Becoming the Boss: A New Project

I have documented in this blog before how difficult it has been for me to break into my field since moving to Australia. (General summary in this post).

Well, since up and leaving my job-job, I've made working for myself (albeit, as a volunteer) my full time job. Turns out, I am a tough boss. I have been networking like a madwoman, and have had exactly one zillion coffee dates. I've taken to Twitter with a dizzying furor. I even did a short internship (which I found so funny because a big part of my job at home was managing up to 5 full time interns at a time). I'm making tiny little inroads all over the place, and I am having a ball doing it.

But, the thing that I am most proud of is a project that I completely conceived of and executed on my own. I had the idea some time ago, but did not get up the gumption to follow through until becoming my own "boss." After two months of work, last weekend I launched The Australian Theatre Writers Project.

With this site, I am publishing my interviews with Australian playwrights. It has been an amazing way to meet some fascinating writers and a good excuse to read a lot of new Australian plays.

Most of all, the more I've done, the more I have begun to approach the project as an expat learning experience.

From an expat perspective, the two most fascinating interviews for me were with Australian writers who spent considerable time in the U.S. and could speak with some authority about cultural differences.

Hilary Bell spent 9 years in the States, attended Julliard, and married an American. For her, a deciding factor of moving to the States was the fact that her parents are well known actors, and she wanted to see how she'd fare in a place where she was a bit more anonymous.

An interesting comparison she made about the U.S. and Australia, which I think is relevant in terms of larger society, as well as the arts ...

There is the star hierarchy in the States. My husband, who is a jazz musician, made an interesting observation, which I think is also true in theatre, too. In the States, you will have a ‘star,’ accompanied by sidemen. In Australia, it is a lot more about an ensemble. You have groups with no front-man. They will all write the music and work together. You can see that across the board in the arts. Similarly, plays don’t necessarily feature one character orbited by others. They are often about a family or group. I think that is a fundamental difference between the two cultures, as well. One is not better or worse, they are just different approaches.


I don't know if I would have noticed this in the same way on my own, but I think there is something to the idea that the U.S. is more individual-centric, while Australia is more community based. This sort of thing manifests in a lot of subtle ways that add up to big cultural differences.

The other fascinating expat interview I did is with Christine Evans, who has been in the U.S. for 11 years, since moving over to study playwriting at Brown (she now teaches at Harvard). She had amazingly insightful things to say about the differences in the theatre communities, and I'd direct you to the interview, where you can read all of them. What I do want to share is the non-theatre observation that has really stuck with me.

A bizarre thing that happens as an Australian, which I don’t think can happen the other way around, is that when I came here, my whole country disappeared off the map. As an American, you can’t go somewhere and not see your country in the news. As an Australian, I came here and everything I was reading about everyday politics and so forth was just gone. It was incredibly disorienting to feel that my entire political/social world had disappeared. Suddenly, my country was just a cliché about poisonous animals or earthquakes and fires, occasionally.


I complain about not getting to celebrate my holidays or not being able to buy Graham Crackers, but when put in perspective of what the reverse move is like, I begin to feel downright whiny and spoiled. It's true that, as an American, I've never "lost" my country. It's always ever-present, and anyone I meet knows our politicians, our geography, our TV shows. I know some Australians who know American history better than I do. I imagine I'd be completely lost (more so than I feel sometimes now) if I went somewhere that my country all but "disappeared." I have very much started to value more how privileged I am to not have had to make more cultural sacrifices than I have.


I knew that talking to Australian writers would be a great way to meet people and get a better sense of "how things are done around these parts," but I did not anticipate how much I would learn about this culture, as well as my own.

This project also represents a big step for me in my expat journey. This is the first time in my new country that I have taken a big plunge, put myself forward, and did not wait for someone to hand me something to do. In effect, I have taken responsibility for making this experience what I want it to be. I am proud of this thing I've created on my terms, and thrilled to have something of growing value to contribute to the Australian theatre community.