves to

tell autobiographical stories about some aspect of their experience with daily life”

(Ellis and Bochner 2000, 740). Further explanation of this mode of autoethnography

will be outlined in Chapter Three. This research method has allowed me to

investigate and articulate my own personal experiences and relate these to

theoretical concepts of the construction of truth. In order to capture my own acts of

self-reflection and to ensure that my voice is highly visible within the research, I

have included extensive quotes from my personal journals. These quotes have been

placed in italics in order to differentiate them from other references in the study.

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Within an autoethnographic approach, techniques of practice-led research have

placed the focus on artistic practice as the site of exploration. Due to the use of the

personal material within the performance I have related my creative practice to

theories of autobiographical performance, verbatim theatre and documentary

theatre. The combination of autoethnographic and practice-led research has allowed

me to bring together research into therapeutic techniques, social attitudes and public

discourses about mental illness and contemporary cabaret to facilitate the creation

of a one-woman cabaret performance entitled Mind Games. The nature of the

methods most suited to the nature of the project means have compelled me to be

honest about my own assumptions and changing thought patterns, and how they

have impacted on the findings represented in the show and exegesis. The

performance Mind Games has made personal experiences public. The cabaret has

been based my own experiences and the experiences of individuals, and creative

expression has been used to develop these stories into a cabaret performance. In

this way, the non-fictional inspiration for the performance and has been extended in

fictive ways. Within this research project there has been a productive relationship

between the real and the fictional and a complex relationship between the personal

and the public. These elements of the performance will be discussed in Chapters

Five, Six and Seven. Finally, action research has been used to facilitate a cyclic

approach to the research reflection. I have used three cycles within the research.

Within each cycle of the research, action has been taken followed by reflection on

the results and re-framing of the central concepts towards the next cycle of the

development. These cycles will be discussed in Chapter Three.

Sub-question 4: The tensions within the process

Two major tensions within this research project have arisen from the practice-led

methodology, and conflicting epistemologies within the process.

Practice-led research is experimental and likely to produce unexpected results. In

the third year of the study there was a mismatch between my theory and my

practice. This mismatch required a detailed analysis of and reflection on the creative

work and my own creative process. This required me to put aside ideas of what I

had been trying to create, to appraise the reality of the creative work, and to explore

“the double articulation between theory and practice” (Bolt 2006, 4). This process is

discussed in Chapter Three.

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As I journeyed through the research, I struggled to articulate an epistemologically

clear position. Within the research cycles, my attempts to communicate a

performative outcome and to achieve personal understanding of the material led me

through many interpretative frames, perspectives and speaking positions. The

process of exploring many epistemologies within this research project involved

playing many different games of truth and identifying the games of truth within my

own mind. A major epistemological tension arose from two potentially conflicting

intentions within the work. This tension has had a major impact on the project. I

began the project with an interest in telling my own story and presenting the

experiences of others in an empathetic manner. At the same time I was researching

the history of cabaret and studying the work of contemporary cabaret artists. I fell in

love with the unsettling, edgy nature of this art form. This is a form that began in

France in the late 1800s as a challenge to bourgeois norms, thrived in Weimar

Germany, challenging the political norms of the times, and continues to unsettle the

spheres of politics, sexuality and identity to this day. The history of cabaret,

discussed in more detail in Chapter Four, suggests cabaret is an art form that asks

questions and provokes discussion rather than providing solutions. On the one

hand, I wanted to utilise the intimate space of the cabaret to tell my own story and

the interviewees’ stories in an empathetic and supportive fashion. From this

viewpoint I was creating a kind of verbatim cabaret intended to create a sense of

intimacy and personal revelation. On the other hand, I wanted to be a part of the

tradition of cabaret and create an edgy, provocative work that encouraged audience

discussion. I experimented with a number of solutions to this central tension. These

epistemological tensions will be discussed further in Chapter Three.

Sub-question 5: The challenges of the autoethnographic method

The challenges of the autoethnographic method within this study relate to the telling

of my own story and its presentation with the stories of others.

To tell my own story required honest and rigorous self reflection and the courage to

share my personal stories of depression.

Following an autoethnographic methodology, I aimed to examine and scrutinise “the

connection, intellectual and emotional between the observer and the observed”

(Spry 2001, 191). This quote in Spry’s article is taken from Ruth Behar’s The

Vulnerable Observer (1997), and Spry quotes the following section: -

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Efforts at self-revelation flop not because the personal voice has been used, but because it has been poorly used, leaving unscrutinised the connection, intellectual and emotional, between the observer and the observed. (quoted on Spry 2001, 191)

Through a process of self-examination and reflection I was able to draw a number of

conclusions about my autobiographical performance method. The unexpected

findings of the research project forced me to examine my own personal views and

beliefs, and the performance I created became a reflection of my thought processes.

I noted in my personal journal:

It has suddenly occurred to me that my methodology became embedded in my practice! My performance became an autoethnographic performance. In my theoretical writing I was privileging my own experience as an autoethnographic researcher – and was trying in the show to allow the “researched” to have their own voice and present a different perspective. (Personal Journal 14th July, 2010)

Through personal reflection I was able to observe the way autoethnography, as the

foundational method of the research project, was reflected in the creative outcome

of the research.

Throughout the project I have had a strong interest in White’s principles (especially

the principle of externalisation) and researching White led me to Foucault’s games

or truth. I did not fully articulate my application of White’s principles until May 2010,

within the third cycle of development. In retrospect I understand the integration of

White’s principles within my work as a reflection of my engagement with the work of

Margi Brown Ash (whose workshops and therapeutic methods are based on White’s

principles). In this way the cabaret performance became a reflection of my own

personal understandings of life, a reflection of the autoethnographic foundation of

the study. Practice-led research allows the intuitive to become manifest, for it is

through creative processes that intuition and foundational understandings are

expressed, often in unexpected ways. This process occurred in the way the Mind

Games cabaret reflected my own meaning-making processes. These observations

are further discussed in Chapters Three, Five, Six and Seven.

A major personal challenge within the project was my reticence about telling my own

story in relation to the stories of other people. I have identified this reticence as

arising from a sense of self-stigma, or in other words, my sense of shame and

inadequacy in relation to cultural norms. In response to my experience, self-stigma

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became a motif that was explored within the cabaret performance. The experience

of self-stigma is discussed in detail in Chapter Two, with further explanations of this

experience in relation to the creation of the cabaret in Chapters Three, Five and Six.

An additional personal challenge within the project was to relate my personal stories

to the stories of my interviewees in an ethical fashion to present games of truth. A

major concern in the presentation of verbatim and autobiographical performance is

that these forms are often associated with “telling the truth” about a life story

(Heddon 2008, 151). As this research project is focussed on creating games of truth

rather than presenting a singular truth, the use of verbatim material is highly

problematic. In addition, the illusion of presenting a truthful life story of other

individuals raises a number of ethical concerns. My approach to handling these

concerns is discussed in detail in Chapters Three and Five. I found a useful

approach to this challenge in Rokem’s (2000, 2002) concept of the “witness”, and

particularly his notion that the presence of an onstage “witness” to the action

enhances a sense of theatricality within the performance. The sense of theatricality

in the performance draws attention to the artificial or constructed nature of the

performance and the presence of the witness draws attention to the tension

between the ‘real’ and the ‘fictive’. Thus, the onstage witness can enhance the

acknowledgement of games of truth being presented within the

performance.Rokem’s concept of witnessing is discussed in further detail in Chapter

Three, and will be related to the Mind Games cabaret in Chapters Five and Six.

Contribution to knowledge

The contribution to knowledge of this research project is the application of

therapeutic principles to the creation of a cabaret performance. This process has

focussed on creating a self-revelatory cabaret that questions notions of a fixed truth

through combining elements of existing cabaret forms in new ways. Two major

forms in contemporary cabaret, the personal cabarets and the provocative cabaret,

use the performer- audience relationship in distinctive ways. Through combining

elements of these two forms, I have explored ways to create a provocative cabaret

focussed on the act of self-revelation.

This research has focussed on the illustratration of therapeutic principles through a

cabaret performance in order to play games of truth The performance’s primary

focus has not been on a therapeutic outcome for myself or the interviewees within

the study, but rather on the illustration of therapeutic principles through the telling of

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personal narratives. While the primary outcome is not intended to be therapeutic,

there has arguably been some therapeutic benefits for myself and the interviewees

throughout the process. As I am not a psychologist, these benefits were unintended,

and can be seen as unexpected bonuses of the project. Some discussion of these

benefits will be touched on throughout the exegesis in Chapters Three and Seven.

The research project investigates ways of telling my own story in relation to other’s

stories, through three of the re-authoring principles of Michael White’s narrative

therapy (externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions).

Previously, narrative therapy has been combined with dramatic elements in the form

of narrative theatre (as in the work of Sliep 2005), and with forms of musical therapy

(as in the work of Denborough 2008). Sliep and Denborough have been combining

narrative therapy with theatre and with music respectively, for applications within

social work and therapy. These practitioners have both been strongly influenced by

the narrative therapy of Michael White and David Epston (Sliep 2005, 49;

Denborough 2008, 2).  

Yvonne Sliep has worked as an international consultant on training programs in

Africa, using a “narrative theatre” approach within “counselling, development

projects and psychosocial programs” (Sliep 2005, 47-48). Sliep’s work has been

created “as a means of strengthening the social fabric in dislocated communities”

(Sliep and Meyer-Weitz 2003, 45). She combines practices of narrative therapy with

techniques of forum theatre (as developed by Augusto Boal) to explore “key issues”

that a community has identified (Sliep 2005, 49). Sliep’s process begins with the

construction of a drama “from people’s own stories” (Sliep and Meyer-Weitz 2003,

49). This drama is then performed for the community, and the community is involved

in responding to and adapting the performance to develop problem solving

strategies (Sliep 2005, 50 – 51). Sliep and Meyer-Weitz (2003) state that narrative

theatre fosters “the critical consciousness necessary to promote a sense of social

responsibility and action” (54).

David Denborough is a practitioner of narrative therapy who uses songs as one

technique within his practice “to enhance therapeutic and community practice”, and

describes this process as developing “songlines of sustenance” (Denborough 2008,

163, 1). This approach is based on his experience of the “sustenance” and “solace”

that music can provide, and he comments that:

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In my life, at times of profound sorrow, it has been music that has provided the greatest sustenance. It has been songs that have carried me through. And I know for many others, local folk culture provides rich meaning, comfort, celebration and solace. (Denborough 2008, 162)

Denborough describes his work as that of a “community songwriter” and states that

he uses song writing to contribute to “rich story development” and to develop and

co-author “alternative songlines... within narrative practice” (Denborough 2008, 167,

165). The songs created within this process are “double-storied” in that they aim to

express “both the effects of hardship and an alternative storyline of dignity, skills,

values, and local knowledge” (Denborough 2008, 167). Denborough states that this

process of writing, sharing and recording songs is focussed on “inclusion” rather

than “perfection”, and on creating songs that are “resonant with people’s

experiences of life” (Denborough 2008, 170). This approach is based on

Denborough’s belief that therapeutic gain can be found when individuals “feel as if

they are making a contribution to the lives of others” (Denborough 2008, 3). He

refers to this process as “enabling contribution” (Denborough 2008, 3), and aims to

create contexts “in which individuals and communities who are going through hard

times can make contributions to the lives of others who are going through similar

difficulties” (Denborough 2008, 4). Denborough concludes that this use of song is

part of “transforming anguish to art” and of establishing “contribution” (Denborough

2008, 175).

My work differs from the work of Sliep and Denborough in that it is focussed on

illustrating therapeutic concepts, rather than enacting a therapeutic or transformation

experience for the participants. Within this study, I have been applying principles

from narrative therapy to the performative realm in order to discuss these concepts

within the public domain. As an artist rather than a therapist, I have utilised my own

work as a site for the discussion of personal issues and experience. If the work of

Sliep and Denborough can be said to bring artistic expression to the world of

therapy, then my work brings therapy into the world of artistic expression.

Key Terms

Depression and bipolar disorder

This research comes from a personal perspective, as an individual who has

experienced depression meeting other individuals with depression or bipolar

disorder. It is important to clarify that I have been exploring depression and bipolar

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disorder from a social perspective, not a clinical perspective. However, in order to

establish the key terms of this study it is useful to refer to clinical descriptors. Beck

and Alford (2009) define depression in terms of a change in mood (“sadness,

loneliness, apathy”), a “negative self concept”, “regressive and self-punitive

wishes”, “vegetative changes”, and a “change in activity level: retardation or

agitation” (Beck and Alford 2009, 8 ). The American Psychiatric Association (APA)

defines both depression and bipolar disorder as forms of “mood disorders”, and

states that in depression “there is no history of manic or hypomanic episodes” and in

bipolar disorder “there is such a history” (Beck and Alford 2009, 9). It is this

relational definition that informs this study. By including depression and bipolar

disorder within this study I have explored two kinds of common mood disorders. This

study points to the similarities and differences between these two mood disorders

from a social perspective, with a focus on exploring personal experiences of these

conditions. One common feature of personal experiences of depression and bipolar

disorder is the experience of stigma associated with these conditions.

Self-stigma

A sense of self-stigma, or personal shame, is related to feeling abnormal or

inadequate in relation to cultural norms. This definition of self-stigma has been

informed by Foucault’s (2005) discussions of subjectivity and truth in relation to

“self-care”; and Goffman’s (1963) concepts of stigma and self-stigma. These

concepts are discussed in detail in Chapter Two.

Persona

Persona is an exaggerated form of a theatrical character that is often based on

aspects of the performer’s own personality. Performance persona is often used

within cabaret performances to enhance the sense of performativity. Harrington

(2000) advises creators of the personal cabaret style that the “stage persona comes

from you and is part of you, but it’s a creation that’s developed and tailored to evoke

a certain reaction in an audience” (117).

Personal cabarets often emphasise one aspect of a performer’s own personality

within in a heightened performance style.

Within provocative cabaret, great emphasis is placed on an exaggerated

performance persona, as demonstrated in the work of Meow Meow and Tim

Minchin. Meow Meow, the creation of Australian Melissa Madden Gray, is a

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melodramatic vamp who is by turns seductive and comic, outrageous and sweet.

Power (2009) describes this as “the riddle wrapped in an enigma that is her stage

persona”. Tim Minchin’s onstage persona is a kind of crazed concert pianist. With

wildly teased hair, black kohl around the eyes and wearing tuxedos (or black pants

and a white button up shirt) and manic expressions, he has been described as “a

cross between a concert pianist and Igor, the mad retainer from the Frankenstein

movies” (Woodhead 2006).

The persona is the vehicle for the cabaret performer. Meow Meow states that her

shows are “often historionic”, but that this melodramatic form can present “some

truth because you give yourself and the audience some room to move with fantasy"

(quoted in Lawes 2009). Provocative cabaret performers often use a performance

persona to make a point to their audience or to present an aspect of their truth to an

audience.

I have observed two major trends within performance personas in provocative

cabaret, and have described these as the personas of the provocateur and the

vamp. The provocateur presents political and social critiques through musical

humour, and the vamp presents constructed femininity and the vulnerability of the

diva. Tim Minchin is a provocateur, while Meow Meow is a vamp.

Parody

Parody references artistic or cultural forms for comic effect. During my creative

process I have experimented with the use of parody to create a distancing

relationship with the audience, along the lines of Brecht’s Verfremdungseffekt

(Willett (ed) 1964). In other words I have used parodic humour as a way to make a

subject seem strange or unfamiliar and to provoke thought about an issue. However,

parody also works to create a sense of familiarity or intimacy with an audience by

referencing popular cultural forms. This ‘push-pull’ effect of distance and intimacy is

a characteristic of provocative cabaret.

Chapter Summary

This exegesis has been structured to explain the theoretical foundations of the study

and relate these to my own creative processes. Chapter One has introduced the

research questions that have motivated this project and the key terms of the study.

Chapter Two discusses the concept of games of truth and the understandings that

frame this research in relation to the theories of Foucault, White and Goffman.

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These theories will be explored with reference to my personal experience of

depression and to the practices of creative arts therapist Brown Ash. Chapter Three

provides a detailed account of the autoethnographic, practice-led, action research

methodology of the study. This methodology is discussed in relation to ethical

considerations, creative practice as a research tool, and the cyclical nature of action

research. Chapter Four, the contextual review, compares the styles of personal

cabaret and provocative cabaret, focussing on six provocative cabaret performers in

Australia and the United Kingdom. Chapters Five and Six focus on the creation and

analysis of the Mind Games cabaret through a discussion of the principles of

Michael White’s narrative therapy in relation to concepts of distance and intimacy.

Three inter-related findings of the study are discussed in Chapter Seven. The first

finding is that the application of principles of White’s narrative therapy was able to

successfully combine provocative and empathetic elements within the cabaret. The

second finding is that the personal agenda of addressing my own self-stigma within

the project reduced the effective portrayal of a truth in flux within the cabaret. The

third finding presents the view that the cabaret expressed ‘Jo’ playing games of truth

in order to journey towards her own “preferred identity claim” (White 2004b) through

an act of “self care” (Foucault 2005). Chapter Eight provides a summary of the

discussion within this exegesis and relates this discussion to the research question

and sub-questions.

 

 

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Chapter Two: Framing the research

 

This whole experience has made me interested in examining the thought processes in our minds that hold us back. The awful inner critic, that voice inside our head that criticises us interminably and screams out our worst fears. (Personal Journal, Saturday 21st of June 2008)

* * *

Depression, mental disorders, identity confusion, and loneliness in contemporary society seem to me to be connected to the way we distance ourselves from others and from ourselves, and I’m interested to explore these concepts in performance.(Personal Journal, 18th February 2008)

* * *

Introduction

As stated in Chapter One, this research project has been inspired by my personal

experiences of having had depression, and my attempts to make sense of my own

experience through the form of cabaret. This chapter elaborates on the theoretical

concepts that have informed my exploration of Michael White’s narrative therapy

and grounds these concepts in my personal experiences. The theoretical concepts

of this study explore notions of games of truth.

In the early stages of this research project I came across a quote from Michael

White that related an individual’s perceptions of their own problems to cultural

constructs:

many of the people who seek therapy believe that the problems in their lives are a reflection of their own identity or the identity of others. When this is the case, their efforts to resolve problems usually have the effect of exacerbating them instead...[because] the habit of thought that constructs these internal understandings of people’s lives is significantly a cultural phenomenon, many of the problems that people consult therapists about are cultural in nature. The history of this cultural phenomenon has been traced by a number of historians of thought, including Michel Foucault. (White 2007, 24- 25)

This quote provided an entry point into the theoretical landscape of this research

project, leading me to explore the theories of Michel Foucault. The following chapter

is a review of literature to illuminate the working definitions of my study as grounded

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in my personal experience. As stated in Chapter One, my experiences of working

with the techniques of Michael White with therapist Margi Brown Ash led me to

explore White’s academic writings on the principles behind his therapeutic

techniques. White’s discussion of Michel Foucault’s concepts of truth and power

then led me to explore Foucault’s concept of pathologisation and Erving Goffman’s

concept of spoiled identity. Through looking at the works of Foucault and Goffman I

began to identify my own experience of self-stigma, and to explore ways to perform

my experience of this. I found Michael White’s narrative therapy, and the revelation

of my own personal stories, a useful way to work through my sense of self-stigma. In

my cabaret show I proceeded to theatricalise, or more appropriately ‘cabaret-ise’,

principles of Michael’s White’s narrative therapy.

The theories of Foucault, White and Goffman form a foundation for this study. This

chapter will discuss Foucault’s approach to the construction of knowledge and truth,

the pathologisation of mental illness and the ethical formation of the subject. These

concepts will then be related to Goffman’s theories on stigma and self-stigma and

Michael White’s concept of spoiled identity. These foundations form the basis for

discussions of the stigma of mental illness and self-stigma. Finally, this chapter will

introduce principles of Michael White’s narrative therapy in relation to performative

concepts of distance and intimacy, and will connect these principles to the work of

Margi Brown Ash.

Foucault’s games of truth

A major inspiration in this study has been Foucault’s perspective that truth about

mental illness is a constructed notion, and that the construction of truth can serve

different dynamics of power. Foucault has termed this process games of truth. For

Foucault, truths are constructs that society uses to categorise and control social

interactions between individuals and institutions, and thus truth is not a universal,

pre-ordained quality but is instead a notion constructed by discourse (Danaher,

Schirato and Webb 2000, 21- 22). In The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault

(1989) explains that his work aims to explore sets of concepts within discourses in

order to work out what kind of “schemata” (organising principles) link the statements

together. According to Foucault:

One stands back in relation to this manifest set of concepts; and one tries to determine according to what schemata (of series, simultaneous groupings, linear or reciprocal modification) the statements may be linked to one another in a type of discourse. One

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tries in this way to discover how the recurrent elements of statements can reappear, dissociate, recompose, gain in extension or determination, be taken up into new logical structures, acquire, on the other hand, new semantic contents, and constitute partial organizations among themselves. (Foucault 1989, 60)

Foucault argues that these organising principles are linked to “centralising powers”

within society and cites the example of the discourse of science that is constructed

as a truth. In order to overcome the power of this dominant discourse of science, he

argues for a process of “genealogy”:

We are concerned... with the insurrection of knowledges that are opposed primarily not to the contents, methods or concepts of a science, but to the effects of the centralising powers which are linked to the institution and functioning of an organised scientific discourse within a society such as ours... for it is really against the effects of a power of a discourse that is considered to be scientific that the genealogy must wage its struggle. (Foucault 1980, 84)

By “genealogy”, Foucault is referring to an historic examination of events in relation

to discourses and states that his work “follows a refusal of analyses couched in

terms of the symbolic field or the domain of signifying structures, and a recourse to

analyses in terms of the genealogy of relations of force, strategic developments and

tactics” (Foucault 1980, 114). One of Foucault’s tactics within this genealogy is to

look for the “minor knowledges” or the points of rupture or discontinuity within

discourses in order to disrupt notions of “unitary truth” that are set up by the

dominant discourses:

It is based on a reactivation of local knowledges – of minor knowledges, as Deleuze might call them – in opposition to the scientific hierarchisation of knowledges and the effects intrinsic to their power: this, then, is the project of these disordered and fragmentary genealogies. (Foucault 1980, 85)

Foucault makes it clear that in examining discourses and the construction of truths

he is not aiming to find the ‘great truth’ that lies underneath everything. Instead he

places the focus firmly on the discourses themselves. His work aims to remain

within the discourses and examines the links between discourses. As O’Farrell

(2005) states:

Foucault consistently maintains that he is not interested in spelling out for the reader what the concrete content of ‘the truth’ might actually be, instead he is interested in looking at the way rules are set up historically to grant or limit access to something called the truth. (84)

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In Foucault’s words,

One is not seeking, therefore, to pass from the text to thought, from talk to silence, from the exterior to the interior, from spatial dispersion to the pure recollection of the moment, from superficial multiplicity to profound unity. One remains within the dimension of discourse. (Foucault 1989, 76)

These analyses have relevance to the way individuals use discourse. Foucault asks

individuals to look within their own consciousness to determine the rules that are in

place, to examine their own use of discourse, and relate this to larger structures

within society. In the final chapter of The Archaeology of Knowledge, Foucault

rhetorically acknowledges the difficulty in this process, and the “unease” that this

examination may cause.

I understand the unease of all such people. .. they prefer to deny that discourse is a complex, differentiated practice, governed by analysable rules and transformations, rather than be deprived of that tender, consoling certainty of being able to change, if not the world, if not life, at least their ‘meaning’, simply with a fresh word that can come only from themselves, and remain forever close to the source. (Foucault 1989, 210-211)

It important to note that for Foucault these truths and power relations are not ‘fixed’,

but are instead “changeable, reversible and unstable” (Foucault quoted in Bernauer

and Rasmussen 1998, 12). This fluid, changeable and unstable construction of truth

is a notion that has influenced the creation of my cabaret. In an interview later in his

life, Foucault defined his work as playing games with truth, and summed up his

career in the following way:

I have tried to discover how the human subject entered into games of truth, whether they be games of truth which take on the form of science or which refer to a scientific model, or games of truth like those that can be found in institutions or practices of control. (Foucault quoted in Bernauer and Rasmussen 1988, 1)

Foucault goes on to clarify that by a “game” he means “an ensemble of procedures

which lead to a certain result, which can be considered in function of its principles

and its rules of procedures, as valid or not, as winner or loser” (Foucault quoted in

Bernauer and Rasmussen 1988, 16).

Identifying games of truth about mental illness

This concept of games of truth that occur within our own belief systems is

particularly relevant to the way that mental illness is viewed within society. Foucault

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examined the history of thought in Western society in relation to madness and

observed the way the “mad” subject was viewed within the medical game of truth,

and asked the question:

how is it, for example that beginning at a certain point in time madness was considered a problem and the result of a certain number of processes – an illness dependent upon a certain medicine? How has the mad subject been placed in this game of truth defined by knowledge or a medical model? (Foucault in Bernauer and Rasmussen 1988, 9-10)

In Madness and Civilisation Foucault noted the changes in the way madness was

viewed in Europe from the Renaissance to the eighteenth century. He observed that

in the fifteenth century there was a celebration of madness and madmen in

literature, and these characters were often used as catalysts for finding truth.

Foucault suggests this celebration of madness arose within a curiosity about the

experience of madness. Foucault proposed that “[i]f folly leads each man into a

blindness where he is lost, the madman on the contrary, reminds each man of this

truth” (Foucault 1991a,14).

Foucault argued that from the eighteenth century onwards madness came to be

institutionalised. He linked this phenomenon to matters of economics in which there

was a new emphasis on the ‘utility’ of individuals. Due to the rise of the industrial

age, “the biological traits of a population become relevant factors for economic

management and it... [became]...necessary to organise around them an apparatus

which will ensure not only their subjection but the constant increase of their utility”

(Foucault 1980, 172). Within this system individuals began to be categorised and

objectified:

The great eighteenth-century demographic upswing in Western Europe, the necessity for co-ordinating and integrating it into the apparatus of production and the urgency of controlling it with finer and more adequate power mechanisms cause ‘population’, with its numerical variables of space and chronology, longevity and health, to emerge not only as a problem but as an object of surveillance, analysis, intervention, modification etc. The project of a technology of population begins to be sketched: demographic estimates, the calculation of the pyramid of ages, different life expectations and levels of mortality... .(Foucault 1980, 171)

Within this new culture, madness became “a condition that was in opposition to

reason, and various forms of madness were identified and classified” leading to the

establishment of the “great houses of confinement” for the mad, the poor and the

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sick (Danaher, Schirato and Webb 2000, 126). In this way, madness became

separated from the broader society, a quality deemed unsuitable to be associated

with. In his introduction to Madness and Civilisation, David Cooper sums up the

author’s argument as follows:

Foucault makes it quite clear that the invention of madness as a disease is in fact nothing less than a peculiar disease of our civilisation.... Above all, in reading this book, one is awakened to a tragic sense of the loss involved in the relegation of the wildly charismatic or inspirational area of our experience to the desperate region of pseudo-medical categorization from which clinical psychiatry has sprung”. (David Cooper in the preface to Foucault 1991a, viii)

In The Birth of the Clinic, Foucault examined the way that modern medicine

objectifies its subjects, discussing the way conditions became objectified and

pathologised. Foucault describes the medical gaze as one of aiming to ‘master’ all

that it beholds; for within this ‘rational’ process the patient becomes the ‘object’ for

analysis:

The gaze is passively linked to the primary passivity that dedicates it to the endless task of absorbing experience in its entirety, and of mastering it ...By acquiring the status of object, its particular quality, its impalpable colour, its unique, transitory form took on weight and solidity. No light could now dissolve them in ideal truths; but the gaze directed upon them would, in turn, awaken them and make them stand out against a background of objectivity. (Foucault 1991b, xiv)

Madness had changed from being a quality potentially within all of us to being a

‘sickness’, a quality to be objectified, confined, and examined. Foucault describes

this process as the ‘pathologising’ of madness:

In a space so arranged, madness will never again be able to speak the language of unreason, with all that in it transcends the natural phenomena of disease. It will be entirely enclosed in a pathology.(Foucault 1991a, 196-197)

It is important to note while Foucault’s theories of mental illness refer to the full

spectrum of mental illness, I am using these theories as a way of exploring the way

just depression and bi-polar disorder are ‘distanced’ from normal life.

The stigma of mental illness

I have personally experienced stigma relating to mental illness, a phenomenon that

has been discussed by Healy (1998), Sartorius and Schulze (2005) and Sayce

(1999). Healy (et al. 1998) states that there is a substantial amount of “stigma and

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suspicion” surrounding mental illness within contemporary society that can cause

“isolation and discrimination” (5, 9). Sartorius and Schulze (2005) argue that stigma

is one of the major obstacles facing individuals with a mental illness (xii- xiii). Sayce

(1999, 9-10) relates her personal experience to her own research and observes that

many individuals with a mental illness have a fear of seeking help or admitting their

condition to work colleagues due to a fear of discrimination. Sayce goes on to state

that individuals often find the experience of being diagnosed with a mental illness as

‘frightening’; that they have a fear of being rejected if they reveal their condition; and

that they can go to great lengths to conceal their condition (1999, 69- 70).

Faced with stigma and prejudice from both the public and mental health professionals, it is no surprise that people with psychiatric illnesses begin to view themselves as inferior to others. They may accept the image that others hold of them as being dangerous and unpredictable. The impact on their self-image is then disastrous, leading to social withdrawal and lack of motivation to achieve their goals. (Leff and Warner 2006, 4)

Leff and Warner’s notion of ‘inferiority’ being an effect of stigma around mental

illness articulates an important component of what I am terming ‘self-stigma’. Both

‘inferiority’ and ‘shame’ are important operating principles in my defining the

theoretical framework of my study.

Goffman on stigma and self-stigma

My own sense of self-stigma has included feelings of shame and inadequacy. The

term self-stigma is based on Goffman’s description of the stigma that occurs within

an individual’s ego identity. Goffman describes stigma as a situation in which an

individual does not experience full social acceptance: “He [sic.] is thus reduced in

our minds from a whole and usual person to a tainted, discounted one. Such an

attribute is stigma...” (Goffman 1963,12). In this way stigma has the effect of making

a person ‘tainted’, ‘discounted’ or spoiled rather than ‘whole’, ‘usual’ or ‘normal’.

The person sees themselves as ‘normal’ but realises that this image does not match

up with society’s view:

Earlier it was suggested that a discrepancy may exist between an individual’s virtual and actual identity. This discrepancy, when known about or apparent, spoils his social identity; it has the effect of cutting him off from society and from himself so that he stands a discredited person facing an unaccepted world. (Goffman 1963, 31)

It is this process that ‘spoils’ the identity, and ‘discredits’ the individual. Goffman

states that within this phenomenon shame can become a ‘central possibility’ (1963,

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18). Goffman defines stigma as affecting three types of identity for an individual: a

social identity, a personal identity and an ego identity, each having a different

relationship to stigma (1963, 129). Social identity concerns the way in which the

individual presents him or herself to the world at large, comprising people who do

not know him or her. Personal identity is the recognition of the individual by the

circle of people who know him or her. Ego identity, on the other hand, “concerns

what the individual feels him – or herself to be and, hence, is a personal, self-

reflexive experience” (Leff and Warner 2006, 19). Goffman states that “ego identity

is first of all a subjective, reflexive matter that necessarily must be felt by the

individual whose identity is at issue [and that] the idea of ego identity allows us to

consider what the individual may feel about stigma and its management” (Goffman

1963, 129- 130). A central tenet of Goffman’s argument is that the stigmatised

individual is likely to hold the same set of values as the general community, and thus

is acutely aware of their own ‘spoiled identity’. This is then likely to lead to a sense

of shame:

The stigmatized individual tends to hold the same beliefs about identity that we do; this is a pivotal fact......the standards he has incorporated from the wider society equip him to be intimately alive to what others see as his failing, inevitably causing him, if only for moments, to agree that he does indeed fall short of what he really ought to be. Shame becomes a central possibility, arising from the individual’s perception of one of his own attributes as being a defiling thing to possess, and one he can readily see himself as not possessing. (Goffman 1963, 17- 18)

Goffman goes on to say that this discrepancy between the society’s norms and the

individual’s characteristics “spoils his [the individual’s] social identity...[and] has the

effect of cutting him off from society and from himself so that he stands a discredited

person facing an unaccepted world” (Goffman 1963, 31). For the purposes of this

research I have termed the experience of stigma within ego identity as ‘self-stigma’.

From the viewpoint of ‘pathologisation’, individuals suffering from depression or bi-

polar disorder become patients and objects for analysis, separated from wider

society, and marked as ‘spoiled identities’.

Michael White and spoiled identity

Michael White’s narrative therapy is based on helping his patients to re-think their

spoiled identity. White links concepts of spoiled identity to the Foucaultian notion

that power is constructed by discourses of truth/knowledge. White states that in

contemporary life people tend to judge themselves by “socially constructed norms”

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and that this can lead to a sense of “inadequacy” (White 2004, 168). In the sense

that spoiled identity is created when an individual negatively judges themselves in

relation to social norms, spoiled identity has a strong relationship with self-stigma.

Using a Foucaultian approach, White attributes the phenomenon of spoiled identity

to “dividing practices” of “scientific classification” that lead to individuals considering

themselves “incompetent” or “inadequate” (White 2007, 25-26). White states that

this sense of inadequacy or spoiled identity is created when individuals believe their

identity to be ‘fixed’: that is, not subject to change. White describes this process as

one in which individuals believe that their problems are internal to themselves, and

thus they – the individual – are the problem. In this way, individuals identify with their

problems, believing that the problem is innately a part of their identity. In White’s

words:

people come to believe that their problems are internal to their self or the selves of others – that they or others are in fact, the problem. And this belief only sinks them further into the problems they are attempting to resolve. (White 2007, 10)

White’s solution to this phenomenon has been to create a form of therapy “that

sponsors possibilities for the remanufacture of identity” (White 2004, 187). White

proposes that through the practice of narrative therapy, it is possible to subvert the

power operations of contemporary society, and move society into a state of ‘flux’

where meaning is not fixed and individuals can participate in their own meaning-

making processes. Using the terms of this study, White’s therapeutic approach

encourages individuals to play games of truth with the narrative of their own lives in

order to overcome a sense of self-stigma.

My personal experience of self-stigma

My own experience aligns with the feelings of inferiority and shame identified with

self-stigma. As stated in Chapter One, I have defined self-stigma as an experience

of shame in relation to feeling abnormal or inadequate in relation to cultural norms. I

have often felt ashamed to be depressed, and have tried to put on a ‘brave face’ for

the world. I experienced some relief in discussing my experience with friends and

finding common ground. However, this occasional sense of relief through personal

disclosure has often been negated with a sense of shame or self-stigma. I journalled

my own personal experiences of self-stigma within this research project and, in the

second year of the project, noted my own struggle with the act of self-revelation:

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When I look back on my research last year, I feel that I was not ready to undergo a process of deep inner reflection... [to bring] these reflections in[to] a public realm. Even though while I am writing these reflections they are purely personal, I am of course aware that these reflections form part of my PhD and will become ‘public property’. I feel that this has definitely contributed to my reticence in telling my full story, and exploring my personal responses within this research. (Personal Journal 25th May, 2009)

At the time I related my own dilemma to Etherington’s (2004) comments that “there

is a real risk that others might pathologize us if we expose our vulnerabilities in

writing and research” (142). This point relates to Foucault’s theories of the

pathologisation of mental illness, and White’s theories of spoiled identity.

Etherington then balances this risk of pathologisation with the comment that writing

about personal experience could be a “affirming”, “encouraging” and “strengthening”

(143). Taking these comments on board I attempted to a write more openly in my

journals, and found this to be a very challenging process:

[I] don’t like [the] feeling of vulnerability this brings. [It] makes me feel less ‘in control’, and actually when I reflect on it less ‘smart’, and less ‘rational’...I feel like I associate being an academic with being ‘rational’ and thus with not being emotional or vulnerable. Telling about my own vulnerabilities makes me feel less capable within the world of ideas and intellect. (Personal Journal Monday 25th May, 2009)

This journal entry shows my own discomfort in sharing my own story: I was

interested in talking about my experiences of depression, but at the same time felt

deeply uncomfortable when doing so. This discomfort created a tension within my

research. Later in my journal I reflected that:

Every time I tell someone about the show I always start with “it includes interviews from people with depression and bipolar disorder” - I use this as a disclaimer because I’m very self-conscious about writing a show about ‘my depression’ and telling people that I have had depression. I still feel a sense of shame, self-consciousness, or at best awkwardness with revealing this information, and often feel compelled to state that I was never “seriously” or “clinically” depressed... The ‘demons’ in the work are for the me the self-stigma that I associate with this area and with revealing myself as having had depression. (Personal Journal, 18th January 2010)

These feelings of discomfort, shame, and embarrassment are central to my

experience of self-stigma.

