RED SANDSTONE VARIED PRODUCTIONS

http://www.fundit.ie/project/no-matter-where-you-go-there-you-are 

No matter where you go there you are, is an interactive interdisciplinary film and theatrical piece. A conversation between two women, one Australian, Jennifer Williams, now based in Ireland, and one Irish, Cathie Clinton, now based in Australia, the show will be performed at Melbourne Fringe Festival for two weeks (8PM 26th Sept-9thOct) and the Wexford Fringe Festival for 3 dates (3.30PM 4th, 5th, 6th Nov.) The show inMelbourne will be performed by our Irish actor, with video of our Australian actor’s performance inIreland projected into the space, and interacted with by the Irish actor. Written by the two performers, the show will draw on their experiences of the expectations and promise of travel, their subsequent lives in their new countries, and where they hope or expect it to lead to from here.

http://www.pozible.com/index.php/archive/index/1482/description/0/0

The honesty of its creators, the humour and drama entailed, and the brave venture into the unknown that this performance represents in every way, will wake you up, shake you up, make you laugh and cry, and challenge you to really look at your own life. This is about building your own future, not just waiting for it to happen, this is about inspiring others, not just searching for inspiration.

HERE IS A TASTE OF ‘NO MATTER WHERE YOU GO THERE YOU ARE’

So, I was having drinks with my friend Emma. She was back from New York for 6 months or so and was working at some impressive law firm in Sydney. She’s telling me about all the amazing things she’s been doing, her French boyfriend, her New York boyfriend, her UN boyfriend, the New York bars she’s been hanging out at, the museum and art galleries she visits, the UN people she’s been working with and I’m telling her how… I’m still inSydney. How every year, the students get younger. And cooler. More piercings. That my agent hates me for taking a job he considers beneath me, and is punishing me by not putting me up for any other work, meaning I’m working part-time as a ‘Customer Service Representative’ in a hideous high school tutoring business run by an incredibly intense and critical Korean man who watches me like a hawk. And, to top it all off, after a couple of disastrous, and frankly, embarrassing attempts at relationships over the past few months, I’ve started internet dating. 

It gets to a point, I think probably after about my third glass of wine, when I put my head on my hands and cry out, ‘Why can’t I live overseas? Why can’t I do exciting things like you?’

Emma doesn’t do emotional. Emma doesn’t do self-pity. Emma doesn’t do drama. She says, ‘Well, you can, you know, Jen. Its not that hard, you just get yourself a visa and you go.’

She’s right. Of course she’s right. And I decided, then and there,

‘I’m going. Next year. I’m going.’

 

The first few months every time I opened my mouth I would be greeted with “You’re Irish.”  When I replied in the affirmative I could see a wave of assumption flush down over the backs of the eyes. Some were even tactless enough to remark on how fucked my country is now. A small few would even go so far as to give me a cultural assessment, as to why we are such a pathetically messed up bunch. I enjoyed these little anthropological appraisals from the armchair sociologists, as much my tone deaf housemate plundering every song I happened to mention I liked, or even was heard to hum to myself. Of course the hidden cost of a job in retail is never, NEVER, telling the customer what you really think. I felt myself quietening and then worse, assimilating.

The otherness was crippling. I wanted to scream sometimes. ‘I GREW UP WITH CROCODILES ANDBUFFALOIN MY BACK YARD!! IN 40 DEGREE HEAT ALL YEAR ROUND! WITH A COCONUT TREE IN THE BACKYARD.’  My childhood memories are ofCoburgand the outback NT. I am not ‘Irish’, not the way you mean! I am not here with my cap in my hand. I am a god damn citizen, and I came here to study and to reconnect with a huge chunk of my childhood.

Jennifer Williams 

 

Cathie Clinton. Pic John Allen

I was so nauseous for so long I began to be worried I might be pregnant. That was when it hit me that all the freedom, the possibility, the vast range of options could disappear if I were to suddenly have to raise a child & that is when I began to see what I was ignoring. The premise of working so much was to save money for university next year. Relocating and, having given away everything you own, arriving with just a bag of clothes and a violin, costs money.

 

I was panicking about what to do, reading up on abortion laws, recalling, terrified, a friend who had jokingly commented to me before I left that I shouldn’t get pregnant whilst I was over there, because abortion wasn’t legal in Ireland yet.

THE PEOPLE WHO ARE WORKING TOWARDS FILLING THESE EMPTY PERFORMANCE SPACES 

 

Director/Producer