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Foucault, the ethical formation of the subject and games of truth  

Late in his career, Foucault discussed notions of truth in relation to subjectivity and

“self-care”. In The Hermeneutics of the Subject (2005), Foucault discussed the ways

in which a subject comes to find truth in relation to self-care or “care of oneself”

(Foucault 2005, 2). This work explored “the movement in ancient thought, from the

Hellenistic and imperial period, by which reality was thought of as the site of the

experience of the self and as the opportunity for the test of the self” (Foucault 2005,

486). According to Foucault this view of life as a “test of the self” can be understood

in two different ways: firstly in the sense that “the world is recognized as being that

through which we experience ourselves”, and secondly as “an exercise... through

which, in spite of, or thanks to which we form ourselves, transform ourselves,

advance towards an aim or salvation, or head towards our own perfection” (Foucault

2005, 486-487). Foucault favours the second option of ‘self-transformation’

(O’Farrell 2005, 113), and advocates for conscious ‘self-formation’ of the subject in

relation to games of truth, commenting that it is “...an exercise of self upon self by

which one trie[s] to work out, to transform one’s self and to attain a certain mode of

being” (Foucault quoted in Bernauer and Rasmussen 1988, 2). It is interesting to

note that Foucault’s suggested method for achieving this conscious self-formation is

through artistic practices. For Foucault, art is associated with ethics and the ways

that we represent ourselves to ourselves and others, and thus:

Foucault’s point [is] that what lies behind the effort involved in taking care of the self, applying techniques of the self, and crafting one’s life as a work of art is the relation between freedom and power… Foucault writes, the idea of aesthetics can be used as a metaphor for the self, can provide a set of practices in and by which to take care of the self. (Danaher, Schirato and Webb 2000, 163)

“Self care” is thus the subject’s conscious formation of their own truth, and constant

attendance to their life as a work of art. Following on from this, “self care” is a

subject’s conscious use of games of truth that define their life.

Principles of White’s narrative therapy

Foucault’s description of “self care” as a subject’s conscious formation of their own

life as a work of art had strong impacts on Michael White’s principles of narrative

therapy. White refers to Foucault’s statement that “self care” is an “exercise of the

self by which one attempts to develop and transform oneself” (Foucault quoted in

White 2004a, 192), and states that this “exercise of the self” leads to the perception

“that the human subject is not a ‘substance’ but a ‘form’” (White 2004a, 193). In

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other words, an individual’s identity is not a predestined quality but is subject to that

individual’s choice and action.

Narrative therapy involves processes in which individuals examine the workings of

their minds and their perspectives on life, and work to unravel their own negative

conclusions. Through this process, individuals are able to “reveal the history of the

‘politics’ of the problem that bring people to therapy ... and that have shaped their

negative conclusions about their life and their identity” (White 2007, 27). This

process asks individuals to challenge their own conclusions of truth, and to re-write

their lives on their own terms. White (2004a, 2007) provides examples in which his

patients have used his techniques in order to overcome a sense of personal failure

and inadequacy, and finding new ways to tell their life story that align with their own

personal values and ethics. White’s therapeutic processes challenge individuals to

transform the way they see the world, and their own actions in relation to their own

sense of personal ethics.  

White’s process of asking individuals to define their own life in relation to their own

values and ethics is a technique of intimacy or of valuing and connecting with their

own sense of subjectivity. Narrative therapy challenges individuals to examine their

own negative conclusions, to explore “neglected aspects” of their lives, and to move

into a state of flux and flexibility, where many perspectives are possible. White

describes this as a process of “unravelling”:

It is quite common for this unravelling process to reveal the history of the “politics” of the problem that bring people to therapy. This is a history of the power relations that people have been subject to and that have shaped their negative conclusions about their life and their identity. This unravelling deprives these conclusions of a “truth” status and calls them into question. As an outcome, people find that their lives are no longer tied to these negative conclusions and this puts them in a position to explore other territories of their lives. (White 2007, 27)

This refers back to White’s use of Foucault’s theories of truth. For White, narrative

therapy offers a way for individuals to challenge their concepts of truth, to question

their concepts of certainty. White argues that a narrative approach is able to

achieve this because “[t]he narrative mode leads not to certainties, but to varying

perspectives... [and in] this world of narrative, the subjunctive mood prevails rather

than the indicative mood” (White and Epston 1990, 78). In order to expand on this

concept, White refers to Bruner’s theories of effective storytelling and quotes

Bruner’s theory that:

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the triggering of presupposition, the creation of implicit rather than explicit meanings … The second is what I shall call subjectification: the depiction of reality not through an omniscient eye that views a timeless reality, but through the filter of consciousness of protagonists in the story… The third is multiple perspective: beholding the world not univocally but simultaneously through a set of prisms each of which catches some part of it. (Bruner quoted in White and Epston 1990, 79)

In this way narrative therapy allows individuals to move away from a fixed view, to

explore their experience from many different perspectives, taking them “out of a

fixed and static world, a world of problems that are intrinsic to persons and

relationships, and into a world of experience, a world of flux” in which they “find new

possibilities for affirmative action, new opportunities to act flexibly” (White and

Epston 1990, 42).

As mentioned in Chapter One, this study has focussed on three principles from

White’s narrative therapy: externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living, and rich

descriptions of life experience. The principle of externalisation separates an

individual’s problem from their identity, an autonomous ethic of living is the

identification of core values and beliefs, and rich descriptions focus on a sense of

multiplicity and encourage individuals to view their lives as “multi-purposed and

“multilayered” (White 2004b, 32). I employed these three principles of White’s

narrative therapy to create dynamic relationships between distance and intimacy in

the Mind Games cabaret and to create the effect of a truth in flux, or, to use one of

Foucault’s phrases, to play games of truth. The following sections will discuss these

therapeutic principles in relation to the performative concepts of distance and

intimacy. Performatively speaking, distance and intimacy relate to the relationship

between the performance and the audience. A relationship of distance estranges the

audience from the performance, while a relationship of intimacy draws the audience

into a more empathetic connection. In applying these performative terms to a

therapeutic process, the individual in therapy is both the performer and audience for

their own life story.

Principle One: externalisation

The principle of externalisation objectifies and separates an individual’s problems

from their identity; “this makes it possible for people to experience an identity that is

separate from the problem [so that] the problem becomes the problem, not the

person” (White 2007, 10). Externalisation allows individuals to examine the way they

tell their life story and to “separate [their story] from the dominant stories that have

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been shaping their lives and relationships” (White and Epston 1990, 40 -41). This

process is achieved through an objectification of the problem (rather than an

objectification of the person) allowing individuals to separate their own identity from

the problem. Through this process, the problem no longer represents the truth of

someone’s identity allowing for easier resolution of the problem. White relates that:

Externalizing conversations can provide an antidote to these internal understandings by objectifying the problem. They employ practices of objectification of the problem against cultural practices of objectification of people. This makes it possible for people to experience an identity that is separate from the problem; the problem becomes the problem, not the person. In the context of externalizing conversations, the problem ceases to represent the “truth” about people’s identities, and options for successful problem resolution suddenly becomes visible and accessible. (White 2007, 10)

White comments that externalisation “undermines the sense of failure”, “opens up

new possibilities for persons to take action to retrieve their lives…” and “ presents

options for dialogue, rather than monologue, about the problem” (White 1989, 6).

For purposes of clarity I will describe an example of the externalisation process as

given by White. ‘Sarah’ had a history of cutting and depression, and believed that

she was ‘hateful’. In response, White’s therapy focussed on an inquiry into her

‘self-hate’ as an external object for examination, or a kind of personification of self-

hate:

We were soon engaged in an inquiry into what self-hate had persuaded Sarah to believe about her identity (“I am worthless and useless and I deserve my lot in life”), about what it required her to do to her body “treat my body in rejecting and punitive ways”), about its agenda for her relationship with others (“to isolate me from others”), and so on. (White 2007, 26)

Through this process, ‘Sarah’ then reflected on what her ‘self-hate’ would say in

relation to certain situations, and this gave ‘Sarah’ the opportunity to link her self-

hate with people from her life experience, and examine the way that her thought

processes had been influenced by things others had said to her. Thus

the externalizing conversation that facilitated the unravelling of

these conclusions also created space for the development of a re-

authoring conversation... The development of these conversations

was associated with a rapid diminution of the cutting and of the

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depression that had maintained such a strong presence in Sarah’s

life. (White 2007, 27)

I have had personal experience of these techniques through my therapy sessions

with Margi Brown Ash. Brown Ash is a practitioner of narrative therapy and applies

this technique to her creative arts therapy. Within my therapeutic process with

Brown Ash, I externalised and creatively personified my inner critic. As noted in

Chapter One, a vivid memory I have of working in this way is a session in which I

personified my inner critic as a tall thin woman, and then re-worked (or re-authored)

this story to make my inner critic a more productive force in my life.

This externalisation process can be seen to relate to the performance personas

developed in cabaret. When an aspect of the individual is externalised in narrative

therapy, it becomes exaggerated and stylised. The externalised persona is not

intended to be a realistic persona; rather, it is one aspect of a personality

exaggerated and streamlined into the essence of an idea. The process of

externalisation is a playful and theatrical process. In White’s own words, this

process encourages a “lighter, more effective and less stressed approach to “deadly

serious” problems” (White 1989, 6). The process encourages individuals to see their

situations from new perspectives, find other ways to approach their own problems

and “...provides people with avenues of possibility for addressing the predicaments

and problems of their lives in ways that they wouldn’t have imagined” (White 2007,

5).

Within therapeutic sessions, White uses a number of different questioning styles to

externalise the problem, including “relative influence” questions, “unique outcome”

questions and the technique of “mapping relative influence” (White 1989). “Relative

influence questioning” invites individuals to create two descriptions of their

relationship with the acknowledged problem. The first describes the influence of the

problem in relation to their lives, and the second describes the influence the

individuals have in relation to the problem (White 1989, 37). Both of these

descriptions help individuals to externalise their problems, as their problems are

seen as separate from themselves. The second description leads to “unique

outcome” questions, inviting individuals to “locate exceptions to the influence of the

problem in their lives and their relationships” (37). White states that these type of

accounts “usually possess a richness and a complexity that the old accounts,

descriptions, and possibilities lack” (White 1989, 39). The approach of “mapping

relative influence” is based on a series of questions that ask individuals to draw

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together experiences in which they have resisted the problem’s oppression or “to

map their influence in the life of the problem, to select out “facts” which are at

variance with their experience of the problem’s oppression of them” (White 1989,

72). These three questioning techniques work in a sequence to externalise the

problem, and draw attention to an individual’s ability to influence and respond to the

problem within their life.

The process of externalisation can be seen as a technique of distancing in that it

exaggerates personal experience in playful and sometime comic ways, encouraging

new viewpoints to emerge. In performative terms, externalisation can be seen as a

process of distancing: that is, a way to see a situation differently through playful

processes of exaggeration and dialogue, or to use a Brechtian term, to ‘make

strange’.

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Principle Two: an autonomous ethic of living

The principle of an autonomous ethic of living invites individuals to move towards

their own ‘telos’, that is, “the goal or the end-point that one seeks to arrive at in one’s

identity project” (White 2002, 56). This principle encourages individuals to define

their own core values. Intimacy is found as individuals explore their own core beliefs

and create their own sense of identity in opposition to normative discourses. The

term autonomous ethic of living is drawn from Foucault’s discussion on personal

ethics and the constitution of the self as a moral agent, involving four aspects:

‘ethical substance’, ‘mode of subjectification’, ‘aesthetics’, and ‘telos’ (White 2002,

53). The first aspect, ‘ethical substance’ focuses on one aspect of life that the

individual considers “of primary relevance to ethical judgement” (White 2002, 53).

The second aspect, ‘mode of subjectification’, is “the mechanism through which

people are encouraged or required to recognise their moral obligations in regard to

the management of the relevant ethical substances” (White 2002, 54). The third

aspect, ‘aesthetics’ or ‘ascetics’ involves an individual’s lifestyle and specifically “the

self- and relationship-forming activities that one elaborates an identity and a life that

can be considered ethical” (White 2002, 56). The final aspect, ‘telos’, is the end

point or goal of the lifestyle choices one is making. These concepts are explained

using Ancient Greek and early Christian lifestyles as examples (White 2002, 53 –

58). In Ancient Greek culture it can be seen that, ethical substance is that pleasure

has to be managed well, the mode of subjectification is aesthetic values, the

ascetics are the techniques through which pleasure is managed, and telos is self

mastery in relation to pleasure. In early Christianity, ethical substance is that

personal desire needs to be managed through the subjectification of divine law and

the techniques of deciphering and modulating one’s desires towards the telos of

salvation or purity of being. As a therapeutic principle, White uses the concept of

autonomous ethic of living in order to help individuals choose the values they wish to

live their life by. The principle of an autonomous ethic of living invites individuals to

choose their own core values and beliefs and to structure their life around these

choices.

An inquiry into an autonomous ethic of living encourages individuals to identify

aspects of their life “that people judge to be of primary relevance in regard to how

they live their lives” (White 2004a, 198). For example, for one individual this was

“integrity” and another “self-preservation” (White 2004a, 198). White bases this

principle on overcoming normalising processes in which people judge themselves

“according to socially constructed norms” and hence perceive their own actions as

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reflecting “degrees of inadequacy, abnormality, insufficiency, incompetency,

hopelessness” (White 2004a,168). These normalising judgements often induce a

sense of personal failure (White 2004a,169). In response to normalising

judgements, White encourages individuals to be “active mediators and negotiators

of life’s meanings and predicaments” and to live “...their lives according to intentions

that they embrace in the pursuit of what they give value to in life” (White 2007, 103).

Some questions that White uses to discuss an autonomous ethic of living include:

“If you were to name what is important to you that is a foundation for this interest

and these steps, that is one of those bottom-line things, what words would you come

up with?” and “What are you expressing in your interest in.... ?”(White 2004a, 198).

An example of this shown by one of White’s patients, who White describes as

having “successfully abandoned the pursuit of adequacy” in favour of “a strongly

ethical position informed by integrity and by specific values and beliefs that he held

precious” (White 2004a, 167). White uses questions within this therapy that

encourage individuals to identify aspects of their own individuality and “challenge the

subjugation of normalising judgement” (White 1989, 54). Two examples of these

questions are: “What do you think this might tell you about your ability that you

wouldn’t have otherwise known?” and “What do you think it tells me about you that I

can appreciate?” (White 1989, 54).

One situation that shows the principle of an autonomous ethic of living in practice is

White’s treatment of ‘Paul’, a therapist who was ashamed of being overly “sensitive”

in relation to his work, for extreme sensitivity didn’t fit his perceived norms of a

therapist (White 2004a, 61 – 66). ‘Paul’s’ sensitivity was in response to counselling

couples and he related this sensitivity to what he termed “unresolved issues” in

relation to his abusive father (White 2004a, 62). Through extended conversation

with White, ‘Paul’ identified this sensitivity as a skill in relation to addressing

“intimidations and disrespect” and “developed some specific ideas about how he

might give expression to this sensitivity and to these knowledges, and about how

this could open space for conversations about that which usually cannot be spoken

of” (White 2004a, 66). In this way White encouraged Paul to rethink his “weird”,

abnormal qualities, in order to see them as unique skills and abilities. Through the

techniques of narrative therapy, individuals are able to rewrite their life on their own

terms. White believes that the investigation of a sense of “personal failure” is a

useful way to explore an individual’s beliefs. His use of the phrase the “phenomenon

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of personal failure” refers to way an individual may consider themselves a failure in

relation to the established norms of society (2004a, 152-3).

White believes that this sense of personal failure has increased in recent times, and

he believes it is now rare for him to meet anyone who has not experienced a sense

of personal failure. He clarifies that failure refers to “a sense of inadequacy,

incompetence, insufficiency, deficit, backwardness, and so on” (White 2004a, 153).

As influenced by Foucault, White believes that the concept of failure is linked to

”operations of modern power” and to “normalising judgements’’ (White 2004a, 168);

White has created a list of “modern failures”, or actions that are perceived to result

in labelling the self as a failure. These include “simple mistakes and errors of

everyday life”, “unsatisfactory performances of one’s assigned social role”, and

“general backsliding on the established purposes of one’s life” (White 2004a, 172-3).

White’s approach to therapy involves an examination of the origin of an individual’s

sense of failure, and how it can be related to a list of ‘shoulds’ in the person’s own

mind. An example of this is given in his patient ‘Judy’ who upon examining her own

sense of failure commented: “I am just so tired of having to go ‘THERE’, to achieve

‘THIS’, and to make ‘THAT’ of my life!” (White 2004a, 181, original emphasis).

In response to normalising judgements, White encourages individuals to be “active

mediators and negotiators of life’s meanings and predicaments” and to live “...their

lives according to intentions that they embrace in the pursuit of what they give value

to in life” (White 2007, 103). An example of this process is shown in the specific

case of ‘Max’ who was unhappy at work and feeling inferior and incapable. White

relates that through narrative therapy, ‘Max’ was able to unpack his own

assumptions about the world, and realise that he was striving for adequacy; and that

Over a period of two months in which we had four meetings, Max successfully abandoned the pursuit of adequacy. In this time his apprehension was progressively unpacked. This was an apprehension that represented a strongly ethical position informed by integrity and by specific values and beliefs that he held precious, and that fitted with what he eventually names as his life’s aspiration: ‘ to achieve a life of goodness’. (White 2004a, 167)

In this way ‘Max’ articulated his own sense of ethics and worked to re-author his

own story in alignment with his own values. White describes ‘Max’ has having

“successfully abandoned the pursuit of adequacy” in favour of “a strongly ethical

position informed by integrity and by specific values and beliefs that he held

precious” (White 2004a, 167).

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White uses a series of questions that challenge individuals to examine the

underlying values that inform their own sense of personal failure. This process helps

individuals to identify the normative power structures that have informed the way

they tell their life story. After identifying these underlying values the individual can

then make more conscious choices on the kinds of values that they would like to

base their lives on. This technique asks individuals to see their life situation in a

more empathetic way. That is, the individual is encouraged to explore their own

unique subjective experience and personal ethics and to create a personal life story

that reflects this subjective experience. The principle of an autonomous ethic of

living encourages individuals to explore their own unique subjectivity and to

empathetically connect to their own subjective viewpoint of the world. In this way,

personal ethics can be seen as a technique of intimacy.

Principle Three: rich descriptions

A third principle of White’s process is rich descriptions (White 1989; White 2004a;

White 2004b). White’s re-authoring process aims to create a “rich” or “thick”

description of people’s lives as opposed to “thin” descriptions (White 2004a, 126). In

this way the re-authoring process generates “a wide range of possibilities for action

in the world that were not previously visible... [allowing] people to step into other

experiences of their identity” (White 2004a, 126). White’s concept of “rich” or “thick”

descriptions was influenced by the “interpretative turn” in social science, led by

cultural anthropologist Clifford Geertz (White 2004b, 24). Geertz argued against

“reductionist conceptions” of identity and asserted that individuals’ realities were a

production of historical and social factors and “negotiated in and between

communities of people” (White 1989, 40; White 2004b, 24). In his therapy, White

aims to encourage “personal agency” through a “rich description” of intentional

states (White 2004b, 25). These “rich descriptions” focus on a sense of “multiplicity”,

and allow “people’s lives to become multi-intentioned” (White 2004b, 31). White

contrasts “internal state psychologies”, in which identity is seen as fixed, with ‘rich’

descriptions of life that are able to “throw people’s expressions of life into a

multiplicity of different lights” (White 2004b, 31- 32). Through these understandings

individuals can view their lives as “open to renegotiation”, “multi-purposed” and

“multi-layered” (White 2004b, 32). Rich descriptions of life encourage individuals to

move between a sense of distance and intimacy with their own stories through

connecting with one version of their own story and then opening up the possibility to

investigate other stories. This process allows the development of “multiple

authenticities” in which individuals are able to engage in multiple “tellings and

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retellings” of their own stories (White 2004b, 33-34). For White, authenticity is not

about an inner truth being revealed, but rather “authenticity is regarded as a public

and social achievement in which a person’s preferred identity claims are

acknowledged” (White 2004b, 34). Through using rich descriptions individuals are

able to “creatively engage” with their past, and engage in the “generation and

regeneration of meaning” (White 2004b, 35). This experimentation with meaning is

focussed on exploration of an autonomous ethic of living.

An autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions in practice

The principles of an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions can be

demonstrated through White’s technique of “double storied conversations” (White

2003). This technique moves between a sense of distance and intimacy, through

relating one side of a story and then exploring the story from another perspective.

This principle has been used in community projects in which stories are shared

within a community setting for therapeutic benefit. In these settings White worked

collaboratively with other therapists and communities. These community projects

included projects about health concerns (such as HIV/AIDS) and work with specific

Australian Indigenous communities (White 2003, 19). Within a community setting,

individuals express their experiences of “psychological pain and emotional distress”

in a manner that is “honoured and joined with by others”, which encourages a

response of “compassion” and “evokes a sense of solidarity” within the community

(White 2003, 43). The technique of double storied conversations begins with the

concept of “double listening” in which the opposite side of an account is “made

visible” (White 2003, 30). For example, when one individual recounted her

experience of “shattering events”, this experience revealed the core values she held

as “precious”, and her intention towards these values in her life (White 2003, 40).

After this individual had shared her story, other community members were invited to

share stories of their own which resonated with these core values (White 2003, 40).

White relates that one outcome of this process was that the individual experienced

“a very significant lessening of her felt experience of psychological pain, and the

dissolution of the sense of helplessness and personal inadequacy” (White 2003, 40).

The principle of “doubly listening” uses the technique of “contrasting ...some

experiences with other experiences through description” in order to attribute

meaning to experience (White 2003, 30). In these community settings, a space is

created in which people use discussion of trauma to point to their own “intentional”

values, and to express a personal “legacy” in which “the trauma that they and others

have gone through will not be for nothing” (White 2003, 43-44). This process

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encourages individuals to incorporate experiences of trauma “into the storylines of

their lives, and to allocate these to history as events with beginnings and endings”

(White 2003, 44). White asserts that through this process individuals “are provided

with a foundation for knowing how to proceed with their lives” (White 2003, 44). In

terms of distance and intimacy, double storied conversations invite a sense of

intimacy with each story as it is told, and then encourage a sense of distance to

explore the themes within each of these stories and relationships between people.

In this way double storied conversations are an example of White’s principle of rich

descriptions that encourage a flux between a sense of distance and intimacy.

The work of Margi Brown Ash

Margi Brown Ash works as a theatre maker, educator and psychotherapist with

“artists and those wanting to live more creatively” (Australasian Association for

Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies 2009, 45). She facilitates workshops

“aimed at developing resilience and understanding of self using the arts” (Brown Ash

4change.com, 2010). Margi Brown Ash is both a therapist and creative practitioner

working in a social constructionist framework who is strongly influenced by the work

of Michael White (Brown Ash 2009, 25-26). She is specifically influenced by White

and Foucault’s discussion of power relations within discourse that can “be regarded

as repressive, limiting, containing and denying, shaping our lives and creating truths

around which we construct our day-to-day communication” (Brown Ash 2009, 26).

She states that social constructionist counselling “helps the client reconstruct their

own reality and develop a stronger sense of personal agency” (Brown Ash 2009,

21).

She applies this framework to creative therapy and to her own practice as a director.

Within the therapy sessions/workshops she focuses on “the transformational role of

language... and how it can be seen as creating the reality of the individual”, the

concepts of “multiplicity, including ideas of multiple realities and multiple stories”,

and “the role of power in the construction of self” (Brown Ash 2009, 23). Brown Ash

applies White’s discussions of multiple selves/multiple stories in her work and in

reference to White (2004a) states “this multi-authored framework is an alternative

idea to the one true self or the essential self that sits within a more evidenced-based

psychological framework” (Brown Ash 2009, 25). It is important to note that Brown

Ash’s work is influenced by a range of social constructionist theorists. However, it

can clearly be seen that her work has links with White, and the concept of

“multiplicity” has a strong relationship with the three principles of narrative therapy

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discussed in this study. Through working with Brown Ash I was introduced to these

principles in action and they became an important part of my own meaning-making

processes.

Conclusion

My exploration of the work of Foucault, White and Goffman has informed my

exploration of personal identity in relation to concepts of truth. Foucault, White and

Goffman’s discussions of the pathologisation of mental illness, spoiled identity and

self-stigma articulate a number of games of truth that have arisen about mental

illness. In response to these issues, it can be helpful to explore new perspectives to

situations, (that is, to play games of truth) and to search for a sense of personal

ethics, and new ways to approach the world through “self care”. White’s principles of

externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions can be used to

play games of truth with personal identity. I have been engaging with these

principles for a number of years through my work with Margi Brown Ash. These

principles can be described in the performative terms of distance and intimacy.

Techniques of distance can allow individuals to explore new perspectives to a

situation, while techniques of intimacy encourage individuals to connect to one

subjective viewpoint. A dynamic relationship between distance and intimacy works

to create the effect of a truth in flux. I applied these techniques of distance and

intimacy to the creation of a cabaret performance. My methods for this application

are described in Chapter Three. Chapter Four, the contextual review, relates the

terms of distance and intimacy to the field of contemporary cabaret and the forms of

personal cabaret and provocative cabaret. Chapters Five and Six then relates

principles of White’s narrative therapy and the techniques of distance and intimacy

to the creation and analysis of the cabaret Mind Games.

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Chapter Three: A method in the madness

In the first year of my PhD I decided I wanted to do autoethnography. Now in my second year I realise that I am still not telling my story. Without realising it, I am still working in an ‘objective mode’ trying to present story without featuring my own bias, asking for others to tell me their story without coming out of my own comfort zone and sharing my own. (Personal Journal, 25th May, 2009)

* * *

Introduction

My investigation of mental illness and my own experience of self-stigma led me to

experiment with the theatricalisation of a therapeutic paradigm. In order to do this I

combined the techniques of autoethnographic research, practice-led research and

action research. The overarching approach of this study is autoethnographic. I have

chosen to foreground this realm of the study in order to focus on my own life

experience and draw attention to the ways my life experience affected the

development of the research project. In this chapter I will discuss autoethnographic

aspects of this study in light of my research identity and my performative application

of this methodology. I will then discuss ethical considerations of this methodology

and my process of transforming interviews into a performance. Within an

autoethnographic process I have used the method of artistic practice. This is the

medium through which I have chosen to explore the area of mental health, and it is

the artistic area of cabaret that has affected the research tools used in the process.

My practice-led research journey has been characterized by collaborations with my

supervisors and artistic partners. I chose action research as the ‘nuts and bolts’

approach of this study. Action research provides a systematic way of recording and

analysing my results while at the same time allowing for flexibility and openness

within the research cycle. Action research is based on the notion of the participant

researcher who researches their own actions in progress. The combination of

practice-led research and action research has allowed new learning to be integrated

into the study. All of these factors are discussed in reference to the risks, benefits

and challenges of my chosen methodology.

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My research identity

For the purposes of this project, my research identity can be defined in terms of my

personal experience with depression and my performance experience. After

experiencing an episode of depression in late 2006 and meeting others with similar

experiences, I became keen to investigate approaches to discussing, commenting

on and addressing the issue of mental health through my performance work. As

discussed in Chapter One, this project represents my attempt to make sense of my

personal experiences through the form of cabaret. It has emerged from my own

desire to connect my work as a cabaret writer/performer with issues of mental health

in the wider community. When interviewing individuals with depression I

encountered individuals with bipolar disorder. In some medical views, bipolar

disorder or manic depression is seen as a form of depression. The inclusion of

bipolar disorder in this cabaret works to broaden the scope of the performance and

the relevance of the show for a wider community. This research is based on an

amalgamation of my multiple identities and roles as a researcher as:

• an individual who has experienced depression (autoethnographic research)

• a cabaret writer and performer (practice-led research)

• a participant researcher (action research)

My work in cabaret is informed by my background in theatre (as an actor, devisor

and director) and in writing and performing original music (as a singer/songwriter).

The previous cabaret shows I have created (Black Christmas in 2003 and Dr

Mandi’s 9 easy steps to Romantic Bliss in 2007) piqued my interest in cabaret as a

form of social commentary. In pursuing this interest I have sought to develop an

approach to my research that: is connected to personal stories and experience;

encourages discussion of depression and bipolar disorder; and is informed by

contemporary practice in cabaret.

Autoethnography

This research is based on an autoethnographic model in that it is centred on my

personal experiences (Reed-Danahay 2007; Richardson 2000; Ellis 1999; Spry

2001; Etherington 2005). Using the mode of ‘evocative narrative autoethnography’

(as described by Ellis and Bochner, 2000), my personal experience, motivations,

reflections, process and insights form the foundation for this research project. The

research is based on my reflections of my experiences, on my experience of

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interviewing other individuals with depression or bipolar disorder, and on research

on public discourse of mental illness. I have obtained ethical clearance for the

interviews through the QUT Human Ethics Application Processes (reference

number: 0800000384). Full details of the ethical clearance information are

documented in Appendix 1.2. In addition, I have integrated other personal stories

from the public domain2. These stories were from publications of personal

experiences of depression or bipolar disorder. Reed-Danahay (2007) defines three

forms of ethnography. The first is “native”, the second “ethnic” and the third kind is

“autobiographic ethnography” (407). In the first form, former subjects of

ethnographic studies become authors of their own studies, and in the second form

the ethnic or cultural identity is fore-grounded within a personal narrative (Reed-

Danahay 2007, 407). Reed-Danahay describes autobiographical ethnography as

that “… in which professional researchers incorporate their own personal narratives

into their ethnographic texts” (Reed-Danahay 2007, 407). Autoethnography extends

to the inclusion of creative texts such as poetry, drama, and conversations

(Richardson 2000, 9); and as such produce practices that “are both creative and

analytical” (Richardson 2000, 10). As stated, autoethnography privileges the

incorporation of creative texts in the collection of data. Ellis (1999) provides a

definition of autoethnography by reporting on a creative text in the form of a

personal dialogue with one of her students:

“Auto ethnography? What’s that?” she asks, writing the word on her notebook as she looks at me.

“Well, I start with my personal life. I pay attention to my physical feelings, thoughts, and emotions.

I use what I call systematic sociological introspection and emotional recall to try to understand an experience I’ve lived through. Then I write my experience as a story. By exploring a particular life, I hope to understand a way of life……”

“So if I understand you correctly, the goal is to use your life experience to generalize to a larger group or culture”

“Yes but that’s not all. The goal is also to enter and document the moment-to-moment, concrete details of a life. That’s an important way of knowing as well”. (Ellis 1999, 671)

                                                             

2 For example, Journeys with the black dog: inspirational stories of bringing depression to heel (Wigney et al. (eds) 2007).  

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In this way, autoethnography foregrounds personal, subjective experience in order

to understand a larger issue. This approach can reveal the details, contradictions

and inconsistencies within human experience, or, as Spry (2001) states, “auto

ethnographic texts reveal the fractures, sutures, and seams of self interacting with

others in the context of researching lived experience” (712). Within the field of

autoethnography I have chosen to use “evocative autoethnography” as described by

Ellis and Bochner (2000), rather than “analytic autoethnography” as described by

Anderson (2006). Analytic autoethnography aims to “truthfully render the social

world under investigation” and then “transcend... that world through broader

generalization” (Anderson 2006, 388). In this way, analytic autoethnography can be

seen to move from the specific to the general. In contrast, evocative

autoethnography explores a specific individual narrative for the purpose of exploring

subjective experience of a social phenomena. Evocative autoethnography is

informed by other research and theories but moves from general to the specific.

Ellis and Bochner (2000) discuss the need for authors “to feel the moral dilemmas”,

to “think with” the story, and “join actively in the decision points that define an

autoethnographic project” (735). Evocative autoethnography “displays multiple

layers of consciousness, connecting the personal to the cultural. Back and forth

autoethnographers gaze, first through an ethnographic wide-angle lens, focusing

outward on social and cultural aspects of their personal experience; then, they look

inward, exposing a vulnerable self that is moved by and may move through, refract,

and resist cultural interpretations” (Ellis and Bochner 2000, 739). The authors

define four categories of evocative autoethnography: reflexive ethnographies, native

ethnographies, personal narratives, literary autoethnographies (Ellis and Bochner

2000, 740). This research project falls under the category of a personal narrative in

which “social scientists take on the dual identities of academic and personal selves

to tell autobiographical stories about some aspect of their experience with daily life”

(Ellis and Bochner 2000, 740).    

The evocative nature of representations produced in this method allow for “multiple

ways of thinking about a topic, reaching diverse audiences, and nurturing the writer”

(Richardson 2000, 5).

With its focus on subjective experience, autoethnography has been criticised as

being potentially “self-indulgent, introspective, and individualized” (Duncan 2004, 2).

Therefore, when using this method it is important to establish clear criteria for “good

auto ethnography”. Richardson has created five such criteria: “contribution”,

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“aesthetic merit”, “reflexivity” (that is self-awareness of the researcher),

“impactfulness” (on an emotional and/or intellectual level) and the capacity of the

research to “express a reality” (Richardson 2000, p. 16). These criteria are

supported and extended by Spry (2001), who states:

Writing must be well crafted…. Emotionally engaging, as well as critically self-reflexive of one’s socio-political interactivity…[and it] strives to use relational language and styles to create purposeful dialogue between reader and author… [in] a provocative weave of story and theory. (713)

In this research project I have applied the method of autoethnography in order to

develop my own sense of critical self-reflexivity, to combine theory with my own

personal experience, and to research in a manner that is both creative and analytic.

Autoethnographic performance and autobiographical performance

My performance is autoethnographic in that I am performing my own story while also

presenting my interpretation of other peoples’ stories. My personal experience thus

becomes the frame for the performance. In this way I am creating a kind of

autobiographical performance. According to Heddon, autobiographical performance

provides the opportunity to “talk out, talk back, talk otherwise” about an issue (2008,

3). It can have transformative power due to its ability to “story” our lives and the

performance space provides a liberating space where people are “free to rebel

against the values and practices of a dominant culture” (Henke quoted in Heddon

2008, 4). Autobiographical performance can provide a site in which an individual can

stage resistance, spark debate and offer possibilities: “In many examples,

autobiographical performances represent the already lived in order to beckon us

towards, urge us to image or compel us to create the yet to be lived” (Heddon 2008,

20).

In the context of this research, autobiographical performance provides the site for

the re-authoring process of my story and other people’s stories following principles

of White’s narrative therapy.

Autoethnography within this study

As indicated in Chapter One, I have implemented autoethnography in this research

project to focus on my own experience and meaning-making processes as a frame

for the study. I interviewed individuals with depression in the first cycle of this study.

The connections that I made with these individuals led me to interview others with

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bipolar disorder and I became fascinated by the resonances between these two

conditions. It is important to note that this study has not had a clinical focus, but has

instead focussed on my personal experiences of connecting with the personal

experiences of others. The interviews in this study were taped and then transcribed.

(Full documentation of these interviews can be found in Appendix 1.2.) These

transcriptions were then freely used within the creative development of the study,

working from an intuitive basis. There has been no formal analysis of the interviews.

Rather, the interviews served as creative points of departure for the development of

the performance. Throughout the rehearsal process I kept a journal of my process

and reflections on this process and as the research project developed my personal

reflections alerted me to the extent to which I have been reticent to tell my own story

of depression within this study. Through the autoethnographic process, I have linked

this reticence to my own sense of self-stigma, White’s concepts of spoiled identity

and Foucault’s concept of the pathologisation of mental illness. In this way,

personal reflection has greatly impacted on both the theoretical and creative

material I have produced and reviewed. Further discussion of these points can be

found in Chapter Five. For me, the challenges of using autoethnography within this

project have been associated with sharing my personal story. I have found it

personally challenging to include self-revelatory material in my performance work

and to be honest about my personal responses to the material on a theoretical level.

Each stage of my research project has led to a stronger communication of my own

subjectivity as a researcher and creative practitioner. In this way I feel that one of

the greatest challenges I encountered within the research project has transformed

and strengthened my research. There have been many other benefits of the

autoethnographic approach that point to the appropriateness of this methodology for

the project. As the therapeutic method at the heart of the research is focussed on

the re-authoring of personal stories, it makes sense to have a methodological

foundation that foregrounds personal experience. In addition, the fact that

autoethnography often includes a compilation of many different writing styles has

been appropriate as my research work integrates many different methods within the

frame of my own experience, and autoethnography has provided a way of ‘drawing it

all together’. Within autoethnography, the research tools I have used are a personal

journal and interviews with individuals suffering from depression or bipolar disorder.

As discussed in Chapter Two, I also used research on theories of Foucault, White,

Goffman, and the stigma of mental illness in order to articulate my own experience

of self-stigma.

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Ethical considerations

The ethics of personal stories

Given that the practical component of this research project drew extensively from

information gained in personal interviews combined with my own story, the creation

of Mind Games involved many ethical considerations that relate to verbatim theatre,

documentary theatre and autobiographical performance. In Autobiography and

Performance, Deirdre Heddon notes that autobiography and biography has

traditionally been associated with “telling the truth” about a life story. She argues

that this point of view is “problematic”, because “such a ‘self’ – an individual,

autonomous subject – is itself a discursive construct” (Heddon 2008, 151). In

examining my process, a major question for consideration was why I initially wanted

to interview other people and tell their stories within the show. Upon reflection, at the

start of the research project, I was looking for a community of people to support me

in my own story. My interviewing of other people was an act of reaching out, of not

wanting to feel isolated in exploring this area. I felt that having the interviewees’

stories around me provided me with strength and helped me to examine my own

story, and find a new ways to tell it. In this sense, I was also witnessing other

women’s stories and then sharing my own versions of these stories. In reflecting on

the process of collecting information and conducting interviews, I felt like I created a

mini-community of women within the theoretical boundaries of the cabaret

performance itself. Each interview took place in an informal setting, either in a coffee

shop or at the interviewee’s home. This setting enhanced the amount of personal

revelation that took place, and allowed extremely personal information to be

divulged. In each interview I also revealed personal information about myself and

my experiences of depression, and felt that this generated a feeling of commonality

between the interviewees and myself. All the interviewees came to see the first

work-in-progress of the work and I had informal chats with them afterwards. One

interviewee – who was going away for the weekend – was unable to attend the first

formal work-in-progress showing, and so I invited her to a rehearsal run through of

the performance during production week. Out of the four interviewees whose

material was used in the show, all four came along to the first showing and were

involved in the post-show discussions. Afterwards, two interviewees continued to be

involved in the process. The other two interviewees were invited to all the showings

and performances, but didn’t attend. I am unsure as to why. Perhaps it didn’t seem

relevant to them anymore? Perhaps they were interested but too busy? Perhaps

they were content with my use of their interview material within the show? The other

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two interviewees remained closely involved with the project and I had discussions

with them about the way the show was progressing, and we met for coffee after

each show to debrief and discuss the show.

At the start of the research project I was seeking a sense of community through the

interview process. As the research progressed, I found it useful to consider my use

of personal and interview material in relation to concepts of witnessing as informed

by Etchells (1999), Schaefer (2003), Wake (2008) and Rokem (2000, 2002). For

Etchells, to witness an event is to be “present at it in some fundamentally ethical

way, to feel the weight of things and one’s own place in them, even if that place is

simply, for the moment, as an onlooker” (Etchells 1999, 17). Etchells believes that

the role of contemporary theatre is to produce witnesses rather than spectators, that

is, to event an audience, or to “leave a mark” on an audience; to make the people

matter to the audience so that they are “unable to stop thinking, talking and reporting

on what [they’ve] seen” (Etchells 1999, 18). Schaefer (2003) summarises Etchells’

view of the audience-as-witnesses phenomenon in the following way:

Whatever its ethical ramifications, according to Etchells et al. this transformation from spectator to witness is to be desired because it both spurs a spectator’s deeper connection with the world (as manifested through the subject of the performance) and creates a lasting conversation between the artist and the audience. What a witness-producing performer wants to happen to the spectator, then, is that someone who is essentially an onlooker could be so affected by an experience that it becomes a challenge for him to question her ideas, social responsibility and shared history. Essentially, the spectator would experience a soul’s (rather than a mind’s) encounter with the material. (Schaefer 2003, 6)

Wake (2008) discusses the concept of witnessing in relation to the renaming of

documentary and verbatim theatre as the “theatre of witness”, in which “the figure of

the performing witness is typically a character (based on an actual person) that

testifies to a personal, social and/or historical trauma” (Wake 2008, 188). Wake

goes further to suggest that this act consequently positions the characters, actors,

spectators and critics involved with a piece of such theatre as ”performing

witnesses” (Wake 2008, 188). Freddie Rokem discusses the use of characters as

witnesses in a performance, and argues that these characters add “a dimension of

theatricality on the basis of which the spectator begins to interpret the performance”

(Rokem 2002, 168). For Rokem this device provides a “filter” through which “the

‘truth’ about the past can be examined and critiqued”(Rokem 2000, 203). Rokem

defines three modes of this kind of witnessing which each have their own theatrical

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effects. The first mode of the “performance-within-the performance” places

emphasis on the “aesthetic dimension of witnessing”; the second mode of the

“eavesdropper” places focus on “psychological aspects” and the third mode of the

“omniscient” witness “emphasizes the metaphysical aspects of viewing” (Rokem

2002, 171 ). Rokem asserts that these different forms of witnessing “draw our

attention to the theatrical medium” by “showing the spectators what it means to

witness, to watch, to look and to overhear in the particular context established by a

specific performance” (Rokem 2002, 169). Or, in other words, by viewing a witness

onstage and observing the way that this witness watches other stories in the

performance, the audience develops a heightened awareness of their own act of

witnessing. The idea that an onstage witness enhances a sense of theatricality

within a performance has been helpful within my analysis of the Mind Games

cabaret, and will be further discussed in Chapter Six.

In the creation of Mind Games I assumed the role of spectator as witness. I actively

witnessed the interviewees’ stories I gathered through interviews, and then

performed my own version of witnessing their story: responding to the way that their

stories had affected me. Within the performance the interviewees’ stories had a

strong impact on the characters of ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’ (two aspects of myself within the

show), as discussed further in Chapter Six. Within the cabaret ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’

show strong reactions to the interviewees’ stories, and share these reactions with

the audience, thus positioning ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’ as witnesses rather than spectators

– for, to rephrase Etchell’s words, the interviewees left their mark on the characters.

In the performance I invited the audience to act as a witness to my own story and to

the stories of the interviewees; in enacting the way I (that is, ‘Jo’, the representation

of myself with the show) witnessed the interviewees’ stories, I invited the audience

to become aware of their own act of witnessing.

The concept of witnessing, however, can also be problematic when a performer is

both a witness of other stories and a witness performing their own story. Wake

(2008) discusses performers as witnesses in relation to a verbatim theatre piece on

asylum seekers in Australia entitled Through the Wire. In this production one of the

actors was an asylum seeker speaking his own words:

Significantly, one of these actors, Shafaei, is playing himself. This moment manages to incorporate several witnesses simultaneously: the asylum seekers who first said the words; the director who first heard the words; the actors who now repeat these words; and the audience members who sit watching and listening to these various

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witnesses, some of whom are instantly visible to them and some of whom are not. (Wake 2008, 188)

Wake draws attention to the way actors who are presenting other people’s stories

related to the experience of being an asylum seeker are grouped with an asylum

seeker presenting his own story and posits that “this lack of self-reflexivity invites the

audience to conflate every actor with his/her character” (Wake 2008, 190). This

conflation effect is also described by Schaefer (2003) in her discussion of the

performance Binlids. In this performance, women in the IRA performed their own

stories, and they also performed the stories of other people in the IRA. Thus it could

be seen that there was a conflation effect between the two types of stories. Schaefer

notes that the sense of “historical reality” within the performance is “heightened by

the fact that the women acting these monologues live and work alongside the

characters they play” (Schaefer 2003, 12). Schaefer (2003) also notes another

complication of “performing witnesses” (that is, performers playing themselves) is

that the performer’s “desire for self-empowerment” may complicate the audience

response to the performance (Schaefer 2003, 8). In her words:

What witnesses search for are answers, not questions... in testimonial drama there is less room for the audience to find their own interpretation of the event. Essentially, the characters are undertaking the interpretive work for them. (Schaefer 2003,17)

In Mind Games, I was a performing witness presenting my own story in conflation

with the stories of others. This presents an ethical complication within the

performance and is discussed in Chapter Seven in relation to the findings of the

study.

Ethics of verbatim and documentary theatre

The act of transferring interview material into a performance can open up a

Pandora’s box of ethical concerns for the creator. My use of interview material to

help to construct the performance draws on techniques of verbatim theatre and

documentary theatre. These terms are nebulous, but, generally speaking, the term

documentary theatre is used in the United States, and verbatim theatre is used in

the United Kingdom, to describe theatre based on factual information and

interviews. Martin (2006) creates what she terms a “useful” definition of

documentary theatre, stating “it is useful to understand it as created from a specific

body of archived material: interviews, documents, hearings, records, video, film,

photographs” (9). Heddon (2008) states that “the practical methodology of verbatim

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performances, though it might vary in detail, generally includes the conducting of

interviews by performers, which are often recorded” (129). In discussing

documentary theatre’s problematic representations of truth, Martin (2006) argues

that documentary theatre can “both foreground and problematize the nonfictional” in

its mix of fact and fiction (10) and suggests:

No doubt the phrase “documentary theatre” fails us. It is inadequate. Yet at present it is the best phrase available. In the U.K., documentary theatre is known as “verbatim theatre” because of its penchant for direct quotation. However, verbatim theatre does not necessarily display its quotation marks, its exact sources. “Verbatim” can also be an unfortunately accurate description of documentary theatre as it infers great authority to moments of utterance unmitigated by an ex post facto mode of maturing memory. Its duplicitous nature is akin to the double-dealing of television docudramas. (Martin 2006, 13-14)

Here Martin acknowledges the interchangeable uses of the terms “documentary”

and “verbatim”, and draws attention to the problems inherent in the forms. For the

purposes of this research, I will refer to these processes as a combination of the two

forms, represented through the term, verbatim/documentary theatre. From Martin’s

point of view documentary theatre gives the illusion of truth (through aesthetic

devices that mimic behaviour) but is always fictitious, and thus “[d]ocumentary

theatre creates its own aesthetic imaginaries while claiming a special factual

legitimacy” (Martin 2006, 10). She further comments that documentary theatre

emphasises some aspects of its data, and hides others; in this way it can be viewed

either as “getting at the truth” or “telling another set of lies” for “performed stories

invite repetition, revision, and reconfiguration”(Martin 2006, 14).

These points are supported by Heddon who acknowledges that the subjective

version of the story told through verbatim plays is inevitable due to the choosing of

a select amount of interview material from all the data available, and the way that

the plays do not provide the full context of the interview process itself (Heddon 2008,

130-131). Heddon notes that the use of “meta-theatrical gestures” (such as

introductions explaining the amount of interviews done, who the interviewees were

and the timeline over which the interview were conducted) appears to make the

construction process “more transparent” but still doesn’t make the interviewing

“conditions” transparent; for “meta-theatricality does not lessen the appearance that

stories are simply being told and simply being ‘caught’” (Heddon 2008, 132). The

ethical dilemmas associated with this kind of performance delivery are clearly

complex and finding solutions is imperative to the intention of my research.

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Bottoms (2006) and Heddon (2008) offer some constructive possibilities for

navigating this terrain. Bottoms (2006) advocates a self-conscious approach in

which attention is drawn to the construction methods in the play and the way a

“collage” has been created (op cit). Bottoms provides an example of this in Moisés

Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde (Bottoms 2006, 61).

Bottoms states that this play foregrounds the sources of all of the performance

material within the performance and is “highly self-conscious about its own status as

a collage of appropriated historical texts” (Bottoms 2006, 61). In Gross Indecency:

The Three Trials of Oscar Wilde, Bottoms is suggesting that foregrounding and

acknowledging the source of all texts within the play is a more ethical way of

producing documentary theatre. By engaging in processes of reflexivity to make

obvious the means of creation can, as Bottoms suggests, allow a self-conscious

incorporation of documents by rigorously documenting their origin and the authorial

voice within.

In summary, verbatim/documentary theatre presents a combination of fact and

faction that can be misleading. This misleading characteristic could be mitigated (as

suggested by Bottoms) through a self-conscious presentation of the production

processes of the performance.

Addressing ethical concerns within the project

In discussing ethics of verbatim works, Heddon (2008) refers to the work of feminist

philosophers Margaret Walker and Diane Elam and their discussions of: being

“sensitive to cultural determinants” (Walker ); embracing “undecidability”, that is to

make a decision in response to each specific situation (Elam ); and “expressive

collaboration” with a focus on communication and negotiation (Walker) (Heddon

2008, 152-153).

In these ways it is important for the practitioner to be sensitive to the cultural

determinants of each individual situation so that a unique decision can be made

each time with a focus on collaboration, communication and negotiation. For

Heddon, the potential of work based on personal stories makes the risks associated

with performing witness worth taking: “In my opinion, the potential at least makes the

risk worth taking; but the risk is lessened by an informed and thoughtfully critical –

self-conscious – practice” (Heddon 2008, 158).

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In my research I felt that I was connected to the specificity of the situation by

remaining in contact with the interviewees, by inviting their responses, and by

ensuring the interviewees were included in the process. Throughout the process I

constantly checked in with the interviewees to ask for their feedback on the

development of the show, and provide opportunities for them to express any

concerns. In this way I intended to demonstrate sensitivity to the “cultural

determinants” of the situation, and I based my interactions on a sense of

“collaboration, communication and negotiation”. A positive outcome for one of the

interviewees was a sense of feeling validated, or ”affirmed”, in relation to society as

a whole. In a personal letter to me written reflecting on her experiences of viewing

the final performance she commented:

I just want to tell you how edifying it was for me to watch your cabaret performance “Mind Games”. Whilst it was somewhat confronting to “see myself” in your character, it was also a confirmation at my worth in living with a profound mental illness. I felt affirmed in the real world. (Personal Letter 2nd October, 2010)

The process of using interview material in a performance includes risks of giving a

false sense of truth; hiding the interview process and context; and misrepresenting

the interviewees. Within Mind Games, I acknowledge my personal potential to have

committed all three of these offences to a greater or lesser extent. However, Mind

Games was able to work through these risks through the use of stylistic choices,

and by a constant process of collaboration, communication and negotiation. These

ethical considerations will be further discussed in Chapter Six.

The benefit of using interviewee material within this process is that the research is

connected to people’s stories, and I have felt supported by a ‘mini-community’ within

the research process. I also felt that the fact that the words of interviewees were

used within the show, and made clear to the audience, made the audience more

interested in the show.

In the development of Mind Games, there were various benefits associated with

incorporating interviewee material. The research became intrinsically and explicitly

linked to individuals’ personal stories and the structuring of these external texts

became, necessarily, the backbone of a community that I created – that of the

storytellers. By acknowledging the contribution of the various sources in the show to

the audience, I intended to deepen audience interest in the content, and the

audience connection to story.

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The Process of Transforming Interviews to Cabaret Material

My process of working with interview material was highly personal and focussed on

creative expression. Using my own experiences as a frame for the research I chose

parts of interview material that related to my own experiences and used verbatim

extracts as springboards for the writing of songs and dramatic monologues.

The first part of this process involved conducting interviews with six individuals who

had suffered from depression, or who have been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. I

contacted these individuals through a variety of means. The process began with

meeting individuals with depression. One interviewee is a close friend of mine who

has suffered depression during her adult life. I met another interviewee at a social

gathering. I met two other individuals with depression through a mental health

support group. Through this mental health support group I was introduced to two

individuals with bipolar disorder and decided to include their stories within the study.

I conducted the interviews following the requirements of the QUT Human Ethics

Application Processes (reference number: 0800000384: see Appendix 1.2). Within

this group of interviewees, two were male and six were female. I used a standard

interview process of audio-taping the interviews and transcribing them verbatim. The

individual’s name and other identifying information was then removed from the

transcript. In the transcribed interviews I identified the gender of the interviewee and

termed the interviewees Female Interviewee One, Male Interviewee One and so on.

I used the interview transcripts as a creative springboard for the rehearsal process

in cycle one (September 2008). The work-in-progress showing in cycle one

presented a series of songs and monologues developed from the verbatim material,

and a series of songs inspired by my own experiences. Within cycle two I added

more information from my own experience through research of material in the public

domain, and presented a second round of creative material to audience. In the third

round, I identified gaps in the perspectives, added extra research from the public

domain and integrated this into the final performance. Within the third cycle of the

creative process, director Sandro Colarelli noted that there was an unequal

representation of the male interviewees within the show (at this time, only one

stanza of one song included interview material from a male interviewee). This was

possibly due to the fact that I had not connected in the same way with the interview

material from male interviewees, and could also be related to the fact that the

interviews with males were conducted in less intimate settings, and I found it more

difficult to establish a quick rapport with the male interviewees. When creating

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performance material from the male interviewees I wrestled with one particular

scene in the creative developments in 2008 to 2009, and found it difficult to present

this scene within a cabaret format, so the scene was cut from the show, leaving the

said one stanza of a song to represent male experiences of depression and bipolar

disorder. Through discussion with Colarelli, I decided to cut this stanza from the

performance, and thus to consciously focus the performance on female experiences

of depression and bipolar disorder rather than to present a disproportionate

representation of men within the performance. In these ways the use of interview

material within this study was personally rather than scientifically motivated, and

was adapted as the project progressed.

Practice-led Research

Reflecting the fact that creative practice has been the primary means of

investigation, a practice-led research methodology has been an essential

component of the project. Gray defines practice-led research as research that is

carried out through practice and is based on the needs of the practice and the

practitioner (Gray 1996, 3). Haseman supports Gray’s definition and comments:

This is a radical and bold innovation, for it not only affirms the primacy of practice in the research process, but it proclaims that the techniques and tools used by the practitioner can stand as research methods in their own right. (Haseman 2007, 151)

Following Gray’s and Haseman’s definition, this research project was based on my

needs and process as a practitioner from the field of cabaret, and used my creative

process as cabaret practitioner as the central focus of my research. Furthermore,

within this study my artistic process and product was used as a distinctive form of

knowledge. Scrivener (2002, 1) argues that “art research performs an equally

important but complementary function to that of the knowledge acquisition research

domains”. The concept of the art itself being the knowledge of the study is supported

by Stock, who states “embodied practice engenders ways of knowing, and therefore

is a knowledge claim in its own right with a rigorous epistemology, methods and

evaluation processes” (Stock 2007, 343). The knowledge of the research project has

been enacted and embodied through my artistic practice. Thus, this project has

utilised the methods and evaluation processes of practice-led research to create its

own form of knowledge.

For practice-led research I have drawn from a contextual review of contemporary

cabaret in order to inform my own creative process. This creative process, as

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documented in my personal journal, has included my own creative responses to the

interview material, creative writing, solo improvisations and rehearsal processes.

Details of these processes are described in Chapter Five. Within the creative

component of this research, my collaborators have had a strong impact on the work.

My collaborators in this project are: therapist and workshop facilitator Margi Brown

Ash; directors Ben Knapton and Sandro Colarelli, supervisors David Fenton, David

Kavanagh, Bree Hadley and Christine Comans; pianists Philippe Klaus and Wade

Gregory; and dramaturge Therese Collie. A description of the impact of these

collaborators can be found in Appendix 1.9.

My contextual review of contemporary cabaret performers identified a number of

major trends within contemporary cabaret in performance persona and the use of

parody. I have used these trends as a way to develop a performance-making

method that applies the principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret

performance. These trends, and my application of them, will be further discussed in

Chapters Four, Five and Six.

In my practice-led process I developed forms of rehearsal practices to apply these

processes to devising a cabaret performance. More detailed information on

narrative therapy and the way I applied this to the rehearsal process is in Chapter

Five.

Action research

Action research within this project

Action research is a research method in which the researcher is a participant in their

own research project and is engaged with cycles of development and reflection

(Somekh 2006, McNiff 1992, Hinchley 2008, Hearn et al. 2009). Because action

research is grounded in a process of change, it offers “flexible, open and eclectic

process of enquiry” with a “cyclical experimental character” (Hearn et al. 2009,

11).This aspect of action research suited the cycle of my artistic process over a

three year period. My research project involved many cycles of development,

within many different modes of research (for example, information gathering,

rehearsals, creative development and performances). The cyclical model of action

research provided a way to formalise the cyclic nature of my research, to

systematically collect data within each cycle and relate the cycles to each other in a

process of constant development. Using an open, flexible action research cycle

allowed me to approach my research problem in many different ways, and to

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explore many different methods. The tools of action research applied within this

study include a personal journal, and the use of feedback to develop the work.

Feedback came from interviewees, audience feedback, industry experts, supervisor

feedback. I collected feedback through: feedback forms at work-in-progress

sessions; feedback forums; panels, and; documentation of meetings. I analysed this

data using techniques from “conventional content analysis” (Hsieh and Shannon

2005, 1277). In analysing data from audience feedback I focussed on the effect of

applying principles of narrative therapy to create games of truth with an audience

through exploring the audience’s engagement with the performance and

interpretation of meaning within the work.

My research journey has gone through three main phases based on a practice-led

process using the model of action research. This research project has focussed on

using the “living”, “breathing” form of cabaret, as described by Dusty Limits, to

present therapeutic concepts and provoke discussion about mental illness.

There were three feedback rounds that became more focussed as the study

progressed. This process can be described as a funnel effect. In the first cycle the

questions were very open ended, encouraging a range of responses with questions

focussed on the audience’s likes and dislikes, their interpretation of the atmosphere

of the performances, and asking for feedback on ways to develop the cabaret. In the

second cycle, the questions were focussed on the structure and meaning of the

work, and also allowed for other responses. In cycles and one and two, the work-in-

progress performances were open to the public. This allowed for a broad range of

responses. Audience responses within feedback forums were videotaped and then

transcribed, and responses from questionnaires were directly transcribed. The

public feedback sessions in cycles one and two had ethical clearance from the QUT

Human Ethics Application Processes (reference number: 0800000384; see

Appendix 1.2). The third feedback session was informal, small scale, and designed

to refine the work in consultation with a small panel of experts. The third round

allowed for open responses to the work from a select group of individuals.

The aim of using the feedback process was to gain new perspectives on the work

and to see how an audience reacted to and/or resonated with the work. Of specific

interest to me was the audience’s relationship with the work. I wanted the audience

to be engaged and thought-provoked by the performance. It was of great interest to

me which elements of the performance garnered the strongest audience responses.

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Within the feedback there was a range of different viewpoints presented, and I

observed the major themes and common views that came through the work, and

then used these to reflect on my own goals for the work. Within the feedback I

focussed on responses that were common, and on responses that gave insight into

how the show could function to answer the research question. When presenting the

data in Chapter Five, I have presented the data from the most frequent comments to

the least frequent. In 2008, I gained feedback from approximately 50 audience

members in three feedback forums, and in 2009 I gained feedback from

approximately 16 individuals in one feedback forum, with an additional 17 individuals

responding to the performance through questionnaires. Generally, if three or more

people made a comment about an aspect of the show, I took note of these

comments. Occasionally a particular comment was taken into consideration if it

strongly related to an aspect of the research question.

The feedback from cycles one and two was analysed using a qualitative content

analysis approach. According to Wilkinson (2004), content analysis “is based on

examination of the data for recurrent instances of some kind; these instances are

then systematically identified across the data set, and grouped together by means of

a coding system” (183). Hsieh and Shannon (2005) define three types of content

analysis “conventional, directed, or summative” (Hsieh and Shannon 2005, 1277).

Using Shieh and Shannon’s definitions, I have used a “conventional content

analysis”, in that my analysis has aimed to “describe a phenomenon” and to allow

“the categories and names for categories to flow from the data” (Hsieh and Shannon

2005, 1279). In contrast to this, a “directed” approach to content analysis aims to

“validate or extend conceptually a theoretical framework or theory”, while

“summative content analysis” studies the use of certain words or content “with the

purpose of understanding the contextual use of the words or content” (Hsieh and

Shannon 2005,1281, 1283). According to Hsieh and Shannon (2005), one

advantage of the conventional approach to content analysis is that you are able to

gain information from participants within the study without the imposition of

“preconceived categories or theoretical perspectives” (1279 – 1280). Content

analysis aims to produce a systematic and comprehensive “summary or overview”

of the data within the study, and involves the “coding” of the data (Wilkinson 2004,

183). This coding is developed from “recurrent instances of some kind” which can

include a word a phrase or “some larger unit of meaning” and these instances can

then be grouped into “larger units” such as “categories” or “organizing themes”

(Wilkinson 2004, 184). One means of reporting data from content analysis is a

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“thematic analysis” in which the data is presented “with the quotations integrated

into the text, rather than in tabular form” (Wilkinson 2004, 186). This is means of

data reporting that I have used within this study.

Analysing the data

In cycles one and two, I transcribed all of the information gained from the feedback

forums or questionnaires. I then made note of each individual point made in the

feedback and then summed this up in a comment that paraphrased and condensed

the point. I would often include a brief quote in this condensed version. For example,

this quote from a feedback forum in cycle one:

You know what I really liked… on that “more of the bipolar stuff”, is to actually see you go into just a raw emotion… like, you know when you were sending moans down the telephone, maybe to create another moment that deals with trying to escape because of the ups and the downs you just can’t run away from it, and how trapped you feel to be suffering that. (Appendix 1.4, 2008 Audience Feedback, Lines 151- 155)

Was summarised as:

Would like to see more “raw emotion” in order to show a “trapped” feeling, or feeling of “trying to escape”. (Appendix 1.9, Comments on 2008 Audience Feedback, Lines 151- 155)

I then grouped each of these points according to themes. For example, in response

to 2008 feedback forums I grouped the feedback according to the themes of:

variation in characters and performance dynamics; presentation of emotion in the

show; combination of contrasting elements within the show; the presentation of

sexiness; interaction between the performance and the piano player; resonance

with life experience; the use of songs; the ending of the show; clarity of meaning;

and use of space and lighting (Appendix 1.9, 2008 Thematic grouping of feedback

from Showing 1). For detailed documentation of the audience feedback and the data

analysis of this feedback see Appendix 1.9.

In feedback session three I noted all of the responses within the feedback session

and then typed up my notes after the session. I then grouped this feedback into

themes and discussed the feedback with the director Sandro Colarelli. I chose this

approach to analysing and presenting the data as it allowed me to summarise all of

the data and to group this data according to themes that emerged.

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The three development cycles

I began the project in early 2008, and performed a public version of the Mind Games

cabaret in May 2010. In this period I utilised a series of three cycles of development

following the model of action research. This cyclic approach allowed for periods of

research, writing, rehearsals, work-in-progress showings and analysis, and

continuous reflection on the process. Stages of the process that included intensive

writing and rehearsal allowed me to focus on the work with a sense of intimacy, and

work-in-progress showings with audience feedback gave me the opportunity to gain

distance and explore different perspectives to the work. In addition audience

feedback provided valuable data on the audience’s engagement with and

experiences of the cabaret. Through the two and a half years of the project I

developed a stronger understanding of my own sense of self-stigma, and the value

of including more of my own story in the cabaret, leading to my own story providing

a narrative through-line in the May 2010 cabaret performance.

Within the feedback sessions I was interested in the aspects of the performance that

engaged an audience, and how they were engaged. In cycle two I continued this

interest in audience engagement and also focussed on the meaning of the show for

an audience, or how they interpreted the work. My aim was to have maximum

engagement with the audience and to shift the performance dynamics to alter the

way the audience related to the cabaret. It should be noted that my aims were

developed and more clearly articulated through the feedback process itself. This

section will discuss the three feedback rounds and how they impacted on the

development of the Mind Games cabaret, including a discussion on the data from

feedback sessions. For purposes of clarity and brevity I have summarised the main

points from each cycle and the major findings from the feedback sessions. For a

more complete description of each research cycle see Appendix 1.9. After each

piece of data is presented, I discuss the meaning I have drawn from the information.

At the end of each section I discuss the ways each feedback round impacted on the

next cycle of development.

Cycle One

Cycle one involved experimentation with a variety of different ways into the material.

This commenced with solo rehearsals in early 2008, as informed by an

improvisation workshop with Andrew Morrisch in March 2008. In this cycle I

developed the concept of creating a cabaret performance on depression and titled

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the project Singing the blues: Transforming stories of depression into cabaret

(Personal Journal, 21st March 2008). During my personal rehearsals I undertook

solo improvisations that I taped and transcribed, and documented in my personal

journal (Personal Journal, 19th April – 26th April, 2008). In these improvisations I

developed a number of performative concepts including: the characters of ‘Hades’

(as externalisation of depression), ‘Persephone’ (a woman with depression), a “diva”

(who gained pleasure in being depressed) and a “poetic storyteller” (Personal

Journal, 26th April 2008). As I further articulated my project goals I decided to

interview other individuals who had experienced depression. Upon reflection I feel

that I was searching for connection with other individuals with similar experiences

due to my feelings of isolation. At this time in my life I was continuing to experience

episodes of depression, and in August 2008 started a course of anti-depressant

medication. As discussed in Chapter One, the interview process led me to meet

individuals with bipolar disorder and I decided to widen the scope of the project to

include interviews with individuals with depression and bipolar disorder. I taped and

transcribed these interviews, and the interview transcripts were used as the raw

material for a rehearsal process with director Ben Knapton in September 2008. I

began rehearsals with a few song ideas from my solo improvisations from early

2008. During the rehearsal process, Knapton and I did a series of readings from the

transcripts and I chose sections from the interviews that I felt a strong personal

resonance or connection with (Personal Journal 3rd September, 2008). We then

experimented with different performative styles for these verbatim sections

(Personal Journal, 10th – 23rd September 2008). As rehearsals progressed I

developed poems and song ideas from my solo improvisation notes, and created a

series of songs inspired by my own personal experience. I also created two songs

inspired by interviewees’ experiences, My therapist, My Friend and I’m Flying.

These songs were created using the technique of musical parody as discussed later

in this chapter. On 26th and 27th of September 2008 I performed the first work-in-

progress of the Mind Games cabaret. At this time, the performance consisted of a

series of songs, alternated with staged readings of sections from interview

transcripts.

A number of individuals commented that the cabaret reflected their own experiences

with mental illness – either from personal experience or in relation to a friend or

family member. Three individuals related that aesthetic choices reflected personal

experience specifically as a reflection of individuals moving between “in control”

moments and “moments of not being in control” (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Lines 380-

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383); the denial of any problems to other people through an “ambivalent” facade

(240 – 243); and the unease felt by the audience as a reflection of the resonances

with personal experience (179-181). In contrast one individual felt that the

performance needed to “extend the arm of universality” to show more connection

between different individuals’ experiences (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Lines 710-714).

These comments suggest that the audience found it important that representations

of this particular subject matter resonate with real-life experiences. This implies that

the audience wanted to be able to see the relation of this cabaret to their own life

experiences and to those of people they knew, and that they greatly valued

moments within the cabaret that made this possible for them. One theme of

particular note is related to the presentation of meaning within the cabaret. Although

this was not a highly frequent comment, I found it very relevant to the development

of the cabaret. One individual commented that they were confused by the cabaret as

it gave the impression of “a very clear narrative” at the start, but then didn’t deliver

this (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Lines 78-82). A second individual noted that they “didn’t

quite know how to get into the point of the story, or what to take away” (Appendix

1.4, 2008, Lines 314 – 315). This individual chose to follow up their feedback in a

detailed and lengthy email with comments that suggested: the need to clarify the

audience for the performance (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Lines 682- 684); the

performance could be about showing what mental illness is like from different

people’s perspectives (685 – 687); the importance of considering the responsibility

behind the show and identifying what is different about the Mind Games cabaret

compared to other cabarets (688 – 690). Another individual suggested that there

needed to be more fictionalisation of the stories so that the audience didn’t assume

all of the stories are about ‘Jo’ related to the presentation of meaning within the

cabaret (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Lines 168 – 174). This individual acknowledged that

audience members may be uncomfortable seeing someone’s real story on stage,

but that this aspect could still be open to experimentation (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Line

171).These comments all suggested that the audience members found it difficult to

draw a clear meaning from the cabaret, and that they were unsure of how to engage

with the performance. It also suggests that the performance of personal stories (and

the intention behind this) needs to be carefully considered in order to engage an

audience

Feedback from cycle one had a strong impact on the next cycle of development.

Specifically, the feedback highlighted the need for a dramaturge to be involved

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within the process to help me clarify my own intentions in the writing. The feedback

also led to the development of the following aspects within the performance:

• the creation of clearer characters within the performance and greater dynamic variation between these characters

• more emotional variation in the performance • a bolder use of sexuality in the performance of the songs: The Naughty Song

and So You’re Back Again • more opportunities for the piano player to be involved in the performance • converting a number of verbatim sections into songs 

Cycle Two

In response to feedback from cycle one I focussed on clarifying the major dramatic

question of the cabaret. In addition, I began to explore contrasting styles,

exaggerated emotions, physicality and musical contrast, a bolder physicality and to

develop the character of ‘Jo’ (as representative of my own personal experience).

This phase of the study involved an analysis of the first round of performance

material and intensive development of the script with dramaturge Therese Collie

towards a work-in-progress showing on the 3rd and 4th of December 2009. The

audiences from these showing responded to the work through completing

questionnaires after each performance or via email. The audience for work-in-

progress showings one and two comprised of interviewees, students and academics

from the QUT community, and my own family and friends. In the second work-in-

progress performance, the first ten to fifteen minutes of the show was a scene set in

a mental facility performed in a dark, gothic aesthetic. The cabaret then moved

through the performative worlds of a carnival, a seedy nightclub and a gym. The

intention was to present the audience with multiple ‘plays within a play’ in which the

inmates of a mental facility were performing their life experiences to the audience.

To create this effect I developed the character of ‘the caretaker’ or ‘doctor’ who

functioned as a host or emcee. The cabaret opened with the ‘Jo’ character seated in

a chair as if talking to her therapist about her difficulty in creating a cabaret on

depression and bipolar disorder. The ‘Jo’ character also appeared half-way through

the cabaret and in the final scene; her appearances were intended to provide a

frame of reference through which the audience could understand or access the

cabaret.

The most common feedback from the second work-in-progress showing was a

positive response to the shifting moods within the cabaret. The audience found this

a very engaging facet of the performance, with many individuals commenting that

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they liked the combinations of contrasting moods (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 14-15,

34-35, 127-128, 250-252, 258-260, 451-458). Other comments were that

individuals liked the sudden transitions (68), and the humour and variety in the

structure (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 186- 187). This feedback supports responses

in cycle one requesting more dynamic variations, and confirms that this audience

found contrast (and especially sudden contrast) highly engaging within a cabaret

performance.

Another major theme in the feedback related to the character of ‘Jo’. There was a

high level of interest in this character, with many individuals requesting more focus

on this character’s story (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 58-59, 242-247, 482-485, 554-

582, 583- 586, 587- 589, 461-476). In other words, the audience were requesting

more of my own story within the cabaret.

The next major theme was the discussion of the presentation of mental illness as a

condition that affects many different people. Many people commented that the show

reflected that everyone was on a “continuum” in relation to issues of mental illness

(Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 20-23, 53-54, 83-85, 160-163, 316-317, 717-724). Within

this group, three individuals articulated that the cabaret reaffirmed “the normality of

depression”; showed that “depression is very common and not something to be

afraid/embarrassed by”; and could “help to strip away” the “secrecy” and “stigma” of

mental illness (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 21-22, 83-85, 316-317). This feedback

relates to the pathologisation of mental illness as discussed in Chapter Two in

relation to Foucault’s concepts. The audience responded that within the show

mental illness was not being pathologised (that is, it was not objectified or ‘othered’)

but rather depicted as a condition that is widely experienced in many different ways

and that most people sit on a continuum of mental health.

A number of people described the cabaret as a way of sharing experiences of

mental illness, with respondents commenting that the cabaret gave a “glimpse” into

the experience of mental illness and was about “raising awareness of different types

of mental illness/manic depression... [and] the difficulty of dealing with this”

(Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 239, 11-13); and that the performance gave insight into

people’s lives, “open[ing] your eyes to people you just think are weird/crazy”

(Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 239, 11-13, 18-19, 182 - 185).

An unexpected theme in the second feedback forum was a discussion of the

presentation of glamour in the cabaret. Many individuals expressed the desire for

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more glamour, including requests for high heels, feather boas and more sexiness

(Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 591-605, 606-607, 636-641). This point was supported

by arguments that more glamour in the performance could help to keep the

audience “happy” to go to the “dark places”, make the performance “feel finished”,

and place the performance more clearly in the genre of cabaret (Appendix 1.4,

2009, Lines 608-609, 591-605, 606-607). In response the comments, one

respondent asserted that she also liked the unglamorous moments, and suggested

including a mixture of both. Her full comment was as follows:

I liked the contrast of it [the cabaret] not in [high heel] shoes, and maybe not so glam, and I think it would still be good to contrast and it was interesting and brave. ... So there were so moments with the shadows that were quite dark, and I liked the mix of that... so that there could be some moments of spectacle, and I liked the kind of “this is what it is” thing as well. So I think that it would be nice not to abandon that altogether. (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 612- 616)

These comments suggested that more glamour within the performance could further

engage the audience, and that it could be interesting to experiment with a contrast

between moments of extreme glamour and unglamorous or drab moments.

Some individuals requested a stronger narrative through-line to the show.

Two individuals noted that while they enjoyed the “variety” and “choppy

structure”, they found the overall structure “unfinished” and felt the

performance left “many unresolved stories and characters” (Appendix 1.4,

2009, Lines 186-187, 87-89). One of these respondents requested more

“recycling of characters and ideas” to address this point (Appendix 1.4, 2009,

Lines 90- 91). Another respondent stated that they found the narrative

structure “too loose” and felt that this could be assisted by a narrative

“trigger” for each of the songs (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 103- 111).

This feedback suggested the need to have stronger connections between the

scenes of the cabaret and more of a sense of journey within the show. It also

suggested that this could be achieved by providing a stronger narrative through-line

and more contextual information for each song.

A number of people commented that they were more engaged by the second half of

the cabaret than the first half (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines 36- 37, 52, 134- 137). As

stated earlier, in the second work-in-progress showing the first half of the cabaret

was set in an institution and focussed on a formidable emcee character that I termed

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‘The Caretaker’. This section of the cabaret was very intense and serious in contrast

with the more light-hearted second half of the cabaret. The feedback indicated many

audience members were more engaged by the lighter and less intense second half

of the show.

It is also worth noting that there were many comments of praise for the cabaret as a

whole or for specific moments within the cabaret. Some notable comments

described the show as “absorbing” and “wonderful, brave, original and engaging”;

with other respondents stating “the creativity... blows me away” and “you have an

excellent ability to see the truthful humour in a situation” (Appendix 1.4, 2009, Lines

57, 217, 214, 217, 176- 177). These comments were of great value to me as they

reflected the audience’s engagement with the work.

This feedback from the second work-in-progress showing impacted the development

of the cabaret in the following ways:

• I maintained the sudden changes and contrasting moods and atmospheres within the performance, and investigated ways to create greater contrasts in the use of musical styles

• The character of ‘Jo’ was developed with the use of my own personal story as a connection point for the audience and to provide a narrative through-line to the cabaret

• I developed the ‘Jolene’ character to present an extreme pathologising viewpoint. This was intended to show a sharp contrast between a pathologising view of mental illness, and a more empathetic view, thus drawing the audience’s attention to the pathologisation of mental illness. The creation of the ‘Jolene’ character will be further discussed in Chapter Five.

• Glamorous elements were developed in the show, and were used to construct and de-construct the character of ‘Jolene’. (See Chapter Six for a detailed description of the use of glamour within the cabaret.)

• A stronger context was given for many songs in the cabaret. • In response to audience feedback, I cut the gothic-style opening to the

cabaret and adapted the intimidating emcee ‘The Caretaker’ into the character of ‘Jolene’. Feedback stating the intense first half of the cabaret was less engaging than the second half led me to bring a lighter, more playful style to the cabaret as a whole.

In these ways, the feedback from cycle two had a strong impact on the development

of the cabaret. Two major impacts on the cabaret were that this feedback led to a

stronger sense of narrative within the cabaret and to the development of the

character ‘Jolene’.

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Cycle three

Cycle three commenced in 2010 in script development workshops with director

Sandro Colarelli. The working script developed from these workshops was

presented to a panel of my supervisors and two dramaturges, Therese Collie and

Kathryn Kelly, in a staged reading on 16th March, 2010. The final practical stage of

the process involved intensive rehearsals culminating in the final performance of the

cabaret in May 2010.

Cycle three began with script development workshops between Sandro Colarelli and

myself, moving into a third work-in-progress showing and intensive rehearsals for

the cabaret in May 2010. The major developments during this cycle were the

development of the character of ‘Jo’ into a central narrative through-line and the

creation of the character of ‘Jolene’ (the inner critic).

At the beginning of cycle three I began to add more of my story to the cabaret

performance in an effort to explore my own self-stigma, and I likened this to a

woman “facing her demons” (Personal Journal 4th January 2010). This process was

encouraged by Colarelli during script development workshops in February 2010.

Colarelli pushed me to put more and more of my own story into the cabaret

performance. This was a development that I agreed with in theory, but found very

challenging to do in practice, and I noted in my journal:

I have been avoiding this for most of the research... [I have been] writing songs that hint at my experience... talk[ing] about my experience in metaphors, [or] through imagery, [or] talking about emotions and feelings but not the facts of the story... I have been avoiding telling my story... and this is actually at the heart of the piece (Personal Journal 23rd February 2010).

This process led to ‘Jo’ becoming the central protagonist of the cabaret

performance. Through this process I finally allowed my own experiences to be

visible within the cabaret. Further discussion of the character ‘Jo’ is presented in

Chapter Six.

The third work-in-progress showing in March 2010 was set up in an entirely different

fashion to the first two showings. By this stage of the project the cabaret had gone

through two rounds of creative development that led to refinement of the cabaret

and of my own goals within the process. At this stage, my supervisor and I felt there

was the need to receive minor, expert feedback on the process, rather than a large

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amount of general audience feedback. On Tuesday 16th March 2010 I presented a

staged reading of the cabaret to a panel of five people comprised of my supervising

team, Dr Bree Hadley, Professor David Kavanagh and Dr Christine Comans, and

two professional dramaturges, Therese Collie and Kathryn Kelly. After the reading

the panel gave feedback and I noted the points they made. I then transcribed these

notes into my journal. Due to the small amount of data, I chose not to do a data

analysis of these notes, but instead took each point into consideration when working

towards the May 2010 performance.

I will discuss each of the panel’s points in turn, and then reflect on the impact each had on the project.

Firstly, the panel asserted that there was a need to revisit the relationship between

the verbatim aspect of the show and the aim of the show to be provocative

(Personal Journal 16th March, 2010). This point encouraged me to develop more of

a provocative relationship between ‘Jolene’ and the other characters in the cabaret,

and to experiment with ways of showing how the other characters’ stories affected

‘Jolene’.

Secondly, Collie suggested the cabaret could present the points of view of family

and friends of individuals with depression/bi-polar disorder and explore the

difficulties in this area (Personal Journal 16th March 2010). In response I added the

character of ‘the mother’. This character was created from material from the public

domain relating experiences of carers and will be further discussed later in this

chapter.

Thirdly, the panel commented that there needed to be a clearer relationship

between the ‘Jo’ character and the ‘Jolene’ character (Personal Journal 16th March

2010). In response I added a number of sections in which ‘Jolene’ would castigate

‘Jo’ or ‘Jo’ would continue one of the ‘Jolene’s’ statements. In addition, I created a

clearer relational journey between ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’ in which ‘Jolene’ is reduced in

power, while ‘Jo’ grows stronger. Further information about this can be found in

Chapter Six.

The fourth piece of feedback from the panel related to projection titles that I had

planned to use to designate specific scenes. The panel felt that these projections

could give a misleading impression of a singular truth within a verbatim. In response

to these comments, I decided to cut the projections from the cabaret.

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The fifth piece of feedback was that I needed to further consider the question: “What

is driving us through the show?” (Personal Journal 16th March, 2010). This question

made me more strongly consider my intention for the cabaret and how I could lead

the audience through the cabaret and the central dramatic tension within the work.

In response to this feedback I began to experiment with showing different versions

of ‘Jo’ within the cabaret, and the way that these different versions are a response to

‘Jolene’ and the interviewee characters. A detailed description of the presentation of

‘Jo’ in the cabaret can be found in Chapter Six.

The panel made a number of comments regarding the ‘Jolene’ character stating

that: her performance of The Naughty Song needed a stronger contextualisation;

that she could represent society’s strict attitude to failure; and that the character

needed more of a journey (Personal Journal 16th March, 2010). The first two

suggestions were incorporated in the opening speech of the cabaret in which

‘Jolene’ proclaims that people must “control” their minds, and that if they do not do

this they are “weak” and “very, very naughty” (Mind Games script May 2010, 2).

During The Naughty Song she proceeds to proclaim “You’re a total failure, unworthy

of love” (Mind Games script May 2010, 3). The third suggestion was incorporated as

the deconstruction of ‘Jolene’ as the cabaret progressed. This is discussed in detail

in Chapter Six.

The panel noted that the cabaret structure felt predictable in that the first half of the

show focused on ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’ and then the second half focused on the

interviewees (Personal Journal 16th March 2010). I addressed this aspect by

incorporating more interviewees stories in the first half of the cabaret, and by

‘spacing out’ my own story within the cabaret.

The panel also made a number of comments that were not incorporated into the

show (Personal Journal, March 16th 2010). These comments were discussed with

the director (Colarelli) and some were explored within rehearsals, but found to be

either impractical in performance, or not relevant to my own goals with the work.

Chapters Five and Six will provide further description of the ways this feedback was

reflected within the cabaret development and final performance.

The action research methodology described above allowed the research to change

direction in response to outside feedback, research and personal reflections. The

feedback from each cycle had a strong impact on the development of the work.

Each stage of the research project involved conscious reflection on the stages

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undertaken, and the direction for the future, and on the best ways to proceed. In

addition, each strategy used in the research was constantly under evaluation. The

cycles of the work and feedback allowed me to move between intimacy and distance

with the work, to gain new perspectives, and to reflect on my own goals and

intentions within the work. Within each cycle valuable audience feedback provided

me with a sense of which aspects of the performance engaged the audience, and

also encouraged me to: bring more of myself to the cabaret; explore bolder

aesthetic concepts; and to clarify my own intentions within the work.

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Allowing the practice to lead the research: My epistemological journey

A central aim of my research has been to allow my creative practice to lead the

research. This process involved a struggle to articulate an epistemologically clear

position and was affected by: my focus and theoretical goals; changes in personnel

of the project; my application of White’s narrative therapy; and my concept of my

own sense of self-stigma. As I journeyed through the research, I struggled to

address the challenges of self-reflexivity and critical agency.

Cycle one of the process can be defined by search for therapeutic experience and a

lack of critical reflectivity. As discussed earlier in this chapter, during the first cycle

of the research I was experiencing an episode of depression. At this time I intended

for the cabaret to be therapeutic in focus, and pondered in my journal:

Music can transform pain into beauty. The act of transformation is the healing. What could happen if peoples’ personal stories of pain, heartbreak and loss would be transformed into art with a community focus? (Personal Journal 21st March, 2008)

At this stage, the goal of the research was to create a therapeutic cabaret that

addressed social issues. In an academic document at the end of cycle one, I stated

that the project was “based on the notion that storytelling and drama can be used as

a form of healing” (Confirmation Document 2009, 13, Appendix 1.10). At the time

was I strongly influenced by UK Drama therapist Mary Duggan’s position that drama

allows individuals to explore concepts within a safe environment, and to “move

outward from ourselves to a source of being which is not us” (Duggan and Grainger

1997, 3-4, quoted in Confirmation Document 2009, 13 – 14, Appendix 1.10). I was

also influenced by the Jungian concept of the therapeutic potential of connecting

individuals with myths and archetypes that represented “the collective archetypes of

the unconscious” (Hyde and McGuinness 1992, p. 65 quoted in Confirmation

Document 2009, 17-18, Appendix 1.10). I articulated that I was “interested in

exploring the healing potential within myths, by using myth as a point of inspiration

within the creative process” (Confirmation Document 2009, 18 Appendix 1.10).

According to Dickerson (2010) my epistemology at the time would be described as

“individualizing”, in which individuals are seen as “fixed” with an “essential” nature,

and pathologies lie “within the person” (Dickerson 2010, 351). Within this approach

“persons, problems, and change are individual concerns” and individuals should

strive towards “actualization” (Dickerson 2010, 351). Due to the fact I was

depressed at the time, I feel that I was searching for a therapeutic result for myself,

but was unsure how to find it. I hadn’t examined my own thought processes and

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was reaching out to theories entitled ‘therapeutic’. At the time I thought I wanted to

unsettle thinking about mental health issues, but was in fact using an essentialist

approach that stressed a fixed notion of identity and concepts.

The creative exploration in September 2008 (towards the first showing of the work)

was in collaboration with director Ben Knapton and pianist Philippe Klaus. In

retrospect, this phase was a series of tentative steps into the thematic terrain. As the

first time I had worked with the director Knapton and the first cabaret that Knapton

had directed, we engaged in a very open, experimental approach. As a

commissioned director Knapton was involved to help me reach my performance

goals, and because I was unclear about these goals, the rehearsal process became

fluid and tangential. The September creative development resulted in some very

interesting performance concepts and the “germs” of creative ideas, but overall was

not a clear or focussed process. As the first stage of creative development I believe

this was a very valuable stage that allowed the practice to lead the research. It also

exposed my own unclear epistemological position, and led to valuable feedback and

self reflection. In the performance songs were interspersed with sections of interview

transcripts, presenting in a fairly neutral performance style. This style was

encouraged by Knapton who argued against the show being highly emotional and

asked me to “turn down” the emotion and make the piece more “heightened,

imaginative [and] non-linear” and less connected to specific characters (Personal

Journal 23rd September 2008, Appendix 1.1). The songs were generally based on

my own experiences of depression with the exception of the songs “My therapist my

friend” and “I’m flying” which transformed verbatim interview text into song verses.

The songs based on my own experiences were kept intentionally vague. They were

not given a context, or explained to be from my own experience. The opening song

“I’m fine” sung into a child’s toy phone, actually reflected my own struggle at the

time. The chorus, “I’m fine, just fine” sung in a happy, jazzy style, gave way to

improvised verses of strange, wailing sounds (Personal Journal 5th September 2008,

Appendix 1.1). The final song, featuring the lyrics “If I can just unravel my head, and

climb right out of my mind, then I’ll be fine” (Personal Journal 20th September 2008,

Appendix 1.1) was performed as I moved the piano across the floor (with pianist

Klaus trying to keep up). This song was a powerful image of an individual fighting

their own mind, trying to push an almost immovable force. In retrospect, this was

when my own sense of self-stigma was very strong. I desperately wanted to talk

about mental health in the performance, but didn’t want to actually admit that any of

the stories were my own. Ironically, many of the audience assumed that all of the

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stories in the cabaret were my own, and this caused much confusion in trying to

make sense of the competing narratives within the show (Appendix 1.4, 2008, Lines

168 – 174).

In cycle two, I began to clarify a post-structuralist epistemology for the project, and

to explore a large-scale exploration of historical, societal forces. At the beginning of

the second cycle I was made aware through academic feedback and my own

reflections of the contradictions within the research project (Personal Journal, 15th

April, 2009), and began to put more thought and reflection into the writing and

performance of the work. This cycle was marked by a greater harmony between my

epistemology and creative choices, and by extremity in the use of contrasting

performance styles. Prompted initially by academic critique, I spent April to June

2009, examining my own motivations for the project. In my journal I noted that my

supervisor Bree Hadley asked me to “make a clearer relationship between myself

AND the material, and to draw more attention to the tension between ‘Jo’ and ‘the

stories’ ” (Personal Journal 15th April, 2009). At the time I became interested in using

performative techniques from Brecht’s Alienation effect to explore Narrative Therapy

and to use “the power of distancing to discuss melancholy and mania” (Personal

Journal, 22nd April 2009).

In early June 2009 I had a thought provoking conversation with Margi Brown Ash

about the use of ‘distancing effects’ in a performance of the principles of narrative

therapy. I related that while I was interested in combining “distancing perspectives

of Brechtian techniques... and the distancing perspectives of narrative therapy by

using ‘personas’, humour and exaggeration in performance”, I was concerned about

distancing the audience “for the entire thing [show]” (Personal Journal Monday 8th

June 2009). I noted in my journal that:

Margi spoke passionately in response that she feels that Brecht is often misinterpreted as promoting “no feeling” and that she feels this is inaccurate. She believes that Brechtian alienation is about seeing things from “multiple perspectives”, and engaging the mind, heart and spirit. She also commented that while she thinks Narrative Therapy is about distancing, this distancing is achieved through focussing on developing “multiple perspectives”. These comments have helped me to clarify what I’d like to create. They also made me reflect on Brecht plays I love and the way these have often heartbreaking moments, and can be performed with many layers… but that then these emotional moments are broken and the audience is also given a chance to reflect. (Personal Journal, 8th June 2009)

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In June 2009 I began working with dramaturge Therese Collie who helped me to

further analyse my central focus. In my journal I documented my responses to

Collie’s dramaturgical questions:

Therese’s first question: What perceptions do you want to unsettle? My ideas:

surprising an audience with their own preconceptions look at how we are expected to have a ‘strong façade’ (this is from my

own experience of trying to keep up the façade) questioning your ability to function in the world if you are affected by

mental health – look at people’s perceptions around this issue drawing attention to the inner critic inside people’s minds Being sane in an insane world? Sharing the story of an extreme experience of the mind Encouraging the audience to think

[What are the] Aims of the performance [?]…

• a process of ‘personal shaking up’ • investigate the idea that vulnerability = weakness • look at the power of the inner critic • look at the appeal of criticising others (and insecurities) • blurring truth and reality in order to…

question the audience’s judgement of stories, characters and issues playing ‘Mind Games’ with the audience. (Personal Journal 17th June 2009)

These journal excerpts reveal my interest in interrogating perceptions, thought

processes and concepts of “truth” and “reality”. At this time I was interested in using

the principles of White’s narrative therapy in order to question audiences’ pre-

conceptions, and present multiple perspectives within the work. In July 2009, I

began to read more of Michael White’s academic work about his therapeutic

process and specifically his discussion of the ‘remanufacture of identity’ and his

references to Foucault’s work on Language and Power (Personal Journal, 22nd July

2009). By August 2009, I had articulated my central research question as “How can I

create a cabaret that will unsettle/ destabilize normalising judgements about

depression and bi-polar disorder?” (Personal Journal 3rd August 2009), and had

become firmly anchored in a post-structuralist epistemology.

In December 2009 I performed a second work in progress showing of the work, with

directorial assistance from Therese Collie. The post-structuralist concepts behind

the work were expressed in four distinctive and extreme performance styles, aimed

to represent four distinctive ways of thinking about mental health. A full description

of these performative styles and details of the performance are provided in Chapter

Five. However, while appearing stylistically ‘bold’, the second work in progress

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showing still shied away from revelation of my personal experiences of depression.

Although the character of ‘Jo’ appeared in the cabaret, she only revealed her

difficulty in writing the cabaret show, rather than her personal struggles with

depression. ‘Jo’ addressed the audience at the beginning, middle and end of the

cabaret with comments including “I’m trying to write this show and it’s not going very

well... it just feels impossible to make sense of,... and I feel like giving up.... well it’s

a bit of mess actually... it just feels impossible to make sense of” (Personal Journal

30th November 2009, Appendix 1.1). These sections were intended to use the

concept of a performer struggling with putting on a show as an analogy for an

individual struggling with mental health issues. However in retrospect I feel that this

was another way for me to avoid being honest about my own experiences of

depression. It seems that my self-stigma was still a strong force in silencing my own

voice within the cabaret performance. At this time, director Sandro Colarelli had

been commissioned to direct the May 2010 version of the cabaret and he attended

the performance.... commented to me later that he interpreted the performance as

“the journey of a woman and her grappling with her demons” (Personal Journal 9th

December 2009). After the second performance cycle I reflected in my journal that I

wanted to made the show more personal, “simple and straightforward”, commenting:

I’ve been having a re-think of my approach, and feel like I need to go back to being simple and straightforward... asking what it is that my show is doing... and for me it’s about the power of cabaret to dispel stigma (Personal Journal, 27th December 2009).

In getting my head around a post-structuralist approach, I felt I had made the

performance overly- generalized, and now felt the need to move towards a personal

cabaret that shared my own experience. In cycle three, I aimed to combine the

generalized exploration of mental concepts with the expression of my own personal

story and the personal stories of the interviewees. The solution I arrived at was to

present three perspectives in dialectic:

• The perspective of trying to overcome my own ‘self-stigma’ in relation to depression.

• The perspective in which depression and bipolar disorder is ‘pathologised’ (This perspective will be represented by the character of Marlene Dietrich within the performance.)

• The multiple perspectives from other people’s personal experiences of depression and bipolar disorder. (Framing Document 2010, 9, Appendix 1.11)

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At the time I described these perspectives as “aspects of my own personal

experiences” and stated my intention to “externalize my own internal dialogue” and

explore “a range of perspectives of an issue” (Framing Document 2010, 9, Appendix

1.11). The development of the ‘Jo’ character within the cabaret is discussed in detail

in Chapter Five.

After my final show in May 2010, I realised that I had a major mismatch between the

theoretical document I had written to frame the performance, and the final show

itself. The document I had written at the time (the ‘framing document’) was

submitted to the examiners in early May 2010. This document articulated my goal to

play games of truth through presenting three different perspectives within the

performance. These three perspectives were: my attempt to overcome my own

experience of ‘self-stigma’; the pathologisation of depression and bipolar disorder;

and of the interviewees’ personal experiences of depression or bipolar disorder. I

aimed to present these three different perspectives in a dialectical relationship

drawing attention to the clashes and inconsistencies between them.

Upon viewing a video of the performance, it was clear that this aim was not reflected

in the creative work. Upon reflecting on this mismatch between my theory and my

practice, in June 2010 I returned to Brad Haseman’s article on practice-led research,

and noted the following paragraph:

Lincoln and Denzin… relish the instability created by these messy forms of research arguing they have “reshaped entirely the debates around ‘appropriate’ scientific discourse, the technical and rhetorical conventions of scientific writing, and the meaning of research itself. (Lincoln and Denzin cited by Haseman, 2006)

I commented in my journal that:

“what I’ve got now is a ‘messy’, ‘unstable’ situation. The results of the research have not fitted the intentions. Perhaps the intentions of the research inspired the artistic direction? The intentions were a leaping off point for the work”. (Personal Journal 24th June, 2010)

In trying to make sense of my situation, I was encouraged by Barbara Bolt’s

description of a PhD project by visual artist Hockney in which he used a “visual

argument” as part of his research:

Finally, and most importantly, Hockney’s visual argument demonstrates the double articulation between theory and practice, whereby theory emerges from a reflexive practice at the same time

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that practice is informed by theory. This double articulation is central to practice-led research. (Bolt 2006, 4)

The challenge for me in the final parts of my research project was to explore such a

“double articulation”; to allow the theory to inform the practice, and the practice to

inform the theory. I particularly noted the way I needed to be totally in the realm of

the practical at times, and then after the process to return to a reflexive theoretical

model. I have found the creative process to be a completely different ‘head space’,

a space where intuitive processes are privileged. I noted in my journal:

I was working in a creative collaboration with Sandro the director ....For me the creative process is a totally different head space ... I enjoy working in collaborative relationships with people – and Sandro had an enormous impact on the creative work. While in the rehearsal room we argued ideas back and forth – and I was very much empowered as a co-creator... but at this point the work had a different agenda – to do the best show we could do... and I guess to be true to the show and ‘allow the show to reveal itself to us’. Now the final product has become something different to what I intended – and I feel like this is a natural part of the creative process. You can never know what is going to happen within a creative process... it is a creative experiment. The theory I had in my framing document was a kind of ‘leaping off’ point for the work... rather than a map. (Personal Journal 1st July, 2010)

Practice-led research generates a different kind of outcome to those of more

traditional forms of research. Practice-led research is by nature an experimental

process that often has unexpected results. As Barrett states:

Rather than attempting to contort aims, objectives and outcomes to satisfy criteria set for more established models of research, I believe there is a need to generate appropriate discourses to convince assessors and policy-makers that within the context of studio-based research, innovation is derived from methods that cannot always be pre-determined, and ‘outcomes’ of artistic research are necessarily unpredictable. (Barrett 2006, 2)

Barrett argues for the notion of “materializing practices” in relation to practice-led

research. In this process there is a “dialogic relationship” between the practice and

writing of the exegesis. In her words:

Materializing practices constitute relationships between process and text – of which the first iteration is necessarily the researcher’s own self-reflexive mapping of the emergent work as enquiry. Elsewhere, (Barrett 2003), I have argued that a dialogic relationship between studio practice and the writing of the creative arts exegesis is crucial to articulating and harnessing studio methodologies for further application. (Barrett 2006, 5)

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I have employed this “materializing” approach in my own research in order to allow

the practice to inform the theory. By analysing the video document of the cabaret

Mind Games I was able to identify my application of principles of White’s narrative

therapy. This observation led me to a conscious analysis of my own personal goals

and performance making methods. A discussion of the creative methods employed

in this study and an analysis of the Mind Games cabaret is presented in Chapters

Five and Six. The unexpected results that I encountered through my practice

utilising research and theories from theoretical perspectives proved to be of major

interest.

Conclusion

Within this study an autoethnographic approach has drawn attention to my own

personal voice and subjectivity within the research process, and has allowed for

discussion and consideration of ethical concerns from a personal perspective.

Practice-led research has allowed me to foreground and privilege the artistic

practice within which I am working, and through action research I have made use of

multiple reflective cycles. In addition, the autoethnographic, practice-led, action

research methodology has allowed my own personal journey and transformation to

show itself within the research and within the performance. Through using this

methodology I was able to reflect on the unexpected results of my final performance

work in light of my own personal experiences and the way I represented myself in

the performance, and relate this back to the literature and contextual review. My

methodology has been highly compatible with White’s re-authoring process in the

following ways:

• Autoethnography allowed me to base theoretical concepts in my own

subjective experience, thus following Michael White’s approach of focussing

on one individual’s own understanding and re-authoring of their story.

• Practice-led research allowed me to see the practice for what it became (to

use the practice to inform theory), and to make sense of this in relation to my

own personal story. This process allowed me to witness myself and the way

I tell my own story.

• Action research allowed for cycles of change within the research. This

allowed the research to transform itself in response to new information and

points of view. This process allowed me to change my story.

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Chapter Four: The personal and the provocative in contemporary cabaret

Introduction

Principles of White’s narrative therapy encourage individuals to re-author their own

lives in order to play games of truth. The cabaret Mind Games performed games of

truth around personal stories through harnessing existing performance techniques of

contemporary cabaret. As mentioned in Chapter One, the terms personal and

provocative cabaret describe two forms of contemporary cabaret. Personal cabaret

creates an intimate relationship between the performance and the audience, while

provocative cabaret shifts this relationship between distance and intimacy. This

chapter will describe the forms of personal and provocative cabaret in reference to

the historical development of cabaret and the work of specific contemporary artists.

In Chapters Five and Six, the application of elements of both of these styles of

contemporary cabaret within Mind Games is discussed in relation to principles of

White’s narrative therapy.

As discussed in Chapter One, I have defined persona as a performed character that

is intentionally non-realistic and emphasises certain character traits. These

characteristics are heightened and constructed in consciously performative ways. I

have identified two types of persona within provocative cabaret: the provocateur and

the vamp. The term provocateur describes a performance persona that combines

comic music with biting, often caustic, humour; and the term vamp describes a

performance persona that emphasises constructed femininity. These personas have

strong links with the history of cabaret.

My contextual review focuses on seven contemporary cabaret artists: one artist who

works in personal cabaret, and six artists from the field of provocative cabaret. For

the purposes of brevity an extended study of personal cabaret artists has not been

undertaken. Rather, a description of personal cabaret has been used in this study to

briefly outline a major trend in mainstream cabaret, and to provide a point of contrast

to provocative cabaret. Personal cabaret artist Queenie Van der Zant is an

Australian cabaret artist who presents her own personal experiences in combination

with well known songs. A description of Van der Zant provides a contrast to the six

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provocative cabaret artists who can be described as provocateurs or vamps. In this

study, the provocateurs are Eddie Perfect and Tim Minchin from Australia, and

Dusty Limits from the United Kingdom. The vamps are Camille O’Sullivan from the

United Kingdom, and Meow Meow and Paul Capsis from Australia. The discussion

of contemporary cabaret is informed by the history of cabaret. Cabaret is a form that

pays tribute to its history, and constantly acknowledges its musical and stylistic

heritages. For this reason I include details of this history within the contextual

review. Historical discussions of cabaret are also used to explore the development

of the personas of the provocateur and the vamp. This chapter will also discuss the

importance of humour in cabaret, and will focus on the use of parodic humour by the

provocateurs and the vamps in relation to its effect on the audience. This style of

humour is used to create a dynamic relationship between the performer and the

audience that moves between intimacy and distance.

The playful form of cabaret

Appignanesi describes cabaret as creating a formula for entertainment through the

combination of “a tang of eroticism, a touch of sentimentality, music with

contemporary words, a strong rhythm, or a melody which can be whistled, and...

anything that produces laughter (1976, 129-130). This formula is clearly enacted in

the work of Perfect, Minchin, Limits, O’Sullivan, Meow Meow and Capsis.

Cabaret presents songs in direct address with an audience, often in intimate

performance spaces. A sense of playful laughter and “piercing wit” is at the heart of

the cabaret (Appignanesi 1976, 11). Since its origination in the late nineteenth

century, cabaret has brought together ‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms, intellectualism and

hedonism in a self-consciously performative art form with a focus on laughter and

entertainment (Appignanesi 1976, 11). Direct address in cabaret breaks down the

”illusory fourth wall” of the theatre (Appignanesi 1976 ,12). Audience involvement is

central to a cabaret performance, for, as Harrington says, “cabaret is participational.

Audience energy affects cabaret far more than it does any other art form... in

cabaret, audience rapport is the bottom line” (Harrington 2000, 14- 15).

With a focus on engaging the audience, cabaret erodes the distinction between

‘high’ and ‘low’ art forms with an emphasis on the use of popular song forms

(Friedman 2008, 320). This characteristic can be seen in the performances of

Australian artists Tim Minchin and Meow Meow. In his performances, Minchin

brings his virtuosic piano skills to light hearted songs, while Meow Meow will often

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interrupt an impressive performance of an ‘art song’ to give her technician directions

on the lighting state.

Personal cabaret

In what I identify as personal cabaret, a performer focuses on creating a sense of

intimacy with the audience through the interpretation of well-known songs to express

a personal connection or truth. This approach has been used by range of cabaret

acts to the point where it has become a cliché; in the words of Tedrick, “many

people think of cabaret purely as an art form for aging (mostly female) singers, or

crooners who sing retrospectives of the American Musical Theatre Songbooks”

(2006, 74). Personal cabaret generally avoids any sense of danger and provocation

to focus on creating a sense of intimacy and connection with an audience. In this

style the performer ‘opens up’ to their audience, often sharing personal anecdotes

that are related to well know songs. The personal sharing also occurs through the

singer’s interpretation of the songs and the way they “bring [their] inner self to bear

upon” a song (Harrington 2000, 96). Personal cabaret exploits techniques discussed

by Harrington and Eaker in The Cabaret Artist’s Handbook (Harrington 2000).

Harrington advises cabaret artists to create an “exchange of trust” and “feeling of

intimate communication” with their audiences (Harrington 2000, 15). He gives

examples of the “great cabaret singer” (for example Peggy Lee) who has “star

quality”, and describes this singer as “a performer whose extraordinary talent can

not only reach an audience, but can powerfully connect with it and create the illusion

of sharing a highly personal experience” (Harrington 2000, 41). Harrington

encourages cabaret performers to “deeply connect” with each song, and “share their

soul” with the audience, asserting that “to be drawn into an intimate cabaret act,

audiences must feel that they are learning something about you, that something is

being revealed” (106). For Harrington, “good cabaret” provides a “cathartic

adventure” for the performer and audience alike, and creates a sense of ‘real-ness’

or truth:

Good cabaret feels real. It connects audience and performer in a mutual embrace that can be powerfully meaningful to those able to open themselves up to the experience. It’s a heightened form of personal communication in a world where too many messages come by fax machine. (Harrington 2000, 28)

In her introduction to Harrington’s didactic volume, Eaker (2000) supports these

concepts with her statement “Cabaret is a distinctive art that requires a lot of soul

searching, risk taking, creativity, and honesty” (Eaker 2000, 7).

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One example of an artist who performs in the personal cabaret style is Australian

Queenie Van de Zandt. Van de Zandt has a career as an actor and performer in

musical theatre and cabaret. Two of her cabaret performances, No Holds Barred

(2010) and Cabaret in 12 Easy Steps (2008), are very clear examples of the

personal cabaret style in that they combine well-known songs with stories of self

revelation. In No Holds Barred, Van De Zandt shares her experience as a cabaret

artist and talks “about the highlights and the lowlights of her career” (Bhudiya

2010)3. One reviewer described her performance as a combination of “anecdotes,

beautiful songs where she sings from the heart... as well as insightful observations”

in a “no holds barred self expose” (Bhudiya 2010). In Cabaret in 12 Easy Steps, Van

De Zandt presented a mock self help seminar “with a loopy and occasionally very

funny 12-step introduction to showbiz” (Lloyd 2008). She used this format in order

to share her own experiences as a cabaret performer, “revealing the person behind

the performer” (Lloyd 2008). Van De Zandt’s combination of jokes, personal

revelation and well known songs in these cabaret shows is characteristic of the

personal cabaret style.

From a post-structuralist epistemology, Personal cabaret presents a ‘fixed’ and

‘truthful’ notion of the self. As discussed in Chapter Three, Heddon would describe

this presentation of the self as problematic as it does not acknowledge the self as a

“discursive construct” (Heddon 2008, 151). This notion of the self is also

incompatible with White’s concept of authenticity (as discussed in Chapter Two). For

White, authenticity is not a communication of an inner, fixed truth but is instead an

acknowledgement of “preferred identity claims” (White 2004b, 34). In the Mind

Games cabaret I attempted to apply performance techniques from Personal cabaret

within a post-structuralist framework. This application and my endeavour to

problematise notions of a fixed and truthful performance self is discussed in

Chapters Six and Seven.

Provocative cabaret: Pleasing and teasing the audience

Rather than a “cathartic” purging (Harrington 2006) of emotion, the provocateurs

and the vamps of contemporary cabaret enliven their audience through pleasing and

                                                             

3 Page number unavailable; newspaper review.  Full references for all reviews and quotes including section reference or URL are provided in the reference list. 

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teasing or “stoking and striking” their audience (Perfect quoted in Rose 2005a).

Provocateurs please their audience through the use of comedy and song, and then

tease the audience through biting social and political critique. The vamps please

through sensuality and comedy, and tease through drawing attention to the

constructed nature of femininity. The vamps also draw attention to the vulnerability

of the diva persona, using the form to make a social commentary. In these ways, the

provocateurs and the vamps constantly change their relationship with the audience

between one of intimacy and one of distance. The technique of distancing, or as

Brecht terms it Verfremdungseffekt, can make an audience consciously think about

what it is they are viewing on stage (Ewen 1992, 356). In provocative cabaret, a

constant flux between intimacy and estrangement creates a dynamic in which the

audience is entertained and relaxed by the performance, and also encouraged to

think about issues. Thus, the provocative cabaret style encourages the audience to

consider issues within a relaxed and playful environment.

The history of the provocateur

For the purposes of this research I have defined the provocateur as a cabaret artist

who uses popular song forms and humour to present pointed critiques of society,

social groups or individuals. The cabaret can be seen to have originated with an

intent to provoke. The early cabarets of Paris in the 1890s were run by

conférenciers (or performing comperes) such as Rudolphe Salis and Aristide Bruant

who delighted in attacking middle-class attitudes and insulting their audience

through their songs and jokes (Appignanesi 2004, 11, 22; Senelick 1989, 24, 42). In

Weimar Germany (between World War I and World War II) this tradition of

provocation was continued in the cabaret performances of Walter Mehring and Kurt

Tucholsky. An anarchist with sympathies towards the left, Mehring “remained non-

aligned politically” (Senelick 1993, 72) and critiqued both sides of the political fence

(Appignanesi 2004, 133). Tucholsky also remained politically unaffiliated and, under

various pseudonyms, “attacked nationalism, militarism, philistinism, organized

religion, the bureaucracy, the blindness of justice, the wishiwashiness of the liberal

press, and the opportunism of the Social Democratic party” (Senelick 1993, 57).

Salis, Bruant, Mehring and Tucholsky can be seen as provocateurs in that they are

highly critical of many points of view (and often critique all sides of the political

sphere), and delight in insulting and provoking their audience. In addition, their

polemic messages are delivered through witty wordplay and popular song forms.

This technique was exemplified by Walter Mehring, who was accomplished in the

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Berlinese street dialogue of the city; his chansons “combined irreverently free

associations, jazz tempos, and a big city language of slogans and hoarding

advertisements” (Appignanesi 2004, 133).

The history of the vamp

I define the vamp as a persona of constructed femininity who combines the

vulnerability of the feminine and the figure of the diva. The vamp persona can be

seen to have originated in France in the 1880s with Yvette Guilbert (Senelick 1989,

39), and has been associated with the performers Marya Delvard, Anna Akhmatova,

and Marlene Dietrich. The vamp persona also incorporates notions of the diva.

Yvette Guilbert, one of the few female cabaret performers in the 1880s, often

performed Bruant’s songs in a performance style defined by contradictions that

enticed her audience Guilbert’s “hoarse, mournful voice with its touch of hysteria

could both bring to life Bruant’s harlots and infuse meaning into a sentimental lyric”

(Appignanesi 1976, 30). As Senelick states, Guilbert’s “nuanced, suggestive mode

of recitation… provided a model for performers in the intimate new ambiance of the

cabaret” (Senelick 1989, 39). Her performance was also characterised by

contradictions; as Appignanesi writes, “She was at once the weary, ageing, cynical

coquette, and the pure English governess longing for spiritual love” (Appignanesi

2004, 28).

Guilbert was one of the first performers to present what Ruttkowski (2001) has

termed a “prostitute song” in which a favourite topic “is the gradual decline in a

woman’s life... It is the contrast between the ‘glamour’ of the still young ‘cocotte’ and

the misery of her last years of life that moves most writers the most, a quasi-

baroque fascination with the motif of decay” (Ruttkowski 2001, 57, italics as in

original). According to Ruttkowski, the “prostitute song” presents “an ironic

exaggeration of the prostitute”, for the vamp “does not take herself quite seriously”

(Ruttkowski 2001, 59 ). This self-consciousness, revealed in the “prostitute song” is

an important facet of the vamp. In order to perform these songs, the performer

needs to “take distance” from herself, and self-consciously focus on her own self-

representation. As Ruttkowski (2001) states:

The singer-actress must be able to “step aside” or take distance from herself and to characterize herself, directly or indirectly. The prostitute song therefore cannot be an historically early form of song, like the “working song”, the “dancing song”, or the “drinking song”. It is part of a stage of cultural development in which people have already learned

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to see themselves “sociologically” – that is, to see behind their present condition a development which, under special environmental influences, has led them to their present state. (56- 57)

In Germany at the turn of the century another female in cabaret began to use a

complex, mournful performance style. Credited with being the “first stage vamp of

the century”, at Die Elf Scharfrichter (The Eleven Executioners), Marya Delvard

performed Wedekind’s Ilse – a song that tells of a young woman’s fall from grace.

I was a child of fifteen, A pure, innocent child, When I first experienced, How sweet the joys of love are ... Since that day I love them all, Life’s most beautiful spring is mine. And when I no longer please anyone, I will gladly be buried. (translated from German in Appignanesi 1976, 46, 43)

Delvard performed in a striking black dress, intoning the song in a “tired

melancholy... wearing the expression of a grand tragedienne” (Appignanesi 2004,

46 - 47).

A black dress was also the costume of choice for Russian cabaret artist Anna

Akhmatova. Performing at Brodyachaya Sobaka (The Stray Dog Cabaret), she

would “find her way through the dark, litter-filled courtyard to make a grand

entrance, regal in black silk with a huge oval cameo on her belt” (Appignanesi 2004,

101). A “great tragedienne” with a “mesmerizing” voice, Akhmatova chose to present

the darker side of life, singing songs about “unhappy carousers, sheltering from a

natural or perhaps political storm” (Appignanesi 2004, 102).

This tradition paved the way for Marlene Dietrich, arguably the most famous vamp of

all time. Dietrich began performing in the cabaret-revues in 1920s Berlin (Jelavich

1993, 193), and the Weimar influence on her performance style is clearly shown in

her portrayal of cabaret artist “Lola-Lola” in the 1929 film The Blue Angel:

Dietrich performs Lola-Lola’s femininity in the way of a grand Madame, an arch-female whose act is still played out in various pastiche forms today…[and] the kind of steely seduction Dietrich gave to the part is all Weimar. (Appignanesi 2004, 166)

During the film, Lola Lola taunts her lover and “renders him progressively more

jealous with her insolent sexuality veiling a cool impassivity” (Appignanesi 1976,

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126). Lola-Lola is both cruel and seductive, highly promiscuous and impassive,

qualities best summed up by in the lyrics to one of her songs:

Men cluster round me like moths round a flame And if they burn, I’m not to blame. (quoted in Appignanesi 1976, 128)

Through exaggerated gestures, costume and performance style, the vamp presents

a heightened self-conscious, a ‘tongue-in-cheek’ performance. The persona is

created through “witty word plays, innuendos and asides; in exaggerations, which

are not meant to be taken seriously, in pathos, which nobody believes in, neither

the performers nor the audience... the exaggerated use of stylistic elements, which

previously had been taken seriously, for the purpose of entertainment” (Ruttkowski

2001, 59).

These vampish characteristics of heightened, self-conscious performativity relate to

notions of the diva. Pope and Leonardi (1996) describe the diva as a combination of

“two conflicting” representations: “the diva as an icon of powerful womanhood” and

“a queer reading of the diva as an icon of performativity” (20). In combining these

representations “the diva makes visible the seams and fissures of a culture’s gender

and sexual ideology” and “unsettles gender oppositions” (Pope and Leonardi 1996,

20-21).

The vamp is defined by her contradictions. She is alluring, yet harsh; sweet but

sexual; the femme fatale, seductive and dangerous, fragile and steely, sentimental

and cynical, combining elements of light and dark. The vamp pleases with her

sensuality, and teases by presenting the darker side of life, or sexually provoking the

audience. It could also be said that she teases through her contradictions, as she is

impossible to ‘work out’. The vamp constructs herself as an enigma.

The contemporary provocateurs

The provocateurs delight in making pointed, provocative critiques in a comic,

musical style. Eddie Perfect, Tim Minchin and Dusty Limits can be seen to be

continuing the tradition of the provocateur in cabaret, for they are funny, musical

entertainers who use cutting humour to make pointed critiques. Perfect and Minchin

are Australian cabaret artists who write and perform their own songs, using music

and humour to entertain their audiences and to make cutting political critiques. As

Woodhead (2006) comments, “Eddie Perfect and Tim Minchin... harness the

subversive horsepower of the [cabaret] form to provide something more powerful

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and discomforting than pure entertainment”. Born in Melbourne, Perfect discovered

his song writing abilities while studying at The Western Australian Academy for the

Performing Arts (WAAPA). Since completing his studies he has worked as a cabaret

performer, composer and actor in cabaret, musical theatre and television. Minchin,

an Australian born in Perth, also studied at WAAPA, and has had a career as a

cabaret performer, composer and actor. For the purposes of this contextual review, I

will focus on Perfect’s and Minchin’s cabaret performances. Dusty Limits (the stage

name of Mark McInnes) is a UK based cabaret performer whose skills include those

of compere, singer and comedian. Originally from Australia, Limits has performed in

the UK cabaret scene since 1999. He has also performed as an actor on stage and

film, often under the pseudonym Dorian Black. Perfect, Minchin and Limits deliver

their critiques through a humorous musical form. Humour is the basis of the

provocateurs’ art form, and their style is typically biting and caustic: humour that is

sharpened to make a cutting point.

Eddie Perfect’s humour has been described as “bitingly sharp, outrageously harsh,

hilariously wrong…[calling] people's bluffs on everything from racism to detention

centres” (Mcdonald 2004). Perfect’s Drink Pepsi, Bitch toured throughout Australia

and to the Edinburgh festival. The show, a caustic critique of commercialisation,

expressed Perfect’s view that:

Every day we are bombarded with a range of consumer gimmicks, from Omo to Oprah Winfrey, and Drink Pepsi, Bitch questions how we are being manipulated and how we can maintain a sense of sanity, humanity and humour through the process. (quoted in Brown 2006)

The show merged song lyrics and stand-up material critiquing “corporations,

rampant consumerism, cynical marketing campaigns, advertising and our own

apathy” (Herbert 2005b). However, Perfect does not keep his criticisms to one side

of the political fence, also taking healthy stabs at the left wing. Herbert (2005b)

notes that:

His targets are not only high-profile companies. He slams the hippie fascists, those scruffy ferals who come from middle-class families and demand we all ride bicycles, grow dreadlocks and eat tofu.

Perfect relates that he likes the ‘immediacy’ of cabaret because “instead of standing

on a soapbox and talking politics you can do it through song and create a mood with

music while putting across a message” (quoted in Rose 2005a). Perfect’s first solo

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show Angry Eddie was performed in Chapel off Chapel in 2003, and then for The

2004 Melbourne Comedy Festival. Westwood (2004) described the show as:

heavy-handed preaching wrapped up in the palatable packaging of cabaret, but beautifully delivered thanks to Perfect’s extraordinary charm, voice and musical talents.

Perfect’s next show, with the satirical title Transcending Anger Towards Something

More Marketable (2004), was in fact continuing in the same direction, with songs

about "human suffering and human need, head-to-head with corporate greed"

(quoted in Murphy 2004).

Perfect described Drink Pepsi, Bitch as "a theatrical show that combines original

music and original songs that are satirical in nature. It's funny, dark, aggressive and

confusing all at once. It's a one-man comedy musical” (quoted in Adie, 2006).

In 2005, Drink Pepsi, Bitch had a sold-out season at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival,

where a reviewer for The Scotsman described his voice as "a thing of raw beauty”

and commented that “this Australian's sense of humour is so caustic it could strip

paint" (quoted in Baily 2006a).

While Perfect intends to challenge, he prefers the approach of “stroking and striking”

the viewers by combining entertainment with hard-hitting messages (Perfect quoted

in Rose 2005a). He utilises the combination of music and comedy in order to

challenge the audience, encouraging them to “leave their comfort zone and get the

deeper joke” (Burchall 2005). He notes that sometimes it is difficult to get this

balance right:

[It] takes a lot of skill and experience, to get angry at a gig and let the audience be angry with you, rather than feel like you're attacking them…Sometimes you can just completely f--- it and have an audience turn on you. (quoted in Rose 2005a)

Perfect has related that after performances of The Big Con, some audience

members complained to him that they “don’t come to the theatre to be insulted”

(Rose 2005a). In response to this sentiment Perfect reflected that "People are most

offended when you hold certain truths up to them. If it rings true, that's usually the

most offensive” (quoted in Rose 2005a).

Tim Minchin’s songs, stand up comedy and poems confront and provoke his

audience, satirising everything from religion to the new age, capitalists to

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psychology, homophobia and attitudes towards romance. Gadd (2007) describes

Michin’s performances as “slick and often bordering on obscene” and Ferguson

(2006) warns that his performance could easily offend “the faint hearted” or “the

religious” . His show Are you Ready for This? (2009) started by warming the crowd

up with some light self-deprecating songs. He then assumed a tone of mock

seriousness, introducing a song about discrimination. This song was a clever play

with audience expectations, turning a song that might be expected to be about

racism into one about the pain of being a red-head. Later in the set, he put on one

boot to play a rollicking country parody of religious fundamentalism, followed by a

mock R&B ballad sending up irrational romanticism and a beat poem that

mercilessly critiqued hippy culture. In a review for The Scotsmen, Cox described

these songs as offering respectively “a prolonged assault on American religious

right”, “a spoof R&B song in which he replaces the usual genre platitudes with some

cold hard facts about relationships, and... a nine-minute beat poem in which he tears

intellectual strips off a hapless hippy called Storm” (Cox 2008).

So Rock and Dark Side, two of Minchin’s previous cabaret shows, have included

mock solutions to the Middle East crisis (Wareham 2006); critiques of zoos that

teach bears to dance for the entertainment of humans, and a satirical “impromptu

ditty to a woman who had the gall to go to the toilet before the interval” (Gibson

2008).

Michin’s song Fuck the Poor, created for the 2007 Melbourne Comedy Festival

Gala, demonstrates his tendency to walk “the fine line between comedic gold and

pushing the limits of good taste that little bit too far” with reactions ranging from

“sincere belly laugh” to audience members who “stared blankly in protest” (Gadd

2007). In an interview with Michael Gadd, Minchin related that he wanted to give

the audience the benefit of the doubt, and credit their intelligence as opposed to the

way people are treated by the Australian government:

In this country our leaders are constantly patting the community on the head. I'm not a political radical, I tend to be fairly moderate because I tend to have a 'yeah, but ...' to most arguments, but this government is a demagoguery which plays on our fears, the littlest part of us. Commercial TV is the same, and it'd be nice if our intelligence wasn't insulted occasionally. (Quoted in Gadd 2007)

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This quality is also shown in his ‘earnest’ songs about canvas shopping bags and

his own dark side, which Ferguson describes as “hilarious and yet honestly moving

at the same time” (Ferguson 2006). Minchin pleases and teases his audience by

placing his harsh, satirical (and often offensive) words in a charming, light and self-

deprecating package: “Knowingly cheesy, he subtly utilises his soft-voiced

sensibility to mask the more risqué material” (Wareham 2006). Minchin uses these

qualities to great effect as he confronts and provokes his audience.

McInnes, in the onstage persona Dusty Limits, sarcastically critiques both public

figures and the crowd who come to see him perform. Described as “beautifully

bitchy” and “blessed with a wicked comic tongue”, in his performances Limits attacks

politicians, public figures and audiences alike, “teasing, flirting and haranguing” his

audience (Three Weeks and The Stage quoted in McInnes 2010; Randall 2009).

In a way similar to the one in which Rudople Salis insulted his audience in 19th

century Paris, Limits plays the part of the ‘provocative emcee’, teasing and

haranguing his audience. A true conferencier (he comperes, he sings, he tells

jokes, adapts lyrics and writes his own songs), with a sharp tongue, Limits could be

described as a contemporary Bruant or Salis. Limits has compered a wide range of

events including The Club at Edinburgh Fringe, and burlesque, circus and cabaret

acts. He uses his skills in vocal delivery and physical comedy to draw diverse acts

together (The Skinny quoted in McInnes 2010). Limits critiques his targets while at

the same time keeping the audience amused with his musicality and humour

(ThreeWeeks and The Stage quoted in McInnes 2010). Limits would like to see

more cabarets following his lead, stating:

I would love to see more cabarets that are very satirical and critical of [politicians] because we are sleepwalking into another age of governments abusing their power with such impunity. (Limits quoted in Brownell, 2008)

His skill as a conferencier lies in his ability to combine the beautiful with the

confronting as he pleases and teases his audience. Eaton (2007) describes Limits

as “sharp, erudite, occasionally withering, with bags of charisma and an odd,

inscrutable mix of gentle generosity and black, black humour”. In a discussion of his

performance at The Edinburgh Fringe Festival, Eaton celebrated the way the

compere “chose to close the opening night's proceedings with a song about hoping

someone's children die of cancer”.

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The cutting statements of the provocateur are delivered in sweet, popular song form.

In this way, the provocateurs draw their audience into a sense of intimacy through

their use of popular music forms, while at the same time distancing the audience

with critical comments. The provocateurs please through their use of music, and

tease through their cutting commentary. Central to the ‘pleasing’ effect of the

provocateurs is the parodic use of music, as is discussed later in this chapter.

The features of the contemporary vamp persona

The vamps of contemporary cabaret emphasise a sense of constructed femininity

that proves to be essentially vulnerable.

Camille O’Sullivan, Meow Meow and Paul Capsis present their own versions of

femininty, but each portrayal draws attention to the performed nature of femininity,

and the highly constructed notion of femininity itself.

O’Sullivan’s performance persona draws together a range of feminine attributes in a

contradictory and strange blend. The effect of this juxtaposition is to draw attention

to the range of conflicting descriptors of the feminine. Three different critics have

described O’Sullivan in the following ways: “Gutsy, ballsy, risque, old style glitz,

glamour, drama, seduction, stilettos, blood, sweat and tears” ; “Alternating between

being vampish and kittenish, vocally and dramatically”, and; “at times acting drunk,

at other times as a lost child” (Cadden 2009; Walker 2008; Ellis 2005). Allen (2009)

noted that “there is something of the affectedly ker-azy actress about her – bunny-

hopping across the stage and requesting the crowd miaow because it makes her

happy... [and] a little madness helps the bleak illusion”. These descriptions are

supported by Mansfield (2007) in his comments:

Her versatile voice is matched only by the broad emotional range of her performance. She can be coquettish or menacing; playing for laughs hamming up the Irish drunk, or wittily reworking Bette Midler's In These Shoes? in a pair of sparkly red stilettos. Moments later, she can be reduced to anguish by the very words she's singing.

O’Sullivan states

I'm completely schizophrenic and mad on stage. I can be quite enigmatic and create a distance between myself and an audience in order to climb all over them. (Swarbrick 2009)

Meow Meow has constructed her own persona as a pastiche of the contradictory

aspects of the ‘vamp-diva’. She relates that her favourite songs are Surabaya

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Johnny and Ne Me Quitte Pas, because “both are about high romanticism and

complete desperation” (quoted in Barclay 2009). Meow Meow’s performances are

contradictory and unpredictable, offering up a plethora of possibilities rather than

making any clear statements. Power (2009) describes her stage persona as a

“riddle wrapped in an enigma... [that is] ... equal parts beguiling, hilarious and

bemusing”. In 2008, Meow Meow created a show called “vamp” in which she played

different femme fatales. The show was an homage to these females who are both

seductive and terrifying, beautiful and destructive. Meow Meow wrote all the songs

for the performance, presenting a range of “alluring seductresses” (Butler 2008)

including Medea, Salome, the Biblical Judith, Marlene Dietrich, Sarah Bernhardt ,

Louise Brooks, Mata Hari, Lola Montez and Madonna (Gill 2008; Blake 2009; Litson

2008). In her portrayals she “[brought] to life the voracious women who are ’fabulous

or terrifying or both’” (Gill 2008). Her performance honoured the persona of the

vamp, which “celebrates the cult of the man-eating femme fatale and revels in her

tragedy” (Blake 2009). She explores two sides of the vamp: “the dangerous

seductress who is both avenging angel and tragic victim” (Litson 2008).

Paul Capsis’ cabaret career has focused on reinterpreting famous female singers,

reworking and commenting on their performances. Capsis has been described as

“best known as a high-camp singing impersonator” (Shand 1997) and a “wicked

mimic” (Simmonds 2001) who has “spent a good chunk of his career channeling

divas” (Harari 2008).  

Capsis had some success as a drag queen early in his career:

Having long been rejected for parts because of his high voice, here he was putting on a dress to accompany it, and it seemed to make all the difference as he belted out hits by Joplin and Garland, Holiday and Dietrich. "From then on," he says, "I got noticed". (Harari 2008)

Ultimately Capsis felt that drag was not for him, commenting “I just got bored with

drag. I wasn't connected to it at all” (quoted in Bela 2006), and after a few years he

found his niche in cabaret (Bela 2006). By 1997 he had been impersonating singing

divas for nine years and had brought together these impersonations in the cabaret

Burning Sequins. Not content to frock up in his ‘impersonations’, Capsis created

cabaret in which he morphed between different performers with minimal costume

changes, nailing each singer’s vocal style in parodic tributes.

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In enacting impressions that are not reliant on costumes, Capsis reveals the

constructed nature of his performance, and of gender itself. He becomes the

women through taking on the on-stage persona and voice of each, rather than

attempting to replicate their exact appearances. Capsis can thus be seen to be

engaging in gender as a performative act as described by theorist Judith Butler.

Butler’s writing discusses ways that perceptions of gender can “delimit” our

perceptions of what it is to be human (Butler and Salih 2004, 99). Butler argues that

acts of drag are able to subvert this reality because they show gender as an

“illusion” and something that is not fixed (Butler and Salih 2004, 101). By choosing

not to don a frock, Capsis shows himself both to be the female singers and a male

performer, taking on feminine performance and vocal styles without needing to look

overtly feminine. In discussing Butler’s work, Lloyd links Butler’s theories of drag to

concepts of parody in relation to gender. Lloyd states of Butler’s work:

It implies that when parody is at its best, the actions themselves, and the radical responses and appropriations it inspires, may lead to the performative production of new groups; that is, groups which do not exist prior to these (re-citational) practices. (Lloyd 1999, 208)

Capsis could be seen as a performer who is creating a new genre of performance

that works within the “gaps” of fixed gender identity. Lloyd sums up Butler’s work as

raising the possibility “that occasional gaps open up within contemporary culture

where norms (both dominant and annihilating) can be mimed, reworked, re-signified

and, of course, reincorporated” (Lloyd 1999, 209). Throughout his performances,

Capsis shape-shifts between gender identities and challenges audience concepts of

gender identity.

While female performers O’Sullivan and Meow Meow exaggerate the contradictory

nature of feminine qualities through their exaggerated onstage personas, Capsis

performs shifting gender to draw attention to the fluid nature of gender identity.

The persona of the diva figures in the work of each of the contemporary vamps

discussed here. The vulnerable nature of the diva is represented through a

‘stripping back’ of glamour or by showing the star’s fall from grace.

In Camille O’Sullivan’s The Dark Angel and Meow Meow’s performances the

stripping back of glamour occurs literally through the shedding of costumes.

O’Sulivan’s Dark Angel is an exploration of the “shadowy side of the human psyche”

(Walker 2008); O’Sullivan comments that she likes to mix darkness with comedy: “I

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have a lot of humour but tend to go into a dark world full of art, melancholy and

French drama” (quoted in Swarbrick 2009).

In The Dark Angel O’Sullivan began wearing a large black overcoat, and then

gradually took off layers of costumes until she was only wearing a black leotard and

red high heels. Interacting with audience members throughout the show, she then

began “stroking front-row punters, sitting on laps, making people equally

uncomfortable and excited” (Allen 2009).

Camille O’Sullivan self-deprecatingly undermines her own glamour. When she

begins performances she is polished and glamorous, with her hair carefully styled

and every piece of clothing in place. Then, throughout her performances she strips

off her layers and messes up her clothes and hair until she appears as a dishevelled

mess: “At the start of my shows I'm quite well-kempt but by the end I look like I've

climbed out of the back of a bush” (Swarbrick 2009).

Meow Meow literally throws herself into her audience during performances. She

relies on her audience to lift her up, move around the stage, hold her lights, hold her

music, share their drinks with her and throw roses at her. She doesn’t give her

audience any choice in the matter and “holds the audience in the palm of her hand,

calling the shots like a theatrical dominatrix. She orders men on stage and when she

expects more applause she tells us so” (Litson 2008).

Meow Meow is the star being adored and is also the victim, heightening awareness

of her own need for the audience and her vulnerability. Pickard (2009) states that

her “brilliance is the force of her wit and the way she plunges herself into the

audience”. She presents herself as the star being adored, and being the victim of

her own need for adoration. This is a vamp on the point of collapse or disaster. For

Blake (2009), the artist “flirts with disaster... and that is what makes her so

compelling. Collapse is her forte and she gives herself further to fall than usual”.

Meow Meow strips down the facade of the diva – and often does this quite literally

by having the audience undress her. In Beyond Glamour (2007) and Feline

Intimate (2009), Meow Meow had a number of costume changes, calling on various

audience members to take her clothes off or help her to assemble her next costume.

This is a performer who demands that her audience get up close and personal, and,

she has asked audience members to unzip her skintight pants and jacket, has straddled shoulders singing with legs and arms spread

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and used others as music stands or microphone holders. (Lawes 2009)

In a recent performance at the Opera house, she even had her costume

repossessed, and her band stripped down to their underwear:

Lured to the Opera House with promises of lavish production budgets and sumptuous hospitality, the cabaret artist Meow Meow is confronted with the hard truths of the global financial crisis: her dress is repossessed after the opening number. Then her band members are stripped to their underwear to save on dry-cleaning bills. She even has to stump up for her own dream sequence. (Blake 2009)

Meow Meow’s performances confront audiences with the constructed nature of the

vamp persona, heightening awareness of the performer’s need for the audience.

In his portrayals of famous divas, Capsis draws attention to their vulnerability. In his

self-titled Brisbane performance in 2006 he became a drunk, confused Judy Garland

unsure of which city she was performing in. His performances caricature these

women in an empathetic way, combining satire with emotional connection. On

(2005) stated “Capsis's honeyed voice was tempered with a grit that spoke volumes

about the vulnerability of these faded stars”. Herbert (2005a) notes that Capsis is

able to accurately mimic other singers voices, but that “it is more the spirit of these

damaged women that he captures” (Herbert 2005a).

This focus on vulnerability was perhaps strongest in Capsis’ Boulevard Delirium, a

show written and directed for Capsis by Barrie Kosky. Boulevard Delirium explored

the singers’ “mental instability, shattered dreams and haunted love affairs” (Sheridan

2005) thus “heightening the implicit theatricality of his portrayal of each woman”

(Shand 2002).

Woodhead (2007) felt that this performance extended the form of cabaret,

describing the show as:

part rock concert, part theatrical tribute to fame's siren call... [that] punched well above the weight of most cabaret, and turned into something altogether more mesmerising, subversive and grotesque. (Woodhead 2007)

Hallet (2004) commented on the show’s fragmentation of the conventional music

theatre narrative and described Capsis as “a vocal-stretching, gut-wrenching force

of the theatrical gods who is risky and raw, sentimental and hard, hidden and

exposed” (Hallet 2004). Capsis exposes vulnerabilities in his performances,

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stripping back celebrities to reveal their frailties. Vulnerability, it seems, is at the

heart of the vamp persona.

The use of parody in contemporary cabaret

The provocateurs and the vamps both make use of parodic humour in their use of

musical parody, celebrity parodies and parodies of cultural types. In addition, the

provocateurs use familiar musical forms to present critical material and the vamps

use parody to draw attention to the constructed nature of femininity. I have drawn

my definitions of parody from the theories of Hutcheon (1985), Kreuz and Roberts

(1993), Dentith (2000) and Rose (1993). Hutcheon (1985) contends that “parody is

one of the major forms of modern self-reflexivity … [and] is a form of inter-art

discourse” (2). Hutcheon posits that modern parody has a “range of intent – from

the ironic and playful to the scornful and ridiculing” (ibid, 6). Parody does not

necessarily denigrate the original text and, as discussed earlier, “is an integrated

structural modelling process of revising, replaying, inverting, and ’trans-

contextualizing‘ previous works of art” (ibid, 11). According to Kreuz and Roberts,

“the parodist makes his or her familiarity with original work obvious… rather than

expose ignorance, parody criticises or flatters” (1993, 103). Dentith expands this

definition to include imitations of cultural practices, stating that “parody includes any

cultural practice which provides a relatively polemical allusive imitation of another

cultural production or practice” (Dentith 2000, 9). Dentith clarifies his use of the term

“relatively polemical” to include a wide spectrum of imitation from the “contentious”

or “attacking” texts to texts that “just playfully... refer to elements of the

contemporary world” (Dentith 2000, 9). From the highly polemic Eddie Perfect to the

playful parody of Paul Capsis, the cabaret artists chosen for this contextual review

are representative of this range.

In addition, parody can create humour through contrasting the parodied text and its

original. Rose (1993) discusses this in relation to written texts, but this theory can

also be applied to performance texts. Rose (1993) notes that:

In some parodic changes to other texts, the controlled discrepancy or incongruity between the parodied text and its new context is also one of the chief sources of the comic effect which distinguishes the parody from other types of literary criticism as well as from forgery and plagiarism. (Rose 1993, 32)

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Rose notes that this often occurs by “contrasting the serious with the absurd as well

as the ‘high’ with the ‘low’, or the ancient with the modern, the pious with the

impious, and so on” (Rose 1993, 33).  

It can be argued that parody relies on the way the text is received by its audience.

The theories of Jonathon Culler (as discussed in Hutcheon, 1985) draw attention to

parody as “an act of communication between encoder and decoder” (Hutcheon

1985, 108). Hutcheon continues:

Parody, by this definition, becomes an ultimate act of co-opting, a making sense of the unintelligible by the imposition of the code of parody. This stress on the importance of the interpretive act of the receiver of the text has been reinforced by postmodernist views of parody as performance, as involving an increase in the work and participation of the decoder, forced to draw extensively on his or her artistic memory. (Hutcheon 1985,108)

This definition of parody points to the need for the audience to ‘get the joke’ for

parody to be effective. It can be seen that this act of getting the joke can make the

audience feel included in the performance and even draw them together to create a

temporary audience community, who are unified by the fact that they understand the

joke.

These theories of parody have strong relevance to contemporary cabaret

performance. In cabaret performances, parody is often used to create a sense of

familiarity, humour and/or a sense of play within the performance, allowing difficult

and/or unsettling ideas to be discussed in an entertaining format. These pleasing

aspects draw an audience into a sense of intimacy with the performer. Parody can

also tease an audience by playfully, or polemically, mimicking cultural forms,

stereotypes or social groups. Through presenting these discourses for mockery,

parody has the potential to disrupt normative discourses embodied in specific

cultural forms. This use of parody can have a distancing effect on the audience. In

highly polemic parody, such as that of Eddie Perfect, the teasing can become a

scathing attack, distancing the audience from the performer. On the other end of

the spectrum, Paul Capsis’ use of parody becomes a playful homage, creating an

interplay between the forces of intimacy and distance. The six artists in this

contextual review use parody in a variety of ways including musical parody, the

parody of celebrities or the diva persona, and the use of polemic parody.

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Musical parody

The performances of Minchin, Perfect, Limits and O’Sullivan place an emphasis on

musical parody. Eddie Perfect uses parodic versions of different musical styles,

ranging from operatic rock, bossa nova, and Broadway musicals, in order to sugar

coat the political messages of his songs (Rose 2005b, Hanusiak 2004).Tim Minchin

also milks different musical styles for their comedic value - including country and

western, R&B, beat poetry and ‘Jamie Callum’ jazz styles in his shows (Cox 2008,

Wareham 2006). Dusty Limits pays parodic homage to the style of Weimar cabaret

by taking on the image and musical style of this period (Hoggard 2008). Limits

performs in a carefully tailored black suit with short perfectly coiffed hair and white

make-up, evoking images of the Weimar conferenciers. His vocal style is

reminiscent of the Wiemar period, and his repertoire draws heavily from Kurt Weill.

In addition, Limits draws influences from Jacques Brel and Cole Porter: performing

his own translations of Brel’s songs, and rewriting and updating lyrics to Cole Porter

tunes (Finkle 2006, Randall 2009). Camille O’Sullivan performs contemporary songs

in the Weimar musical style. Her use of parody is subtler and more about an

appreciative audience getting the aesthetic joke. This kind of parody draws links

between the Weimar musical style and the lyrics and concepts in dark,

contemporary music. This could be defined as Hutcheon’s ”honorific parody” (op

cit). O’Sullivan’s Weimar influences are clear in choice of narrative songs that are

often harsh and thought provoking (Allen 2009; Swarbrick 2009). One critic likens

her performance to that of Liza Minnelli performing Sally Bowles in the musical

Cabaret (Gillard 2008). Using the Weimar performance style as a through-line she

assembles an eclectic combination of songs, including pieces by Kurt Weil, Jacques

Brel, Nick Cave, Tom Waits, David Bowie and Radiohead (Gillard 2008; Lee 2009).

Parodic versions of celebrities and divas

Meow Meow and Paul Capsis use parodic humour to refer to famous divas of the

past.

Meow Meow’s performances make continuous references to divas from cabaret

history, including songs by Weill and Brel, clearly showing “a direct link... [to] Berlin's

sinful, decadent nightlife circa 1930s” (Dow 2010). As discussed earlier in this

chapter, Meow Meow’s show Vamp played homage to famous femme fatales from

history. In this performance, Meow Meow uses the technique of honorific parody to

celebrate the foibles of these women.

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Paul Capsis’ cabaret career has focused on reinterpreting famous singers,

reworking and commenting on their performances. Capsis’ cabaret uses parody to

celebrate other singers’ style, eccentricities, and personas. Capsis uses parody

within his performance personas in order to both send up and celebrate the female

singers he embodies. In his ‘impressions’ of famous female singers, Capsis shifts

between the identities of performer and fan. There is a warmth to Capsis’

impressions. In his performances, send up is balanced with an emotional

connection in performance; Litson described his channeling of divas as being

“emotionally charged (Litson 2007). Capsis develops a relationship with his

audience as ‘co-conspirators’ and relies on the audiences knowledge of performer’s

work. In some ways his performances feel like a nostalgic dinner party where the

host shares his favourite records.

In these different ways, Meow Meow and Capsis use parody to playfully celebrate

cultural icons of the past.

Polemic parody

In Perfect’s cabarets, it seems that no societal group is safe from attack. He has

parodied Kevin Rudd’s political campaigning in the song Howard 2.0, racist white

Australians in Some of my best friends are Aboriginal and middle class liberals in

the songs Stop being so damn September 10 and Poor little middle class me. In the

song Cirque du Soliel Perfect manages to parody the musical form favoured by the

company, the company’s rampant consumerism and “non-specific universality” and

the middle class audience who are “trying to extract meaning” from the show

(Hughes 2006). Each of these parodic songs are performed in mock sincerity,

making the views presented appear naive and simplistic.

Tim Minchin’s cabarets also include highly polemic parody. One of his most cutting

parodies is a nine-minute beat poem called Storm, in which he parodies the new

age views of a young hippie woman. Minchin’s poem Angry (Feet) also presents a

cutting parody of a man with anger issues who is not being helped by his quack

doctor. Minchin also uses self-parody. He mocks himself through self-deprecating

parody during his performances by caricaturing himself, exaggerating his nerdiness,

sexual inexperience, and onstage awkwardness (Ann Low 2007, Ferguson 2006,

Woodhead 2006).

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[101] 

Conclusion

Personal cabarets present concepts of personal verity and truth based on an

intimate relationship with the audience. In contrast, cabaret performers in

provocative cabaret favour highly stylised performances that draw attention to the

constructed nature of the performance. In the former style, truth is presented as an

individual’s expression of emotion, and personal interpretation of songs; in the latter

truth is presented as a concept in flux through changing dynamics of distance and

intimacy with the audience. The provocateur persona can be seen to relate to the

inner critic, that is, a critical voice inside one’s mind. The constructed nature of the

vamp can be shown to relate to the constructed nature of the externalised aspect of

oneself. By this, I mean that White’s process of externalisation draws attention to

the way that voices in our minds have been constructed by our experiences. The

use of the vamp as a performance persona can draw attention to the constructed

nature of a persona within the mind. The vamp’s emphasis on showing the

vulnerability within this persona can also be used in a similar way. These points will

be explained in detail in Chapter Six. Also of interest to the creation of my cabaret

performance is the cabaret artist’s use of parody as a technique to create push and

pull of the forces of intimacy and distance between the performer and the audience.

The use of parody can be seen to draw the audience together in knowing and

understanding comic references within a performance. It can also be used as a way

to comically parody situations and personality. The applications of these points are

discussed in Chapters Five and Six.

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Chapter Five: Creating Mind Games

Introduction

Inspired by the principles of Michael White’s narrative therapy and by the

provocateurs and vamps of contemporary cabaret, the creative development of the

Mind Games cabaret investigated ways to create a performer-audience relationship

that moved between distance and intimacy. As discussed in Chapters One, Two and

Three, my application of White’s principles within the work reflects my own meaning

making processes. Through the autoethnographic, practice-led methodology I was

able to express these processes in a creative form. The action research method

allowed me to experiment with ways to express my own meaning making processes,

to gain audience feedback, and to reflect on the work through three cycles of

development.

This chapter focuses on the specific creative techniques used to transform personal

stories into cabaret. The creative techniques used are three principles of White’s

narrative therapy (externalisation, an autonomous ethic of livingand rich

descriptions), the performative concepts of distance and intimacy, and parodic

humour. I have defined intimacy as a sense of empathy with another’s story or the

appreciation of one’s own subjective experience of an event. In contrast, the

distancing process encourages shifts in viewpoint by presenting material as strange

or alienated.

This chapter will refer to journal entries, performance scripts, and transcripts from

feedback sessions. Where possible I have chosen performance concepts that have

spanned the three-year process to show the development of my performance

making method, and to point towards the experiments I undertook toward creating

this method.

Creative Processes

Transforming personal stories to cabaret

The cabaret used my own personal stories as a frame of reference for the stories of

others. As the creative development progressed I began to integrate more of my

personal stories into the cabaret. The cabaret also featured parts of the interview

material that I had a strong personal resonance with. Some characters in the

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cabaret were based on specific interviewees, and at other times interview material

was used to create composite characters. In addition interview material was used to

flesh out the characters of ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’. In these cases interview material

provided a way to enrich my own perspectives with other individuals’ ideas on the

same themes. In addition, material from the public domain was used to flesh out

themes within the script, or to explore other perspectives. These personal stories

were adapted into a cabaret performance via the principles of White’s narrative

therapy.  

Principles of narrative therapy, distance and intimacy

As discussed in Chapter Two, narrative therapy encourages individuals to

investigate different ways of retelling, or re-authoring, their stories. This process

asks individuals to examine the politics behind their own thought processes and

concepts of truth and to re-write their lives on their own terms. I have focussed on

three principles of White’s narrative therapy (externalisation, an autonomous ethic of

living, and rich descriptions) and have described these principles in terms of the

performative concepts of distance and intimacy. I applied principles of narrative

therapy in the creation of the cabaret Mind Games in order to play games of truth in

retelling my own personal story in relation to others. In creating the cabaret I used

the principle of externalisation to perform aspects of my own thoughts, and used the

principles of an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions to experiment with

different ways of telling and re-telling my own story. Through connecting with the

stories of others, I was able to explore different perspectives and approaches to life,

and to experiment with ways of re-authoring my own story. I used the interview

process as way of connecting with others. As my own experiences were used as a

central frame for the cabaret, I chose themes from the interviews that connected

with my own personal experiences. These themes provided the basis for many

scenes within the cabaret. For the purpose of clarity I will firstly describe each of

three principles in relation to performative techniques. I will then describe how each

of these principles and performative techniques was applied in relation to specific

scenes within the cabaret.

Externalisation

White’s principle of externalisation is a process of distancing individuals from their

problems, encouraging them to see their problems in a new light through playful

exaggeration and personification (White 2004a, 2007). The technique of

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externalisation is used to present an extreme viewpoint of the world (one that is

causing problems for the individual). In order to present externalisation in my show I

used forms of exaggerated and abstracted stylisation. Presenting the technique of

externalisation in performance seems suited to exaggerated caricature rather than a

subtle, realistic approach. In addition, externalisation is a playful form, intended to

be light and fun, another factor that makes it compatible with the cabaret art form.

When illustrating externalisation in the cabaret I used parody and personas as a

means of creating distance between the performer and the audience. ‘Jolene’, the

externalisation of my inner critic, was performed as a scathing parody of Marlene

Dietrich. This character also utilised aspects of the personas of the provocateur and

the vamp as described in the contextual review in Chapter Four.

An autonomous ethic of living

The principle of an autonomous ethic of living encourages an individual to develop

their own sense of ethics in relation to their personal values (White 2004a). As this

principle is based on an empathetic connection to an individual perspective it can be

seen in terms of the performative concept of intimacy. When performing scenes

intended to illustrate an autonomous ethic of living I utilised stylistic techniques from

personal cabarets in order to create a sense of intimacy. A style of heightened

realism was utilised in the cabaret for scenes in which I desired the audience to feel

empathetic towards the characters. As discussed in Chapter Four, personal

cabarets aim to express a sense of truth. Harrington (2000) describes this as a

“feeling of intimate communication” between the performer and the audience

achieved when the performer “create[s] the illusion of sharing a highly personal

experience” (15, 41). In personal cabarets the performer focuses on achieving an

emotional connection with the material in order that the performance “feels real”

(Harrington 2000, 28). In order to create an effect of intimacy during some scenes in

the cabaret I applied these principles, performing in a style of heightened realism

with a focus on emotional connection with the material.

Rich descriptions

White’s principle of rich descriptions encourages an individual to explore multiple

possibilities within their identity through creating many rich descriptions of intentional

states (White 2004b, 25). This principle encourages individuals to see their life in “a

multiplicity of different lights”, to be “open to renegotiation” with their life stories and

to see their life as “multi-purposed” and “multi-layered” (White 2004b, 31- 32). Rich

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descriptions of life encourage individuals to move between a sense of distance and

intimacy with their own stories through connecting with one version of their own

story and then opening up the possibility of investigating other versions of their

stories. This encourages individuals to move between realms of distance and

intimacy. By alternating between distance and intimacy my aim was to shift

audience perspectives and create rich descriptions of life’s possibilities. I used

techniques of parody as a way to create a sense of distance in some scenes,to

provide another perspective in the investigation of depression and bipolar disorder.

Parody

I used parody as a performance-making technique when converting some material

from my own story and interviewees’ stories into scenes in the cabaret. As

discussed in Chapter Four, parody is a strong feature of contemporary cabaret

performances that can be used to create a push/pull effect of distance and intimacy

between a performer and an audience. Intimacy is created through familiarity with

performance styles and parodic tributes to celebrities, while distance can be created

when parody is used to make pointed critiques of social groups or celebrities. The

following is a description of my use of parody in the creative development process.

Within my creative process I have found parody a very useful creative technique that

allowed me to find different ways into the work, and to experiment with matching

form and content. As a singer/songwriter, I tend to write in my own distinctive style

– a style I would describe as ‘jazzy folk’ – and the use of parody as a creative

technique allowed me to experiment with new ways of writing and performing my

original songs with the aim of expressing the concepts of the piece, and different

voices within the show.

The process of externalisation aims to deal with serious problems in a lighthearted

way. White states that through his therapeutic techniques serious, and often

chronic, problems can “be approached in playful, lighthearted and joyful ways”

(White 2007, 24). Through this approach, White asserts that he routinely

experiences “delight and fascination” in his therapeutic sessions (White 2007, 7).

This playful therapeutic approach can be seen to be compatible with the form of

cabaret, with its focus on humour and fun. White’s playful approach to therapy is

well matched with the playful style of cabaret. Two elements of cabaret that involve

a sense of play are the use of parody and personas. I found these two elements to

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be useful ways of applying a therapeutic method to the cabaret form. I used parody

and play to ‘cabaretise’ White’s technique of externalisation.

Sharing my story

Externalisation: creating ‘Jolene’

In reflecting on my creative process, I have been using techniques of externalisation

since early 2008. I used this as a performance-making technique in order to

theatricalise my ideas and to give them a greater dramatic scope. In a way, I was

finding a way to perform thoughts: exploring ways to transform an internal

phenomenon into an external form.

In April 2008, through my solo improvisations, I started to develop ideas around the

mythical figures of ‘Persephone’ and ‘Hades’ as a way to enact the relationship

between an individual and their depression. The antagonistic love-hate relationship

between the characters of Persephone and Hades became the seeds for the

relationship between ‘Jo’ and ‘Jolene’ in the final cabaret performance. When

developing the characters of ‘Persphone’ and ‘Hades’, I noted in my journal that in

these improvisations an individual’s “relationship with depression is enacted as an

abusive relationship... [that is] Persephone is having an abusive relationship with

Hades, and Hades represents her depression” (Personal Journal, 26th April, 2008). I

continued to develop the character of ‘Hades’ and work with the idea of personifying

thoughts in workshops with Brown Ash and with director Knapton in

August/September 2008. In an early meeting with Knapton I related my experiences

of narrative therapy and Knapton commented that he liked the way this therapy

physicalises “something that is inside your head”. During rehearsals he commented

that we were trying to find “the language of thoughts” and “the aesthetic and the

music of thoughts” (quoted in Personal Journal, 1st September, 3rd September,

2008). With these concepts in mind I modified the character of ‘Hades’ as a

personification of depression in relation to a concept I created within a workshop by

Margi Brown Ash. In this workshop, I created the character based on an image of

James Dean, who languidly smokes a cigarette, and then plays violin on his arm

with the cigarette. I combined this character with the concept of ‘Hades’ and used

my improvisation ideas to write the song So you’re back again featuring the lyrics:

So you’re back again How could you think that you could leave? So welcome back my friend And you thought you were so strong

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You may be able to pretend Fool yourself for a while Scrape your way back again But soon you’re back, back where you below

I know you think that you Can live without my voice But you know I’m part of your soul So you’ll never have that choice. (Personal Journal, 3rd September, 2008)

In retrospect, this was my first experimentation with externalisation as an approach

for developing material for the cabaret show. In September 2008, inspired by this

process of creative externalisation, I wrote a poem from the point of view of the inner

critic (Personal Journal, 1st September 2008). During rehearsals I developed this

further to create a song. The development of this song came from a desire to show

an extreme version of the way we unfairly criticise ourselves (Personal Journal, 10th

September 2008). This song was inspired by my own experience and interviewees

comments. A number of interviewees discussed the extreme negative thinking that

occurs within depression or bi-polar disorder. For one interviewee this involved

feelings of self-hatred, and thoughts of being “useless” and “unloveable” (Female

Interviewee 2, Line 759, Line 905). She also related that “there’s a big degree of

shame and embarrassment. I always felt embarrassed to be me... and unable to

appreciate or value anything that was actually positive” (Female Interviewee 2, Lines

906 – 916 ). Another interviewee related that she felt “hopeless, despairing... like

there’s no way I’m ever going to get out of it” (Female Interviewee 4, Lines 124-5).

One interviewee even related that in her lowest moments she felt that she was “evil”,

and when asked about this commented “yeah, I’m not really sure why but I just think

that I’m a bad person like I just generally do” (Female Interviewee 1, Lines 694 -

706) . I found a strong sense of resonance with these ideas, specifically in relation to

my experience of my inner critic as a critical voice inside my mind. This common

theme inspired me to write the poem called The Inner Critic that was developed into

a song including the following lyrics:

You’ve been a bad, bad boy You’ve been a bad, bad girl You’ve no hope of succeeding In this whole wide world You need to try a little harder than that Cause you’ve been so bad

You’re a naughty person, You’re an evil sort

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With all your troubles And your unkind thoughts You need to be a whole lot better than that Cause you’re so very bad

Let me introduce you to your failures I’ll list them one by one And then I will replay you your humiliating moments And put them on re-run and re-run

You’ve been a total failure Unworthy of love There’s no hope for you No there’s no hope at all But you can never be better than that Cause you’re so very bad. (Personal Journal, 1st September, 10th September 2008)

This song became The Naughty Song, presented by ‘Jolene’ in the May 2010

performance. In 2009, I more consciously started to use Michael White’s

externalisation technique and to link this to some of his theories, and I noted in my

journal that I could illustrate “White’s ‘concept of personal failure’” (Personal Journal,

22nd July 2009). Over the subsequent months, I started to develop these concepts

and connect my use of externalisation techniques with my experiences of narrative

therapy and to my creative development techniques. In October 2009 I noted after

reading White’s Exotic Lives (White, 2004, 67) that:

I think this is what I’ve been doing with Margi for years... Looking at White’s work I have started to realise how I have used his approaches as creative strategies in the first work-in-progress version of Mind Games...I developed these approaches through my work with Margi Brown Ash… and now they have become part of the way I create work. (Personal Journal, 1st October 2009)

In the 2009 version of the cabaret, I created the character of ‘The Caretaker’ (or

‘The Doctor’) in order to represent the perspective in which depression and bipolar

disorder is pathologised. This character is a caretaker at a mental institution, and

was created to represent a pathologising force within society, but could also be seen

to represent this force within the mind. These characteristics are shown in the

following excerpt from the 2009 script:

The caretaker: So you’ve an expressed a desire to learn more about what goes on down here. Well, welcome to the facility... I’m sure that your stay here will be very… Illuminating... You’ll be meeting some interesting creatures here… normally hidden from view. (Personal Journal, Mind Games script, 30th November, 2009)

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In 2010 I crystallised this approach in the character of ‘Jolene Mindtrich’, a parody of

Marlene Dietrich, who can be seen to embody an externalisation of my inner critic.

The character of ‘Jolene’ was first presented in a work-in-progress showing for my

supervisors and the dramaturges Therese Collie and Kathryn Kelly in March 2010.

In my journal I noted the panel feedback and my reflections on this feedback. As

discussed earlier in this chapter, the panel’s feedback helped me to develop the

character of ‘Jolene’ and to develop a clearer relationship between ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’

(Personal Journal, 16th March, 2010). This feedback also drew me back to having

the emcee character present a pathologising perspective in the show (as ‘The

caretaker’ had done in 2009). The character of ‘Jolene’ as an externalisation of my

own inner critic will be further discussed in Chapter Six.

‘Jolene’: a provocateur and a vamp

Throughout my creative process, I developed my use of a persona as a way to

cabaretise Michael White’s externalisation. Over the three years the use of

performance personas in relation to aspects of the vamp and the provocateur

became much more pronounced. This led to the development of the persona of

‘Jolene’ in the final show, with aspects of the provocateur. I first began to explore

‘vampish’ qualities when performing the song So you’re back again in September

2008. In this song I draped myself across the piano, while seductively smoking a

cigarette (Figure 1). Then in the solo of the song I pretended to draw the cigarette

back across my arm, intending to evoke the bowing of a violin and the act of self

harm. This song showcased the contradictory qualities of the vamp, being both

seductive and terrifying. In the same show I also performed the first version of The

Naughty Song as a school-teacher style dominatrix with a wooden spoon. In 2009, I

took the vamp persona further in performing the world of the bar. In this part of the

show I performed the songs So you’re back again (Figure 2) and The Naughty Song

(both a part of the 2008 version of the show) in a new context and in a more

seductive fashion. Both songs were performed as a saucy bartender, So you’re back

again as I filled people’s wine glasses and The Naughty Song as a seductive ‘come

hither’ bar wench, inviting audience members onstage to be spanked (a section

inspired by cabaret artist Meow Meow). At this stage the vamp was very much a

cameo appearance in the show. By 2010, the vamp ‘Jolene’ had become the

narrator of the show. Throughout 2010 I developed this character into an

impersonation of Marlene Dietrich. Inspired in part by Paul Capsis’ parodic tributes

to aging divas, I heightened the recognisable features of Dietrich, while also

focussing on her vulnerability and ‘faded star’ quality. In choosing to perform Dietrich

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in her ‘Vegas years’, I kept the focus on her constructed femininity and on the

amount of effort taken to create her stage image. This construction is discussed in

detail in Chapter Six. On reflection, while I included elements of the provocateur in

the 2008 and 2009 versions of the show, the provocative characters in these

performances lacked the sense of pointed humour and playfulness that is apparent

in the provocateurs discussed in my contextual review. In 2008, The Naughty Song

was performed in a very serious, po-faced style, and in 2009, the caretaker

character was presented as serious, intimidating, and ‘creepy’ rather than humorous

(Figure 3). In contrast, the 2010 ‘Jolene’ was performed in a humorous style, with

most of her lines written as gags inciting giggles from the audience. ‘Jolene’

balanced her pointed and caustic comments with a greater sense of playfulness and

fun, consistent with the cabaret form.

My own autonomous ethic of living

The Mind Games cabaret expressed my exploration of my own personal values or

autonomous ethic of living in a number of scenes in the cabaret. I developed these

scenes through reflecting on my own story, focussing on sharing my story more

within the cabaret, and relating these values to interviewees’ experiences.

In cycle one I reflected on the value of ‘being strong’ or ‘trying to put on a brave’ face

to hide depression and wrote this in poetic form in my journal at the time:

How are you “I’m fine, yeah good” Yeah, I bet they’re depressed! Show a strong face, to hide the disgrace Of not being able to cope with your life. (Personal Journal, 26th July 2008)

This poem became the song I’m Fine as an expression of an individual wanting to

pretend to the world that everything was okay.

I’m fine, just fine Thanks for asking but I’m coping okay I’m fine, just fine Had some problems but I’m still on my way. (Personal Journal, 4th September 2008)

In cycle one, this song was performed with vocal soundscapes used as verses to

express the sadness an individual is trying to hide. In retrospect this song strongly

represented my own experiences at the time. I was quite depressed, but didn’t want

to let anyone know how I was feeling. In cycle two, encouraged by dramaturge

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Therese Collie, I wrote verses to this song that revealed my own experiences of

wanting to pretend that I was fine, as shown in verses two and three:

Verse 2: Crying hysterically in the toilet at work Strange sounds come out of my body It convulses and rocks and I’m powerless to stop it Someone hears the noise and knocks on the door “Are you okay? Can I help” “Well actually…”

Verse 3: I’m in a meeting with my boss And I’m that crazy crying woman again He says “perhaps today isn’t the best day to give feedback” And I say, “no it’s okay, I’m always like this anyway…” Cause you see… . (Personal Journal, 4th August, 2009)

In cycle three director Sandro Colarelli encouraged me to give this song a dramatic

context, so I wrote an introduction to this song that explained a particular event in

my life that led to a depressed episode. This event was in 2006 when I was trying to

establish myself in the music industry and was humiliated by a bar manager at a

hotel, and featured in Scene Five in the cabaret (Mind Games script 2010, 8-9).

One theme from the interviews that had strong parallels with my own experience

was of becoming aware of thought processes, or ‘unravelling’ thoughts. This

process expresses a personal value of understanding. One interviewee commented

that the first part of this process was becoming aware of her thought processes, and

that she specifically found cognitive therapy useful:

[because] going through different exercises with that it helped me to become aware of my thought processes. Just doing lots of journalling, also… Just to get it out of my head and to stop – you know – the same feelings and thoughts going through my head… just get it out…so it didn’t have as much impact. So that so [from this] one can think of depression and anxiety as separate entities that you could control… That they don’t have control over you. (Interviewee Four, Lines 1594-1601)

The same interviewee described her experience of depression with metaphors:

like you’re in cage and you can’t get out of it. I sometimes think of it as if you’re being underwater and you are just trying to swim to the surface and you’re stuck there…or even maybe that you are just up at

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the surface and you’re just treading water but you can’t get anywhere. (Lines 1526-1529 Interviewee Four)

Another interviewee described panic attacks she experiences during depressive

episodes in the following way:

Interviewee 3: It’s just everything’s crowding in on you and you just can’t breathe and you can’t see and you can’t hear. Oh, it’s the most ghastly things.

Jo: And what kind of thoughts go through your mind?

Interviewee 3: Oh hardly any! You just think “I’ve got to get out here, I’ve got to get out of here, I’ve got to get out of this… feeling…” That’s all you can think; “I can’t have this anymore.” (1276 – 1283 Female Interviewee Three)

Another interviewee commented that it has taken her a long time to work through

her thoughts because her “thinking had been so warped for so long, that it’s taken a

long time to kind of unravel it” (831-832, Interviewee 2). I strongly related to these

experiences of unravelling the mind, and these interviews led me to write the

following song while I was in a class:

during this class I was just aware of all these really depressed and dark thoughts in my head – and I felt like I just needed to escape from my head. This reminded me of one of the interviews in which a woman had described her process of ‘unravelling’ her thoughts. She said that her psychiatrist was helping her to “unravel” her thinking. I love this image, and from my experiences today and created the beginnings of a song…

Climbing out If I can just unravel my head, and climb right out of my mind Then I’ll be fine. (Personal Journal 2nd September 2008)

This song was written in my own musical style of ‘jazzy folk’, reflecting the self

revelation in the song.

These are two examples of how I used the principle of an autonomous ethic of

living to develop specific scenes in the cabaret. In the first example, I drew from my

own experiences in an abstract fashion to express one of my core values at the time

(the value of being strong). Through 2009 and 2010 I was encouraged by my

dramaturge and director to delve further into these concepts and to share the

specific circumstances that surrounded this value. In the second example,

comments made by a number of interviewees drew my attention to the act of

unravelling my own thought processes and gave me new words to express the way I

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was feeling. I then incorporated interviewees’ comments to flesh out a song

describing the value of understanding. Both of these scenes were performed using

the style of heightened realism in order to encourage a sense of intimacy with the

material being performed, and to draw an audience into connecting with the

perspectives presented.

Rich descriptions of my story

In the three cycles of the project I experimented with telling my own story from many

different perspectives through the use of different performance personas and styles.

This technique provides rich descriptions of my own life experience in that it

presented life experiences as “multi-layered”, “multi-purposed”, and “open to

renegotiation” (White 2004b, 31-32).

In cycle one I began to experiment with expressions of my personal experiences in

song form. These songs gave small glimpses into my personal experiences from a

range of perspectives. In the song I’m Fine, the audience received a glimpse of an

individual being extremely distressed while still putting on a brave face for the world

(Personal Journal, 4th September 2008). In the song Just One the audience saw an

unemotional woman, numb with depression, slowly making herself a cup of coffee

(Personal Journal 3rd September 2008). And in the song Unravel, the audience was

introduced to an energetic and driven woman pushing a piano (Personal Journal 2nd

September 2008). The abstract nature of the songs provided me with a sense of

safety in sharing my personal story with an audience. However, as stated earlier,

the audience found the lack of clear characters or context to be disengaging. At the

time I also felt clearer choices needed to be made in how I expressed these different

aspects of my own experience.

In cycle two, I told my experiences from the points of view of diverse personas from

different performative worlds that I described as ‘the facility’, ‘the bar’ and ‘the gym’

(Personal Journal, 30th November 2009). Within the gothic aesthetic of ‘the facility’ I

expressed my own personal experiences in the characters of the ‘mental patients’

through the songs Dancing with my demons til dawn (an exploration of insomnia

driven by anxiety) and You put my brain back the wrong way (a description of an

extreme response to anti-depressant medication). As ‘the bartender’ I expressed

my resignation to depression as an inevitable part of life through the song

Everyone’s Fucking Depressed, performed in a blues style. And as a ‘gym junkie’ I

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performed the act of trying to feel better through exercise in the songs I’m Fine and

Just One (Personal Journal, 30th November 2009).

In cycle three I used audience feedback to refine these personas, and to make

these personas more clearly aspects of the character of ‘Jo’ rather than entirely

different personalities. As ‘Jo’ I moved between a number of different performance

personas within the cabaret that I have described as ‘Jo the calm storyteller’, ‘Jo in

denial’, ‘provocative Jo’, ‘numb Jo’ and ‘psychotic Jo’. The ‘provocative Jo’

appeared in the 2010 version of the song Everyone’s Fucking Depressed. In 2009, I

had performed the same lyrics within a blues style. The transition of these lyrics into

the rap style introduced a more provocative and ‘in your face’ feel to this song. It

also created humour through the parodic incongruity between rap form and the

content of the lyrics. The ‘psychotic Jo’ appeared in the song You put my brain back

the wrong way. This song follows ‘Jo’s’ revelation of wanting to commit suicide and

being put on anti-depressants by her doctor. In 2009, this song was performed in the

world of the clinic and the character was represented as a kind of Frankenstein’s

monster who came to life. The use of this song as the end of one of ‘Jo’s’ scenes

gave a personal context to the song as an expression of my experience of taking

anti-depressants, and thus created a more confrontational setting for the song. In

addition the dramatic juxtaposition of the revelatory subject matter in the scene with

the form of punk rock added to the comically incongruous use of parody in this

scene. These different aspects of ‘Jo’ are further discussed in Chapter Six.

The interviewees’ stories

In a similar process to the adaptation of my own story for the cabaret, I used

principles of externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions to

transform interview transcripts into scenes in the cabaret. As discussed earlier in

this chapter I used many of interviewees’ comments to flesh out The Naughty song

as an externalisation of the negative thoughts within one’s mind.

An autonomous ethic of living in the interviewees’ stories

I used the principle of an autonomous ethic of living to present a number of the

interviewees’ core values in the style of heightened realism. One of these core

values was of acceptance as an important part of a healing process. Female

Interviewee Four noted the importance of accepting what was happening to her, and

“not being afraid of it” (Lines1585- 1592). This sense of acceptance was also cited

as important by other interviewees. Interview Three commented that she liked her

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current counsellor because “she doesn’t criticise or judge or take emotional sides or

anything” (Female Interviewee Three, Lines 1409-1410). Interviewee One noted that

her husband was very understanding, commenting “he’s really, really good. He’s

really got to really understand it, which is more than a lot of people do I think”

(Female Interviewee One, Lines 488-490). Interviewee Two commented that for her,

self acceptance (being ”okay with me”) was an important part of overcoming

depression and that “I had to get to a point where I was okay with me, and that was

a long path” (Female Interviewee Two, Lines 978-980). In the case of depressive

disorders, this sense of self-acceptance can also relate to knowing that the condition

has a family history. Interviewee Two commented that it helped her to find out there

had been a family history of depression, and that she wished she had known about

this earlier so that she could have known it was a biological part of her:

Looking back on my family history I think it’s an hereditary condition. I think my grandfather certainly suffered from it, members of my family suffered from it on my mother’s side. And this is only something I’ve found out in the last couple of years since I sort of started talking about it… which shits me, cause if someone had said this to me a bit earlier I might have had an idea of what was going on… and that I wasn’t exactly freaky. I think that it has been a family history. And I’m cast as having melancholic depression so it is a long ongoing thing, it’s not something that’s triggered by any event, it’s just something that is. It’s a chemical imbalance in my brain and that’s how I look on it now. (Female Interviewee Two, Lines 765-773)

Female Interviewee Three confirmed this experience in relating her story of finding

out that she was adopted, and that her biological family had had a history of mental

illness:

Female Interviewee Three: I’ll just tell you an interesting thing… When I found out I was adopted, about 11 years later I found my natural family, but I met my father and lots of aunts and uncles and cousins and I found out that just like the Amish people who live in a secluded sort of style, my relatives all had schizophrenia, bi-polar, depression… nearly all of them had one form or another of mental illness – they say it’s the most hereditary illness you can have. So I was quite surprised. My dear aunt she even felt guilty that she was passing on bi-polar – you know. So that’s very interesting.

Jo: Did that help you?

Female Interviewee Three: Yes, hugely. I didn’t feel quite so weird. (Female Interviewee Three, Lines 1225 - 1236)

The value of personal acceptance and understanding from others was captured in a

personal story related by Female Interviewee Three, telling of her experience of a

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depressive episode and of her husband’s inability to accept this process, shown in

his request for her to “pull up her socks”:

when I was down he used to tell me to get my act together and “pull up my socks”, you know, which you can’t do when you’re that depressed, but that’s what made me realise that he didn’t understand at all. (Female Interviewee Three, Lines 1259-1261)

The interviewee related that she had divorced her husband because “We couldn’t

work it out” (Female Interviewee Three, Line 1209). I used this particular story within

the first creative development process; in the second creative development process

dramaturge Therese Collie, after reading the script from the first showing, noted the

image of ”pulling up socks” as a potentially powerful theatrical metaphor (Personal

Journal 17th June 2009). I then developed this concept of ’pulling up the socks’ in

my rewriting of the script, and noted in my journal that I was aiming to use the

“symbolic gesture of pulling up socks” in order to represent the individual “trying to fit

into an unrealistic stereotype”, and then to show “how she turned her back on

stereotypes and learnt to make peace with herself” (Personal Journal, 27th June,

2009). In cycle three this interview excerpt was used as the basis for a

contemplative monologue in which woman took off her stockings to symbolise not

trying to fulfil a stereotype. This monologue was almost entirely verbatim

information from the interview:

Scene eight: The sock woman That’s what my husband used to say. I’m a nursing sister. After I did my general training, I came up here and did obstetrics, and got married to an American on the rebound from another chap, and we had two children...

I was diagnosed when I was about 24 -- just before I got married I had another depression – I had jumped into the river fully clothed and someone fished me out. I can’t have wanted to die too much because I think I swam… I was in the hospital for a few weeks...

And I came home and got married and lived … happily ever after?

We were married for about 7 years. (Starts to roll down her ‘stocking’, and take them off) He was 16 years my senior and an American and he’d been a bachelor for too long. We just couldn’t work it out.

We had two little kids and he still wanted to be the company executive. He’d come home with three men at night and he’d want dinner on the table…

And I was looking after two little children… and I just couldn’t do it.

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I divorced him and he didn’t like that. He did love me, and he was shocked that I would go so far as to divorce him.

When I was down he used to tell me to get my act together and “pull up my socks”, you know. (Mind Games script May 2010, 18)

At the end of this monologue, I added the following line in order to clarify the theme

of the scene, and reflect information from other interviewees:

He just didn’t understand that this is a part of me, this sadness is part of who I am, and is not going to be fixed by any cover up! (Mind Games script May 2010, 18)

In this way, I used one individual’s interview material to focus on a general theme

from the interviews. I chose to perform the scene with a style of heightened realism

to reflect the intensely personal nature of the material, and to encourage a sense of

intimacy.

Other core values expressed in the cabaret were the importance of being

independent and responsibility and commitment. These core values were

expressed ‘in reverse’; by this I mean the value was expressed by the sense of

trauma created in an individual’s life. The first of these values, the importance of

being independent, was expressed in a scene in which an individual was

experiencing trauma due to a loss of independence. The second core value, of

responsibility and commitment, was expressed in a scene in which a woman

continued to care for her daughter despite the difficulty and pain this was causing

her.

The value of independence was expressed in a scene entitled Ms Rapid Cycling,

performed towards the end of the cabaret. The interview expressed an individual’s

shame at needing to be looked after by her parents after an extreme episode of

bipolar disorder in which she engaged in promiscuous behaviour:

We were in New Zealand and there was a group of us travelling around and I decided to have this party and we were going to have the best party ever and I was even getting my teeth cleaned for this party – I was manic you see. And I ended up in a field somewhere in the back of someone’s ute having sex… Well it wasn’t really sex… I was just there and he was having sex and I felt so bad about it… anyway he took me home to his place and gave me breakfast. And the next thing I found myself sitting in the lounge room feeling so bad – not knowing that I was bi-polar I just went from high down to low in about 24 hours and I took all these sleeping pills… I don’t know where

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I got them now. And then I got in a taxi and I asked him to drive me over a cliff. And the poor man – he spent about two hours talking to me… I was in my nightie and dressing gown and he finally persuaded me to go to hospital and I went. And my father came over from Australia and got me, and my mother took me to this psychiatrist... And I stayed home for a while and then mum and dad were going on a trip to Queensland and they took me along. Mum didn’t want me to go with them because she thought she was rid of me, and then here I was again just like a little child… You know, needing to be looked after. (Interviewee Three, Lines 1169 – 1189)

In this scene large excerpts from the interview material were used as a dramatic

monologue followed by the Fallen angel song that expressed the pain of having “so

much potential, so much promise” having to return to “being spoon fed” in “my high

chair” (Mind Games script May 2010, 24- 25). The second core value of taking care

of a loved one was expressed through a character called ‘The mother’. This

character was developed in response to feedback from cycle three’s work-in-

progress showing suggesting there was a need to explore the point of view of carers

of those with depression, and the tensions that can occur in caring relationships

(Personal Journal 16th March, 2010). An implied core value here is the sense of

responsibility and commitment to taking care of a loved one in difficult

circumstances. While researching this perspective I found a research report by

Graeme Cowan conducted for the book Back from the Brink Too that included on-

line responses from 351 carers of individuals with depression (Cowan 2008, 3).

This resource presented a range of different experiences through responses to

standardised questions, and also included section for other concerns and

experiences to be discussed. For example, the question “Please rate the

problems/frustrations you have in supporting someone with depression”, 72 percent

supported the comment “I feel like I am being pushed away”; while 62 percent

supported the comment “I wish they would just snap out of it”; and 60 percent

agreed with the statement “I feel like I don’t know them anymore” (Cowan 2008, 3).

Other data from the questionnaire that I found relevant to my cabaret performance

included the quotes: “I feel like I am always giving – I am running on empty”; “I have

great difficulty in communicating with them and they often get irritated/angry” ; “I feel

that nothing I do helps” (Cowan 2008, 4) and “I require help... [in finding out] how to

tell them when their behaviour is unacceptable” (Cowan 2008, 8). Other

respondents noted that they feared “self harm and suicide” (Cowan 2008, 4). I used

this information to create the monologue for ‘the mother’ who appears towards the

end of the cabaret. This speech in the final performance was as follows:

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The mother: (Sigh) I wish she would just snap out of it! But... she keeps telling me she doesn’t need any help! Sometimes the best thing I can do is to get her out of bed every morning and have a shower... Most of the time though... I can’t say anything to her – she’ll just get really angry! It’s like I’m walking on egg shells all the time… I don’t know her anymore... all she seems to care about is herself... I feel like it’s all my fault... I don’t know what to do... How long will this last? I need to tell her that her behaviour is unacceptable... “pull yourself together”, “everyone struggles”... but that’ll just upset her further... I’m terrified that she’s going to... but how do I talk about that? ... so I just keep trying to pick up the pieces. (Mind Games script May 2010, 25-26)

This monologue reflects the challenges a carer experiences when they are

committed to looking after a loved one with a mental illness, and expresses the high

level of responsibility and commitment carers have towards their loved ones.

Rich descriptions and the interviewees’ stories

I presented a rich description of interviewees’ stories through the performance

technique of parody. This was designed to move the audience between a state of

distance and intimacy with interviewee’s stories, and to encourage multiple points of

view of a situation. Multiple perspectives on mental illness are presented within the

cabaret as a way to perform motivations for ‘Jo’ to change her perspectives on

issues. I used rich descriptions within the cabaret to present the interviewees’

stories of the search for the right therapy, the high level of productivity while on a

‘high’ and the sharing of personal experiences.

Of particular resonance to me were interviewees’ descriptions of their often lengthy

experiences of finding the ‘right’ therapist and the ‘right’ drugs. One interviewee

described this experience as beginning while she was in high school. At this time

she went to see a therapist with her mother. When the therapist suggested she was

depressed, her mother forbade her to see the therapist again. In response, the

interviewee tried talking to counsellors over the internet, and later when she went to

university she went to see many different psychiatrists and counsellors but didn’t

find them very helpful. Some of these psychiatrists would give her drugs, and then

when she complained about adverse effects the psychiatrists increased the dose

(514- 583, Female Interviewee One). A particularly vivid episode occurred for this

interviewee when she saw a psychiatrist while in hospital and subsequently returned

to work:

yeah, but it was really hard… she had me on so many drugs… she told me to take the lithium and so I did and then I was at work and I

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kept ringing her and saying to her like I can’t move, I feel like my limbs are really heavy and I’m like trying to drag myself around, and I can’t teach like that, it just doesn’t work. And she just said “Oh no, you’ll be fine”. Then when I rang her to tell her what had happened at work and I told her and said “Oh well that’s probably a good thing because now you can just like take more lithium and see what happens”… and I was like “Oh no, I don’t think so.” So I hung up and I actually never spoke to her again. (Female Interviewee One, Lines 547 – 563)

Another example of a similar experience was shown in the interview with Female

Interviewee Two, who took a very long time to be diagnosed with a depressive

disorder (Female interviewee Two, Lines 814- 877). Her story began when she

went to see a doctor to try to lose weight. This doctor put her on a very low dose of

an anti-depressant, which didn’t have any effect. Later when she decided to have a

lap-banding procedure she was given a psychiatric assessment followed by multiple

trips to a psychiatrist, which finally led to her diagnosis with a depressive disorder.

She related that:

after a few sessions with the psychiatrist he’s like “right well here’s what I think… You have melancholic depression… you have had a severe depressive disorder for most of your life, it’s amazing that you have done as well as you have, we’re going to up the drugs and change your drugs” and from that point on I’ve just been a much better person. It hasn’t been easy. (Female Interviewee Two, Lines 820-822)

From that point on, she related that it was a very long process and that “it hasn’t

been an easy relationship in terms of my shrink... I’ve hated him” (Female

Interviewee Two, Lines 868-869). A similar lengthy process was experienced by

Female Interviewee Four, who related that it took her a number of years to find a

therapeutic process that worked for her (Female Interviewee Four, 1572-1601). After

a particularly traumatic life experience she returned to her home town, where there

was only one counsellor who came to visit once a month. The interviewee related

that she didn’t find this counsellor’s approach useful. This individual she did not find

therapists or psychiatrists particularly helpful, and she found it more helpful to read

books on psychology and to take anti-depressants. She summed up with the

following statement:

Yeah, I haven’t had much success with therapists. But what I did have success with was taking anti-depressants… just to kind of get out of that extremely low state and also to help the anxiety attacks to subside and I also started reading a lot about depression and anxiety and, you know, lots of self-help books. And it was through that process that I really started to accept what was happening to me and I

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really started to not be afraid of it anymore. (Female Interviewee Four, Lines1585-592)

In 2008, I began to experiment with performing these experiences in a song that

parodied the style of musical theatre , My therapist, my friend. While reading a

section of an interview with young woman that explored the theme of the ‘rigmarole

of going through therapy’, I was struck by the rhythmic and poetic quality of her

spoken language (Personal Journal 5th September 2008). This is particularly

obvious in the following excerpt:

I first saw a psychologist when I was at school, for the anorexia, yeah, and she thought I was depressed and stuff, but that upset my mother too much, so we didn’t actually go back, yeah, she took it really personally… so I never went back, so I was pretty much on my own… so I’d get onto the internet and you can contact counsellors on the internet, and so I sort of got into that. (Personal Interview, 27th July 2008)

I then investigated ways of singing these words, and began to sing in a ‘saccharine

sweet’ musical theatre style. I found the use of this style interesting as it parodied

the form of musical theatre, contrasting the neat, happy endings offered by this form

with the complexity of real life experiences. During my interviews I was also struck

by the way individuals would often laugh after sharing their darkest moments,

possibly to lighten the mood of the situation; and felt that the use of the musical

theatre form and an exaggerated smile mimicked this approach, helping to approach

the subject matter in a light hearted way. From this inspiration, I began to write a

song based on three interviewees’ experiences with their therapists, and added the

‘corny’ chorus “My therapist, my friend, without you where would I be?” (Personal

Journal 5th September 2008). In this way, the use of musical parody offered me a

way into a musical performance of the interview material. In 2010, in order to

heighten the performative style of this song, Colarelli and I developed this song into

a parody of opera performed by the character ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’. Originally

this song was divided into three different characters and involved chair-swapping to

represent different people’s experiences. During the final creative process I decided

to simplify this scene by making the three characters into a single character. This

simplified the story for the audience by bringing a number of individuals’ experiences

together under the one theme. The individual experiences described above are

each represented in the verses of the song, most of which were verbatim material

from the interviews, unified by the chorus “My therapist, my friend, without you

where would I be?” The final lyrics are as follows:

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Verse One: I first saw a psychologist when I was at school She thought I was depressed and stuff But that upset my mother too much So I didn’t go back I didn’t go back

Then I saw my general practitioner to get some help with my weight So it really was by accident He prescribed me a mild anti-depressant But it didn’t really help (No, no) It didn’t really help (No!)

My home town it was so small A counsellor only came once a month She handed me a box of tissues (Piano player: hands box of tissues)

And wanted to know about all my issues And I wasn’t ready for that (blows nose) I wasn’t’ ready for that (blows nose)

Chorus: My therapist, my friend, Without you where would I be?

Verse Two: And then I got on the internet, you can contact counsellors that way I’ve always been intellectual And just wanted to know it all And I got into that I got into that

Chorus: My therapist, my friend, My therapist, my friend, Without you where would I be?

Spoken: I was having a really hard time, my weight was spiralling out of control And I decided to have lap-banding done But that doctor said “You can’t do that until you get your head straight”

Bridge: So finally I had an appointment with my very own psychiatrist He was pretty shocked to hear My story from the start And he pushed up my dose He pushed up my dose

He said Piano player (as the psychiatrist): you’ve got a severe depressive disorder It’s amazing that you’re still okay

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Chorus: My therapist my friend, My therapist my friend, My therapist my friend Without you where would I be?

Spoken: I haven’t had much success with therapists. But I did have success with taking anti-depressants… just to kind of get out of that extremely low state and to help the anxiety attacks and I started reading a lot about depression and anxiety lots of self-help books. And it was through that process that I really started to accept what was happening to me and I’m not scared of it anymore.

Verse Three: And then I started to read about The cognitive behaviour approach And I liked all those exercises To help unlock your thought processes Just to get out of my head Get out of my head. (Mind Games script, May 2010, 12-14)

The performance choice of compiling three interviewees’ experiences into the one

character also led to greater comic potential through parodying the persona of an

‘Opera Diva’, as discussed in Chapter Six.

For Interviewee One, bipolar highs are associated with a high level of work

productivity (Lines 413-417 and Lines 453-462) while her lows often involved staying

in the bathtub and wanting to commit suicide (Lines 468-472).

The first of Interviewee One’s experiences was portrayed in Mind Games in the

light-hearted song I’m flying, in which a woman dances and shakes maracas before

collapsing in exhaustion. This song was the brain child of my pianist Philippe Klaus

during one music rehearsal when we were exploring ways to show the bipolar highs

in the show (Personal Journal, 6th September 2008). We started to musically ‘jam’

on this idea and, as I noted in my journal:

Philippe started mucking around on the piano and played the riff for the song that would become “flying”... I then started dancing around and improvising lyrics and came up with “I’m flying so high, I don’t wanna come down, I’m flying so high, I don’t wanna come down, flying, flying”… We decided that this would be the chorus for this song. (Personal Journal, 6th September 2008)

I combined this music and lyrics with interview material about one interviewee’s

bipolar high to create the song “I’m flying”. The music that Philippe had created was

in a Latin based style, and in response I had the idea of playing maracas in the

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scene and dancing around in a Tropicália style. In 2008 I performed this scene

running around the audience shaking maracas during the spoken verses, and

dancing and singing during the choruses. This song was used in the 2008, 2009

(Figure 1) and 2010 performances of the cabaret. This scene’s exaggerated use of

parodic humour created a strong sense of distance between the performer and the

audience.

All interviewees commented on the value they found in sharing their stories and

experiences with others, be they therapist, support group or friends and family. I can

strongly relate to this experience. Interviewee Three noted that she regularly goes

to see a psychologist and a range of support groups and finds these helpful (Female

Interviewee Three, Lines 1386- 1395). Interviewee Two noted the drastic change in

her life that has taken place from the most severe depressive episode in her

twenties to her current life. In her most depressed

times she said she isolated herself, stating: “I had a

year virtually where I found it difficult to get out of

bed and I refused to go home to visit my parents and

that year it was really quite bad…” (Female

Interviewee Two, Lines 779-784). She then

compared this with her current life:

I’ve gone from one who was so shy and friend-less for such a long time, I now have a huge circle of friends, I remember for my 30th birthday I had a pub crawl and had a bus full of 60 people and I could never have thought that I would have managed to fill a bus with

60 people. You know, and I’m getting married next year, and I’m having trouble culling the guest list. (Interviewee Two, Lines 974-978)

Figure 1: ‘The flying girl’  2009

Here she relates being happier and overcoming depression to having more

connections with other people. Interviewee One commented that she found value in

talking and joking with her husband about her negative thoughts, and that he helped

her to understand the origin of her own thoughts:

Oh, he’ll just egg me on... he’ll go… “Oh that’s because you’re evil” and I’ll be going “yeah I know”… no, he’s pretty good about it. And he’ll say to me “Oh, you got that from your parents,” because they were really harsh and very critical, so it was easy for me to not have very good self esteem because they were really difficult people to live with. (Female Interviewee One, Lines 729-732)

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I found this theme of connection with others to be most poignantly expressed in a

personal anecdote by Interviewee Four, relating her experience of being an au pair

while she was overseas and finding consolation through crying and talking to her

friends over the phone:

I was working as a live-in nanny for two young children aged one and three, and I was really at that point in time having a nervous breakdown, and like I was responsible for these two young people everyday while their mother went off to work and I was waking up crying and just crying all day, and trying to keep it together so that I could look after these children. So in order to get through the day and be able look after these children I’d often call some of my friends, and I’d be talking on the phone to them and crying on the phone and having them talk me through it, and talk me down so I could maintain my calm. And one day the three year old girl who I was looking after was playing with a toy phone and she picked up the telephone and put it to her ear and she was playing, pretending that she was crying, and freaking out on the phone… and that was when I decided to quit. (Mind Games script 2008, 5)

In 2008, I performed this scene with a toy telephone, to evoke the image of a young

girl imitating her au pair’s behaviour. At this time, the performance of this scene was

very realistic, with a focus on the sadness of the scene. I would describe the

performance style as subtle, realistic, with an emphasis on a low key performance

style (that is, it was not overly emotive). In 2009 I embarked on extensive

development of this scene with Collie, and we experimented with many different

ways into the scene, including a versions of the song as a ‘persecuted maiden’ in

the gothic performance style. One of these versions experimented with showing the

scene “as a nightmare contrasted with a children’s song” (Personal Journal, 11th

August 2009). In this version lines spoken by the character to the children, were

contrasted with thoughts in the character’s mind. This related social views to the

way parental sayings canrepresent imbedded ideologies in the mind:

“Tommie, time to get up! Rise and shine, it’s time to face the world…. Come on, you can’t just lie around in bed all day!” “That’s a good boy… up you get!” (Personal Journal 11th August, 2009)

At this time, I was experimenting with the notion of the whole cabaret being

performed in a gothic aesthetic in order to represent the nightmarish experience of

depression and bipolar disorder. Later in the process I introduced the concept of

four different performative worlds within the performance (a circus, a nightmare, a

bar, and a gym) and described the circus world as presenting “the experience of

trying to ‘perform’ for the world… to meet society’s standards… and fail[ing]”

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(Personal Journal 26th October, 2009). These four different worlds were created to

present four different truths about the world of depression and bipolar disorder, or

four different perspectives of these experiences. At this time I became more

conscious of the relationship between the content of the scene and the style, and

began to clarify the agenda of each scene. In reflecting on the nanny/au pair scene,

I decided that this scene fitted within the circus/show world in that it focussed on an

individual attempting to ‘live up to’ society’s expectations. This change of attitude

towards the scene led to a stylistic change to show that the au pair’s behaviour

related to the theme of performing others’ expectations. Therese Collie had the idea

of performing the song in the country and western style. This style was chosen as

country and western songs often discuss extremely dark and upsetting subject

matter in an upbeat way. In this light, the country and western style of performance

can be likened to ‘putting on a brave face’ in a tough situation. I spent the next few

weeks listening to country and western CDs that Therese Collie lent me and wrote

the song Crying on the Phone in this style (Mind Games script in Personal Journal,

3rd November 2009). I continued to develop this song towards the December

showing of the work, and performed it with an exaggerated American accent. The

song began with the following lyrics:

Well about ten years ago I was dating a fellow But he was putting me down, holding me back So I got a job as a nanny For a friendly family Tried to get myself back on track But I was waking up crying And lookin after those kids was trying I needed my friends to help me through

CHORUS: I was crying on the phone I could hear the friendly tone Of my friend in another time zone  

And then I wasn’t so alone When I was crying on the phone Until I heard that sad dial tone. (Mind Games script May 2010,19)

Audience feedback on this scene described appreciation of the way the country and

western style differentiated the character and explored a sense of pathos, as shown

in this sample:

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I thought that the high point in terms of pathos was the scene that featured the country blues song (very quaint!). The atmosphere really changed, and the concept of the mood of the Nanny being transposed to the little girl was quite touching. The ‘country twang’ was an effective variation – and Jo could make more use of her skills with language and accents to differentiate between some of her characters (Audience feedback Showing Two, Lines 268-272).

Sandro Colarelli commented in support of this audience member’s opinion that at

this stage the show was ready for a more “refined expression of the characters”

(Audience feedback Showing Two, Line 49) In development with Colarelli in 2010

we worked on creating ”more definite stylistic brush strokes”. We kept the basic

structure of this scene, including the three verses and three choruses of the song,

and added original interview material eliminated in earlier versions in order to give

the song a greater sense of context (Mind Games script 2010, 19-20). In addition,

Colarelli and I decided the character was not American but an Australian girl from a

rural country town who was in love with country and western music. This choice

grounded the scene more strongly in Australian culture, and made the focus less on

making fun of country and western music, and more on country music as an

expression of the character’s situation. Thus my use of parody in this scene

became a celebration of the form of country and western music, rather than a

‘mocking’ form of parody. As Kreuz and Roberts state, parody can “criticise” or

“flatter” (1993, 103); and as Hutcheon states, parody is not necessarily denigrating

but can involve the ”revising, replaying, inverting and ’trans-contextualizing‘ previous

works of art” (1985, 11). In this scene, we began to use parody as an expression of

the character’s love for country music. This performance choice led to the effect of a

kind of ‘empathetic caricature’, intended to create a ‘push pull’ effect between

distance and intimacy with the audience. In addition, Sandro felt that more

references to other country and western songs were needed to give a greater link

between the scene and country music, and to give a stronger sense of this

character’s attraction to the country and western style. To this end, we added

quotations from famous country songs to the scene, including the lines: “sometimes

it’s hard to be a woman” and “take me home country road... ” (Mind Games script

2010, 19-20).

Conclusion

This project has utilised techniques of intimacy and distance in applying therapeutic

principles to the creation of a cabaret performance. Through action research cycles I

integrated more of my own story into the cabaret performance, created more

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dynamic variation in the cabaret and developed my use of performance persona and

parody. In applying the principles of externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living

and rich descriptions I transformed personal stories into a cabaret that created a

dynamic flux between distance and intimacy. Chapter six will analyse the

performance of Mind Games in order to describe the performance’s application of

these therapeutic principles.

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Chapter Six: Analysing Mind Games

Introduction

This chapter analyses the representation of games of truth in the cabaret Mind

Games in relation to techniques of distance and intimacy, and Michael White’s

principles of narrative therapy. Within the cabaret the character of ‘Jo’ is shown to

be exploring her own games of truth through her interactions with her externalized

inner critic and the other characters in the show. This chapter will firstly discuss the

presentation of constructedness within the cabaret performance in relation to

notions of witnessing and performance style. Three principles of White’s narrative

therapy will then be discussed in relation to the characters of the cabaret and ‘Jo’s’

journey throughout the performance. It is important to acknowledge that the

constructs discussed in this chapter are dynamic and contingent and that the

conclusions in this chapter represent one stage in the research journey. As

discussed in Chapters Three and Five, the application of White’s principles within

this project were in constant development and flux. The problematic representation

of ‘truth’ within the cabaret is explored at the end of this chapter specifically in

relation to the character of ‘Jo’.For the purposes of clarity I will refer to the

characters as performed in the play in the third person, and to my experiences of

having performed the show in the first person. This word choice has been chosen to

clarify the constructed nature of the performance, and to allow me to distance myself

from my own creation for the purposes of analysis. Many of the character names in

the cabaret were written in the script, but not identified on stage; hence, the

characters names were intended for use only by the creative team. For the

purposes of clarity, the characters in the cabaret are as follows:

‘Jo’: a representation of Jo Loth and the central protagonist of the cabaret ‘Jolene Mindtrich’: a parodic version of Marlene Dietrich; the representation of Jo’s inner critic; and the antagonist of the cabaret ‘The flying girl’ : a character based on an interviewee with bipolar disorder ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’: a character based on multiple interviewees who have suffered from depression ‘The sock woman’: a character based on an interviewee with bipolar disorder, but in this scene she is referring to her experiences of depression ‘The country and western singer’: a character based on an interviewee who has suffered from depression

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‘Ms Rapid Cycling’: a character based on an interviewee with bipolar disorder ‘The mother’: a character created from research material that included interviews with carers and relatives of individuals with depression

Also for the purposes of clarity, a scene list is provided below:

Mind Games: Scene List

Scene one: The Introduction of ‘Jolene’ (Song: The Naughty Song) Scene two: The Introduction of ‘Jo’ (Song: Unravel my Head) Scene three: ‘Jolene’ introduces ‘The flying girl’ (Song: I’m Flying so High) Scene four: ‘Jolene’ responds to ‘The flying girl’ Scene five: ‘Jo’s’ story of falling into depression (Song: I’m Fine) Scene six: The introduction of ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’ (Song: My Therapist, My Friend) Scene seven: ‘Jo’s’ stand up routine (Song: Everyone’s Fucking Depressed) Scene eight: ‘The sock woman’ Scene nine: ‘The country and western singer’ (Song: Crying on the Phone) Scene ten: ‘Jo’s’ lowest point (Song: You Put My Brain Back the Wrong Way) Scene eleven: ‘Ms Rapid Cycling’ (Song: Child Song) Scene twelve: The character ‘The mother’ picks up the pieces Scene thirteen: Conclusion (Song: Just one step)

The full script from the cabaret performance of Mind Games in May 2010 can be

found in Appendix 1.6.

Emphasising the constructed nature of the cabaret

Mind Games was not intended to present a truthful representation of real people’s

lives, but was rather intended to present an audience with a number of different

perspectives on mental illness through the adaptation of personal stories. With this

intention in mind, I used the techniques of self-conscious presentation, character-as-

witness and parody to draw attention to the constructed and artificial nature of the

cabaret.

In his discussion of documentary theatre (that is theatre created from interview

material), Bottoms (2006) advocates a ”self conscious” approach to the creation of

the performance, in which attention is drawn to the construction methods in the play

(Bottoms 2006, 61). Bottoms specifically praises Kaufman’s Gross Indecency: The

Three Trials of Oscar Wilde for being “highly self-conscious about its own status as

a collage of appropriated historical texts” (Bottoms 2006, 61). According to Bottoms,

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a more ethical way of producing documentary theatre is to make obvious the means

by which the performance has been constructed. While I did not explicitly discuss

my interview techniques or interview contexts during Mind Games, in scene two I

acknowledged that some of the performance material was drawn from interview

material. This was portrayed through the character of ‘Jo’, and also expressed one

of my own motivations within this process, to discuss the issue of depression within

a public forum, as shown in the following lines:

I’ve written a show about mental health – well depression and bi-polar disorder…. Because I’ve suffered from severe depression… and … um… I guess I’d like to raise awareness of this… condition… and so I’ve been interviewing other women, and through I met some really interesting people with bi-polar disorder… and that seemed relevant as well… so, yeah, this is my show. (Mind Games script May 2010, 4)

In this way I provided a background to the interviews that took place in the

development of the cabaret.

Additional techniques used to draw attention to the methods of construction in the

cabaret were the use of an onstage witness and the conscious use of styles of

parody to move between playful and scathing, homage and critique.

By presenting ‘Jolene’ as a witness to the stories, the audience is made more

conscious of the constructed, artificial nature of the cabaret. As discussed in

Chapter Three, the placement of a character as a witness within a performance can

increase the sense of theatricality in the performance, and draw the audience’s

attention more consciously to their own act of witnessing or watching a performance

(Rokem 2002, 2000). Applying Rokem’s three modes of witnessing, that is “the

performance-within-the performance”, “eavesdropper” or “omniscient” witness

(Rokem 2002, 171), ‘Jolene’ can be seen to represent the first two categories. At

the beginning of the cabaret, ‘Jolene’ sets herself up as an emcee by introducing the

audience to the performance and to the characters they will be meeting during the

cabaret:

Jolene: Welcome, everyone, to the show! Tonight I am going to introduce you to some very peculiar creatures.... some call them ‘sick’... I call them sick, yes, but... ‘interesting’? fascinating? strange? unique?... that will be for you to decide... These people have the blues – real bad... Or they maybe they are a bit crazy, you know... These are the people who lie on this couch and share their secrets. (Mind Games script May 2010, 3)

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‘Jolene’ later introduces ‘The flying girl’ with the exclamation “The extraordinary...

the bizarre... the amazing, flying girl!”; and ‘Jo’ with the description “But Jo, oh dear,

she is another story..She was fine for most of her life. A happy, good person, not

troubling herself with any of those negative feelings” (Mind Games script May 2010,

6, 8). According to Rokem, the use of the “performance-within-the performance”

mode of witnessing places emphasis on “the aesthetic dimension of witnessing”

(Rokem 2002, 171). Within a cabaret format, an emcee overtly showcases their own

and the other performers’ performativity, emphasising the fact that all performers

within the cabaret are putting on an act for their audience. This point can be seen in

Mind Games in the performance of the role of emcee by the overtly constructed

character ‘Jolene’, which emphasises the sense of performativity and artistry within

the cabaret. After being established as emcee, ‘Jolene’

becomes an “eavesdropper” (the second of Rokem’s

categories) to the stories of the other characters by

responding to the characters in a highly judgemental

fashion. To ‘Jo’ she exclaims, “Pull yourself together girl!

No one cares about your pathetic little life”; to ‘The flying

girl’ she counsels “Stop feeling so sorry for yourself”; and

after ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’ has spoken she responds

“Well… Well… I don’t know what is going on with you

people. No one has any self control anymore… Where

is the discipline? Where is the will power?” (Mind Games script May 2010, 6, 8, 14).

Through comments expressing her opinion of them, ‘Jolene’ reveals that she has

been eavesdropping on the other characters. According to Rokem, the witness as

an “eavesdropper” places emphasis on the “psychological aspects” of the

performance (Rokem 2002, 171). In other words attention is drawn to the way the

witness thinks and feels about the other characters. In Mind Games the emphasis

on ‘Jolene’s’ opinions of the other characters in the cabaret draws the audience’s

attention to the act of developing an opinion to the performance being presented,

and invites the audience to develop their own opinions on the cabaret. This

invitation emphasises the notion that the cabaret is a construction to be thought

about and discussed, rather than a realistic presentation of real events and people.

Figure 2: ‘The flying girl’  2010

A range of parodic styles was used in the performance for different performative

effects. Characters that were representative of myself and my inner critic (‘Jo’ and

‘Jolene’) were often performed in a polemic, parodic style. It is with these characters

that I took the greatest creative license. The character of ‘Jolene’ was performed in

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a scathing parodic style for the entire cabaret. She was performed as an extreme

caricature, and even when she is falling apart is shown to be highly critical of the

characters around her. As a parodic representation of Marlene Dietrich, ‘Jolene’

critiqued Dietrich’s vanity, obsession with self-discipline, and unemotional acting and

performance style. This created an unsympathetic portrayal of this character. The

character of ‘Jo’ was generally performed in a style of heightened realism but

occasionally parodied other performance styles, namely hip hop and punk rock. In

the rap song Everyone’s Fucking Depressed, ‘Jo’ presented a one-dimensional,

exaggerated parody of the rap style,

drawing attention to the arrogant and

confrontational performance style of rap,

and mocking rap singers’ ‘gangsta’ style

movements . In a similar way, the punk

rock song You Put My Brain Back the

Wrong Way, presented a one-dimensional

caricature of a punk rock artist’s aggressive

and erratic physicality and atonal, extreme

singing (or screaming) style. In contrast,

parodic presentations of the interviewee

characters were presented in a more

sympathetic manner. These characters were generally introduced in an

exaggerated, caricatured style and then became less caricatured as the scene

progressed. In this way, the scenes moves from a

performer-audience relationship of distance to one of

intimacy, encouraging the audience to more

empathetically relate to the characters at the end of

scene. The first two interviewee characters introduced

to the audience, ‘The flying girl’ (Figure 2) and ‘Dame

Hurry-to-Therapy’ (Figure 4), were performed as

Figure 3: ‘The country and western singer’ 2010

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heightened parodies of Carmen Miranda (in the musical form of Tropicália) and an

opera diva respectively. ‘The flying girl’ presented a comic version of the bipolar

high, as she sings, dances and shakes maracas (Mind Games script 2010, 6); and

‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’ relates light-hearted experiences of seeing therapist after

therapist with exaggerated operatic trills and flourishes (Mind Games script May

2010, 12). Later in the cabaret show, the audience met ‘The country and western

singer’ (Figure 3) who tells of her experiences of depression through the style of

country music. This character is presented as a caricature of an Australian girl from

a rural community (perhaps Central Queensland or Northern New South Wales) who

speaks in a broad Australian accent and loves country music.

In these ways I used parodic forms of Tropicália, Opera and Country and Western

music to present some of the interview material. These stylistic choices made it

clear to the audience that a large amount of creative license has been taken in the

journey from interview material to performance. Scenes presenting interview

material generally began in a distancing relationship with the audience, and moved

towards a sense of intimacy. ‘The flying girl’ , the first interviewee character

presented within the performance, was performed in an exaggerated state of mania,

parodying the extremity of a bipolar high and encouraging a relationship of distance

between the audience and this character. As the scene progressed, however, we

see this character becoming physically exhausted before collapsing in a heap. After

having an intense, and intentionally comic, high, the audience sees her slowly fall to

the floor and her facial expressions become pained. In t

from a comic, light-hearted atmosphere to one of hurt

and pain, implying that the character is about to enter

depressive period. ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’ was also

presented in an exaggerated manner, parodying the

self-centredness and melodramatic attitude of

singer and implying that individuals going to therapy are

similarly self-centred and melodramatic. This caricature

is undermined at the end of the scene when the ‘Dame’ sits on the sofa and more

calmly relates the end of story, and sings her final lines in a gentle sing-song style.

In a similar way, ‘The country and western singer’ begins her scene in an

exaggerated country Australian accent and is shown stuffing her bra in an attempt to

be more like Dolly Parton. This scene ends on a more tragic note as she sings

“take me home, country road” in a plaintive voice, expressing her need to re

home to her parents. These scenes begin by reinforcing stereotypes of indiv

his way the scene moves

a

an opera

turn

iduals

Figure 4: ‘Dame Hurry‐to‐Therapy’ 2010

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with a mental illness as manic, self-centred and ‘other’, and then undermine these

stereotypes encouraging a sense of intimacy with the characters.

My use of heightened, comic, and parodic performance styles was a way of self

the

is

Despite the contrasting use of performance styles to represent the interviewees, I

In describing the usual process in verbatim performance, Heddon notes that

ought

aracter

Thus, by self-consciously introducing the use of interview material in the cabaret,

hin

Externalisation

ene’

ugh the

e’ is an

o

consciously drawing attention to my own creative process. Within these scenes,

parodic performance style makes it clear to the audience that I am not intending to

provide a truthful representation of real people, but am instead self-consciously

interpreting parts of real peoples’ stories to explore the themes of the play. The

incorporation of elements of intimacy in these parodic representations steered th

style of parody to a less critical, more playful and more empathetic style.

would describe the overall style in my performance of these characters as

’empathetic caricature’.

performers often take on the “key physical characteristics or what might be th

of as gestus” of their subjects(Heddon 2008, 130). In rehearsals Colarelli

encouraged me to create a clear physicality and set of gestures for each ch

in order to clearly define the differences between the characters. Each character

was presented through specific physical and vocal characteristics, sometimes

extremely exaggerated, sometimes more minimal.

establishing ‘Jolene’ as a character-as-witness, and through varying the parodic

styles in the performance, I enhanced the sense of constructed, performativity wit

the cabaret. In these ways the cabaret presented itself as a consciously constructed

performance of aspects of life experience, rather than a presentation of real life.

The construction of ‘Jol

The process of ‘externalisation’ within the performance was enacted thro

character of ‘Jolene’. As discussed in Chapter Five, ‘Jolene’ is a stylised

representation of my own inner critic, and thus in the performance, ‘Jolen

aspect of ‘Jo’s’ mind. White states the externalisation of a problem helps people t

assume responsibility for their lives, commenting that:

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This separation of the person’s identity from the identity of the problem does not relinquish people from a responsibility to address the problems they are encountering. Rather, it makes it more possible for people to assume this responsibility. (White 2007, 26)

This chapter discusses the way that the persona of ‘Jolene’ was constructed and

deconstructed within the cabaret performance. It is important to note that I am using

these terms to describe the creation and dismantling of the persona ‘Jolene’ within

the cabaret, rather than as the terms are used in the textual analysis approach of

deconstructionism. In this research, deconstruction refers to White’s process of

dismantling or unravelling of perspectives that are considered to be truths by an

individual. I have chosen the terms construction and deconstruction to draw

attention to the process through which ‘Jolene’ was ‘set up’ and then ‘broken down’

for the audience. According to White, by separating their identity from the problem,

an individual is able to unravel their own thought processes. This “unravelling

process” reveals the origin of the problem and allows individuals to explore different

ways of experiencing the world:

It is quite common for this unravelling process to reveal the history of the “politics” of the problem that bring people to therapy. This is a history of the power relations that people have been subject to and that have shaped their negative conclusions about their life and their identity. This unravelling deprives these conclusions of a “truth” status and calls them into question. As an outcome, people find that their lives are no longer tied to these negative conclusions and this puts them in a position to explore other territories of their lives. (White 2007, 27)

In Mind Games I used performative techniques from the cabaret personas of the

provocateur and the vamp to both construct and deconstruct ‘Jolene’.

As discussed in Chapter Four, provocateur cabaret artists present their critiques in a

humorous, musical form, and their humour is cutting and often caustic. These

qualities ensure that the provocateurs present criticisms that are both entertaining

and focussed.

This is particularly obvious in the work of Eddie Perfect, who uses the approach of

“stroking and striking” the viewers by combining entertainment with hard-hitting

messages (Perfect quoted in Rose 2005a). Perfect states that he aims to “let the

audience be angry” with him but not to feel like he is “attacking them” (quoted in

Rose 2005a). This means that Perfect intends to provoke the audience into feeling

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a strong emotion that can incite action (in this case anger), but not to feel threatened

or individually attacked. In Mind Games ‘Jolene’ made cutting, critical statements,

sometimes directed at the audience, sometimes directed at the other characters in

the cabaret, and these were presented in light hearted, comic and musical forms.

This created a balance between provoking the audience with critical statements and

pleasing them with musical comedy, or, in Perfect’s terms “striking” and ”stroking”

the audience.

‘Jolene’s’ first speech presents the audience with a lesson in which she announces

she will teach the audience how to control their minds, and states that if they do not

control their minds they are “weak” and “naughty”. She then sings The Naughty

Song, telling them they have been very bad. This song starts out in a playful, sexy

manner (“you have been a bad, bad boy”) and gradually becomes more serious and

intense until she tells the audience “you’re a total failure, unworthy of love” (Mind

Games script May 2010, 2). The musical style of The Naughty Song also lightens

the scene. In the tradition of cabaret provocateurs, the music style is sweet and

seductive. In the same vein as Eddie Perfect (whose performances are

characterised by angry, sarcastic lyrics performed in a sweet, ‘cherubic tone’) and

Dusty Limits (whose smooth, operatic voice is the vehicle for cutting satire), The

Naughty Song is performed in a husky, sensual jazz style voice, presenting caustic

statements in a sensuous style.

After this introduction ‘Jolene’ introduces the show explaining that she will introduce

the audience to some “strange creatures” who she describes as “sick”’:

Jolene: Welcome, everyone, to de show! Tonight i am going to introduce you to some very peculiar creatures.... some call them ‘sick’... I call them sick, but... Interesting? Fascinating? Strange? Unique?... that will be for you to decide... anyway... they have de blues – real bad... Or they maybe they are a bit crazy, you know... these are the people who lie on this couch and share their secrets. (Mind Games script May 2010, 3)

This opening scene is in the realm of the provocateur. This scene is marked by a

dark sense of humour, and ‘Jolene’ makes caustic comments addressed first to the

audience, and then to a particular group of people – those with depression or bipolar

disorder. Her comments are simplistic and extreme. These are not the comments

of someone presenting a ‘well balanced’ perspective; these comments are

deliberately provocative. The humour of the situation comes from the extremity of

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the character and her viewpoints; her perspective is so extreme that it becomes

laughable.

Other provocative comments ‘Jolene’ makes include criticisms of ‘Jo’ and ‘The flying

girl’ . In the second scene in the cabaret, ‘Jolene’ castigates ‘Jo’ for telling the

audience about her troubles, and tells her to “Pull yourself together... [because] No

one cares about your pathetic little life!” (Mind Games script May 2010, 6). When

introducing ‘The flying girl’ , ‘Jolene’ describes her as having a “strange condition”

and being part of a “weird world” (Mind Games script May 2010, 6. After the scene

‘Jolene’ gives a double-edged compliment to flying girl and criticises ‘Jo’:

Jolene: How fantastic! You can achieve so much! You are so much more interesting than Jo. Ugh, Jo, she gives me a chronic case of ennui! But,you... It is like you are super human! I need some of that energy! Your energy is fantastic! Stop feeling so sorry for yourself! You just had a wonderful high and you were so productive! You are the over achiever. But Jo, oh dear, she is another story. (Mind Games script May 2010, 8)

Characteristics of the vamp are also used to construct the persona of ‘Jolene’. The

vamp is characterised by an overt sexuality, glamorous style and self-conscious

performance of ‘constructed femininity’. In the first four scenes of the cabaret

‘Jolene’ is overtly sexualised, almost to the point of caricature as she: pouts; gropes

her own breasts; suggestively caresses the legs of the couch; draws attention to her

legs; and hints at a dominatrix style of sexuality in The Naughty Song. Up to scene

four, ‘Jolene’ relates to the other characters and subject matter of the cabaret in a

sexual manner: her excitement in finding more stories of the couch, her interest in

knowing more about ‘The flying girl’ , her castigation of the audience and the

characters for being “naughty”: all of these have a sexualised tone suggesting

arousal or sex play.

As discussed in Chapter Four, vamps in contemporary cabaret often draw attention

to the constructed nature of femininity and glamour. Camille O’Sullivan began The

Dark Angel glamorously dressed in a floor length coat with her hair perfectly coiffed,

and ended the show with messed up hair, and without most of her clothes.

O’Sullivan did not take her clothes off as a strip tease, but rather as a stripping off of

her glamorous layers. Meow Meow makes a point of showing how the diva persona

is created by changing costumes onstage and asking for help from the audience to

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help her construct herself, and Paul Capsis adds small costume items and specific

gestus to construct the diva performers in front of the audience.

In the opening scene of Mind Games, the character of ‘Jolene’ is constructed in front

of the audience. The first image that confronts the audience is of a female

performer wrapped in white fabric facing away from the audience grunting as she

tries to wrestle herself free of the fabric. She is holding her arms across her chest as

if she has been restrained, and the white fabric is intended to symbolise a straight

jacket. After the performer has freed herself from the fabric, she notices the blond

wig (perched on the musician’s head), reaches for the wig and places it on her own

head. Then she carefully drapes the white fabric around her shoulders as a stole.

The musician moves aside, a spotlight is focussed on the female performer, and she

is formally introduced to the audience:

Piano player: Good evening ladies and gentlemen – please put your hands together for the one, the only Jolene Mindtrich! (Mind Games script May 2010, 2)

In this introduction to the cabaret, the performer has contrasted the primal,

uncontrolled qualities of the figure shown at the start of the play (trying to escape

from a straight-jacket) with a

controlled, constructed glamorous performance. This moment clearly establishes for

the audience that ‘Jolene’ is an artificial construction, and that the primal ‘Jo’ has

made a decisive move to become ‘Jolene’. This sequence also draws attention to

the constructed nature of glamour and the effort taken to achieve a glamorous

appearance.

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Deconstructing ‘Jolene’: the vulnerability of the vamp

As the cabaret progresses the audience observes the deconstruction of ‘Jolene’.

With each story told by the other characters in the show, ‘Jolene’s’ glamour and

power are diminished until she becomes a ‘throw away’ joke in the final moments. In

Mind Games, the deconstruction of ‘Jolene’ is expressed through changes in

costume and characterisation.

The costume for Mind Games is a combination of layers consisting of a short mini-

skirt dress in gold sequins under a longer matching skirt. Together these two layers

create the effect of a long sequinned evening gown. A blonde wig and white stole

are added to denote the character

‘Jolene’ (Figure 5). Underneath the

dress and skirt is a plain cream slip,

and high heels and stockings complete

the outfit. In the early scenes of the

cabaret, the sequins, high heels and

blonde wig are used to enhance

‘Jolene’s’ sexualisation. As the

performance progresses these layers

are stripped off until the performer is

left wearing just a cream slip. When ‘Jo’

gets her first chance to tell her story

she removes the long sequinned skirt,

then the character of the ‘sock woma

takes off the shoes and stockings

After this scene, ‘Jolene’ is visibly upset

and removes her own wig and takes off

the dress. At the same time as the costume is being dismantled, ‘Jolene’ is sho

as becoming less sexualised, less sure of herself and more irate and confused. This

deconstruction shows ‘Jolene’ as a vulnerable persona, easily dismantled and take

apart. This vulnerability is a quality of the vamp performance persona. As discussed

in Chapter Four, the personas presented by Camillie O’Sullivan, Meow Meow

Paul Capsis all show the vulnerability of the vamp. O’Sullivan does this by

dismantling her glamorous image through the show; Meow Meow by having the

audience dress and undress her during the show, and asking the audience to lift he

and move her around the space (drawing attention to her reliance on the audienc

n’

.

wn

n

and

r

e

Figure 5: ‘Jolene in 2010

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to maintain her ‘diva-ness’); and Capsis by showing the vulnerability of the ‘faded

stars’ he embodies.

The breakdown of ‘Jolene’ in relation to the other characters

The inner critic ‘Jolene’, encourages ‘Jo’ to feel a sense of self-stigma and to

present a mask so that she can fit in and be normal. ‘Jolene’, can be seen as the

normalising tendency within ‘Jo’. ‘Jolene’ pathologises ‘Jo’s’ depression by advising

‘Jo’ that she is “weak”, “bad”, “evil” and so on (Mind Games script May 2010, 2-6).

‘Jolene’ repeatedly castigates

‘Jo’, telling her that she is not

good enough, and that it is

shameful to admit to having

depression. ‘Jolene’ also

advocates ‘Jo’ not change her

facial expression (thereby

not telling anyone that

anything is wrong), and tells her

to try to succeed in life by being

strong willed. In this way, ‘Jolene’

advocates keeping up a social

mask in order to fit into society.

She also advises ‘Jo’ not to see a

therapist because it is

“...humiliating! Shaming!” asking

“What will people think? What

will people say?” (Mind Games

script 2010, 12). As ‘Jolene’ is

ased. A turning point in the

relationship between ‘Jolene’ and ‘Jo’ occurs in scene seven. This scene follows th

opera singer character relating her experiences of therapy. After going through

many different therapists, the opera singer decides that therapy is not really for her

and that she gains more from anti-depressant medications and reading about way

to cope with depression. In scene seven, ‘Jolene’ is for the first time uncertain how

to progress, and comments:

Figure 6: ‘Jolene’ falling apart, 2010

disempowered, ‘Jo’s’ sense of self-stigma is decre

e

s

Jolene: Well… Well… I don’t know what is going on with you people. No one has any self control anymore… Where is the discipline?

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Where is the will power? It seems dat… I don’t know, I seems dat… (Mind Games script 2010, 14)

This is the first time in the show that ‘Jolene’ is shown as being anything less than

powerful and confident. In response ‘Jo’ seems to be more empowered, and she

finishes ‘Jolene’s’ sentence... proclaiming “everyone’s fucking depressed!” (Mind

Games script 2010, 15).

This is an aspect of ‘Jo’s’ personality

that has not been seen up to this

point. She is outspoken, powerful and

aggressive. ‘Jo’ then proceeds to

critique the use of the term ‘black

dog’ to describe depression, and

recites a rap song proclaiming “it

seems like everyone’s fucking

depressed!” (Mind Games script

2010,14). ‘Jo’ seems to be

challenging the audience to consider

the ways they think about d

and to admit that most people go

through these experiences

‘coming out’ analogy, this scene

shows Jo being ‘loud and proud’

about her views on depression. In

this scene, ‘Jo’ takes on aspects of

the provocateur persona. She is being deliberately provocative, making extrem

statements, playing ‘devil’s advocate, critiquing one of society’s expressions and

challenging the audience, all within a light-hearted parodic framework. This s

shows ‘Jo’ as being more powerful than ‘Jolene’, and thus this is the point of the

cabaret in which the status is shifted. Hence, the relationship between ‘Jo’ and

‘Jolene’ could be seen as a struggle between ‘Jo’ and her sense of self-stigma,

showing ‘Jo’ finding her sense of power within this situation.

epression,

. Using the

e

cene

Figure 7: ‘Jolene's’  disintegration continues, 2010

From scene four onwards, ‘Jolene’ is shown to lose her powerful status. As she

becomes less ‘in control’ of the situation, ‘Jolene’ seems to lose her sexual energy.

This implies that ‘Jolene’s’ sexuality is linked to a sense of being in control – she is

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turned on by power and status. In response to ‘Jo’ telling her story for the first time,

and sharing her desire to reach out to a therapist, ‘Jolene’ berates ‘Jo’ for

considering this option. In this scene, ‘Jolene’ is prowling about the stage, but this is

focussed on an aggressive attack rather than a sexualised ‘come hither’ approach.

After the scene where the opera singer talks about seeing therapists, we see

‘Jolene’ lost for words as she tries to create a response to the situation. ‘Jolene’ then

transforms into ‘Jo’, who finishes off the sentence by proclaiming “everyone’s

fucking depressed!” (Mind Games script May 2010,15). Previously in the cabaret the

focus has been on individual experiences, or on individuals being ”lacking”,

”strange”, ”unusual”’ and so on for having depression or bipolar disorder. In contrast,

the reference to ”everyone” being depressed points to a community of people who

have common experiences of depression. After the ‘sock woman’ has removed the

high heels and stockings, ‘Jolene’ appears very uncomfortable and in order to regain

some sense of control she reverts to the opening speech of the show, perhaps

trying to rediscover the power and authority she had at this time. But she appears

uncertain, struggling to find a foothold in the scene; at one point she stands up from

the chair and then is shocked to see that she is not wearing high heels, and then

proceeds to stand on tip toe to pretend she is wearing high heels and teeter around

the stage. This is when ‘Jolene’ is shown to fall apart. As she repeats the words

“sometimes, sometimes” she struggles to take off the sequinned dress in a

movement evocative of the ‘straight-jacket’ moment at the beginning of the play

(with arms crossed over her chest). The performer then becomes ‘The country and

western singer’ who completes the sentence by proclaiming “sometimes it’s hard to

be a woman!” (Mind Games script 2010,19).

‘Jolene’ has one final appearance at the end of the cabaret show as a part of the

final song. In this scene, ‘Jolene’s’ power is further diminished by having Jo

contradict her final statement. After ‘Jolene’ has instructed the audience: “do not be

weak, do not be naughty”, ‘Jo’ counters with “well, maybe just a little” (Mind Games

script 2010, 27-28).

In this final appearance of ‘Jolene’, no costume or wig is added to denote ‘Jolene’:

instead the performer assumes only her posture, facial and vocal expression. The

absence of costume or prop to identify ‘Jolene’ clarifies for the audience that she is

just an aspect of ‘Jo’s’ personality. ‘Jolene’ is further disempowered by ‘Jo’s’

contradiction of her final line with a throw-away joke, an act that shows ‘Jolene’ is a

playful, harmless persona, rather than the powerful, intimidating force of the opening

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scene of the cabaret. The overt creation and dismantling of the character of ‘Jolene’

illustrates the therapeutic journey in the cabaret, enacting the way that the process

of externalisation is able to disempower an individual’s negative thoughts.

The combination of an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions

The principles of an autonomous ethic of living and rich descriptions were alternated

in the performance, and combined with techniques of intimacy and distance to

create a state of flux in the cabaret. As discussed in Chapter Four, provocative

cabaret performers create a changing dynamic in their relationship with their

audience between intimacy and distance. This constant flux creates a dynamic in

which the audience is entertained and relaxed by the performance and encouraged

to think about issues through a sense of estrangement or alienation. As discussed

in Chapter Four, even highly polemic cabaret artist Eddie Perfect uses the approach

of “stroking and striking” his audience by combining entertainment with hard-hitting

messages (quoted in Rose 2005a). While he aims to challenge an audience he

tries not to make an audience “feel like you're attacking them” (Perfect quoted in

Rose 2005a). Thus, rather than presenting an overtly confrontational performance,

cabaret encourages the audience to consider issues within a relaxed and playful

environment.

In Mind Games, the use of the style of emotionally connected, heightened realism

draws the audience into a relationship of intimacy with some scenes in the cabaret.

This performance style is used in scenes that present characters’autonomous ethic

of living. The use of parody in Mind Games moves the audience between

relationships of distance and intimacy with the performer. This performance

technique is used in scenes designed to explore rich descriptions. Parody is a

technique that can create this push/pull effect between intimacy and distance.

Parody can both celebrate performance styles, creating a sense of familiarity with an

audience, and mock these performance styles in various degrees. The artistic

choice to begin with heightened parodic characterisations within the performance

set up a relationship of distance between the audience and the characters. This

movement between a sense of distance and intimacy through parodic humour

encourages audience members to change their attitudes towards the characters

within the scene, creating a sense of ‘flux’ in meaning.

As discussed earlier in this chapter, playful parody is used to create empathetic

caricatures of the characters of ‘The flying girl’, ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’ and ‘The

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country and western singer’. The approach of beginning these scenes with extreme

parody and then transitioning to a more empathetic portrayal of the characters

creates a flux between the performative states of distance and intimacy. By

changing perspective on these characters within the same scene, multi-faceted

views of one situation are expressed, creating the effect of a rich description. In

addition, the character of ‘Dame Hurry-to-Therapy’ was a composite character that

combined many different personal experiences in relation to therapists. These

included: an individual who liked going on-line to receive therapy (“and then I got on

the internet, you can contact counsellors that way”); an overweight lady who first

went to a psychiatrist when she decided to have lap banding done (“And that doctor

said, well you can’t do that until you get your head sorted”; a woman from a small

town who found a therapist too pushy (“she handed me a box of tissues and wanted

to know about all my issues, and I wasn’t ready for that”); and a lady who preferred

anti-depressants and cognitive behaviour therapy to therapists (“I haven’t had much

success with therapists”) (Mind Games script May 2010, 12- 14). Multi-faceted

perspectives were presented of the characters ‘The flying girl’, ‘Dame Hurry-to-

Therapy’ and ‘The country and western singer’ through the combination of playful

parody and “rich” descriptions.

In the second half of the cabaret, the characters ‘The sock woman’, ‘Ms Rapid

Cycling’ and ‘The mother’ were performed in the style of heightened realism and

enacted the principle ofan autonomous ethic of living. The three scenes featuring

these characters were intentionally understated in tone, and create a sense of

intimacy between the audience and the performer. These three characters embody

characteristics from personal cabarets. As discussed in Chapter Four, personal

cabarets focus on creating a sense of intimacy with the audience through the

interpretation of well known songs to express a personal connection or truth. While

all the songs in the Mind Games cabaret were original, the characters of ‘The sock

woman’, ‘Ms Rapid Cycling’ and ‘The mother’ were performed in a manner focussed

on creating a sense of intimacy and connection with an audience. Each of these

characters gave the impression of ‘opening up’ to the audience, and sharing highly

personal anecdotes through use of a revelatory performance style. Each of these

characters shared their autonomous ethic of living with the audience through an

emphasis on personal values. As discussed in Chapter Five, ‘The sock woman’

represented the core value of acceptance by telling the story of breaking up with her

husband because he didn’t understand that “this sadness is part of me, and won’t be

fixed by any cover up” (Mind Games script May 2010, 18). ‘Ms rapid cycling’

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represented the core value of independence through expressing trauma at being

reduced to being a dependent child, lamenting “now here I am, yes here I am, back

being spoon fed” (Mind Games script May 2010, 25). And ‘The mother’

demonstrated her core value of “commitment and responsibility” through her

concern for her daughter’s well being (Mind Games script May 2010, 25-26). In

contrast to the parodic style of other characters in the Mind Games cabaret, these

three characters were performed with a sense of stillness and emotional connection,

the more realistic performance style creating the sense of truth. For example,

directly after ‘Jo’ has presented the audience with the exaggerated and parodic rap

Everyone’s

Fucking

Depressed there

is a sudden

lighting change

revealing ‘The

sock woman’.

This moves the

audience from an

exaggerated,

crazed scene

ending with ‘Jo’

directing the

audience to “pull your socks up!” to a moment of stillness. After a slight pause ‘The

sock woman’ quietly begins to tell her story with the lines: “That’s what my husband

used to say. I’m a nursing sister. After I did my general training, I came up here and

did obstetrics, and got married to an American on the rebound from another chap,

and we had two children” (Mind Games script May 2010, 17-18). After the extremity

of the rap scene, the audience is presented with a more realistic life story, presented

in an understated manner, in which a character reveals highly personal information

including the story of a suicide attempt and of trying to cope with a difficult marital

situation (Mind Games script May 2010, 18). Later in the performance ‘Ms Rapid

Cycling’ (Figure 8) shares one of her life’s lowest moments when she describes

trying to commit suicide after an episode of promiscuity and sings the ballad Child

Song (Mind Games script May 2010, 24-25). This ballad is performed in an

emotional style that expresses this character’s lowest moment, a style evocative of

the personal cabarets in which there is an ”exchange of trust” and ”feeling of

Figure 8: 'Ms Rapid Cycling', 2010

intimate communication” between a performer and their audience (Harrington

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2000, 15). The sense of intimacy and trust is continued in the following scene w

‘The mother’ shares her struggles as a carer for a family member with depression.

In these ways, the characters ‘The song woman’, ‘Ms Rapid Cycling’ and ‘The

mother’ emphasise emotional connection and a realistic performance style, evo

elements of personal cabarets.

hen

king

‘Jo’: Rich descriptions and an autonomous ethic of living

erself as

telling

the

her

t

ins as she

the

script May 2010, 4-6). This song uses metapho

‘Jo’ is

ene’

As Mind Games progresses, we see ‘Jo’ trying on different versions of h

she moves towards her ownautonomous ethic of living. These acts of exploring

different versions of herself are in

response to ‘Jolene’ and the other

characters in the cabaret. White’s

narrative therapy involves an

experimenting with ways of re-

one’s own story. In Mind Games, ‘Jo’

is shown as presenting different

versions of herself in response to

externalisation of her inner critic

(‘Jolene’) and the stories of the ot

characters, who embody their own

autonomous ethic of living or presen

rich descriptions of a life story. At the

start of the cabaret, ‘Jo’ is

glamorously attired in sequ

reclines on the therapist’s couch. As

she lies on the couch she shares her

experience of depression in a

restrained and poetic fashion in

song Unravel my Head (Mind Games

rs (such as being “out a sea” or

trapped “in a cage”) to describe a personal experience of depression. I have

described this version of ‘Jo’ as being ‘Jo the calm storyteller’. This version of

personable and relaxed, and uses highly poetic images to express her emotions.

‘Jo’ next appears in Scene Five. This scene follows ‘The flying girl’ who has

presented her story of being highly productive while on a manic high, and ‘Jol

has disparagingly compared ‘Jo’ with ‘The flying girl’ stating: “You are so much

Figure 9 : You put my brain back the wrong way, 2010

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more interesting than Jo!... you just had a fantastic high and you were so produc

(Mind Games script May 2010, 8). In response to this the next version of ‘Jo’

attempts to maintain a brave face in spite of all odds as she sings “I’m fine, jus

thanks for asking but I’m coping okay” (Mind Games script May 2010, 8-9). I have

termed this version of ‘Jo’ as ‘Jo in denial’ because she sings “I’m fine” in an up-

tempo jazz style as she recounts her experience of falling into depression as a

series of embarrassing moments (Mind Games script May 2010, 8 – 11). At this

point ‘Jo’ is dressed in a knee length sequinned outfit. This scene uses a light

hearted approach to share personal information and draws the audience into a

sense of intimacy with ‘Jo’, in a similar style to most personal cabarets. Then in

scene seven, ‘Jo’ appears as a confrontational and angry stand-up comedian wh

proclaims that “everyone’s fucking depressed!” (Mind Games script May 2010, 15).

have termed this version as ‘provocative Jo’. This scene distances the audience

from ‘Jo’ who up to this point has been gentle and friendly. In this scene, ‘Jo’ is s

wearing the sequinned knee length dress, but her ‘hip hop’ style movements give

the impression of ‘Beyonce style bling’ to the sequins. The next time ‘Jo’ appears

the cabaret, in scene ten, she is wearing only a slip. The sequins, high heels and

stockings have been removed; she has literally been ‘stripped back’. This scene is

‘Jo’s lowest moment’. In this scene she stands centre stage with minimal

movements and facial expressions, the performance style has also been s

back in this scene. This is a moment of extreme intimacy with the audience. At th

moment ‘Jo’s’ physicality is slightly hunched, and she looks downwards through

most of the scene. The audience is then shocked by a sudden transition into the

punk rock song You Put My Brain Back the Wrong Way (Mind Game script May

2010, 23). Suddenly Jo is screaming and using extreme punk rock gestures and

facial expressions (Figure 9). Up to this point in the cabaret, the movement betwe

intimacy and distance present truth as a shifting concept within the cabaret. At the

end of the cabaret, ‘Jo’, still dressed only in the slip, stands centre stage with

minimal movements. The difference between this scene and scene ten is that

wearing a smile. Her physicality in this scene is also more open and directed

upwards and towards the audience. These changes indicate a ‘happy ending’

cabaret. The cabaret performance shows ‘Jo’ experimenting with different selves

and ways of communicating, and at the end, ‘Jo’ expresses her central values and

truth in the statement:

tive”

t fine,

o

I

till

in

tripped

is

en

she is

to the

So here I am... Jo... finally taking responsibility for myself Stopping the mind games... Starting to reach out to people.

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I’m off the anti-depressants Talking to my therapist Being kind to myself Am trying to stop judging mysI’ve stopped buying “singstarting to make time flearning to surf Having a cry when I need to. Walking in the shade Living with the de

and the way she is living her life in opposition to “other people’

elf by other people’s standards... le lady” microwave meals

or a serious relationship

bris. (Mind Games script May 2010, 26-27)

This shows ‘Jo’ expressing the autonomous ethic of living she has defined for

herself s standards”.

tions

of living at the end of the

s

ature

d

ewee characters through the

empathetic ending in each scene. In the first half of the cabaret, the interviewee

hip

re

e.

t ‘Jo’

She describes this as “taking responsibility for herself”. In this way, rich descrip

of ‘Jo’s’ character show her moving towards her own autonomous ethic of living.

Was a fixed notion of truth implied in the cabaret?

A problematic aspect of presenting ‘Jo’s’ autonomous ethic

cabaret is that it gave the cabaret a ‘neat ending’ and implied a fixed notion of truth.

This fixed notion of truth was also supported in part by the use of the style of realism

towards the end of the cabaret. The presentation of the other characters in the

cabaret can be seen to parallel ‘Jo’s’ shifting dynamic between distance and

intimacy. Throughout the cabaret performance these characters are presented a

distanced or intimate, but as the performance progresses the characters are

presented as more and more realistic. In performance, the interviewees’ stories

were presented in various performance styles ranging from broad comic caric

to heightened realism. The show began with the more heightened characters, an

as the performance progressed the characters became more realistic. From the

discussion above, a number of points can be made about the way I positioned the

audience in my performance of Mind Games.

Firstly, empathy was encouraged for the intervi

characters are introduced in a manner that encourages a distancing relations

between the audience and the characters. This relationship is reversed as each

scene progresses. In the second half of the cabaret, the interviewee characters a

presented in a manner that encourages a relationship of intimacy with the audienc

This empathy was further encouraged by the presentation of ‘Jolene’ as an

antagonist to ‘Jo’ and to the other characters. Having ‘Jolene’ as such an overtly

disparaging and unsympathetic character easily clarifies for the audience tha

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and the other characters in the cabaret are the protagonists, that is, the characters

to identify with and to support. In addition, elements from personal cabarets were

used to create a relationship of intimacy and empathy in Mind Games. Thus while a

dynamic relationship between distance and intimacy was established within the

performance, the latter parts of the cabaret moved towards a sense of a fixed notion

of truth, emphasising a relationship of intimacy between the performer and the

audience.

Conclusion

Mind Games cabaret as a presentation of the games

view of the character of ‘Jo’. As ‘Jo’ journeys through the

‘Jo’

lf,

This chapter has analysed the

of truth from the point of

cabaret, she moves closer to her own ethic of living through encountering an

externalisation of her inner critic and other individuals who present her with their

own autonomous ethic of living or rich description of their stories. In response,

engages in her own rich descriptions through exploring different versions of herse

finally expressing her ownautonomous ethic of living. The characters in the cabaret

are presented through the performative techniques of parody, persona and a style of

heightened realism to move between relationships of distance and intimacy. One

problematic aspect of the cabaret performance was that the ending could imply a

fixed notion of truth, which could potentially weaken the games of truth presented in

the performance. This aspect is discussed in Chapter Seven in relation to the

findings of the study.

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Chapter Seven: Findings

Introduction

Games of truth have been at the

fore-front of this research journey

and as a result, my findings

primarily relate to the presentation

of games of truth within the cabaret.

The 2010 version of the Mind

Games cabaret integrated aspects

from contemporary cabaret and

personal cabaret to create a truth in

flux. The research journey that led

to this performance, was in itself a

‘game of truth’ in which I struggled

to articulate my own

epistemological position and clarify

my application of White’s narrative

therapy. This chapter will discuss

three inter-related findings of the

study in reference to the degree of

success of the truth in flux, and to

my own personal agendas within

the performance. The first finding of the study relates to the cabaret’s ability to

balance the performative elements of provocation and empathy. The second finding

of the study discusses my own desire for self empowerment within the cabaret. The

third finding of the study views the presentation of truth within the cabaret in relation

to White’s concept of “preferred identity claims” (White 2004b).

Figure 10:  ‘Jolene’, 2010

Finding One: Finding a balance between provocation and empathy

The first finding of my study is that by applying techniques of narrative therapy to the

development of a cabaret performance I was able to present both provocative and

empathetic elements within the performance. This was achieved through the

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performer- audience relationship that moved between distance and intimacy; a

changing dynamic that encouraged the audience itself from the issues presented

within the performance (and thus to explore new perspectives on an issue). By

externalising part of myself in the cabaret show, I was able to create a character that

was outspoken and caricatured. The character of ‘Jolene’ uses aspects of the

provocateur persona in that she presents critical statements within a comic, musical

form. These aspects were used to represent the negative, cutting remarks of an

inner critic inside one’s mind. ‘Jolene’ also embodies qualities of the vamp to

represent constructions of the mind as fragile and vulnerable, and easy to

deconstruct. These qualities were used to show the ultimate vulnerability of the

inner critic as a construction within the mind. The incorporation of elements from the

personas of the provocateurs and the vamps created a dynamic flux between

distance and intimacy, bringing elements of provocation into a self revelatory

cabaret performance. Through using techniques of personal cabaret I developed a

sense of intimacy between the audience and performer within some scenes in the

cabaret. The sense of a truth in flux within the cabaret was somewhat effective

through the changing dynamic of distance and intimacy, however this was

weakened by an emphasis on empathy towards the end of the cabaret. In addition,

the final scene of the cabaret showed ‘Jo’ proclaiming a personal sense of truth. The

effect of a truth in flux was more effectively portrayed in the first half of the cabaret

through sudden shifts between parodic presentations and intimate revelation.

However the performance style became more realistic in the second half of the

cabaret, and in the final scene of the performance ‘Jo’ expressed her own truth. This

ending gave a neat resolution to the performance, weakening the notion of a truth in

flux. Thus, while there was some presentation of a ‘truth in flux’ within the

performance, overall the cabaret emphasised a fixed notion of truth. The second

finding of this research project presents a theory as to why this result emerged.

Finding Two: The effects of my own desire for self-empowerment within the cabaret

From a critical perspective, it can be argued that the games of truth presented within

the cabaret Mind Games were effective up to a point, but were problematised by a

‘happy ending’ that privileged one truth over the others. This can be seen to have

occurred due to my own personal need for empowerment through the cabaret

performance.

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Schaefer (2003) notes that a complication of the ‘performing witness’ (that is,

performers playing themselves) is the

performer’s ‘desire for self-empowerment’

may affect the audience’s response to the

performance (8). Schaefer (2003) further

comments that “what witnesses search for

are answers, not questions... in testimonial

drama there is less room for the audience to

find their own interpretation of the event.

Essentially, the characters are undertaking

the interpretive work for them” (17). Perhaps

in my own quest for self-empowerment and t

address my own sense of self-stigma, I

constructed a narrative within the

performance with a convenient happy e

The act of performing my cabaret show can

be seen as a way of ‘witnessing myself’. In

retrospect I am able to reflect on the

version(s) of myself that I presented and the way I “re-membered” my own story.

These concepts are explored by Heddon (2008) in relation to narrative processes of

psycholanalysis. Heddon draws from the work of psychoanalytic theorists (Oliver

2001, Gilmore 2001, Brison 1999, Henke 2000) to argue that psychoanalysis works

to “reconstruct” and “transmit” personal history, enabling “a sense of subjective

agency” that can help to “master” a traumatic event (Heddon 2008, 56). Heddon

continues:

o

nding.

Figure 11 : 'Jo', 2010

In this sense, narrative memory is a performative act that enables the recreation of a ‘self’... and narrative memory needs to be understood as an act of creativity... The work that narrativising performs is the transformation of the seemingly unrepresentable into the symbolic, thereby giving it a name and a place. (Heddon 2008, 56)

Although White would not define his therapy as ‘psychoanalysis’, White’s narrative

process does seem to have links with the psychoanalysis described by Heddon in

which the patient consciously creates the narrative of their own life story. In Mind

Games I re-enacted the events in my life in structured ways and reconstructed these

events to create a linear narrative. All of the events were collaged from moments in

my life over the past four years. These events were taken from my personal

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experiences in 2006, 2007 and 2008, but were not presented in their real order in

the cabaret. In addition I developed material for the character of ‘Jo’ that related to

points of connection between the interviewee’s stories and my own. As described in

Chapter Five, this technique was used in the writing of songs The Naughty Song

and Unravel My Head. I also used relevant material from my research in the public

domain to develop the song You Put My Brain Back the Wrong Way. I combined all

of this material to create what appeared to be a chronological narrative. I creatively

put together my own narrative version of my life to frame my experiences as moving

from confusion, to shame, to feeling isolated and perceiving life to be meaningless,

to finding a sense of resilience or a “pathway through the wood” (Mind Games script

2010, 27), and in the process I came to believe in this new version of my story. In

this way I found a way to “master” my own trauma’ through the “therapeutic balm of

words” (Gilmore 2001, 7).

In a similar way, the cabaret also privileged my process of addressing my sense of

self-stigma. Sayce (1999) posits that strategies for addressing the stigma of mental

health issues include refusing to be shamed:

Having mental health problems is not a moral matter; how one behaves is. Key strategies for throwing off the impact of discrimination are therefore to ‘come out’ – visibly to refuse to be shamed just for being a user/survivor – and simultaneously to take responsibility for one’s actions (see Ch 6.): to be quite prepared to feel guilty, to take the consequences of actions that may be unethical. If user/survivors become ever more involved in the wider disability movement, they could contribute to new overarching ideas, such as ‘No to shame’, which go much further than ‘No pity’, which challenge, ever more trenchantly, society’s tendency to humiliate those it has deemed ‘imperfect’. (Sayce 1999, 139)

Sayce’s choice of the phrase ‘come out’ in reference to this discussion is an

interestingone. It likens the process of overcoming shame associated with a mental

illness, to that of overcoming shame and prejudice associated with being

homosexual. This link is also made by Corrigan (2005), who draws parallels

between these two groups. He argues:

In some ways … mental illness stigma may parallel the experiences of the gay and lesbian community. Most individuals choose to disclose their sexual orientation and come out of the closet. In this chapter, I argue that the community of people with mental illness may similarly benefit from disclosing their illness to the public at large. (Corrigan 2005, 257)

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While these parallels could perhaps be seen as problematic (and Corrigan does

acknowledge that mental illness and homosexuality are not ”transposable”

conditions; ibid), his sense of the ‘coming out’ process for the mentally ill can be

seen to have some merit. The usefulness of the analogy can be seen to lie in the

sense of personal empowerment that may be experienced by individuals who take

ownership of their own condition thus leading to improved self esteem, and, as

Corrigan states “personal empowerment is the opposite of self-stigma” (Corrigan

2005, 249). Corrigan draws from research on empowerment to support this point:

At the negative end of the continuum are persons who report being unable to overcome all the pessimistic expectations about mental illness. They have low self-esteem and little confidence in their future success. These are the self-stigmatized. At the positive end, however, are persons with psychiatric disability who, despite this disability, have positive self-esteem and are not significantly encumbered by a stigmatizing community. Instead, they seem to be energized by the stigma to righteous anger... hence, assessment of personal empowerment may be a proxy for the self-stigma that specifically arises from being a person with a mental illness. People high on personal empowerment may be viewed as relatively low on stigma. (Corrigan 2005, 246)

For Corrigan, developing a sense of personal empowerment is the answer to

overcoming self-stigma:

Persons who have a strong sense of personal empowerment can be expected to have high self-efficacy and self-esteem... Empowerment approaches may be considered among the best ways to deal with self-stigma (Corrigan 2005, 249).

To use these terms, I am ‘coming out’ as a person who has had depression, and the

cabaret Mind Games could be equated to me boldly jumping out of the ‘mental

illness’ closet to loudly proclaim ‘I HAVE HAD DEPRESSION!’. With this in mind I

would like to re-appropriate an excerpt of a song from the gay scene in the Weimar

cabaret. This song, Das Lila-Lied (The Lavender Lay), critiqued attitudes towards

homosexuals at the time, but can be reinterpreted to apply to the stigma of mental

illness within contemporary society:

How civilized That we’re despised And treated as something taboo ... For equal rights we fought our bitter war! We will be tolerated, and never suffer more! (Quoted in Senelick 1993, 89).

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My own personal agendas – of self empowerment and addressing my own self-

stigma – can be seen to have affected my ability to successfully portray a truth in

flux.

Finding Three: A journey towards “self care”

It is interesting at this point to refer to Michael White’s concept of “multiple

authenticities” and Foucault’s concept of “self care” (White 2004b, Foucault 2005).

As discussed in Chapter Two, White encourages individuals to engage in multiple

“tellings and retellings” of their own stories in order to explore “multiple

authenticities” (White 2004b, 33-34). For White, authenticity is not an expression of

an inner, fixed truth, but is instead “a public and social achievement in which a

person’s preferred identity claims are acknowledged” (White 2004b, 34). This

creation of a “preferred identity claim” relates to Foucault’s notion of “self care” as

when a subject comes to find truth in relation to “care of oneself” (Foucault 2005, 2).

As discussed in Chapter Two, Foucault advocates a conscious “self-formation” in

which an individual “tr[ies] to work out, to transform one’s self and to attain a certain

mode of being” (Foucault quoted in Bernauer and Rasmussen 1988, 2). Foucault

saw artistic practices as a means of this conscious self-formation, and according to

Danaher, Schirato and Web (2000) “Foucault writes [that] the idea of aesthetics can

be used as a metaphor for the self, can provide a set of practices in and by which to

take care of the self” (163). In other words, “self care” is the subject’s conscious

formation of their own truth, and constant attendance to their life as a work of art.

Through showing the process of exploring my different versions of ‘Jo’ in Mind

Games, I fore-grounded this character’s search for authenticity not as an unearthing

of a truth that had always existed inside her character, but rather as the result of

creating a “preferred identity claim” and an act of “self care”. In her final speech, ‘Jo’

shares with the audience that she is “starting to reach out to people... talking to my

therapist, being kind to myself, trying not to judge myself by other people’s

standards...” (Mind Games script May 2010, 25-26). These statements are

describing ongoing actions, and processes that are continually being engaged in an

active manner. The final song Just One continues to emphasise this ongoing

process by advocating that individuals approach life “step by step” in the assertion

that:

With hands outstretched, you’re grabbing it all And it just weighs you down

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And I know you want to see it all at once But it’ll come back round

So why do you try to hold it in your head? Why try to keep it in your hand? And why are you trying to catch it in your heart – when all it can be is just one taste. (Mind Games script May 2010, 26)

In this way, ‘Jo’ presents her autonomous ethic of living at the end of the cabaret as

taking a “step by step” approach to life, focussing on one day at a time. In the song

lines “And once where only demons stood, there is a pathway through the wood” ‘Jo’

describes a pathway she sees in front of her indicating her direction of travel, rather

than stating she has reached her final destination (Mind Games script May 2010,

26).  

Conclusion

The three findings within this study can be seen to express my multiple intentions

within the project.

The first finding expresses my intention as a cabaret artist to create an innovative

style of cabaret that balances elements of provocation and empathy. Finding two

expresses my own desire to over-come my self-stigma within the project. Finding

three expresses my intention to explore my own shifting versions of myself as I work

towards my own “preferred identity claim”.

These three findings can be seen to be games of truth that I played while creating

this cabaret. Within each of these games there is a different emphasis. Foucault

would describe these emphases as different sets of “trumps”. Foucault states:

We escaped then a domination of truth, not by playing a game that was a complete stranger to the game of truth, but in playing it otherwise or in playing another game, another set, other trumps in the game of truth. (Foucault quoted in Bernauer and Rasmussen 1998, 15)

Within these findings, the game of technical innovation emphasises the skilful use of

artistry, while the game of over-coming self-stigma values personal empowerment

and the game of “preferred identity claims” values a constant attendance to life as a

“work of art”. In viewing the findings of the work from these different perspectives I

have aimed to foreground my own multiple intentions and the way that these have

impacted on the work.

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Chapter Eight: Conclusion

“If I can just unravel my head and climb right out of my mind, then I’ll be fine” (Mind Games script May 2010, 5).

This research journey has involved an exploration or unravelling of my own thought

processes to examine the games within my mind. White describes narrative therapy

as a means for individuals to see their lives in new ways, and states that through

this process:

people suddenly find themselves interested in novel understandings of the events of their lives, curious about aspects of their lives that have been forsaken, fascinated with neglected territories of their identities, and, at times, awed by their own responses to the predicaments of their existence. (White 2007, 5-6)

In a similar way, this research project has allowed me to explore neglected

territories of my own identity and my own experience, often with unexpected

outcomes. As stated in Chapter One, this study has investigated ways to present

therapeutic concepts within the public domain focussing on the question: What are

the implications of applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of

a cabaret performance about depression and bipolar disorder? I explored this

question in reference to the following sub-questions:

• What is the benefit of applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret performance?

• How can the aesthetic forms of cabaret be harnessed within this process? • What research methods can be utilised to enact this process? • What are the tensions within this process, and how can these tensions be

managed? • What are the challenges of using an autoethnographic method within this

process and how can these be managed?

This conclusion will draw together my discussions of these questions with examples

from the Mind Games cabaret and will discuss the wider implications of this

research.

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In Chapter Two of this exegesis, White’s narrative therapy was described as a

process of re-authoring personal narratives as influenced by Foucault’s concepts of

truth. The principles behind narrative therapy are useful ways of playing games of

truth with personal narratives. A review of the form of cabaret, presented in Chapter

Four, described the highly performative nature of this form in relation to two types of

cabaret: personal cabaret and provocative cabaret. Personal cabarets draw the

audience into an intimate relationship with the performer and focus on personal

revelation, as shown in the highly personal cabarets of Queenie van der Zant. In

contrast, provocative cabaret creates a shifting dynamic between distance and

intimacy through the pleasing and teasing aspects of provocateurs (such as Tim

Minchin) and vamps (such as Meow Meow). Provocative cabaret also makes use of

parodic humour to please and tease its audience, from the highly polemic parody of

provocateur Eddie Perfect to the celebratory parody of vamp Paul Capsis.

By moving between emotionally connected intimacy and heightened, parodic

presentations, the Mind Games cabaret encouraged its audience to shift

perspectives, or to play games of truth, within the performance.

Chapter Two described the pathologisation of mental illness as discussed by

Foucault as one game of truth about mental illness. This pathologising viewpoint

was presented in the cabaret by the character of ‘Jolene’ who described the other

characters in the cabaret as “sick”, “strange” and “weak” (Mind Games script May

2010, 2-3). In Chapter Two, I related the pathologisation of mental illness to White’s

concept of spoiled identity and Goffman’s concepts of stigma and self-stigma. My

own experience of self-stigma was expressed by the character of ‘Jo’ in the cabaret

in scene five, where she is falling into depression but tries to deny this to the world

as she sings “I’m fine, just fine, thanks for asking but I’m coping okay” (Mind Games

script May 2010, 8-9).

White’s principles of narrative therapy are designed to address a sense of spoiled

identity, or self-stigma, through moving truth into a state of flux. In Chapter Two, the

performative terms of intimacy and distance were related to three of White’s

principles of narrative therapy: externalisation, an autonomous ethic of living and

rich descriptions.

Externalisation separates an individual’s problem from their own identity, and can be

seen in terms of the performative term of distancing. The character of ‘Jolene’ is an

externalisation of the inner critic inside an individual’s mind. ‘Jolene’ combined

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aspects of provocateur and vamp personas to express harsh criticism in a comic,

musical form and to show the inherent vulnerability of a mental construct. As the

cabaret progressed, ‘Jolene’ was disempowered and deconstructed. This mirrors

the process of narrative therapy in which an externalised problem is addressed and

can be viewed in new ways, and ultimately disempowered.

An autonomous ethic of living is an individual’s identification of their own core values

and beliefs. Through developing their sense of ethical substance an individual can

journey towards their own conscious self-formation, or in Foucault’s terms, take

“care of oneself” (Foucault 2005, 2). In Mind Games, ‘Jo’ is shown to journey

towards her own autonomous ethic of living through her encounters with other

characters who express their core values. This is shown in the character of ‘The

sock woman’ who expresses her core value of “acceptance” in the statement: “this

sadness is part of who I am, and is not going to be fixed by any cover up!” (Mind

Games script May 2010, 18). Scenes exploring the principle of an autonomous

ethic of living were performed in the emotionally connected style of personal cabaret

in order to create a strong sense of intimacy with the audience.

The principle of rich descriptions encourages individuals to view their narratives as

multi-faceted, “multi-purposed and “multilayered” (White 2004b, 32). During the

cabaret ‘Jo’ is presented in many different performance styles, from heightened

realism to stand-up comedy and confrontational parodies of rap and punk music.

These contrasts show ‘Jo’ exploring her multiple sides and playing games of truth

with her own identity. In addition, some of the interviewee characters were

presented in heightened parodic characterisations that transitioned to more

empathetic portrayals. This movement from distance to intimacy encouraged

audience members to change their attitudes towards the characters within the

scene, creating a sense of the truth in flux. By shifting the perspective on these

characters within the same scene, multi-faceted views of one situation were

expressed, creating the effect of a rich description.

Within this study, autoethnography has provided a method for allowing my own

reflection to impact on the development of the work and for an in-depth exploration

of my own personal story. Practice-led research and action research have facilitated

a productive dialogue between theory and practice, allowing me to balance intuition

and intellect, intimacy and distance within many cycles of development. The

practice-led research methodology has facilitated a “dialogic relationship” between

theory and practice (Barrett 2006, 5). This dialogic relationship has allowed for

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creative, innovative and unexpected solutions to emerge from within the practice

itself.

On reflection, I feel that the ethical concerns, tensions and challenges of the

research project have enriched the theoretical and creative outcomes.

Ethical considerations within this research project led me to make strong links with

the interviewees, and to explore new ways to present their stories. My personal

links with interviewees helped me to feel more confident in presenting their work,

and allowed interviewees the opportunity to be involved in the creative development

of the cabaret. Explorations of the ethical concerns of verbatim and documentary

theatre led me to explore Rokem’s concept of witnessing. I incorporated Rokem’s

concept of the performing witness in order to heighten the sense of theatricalisation

(or constructed truth) in the cabaret.

In Chapter Three, I described two conflicting aims within the study: to create a

provocative cabaret; and to create an empathetic, verbatim cabaret. The

identification of this central tension within the research led me on a search for ways

to blend and contrast these elements within a cabaret performance. By transitioning

between the performative realms of intimacy and distance within the cabaret I was

able to balance these two aims within the study as I was constantly shifting

perspectives in the performance. In addition, the application of externalisation within

the performance facilitated the creation of ‘Jolene’: a provocateur and a vamp, a

character able to please and tease the audience who draws attention to the fragility

of mental constructs.

Reflection on the presentation of a fixed truth within the cabaret generated an

awareness of my own desire to address self-stigma within the cabaret. This process

drew my attention to the way the performance reflected the values within my own

narrative, developing my awareness of my own games of truth.

My greatest personal challenge in this research project was in telling my own story.

The autoethnographic methodology helped me to identify my own reticence to tell

my story as a sense of self-stigma. This identification helped me to reveal more of

my own narrative within the Mind Games cabaret. Through performing my story in

different performance styles, I was able to perform different versions of my identity,

or to ‘try on’ different versions of myself.

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This research journey began with a desire to discuss depression and bipolar

disorder through the stories of others, and returned to my own story as the frame for

the research. The final cabaret presented my own story in relation to other people’s

stories and portrayed ‘Jo’ exploring various games of truth as she moved towards

her own autonomous ethic of living. Following White’s concept of multiple

authenticities, each individual expression of truth can be part of a constantly shifting

rich description. Despite presenting a truth at the end of the cabaret ‘Jo’ affirms that

“All it can be is just one taste” (Mind Games script May 2010, 26). This exegesis has

outlined the games of truth that I played in my journey to create this cabaret, and

has explored the many shifting narratives that have informed this journey.

As discussed in Chapter Seven, the three inter-related findings of the study present

different games of truth in themselves. The first finding is that by applying

techniques of narrative therapy to the development of a cabaret performance I was

able to present both provocative and empathetic elements within the performance.

The second finding of the study is that my own desire for self-empowerment as a

performing-witness in the study led to the presentation of a fixed truth at the end of

the cabaret. The third finding of the study is that the truth presented at the end of the

cabaret is one version of multiple authenticities and the expression of a “preferred

identity claim”. These three findings can be seen to be a game of truth in which I

emphasise different sets of trumps (to use Foucault’s term). These trumps are skilful

artistry, personal empowerment and attendance to life as a work of art.

This research has provided a model for inter-disciplinary performance-led research

and demonstrates the benefit of embracing ethical, epistemological and personal

challenges within an autoethnographic performance project.

As an inter-disciplinary study, this research project identified a number of stylistic

features of contemporary cabaret performance and applied these to the illustration

of therapeutic principles. The exploration of personal and provocative cabaret

involved both historical and theoretical examination of these forms in order to

explore the forms’ epistemological underpinnings. In order to performatively illustrate

principles of narrative therapy, I also re-framed White’s principles in the performative

terms of distance and intimacy. The performative terms of distance and intimacy

provided a bridging point between the two disciplines and created a sense of clarity

in the research project. This process of re-framing concepts in performative or

therapeutic terms involved an interrogation of the terms and underlying

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epistemologies, and resulted in the discovery of practical ways to connect two

separate disciplines.

This project points to the value of embracing challenges within the research in order

to enrich the project’s outcomes. More specifically, this project demonstrates the

value of action-led processes of action and critical reflection within an

autoethnographic performance project. Exploration of ethical concerns within the

project allowed interviewees to have a greater impact on the creative development

and encouraged innovation in my performative treatment of verbatim material. The

challenge of clarifying a clear epistemological position for the research, led me to

explore the theoretical framework supporting different therapeutic approaches. This

reflective process also allowed me to articulate that White’ s narrative therapy had

become a part of my own thinking and creative processes, and subsequently to

articulate the ways it had informed the performance work. I found that the most

difficult aspect of this research project was the challenge to reveal my own

experiences with depression. It was this aspect that was arguably the most valuable

of the project. My own struggle with self-revelation throughout all three cycles of the

project pointed to my own sense of self-stigma. An examination of my own personal

tensions and struggles within the process greatly informed and enriched my artistic

process, and represented my own autoethnographic journey within the project. This

aspect of the research points to the value of creative work as an avenue for

personal reflection and the revelation of hidden agendas. The major implication of

applying White’s principles of narrative therapy to the creation of cabaret

performance was that this process required an examination and conscious

presentation of my own mental processes. By applying White’s principles of

narrative therapy to the creation of a cabaret performance, I have been actively

involved in performing and articulating different games of truth.

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Appendices

Appendix One on CD ROM:

1.1 Personal Journals (2008, 2009 and 2010)

1.2 Ethical Clearance Information

1.3 Personal Interviews

1.4 Audience Feedback

1.5 Program Notes (2008, 2009 and 2010)

1.6 Mind Games script May 2010

1.7 Personal thank-you letter

1.8 Analysis of audience feedback

1.9 Collaborators and the Research Cycles

1.10 Confirmation Document (2009)

1.11 Framing Document (2010)

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Appendix Two on DVD:

2.1 Work-in-progress showing 2008

2.2 Audience Feedback 2008

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Appendix Three on DVD:

3.1 Work-in-progress showing 2009

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Appendix Four on DVD:

4.1 Performance of the Mind Games cabaret, May 2010