A Play in Two Parts, A Residency Closing Soon, and Sewing Patterns as Art
An Eclectic Selection of Goings-On and Happenings
Hello friends
I took a bit of a break after the fringe and wasn’t keeping my eye on facebook or instagram (or tiktok, but my brain doesn’t have the capacity to keep up there anyway). It was refreshing to stay away from them both for a bit, but it means I missed a bunch of things that would have been good for this Sunday Night In newsletter. But I’m back on track now and I’ve got another bunch of things to tell you about.
I know that a lot of people have signed up to this newsletter recently, and I am so happy to welcome you. The form and format of the newsletter is evolving a little, but at its core it’s a monthly round-up of events in and around Kaurna Yerta. Primarily focused on books and performance, but sometimes straying into other storytelling or narrative events. As the name suggests it’s supposed to come out on Sunday nights, but I sometimes miss my own deadline.
As always if you know anyone who you think would be interested, please feel free to share this newsletter with them, and if someone has shared it with you don’t forget to subscribe here.
From this month on, I’m introducing some more in-depth reviews and responses to local work, and I’m very excited to be introducing my first guest writer, my friend Louise Duncan writing about Libby Trainor-Parker’s book Endo Days.
All right, that’s it for this introduction, I hope that you find something to interest you in my eclectic selection below. I’ll be back in a couple of weeks with a new round of goings-on and happenings, and until then, don’t let the passwords get you down.
With love, Tracy
Sewing patterns as art
I did miss some things while I was taking a break. What I didn’t miss, however, was the opening of Embedded by Margaret Ambridge at Gallery M. Margaret works primarily in charcoals but for this show she is using old sewing patterns as the primary medium. If you don’t know much about sewing, patterns are very often made from paper that is as fine as tissue paper and its soft rustle has a visceral effect on those of us who grew up with sewing mothers.
The work in this show is stunning and its impact is profound. The patterns—their rustle, their packaging, their folds, their fragility—have always been at the heart of my sewing preoccupations. The meditations on fragility and liminality in this show resonated deeply with me.
I am halfway through writing about not only the show, but also the beautiful and insightful opening speech given by Anna Platten and I hope to send it out this week through my Naive Psychologist newsletter (although that will possibly be next week). I am sorry that I won’t be able to get along to hear Margaret in conversation with Anna on 20 April, but if Anna’s speech at the launch is anything to go by, this will be well worth your while. Let me give you a tiny peek of the show with some photos I snapped on my phone:
Closing Soon (In a Couple of Days)
Heather Taylor-Johnson offers many residency opportunities at her Island View Writers’ House in Clayton Bay, but has just announced two fellowships for 2024. Friends, it’s catered! Read about how to apply here, but do it quickly, because applications close this week.
Happening Tomorrow
Bri Lee has been all over the book shows and pages lately with her latest book and first novel, The Work. She’ll be at the Marion Libraries tomorrow in conversation with Ali Clarke, with tickets available here.
Children’s Book Council Event
The South Australian branch of the Children’s Book Council is organising a brilliant event with South Australian authors who have scored a ‘notables’ credit in this year’s Children’s Book Council awards. South Australia has a long-standing and dynamic network of children’s writers so this should be an interesting night. Further information and tickets here.
Read this Report
One of the authors who will be speaking at the CBC event is Dr Jared Thomas, who is not only an excellent writer, but also active across a wide range of the arts and cultural sector. Recently, he was awarded a Churchill Fellowship for his work focused on ‘investigating Indigenous and colonised peoples interpretative strategies in permanent displays in museums and galleries.’ This is vital work, not only because debates about the proposed art gallery, Tarrkarri, continue but also because conversations about proposed, um, changes at the South Australian Museum grow increasingly urgent and contested. Jared Thomas’s report, available here, is extremely readable, and I highly recommend it. He also made regular posts on his Instagram feed while he was travelling, and I learnt so much from them. I hope our Premier and our Minister for the Arts are paying attention.
The History Festival
Here in South Australia we love wrapping everything up as a festival, and coming up next its The History Festival. Flicking through the program, I feel like it’s taken a bit of a leap in scope and breadth over the last few years, but that could be my imagination. Anyway, there’s heaps of great stuff on offer, including a good amount of literary and performance offerings.
You can find all of the First Nations events on this page, of which I’ve bookmarked in particular the Oral History Project and The South Australian Frontier and its Legacies.
There’s a plethora of cemetery and after dark tours taking place around the state. Taking one or more of the many excellent walking tours on offer will change the way you look at some of our most familiar places. Just two examples: Heritage & Folklore Above the Canopy’ “highlights some of the facades located above the canopies in Australia’s first pedestrian mall” while Early Entertainment in Hindley Street will be a reminder of its more vibrant days when the clubs were mixed with cinema, theatre, roller skating, ice skating and even people living there.
You can do poetry workshops with Caroline Reid (The Memory Place) with the City of Adelaide Libraries or Rachael Mead (Write Your SA History) with the City of Marion Libraries.
I am dead chuffed to be opening Sally Heinrich’s latest SA Icons exhibition at Mrs Harris’ Shop. As part of the show Sally is also curating two nights of readings, and I’ll be part of the lineup on both nights. You can get tickets for the readings here.
More Festivals
Starting this coming weekend, the itinerary for the Salt Festival on the Eyre Peninsula is available here; and for later in May, the itinerary for the Penola Coonawarra Arts Festival is online here.
Books and Authors and Readings
This is cool! Mostly Books has opened a pop-up branch at the Normanville Newsagency. There can never be enough bookshops!
The Dog-Eared Readings are back on for April, this time featuring Carol LeFevre in conversation with Jo Case. I think I have raved about Carol’s writing in this newsletter before. Her work is nuanced and layered, it is gentle but packs a punch. If you haven’t read any of her work before, you could start with anyone of these listed on her website, but I absolutely adore Murmurations and have read it several times.
Graeme Simsion and Ann Buist are on a great big book tour around Australia which takes in a bunch of regional and independent bookshops including Mt Gambier, Kadina and the ever-fabulous Meg’s Bookshop in Port Pirie. There’s also a ticketed event in Adelaide as part of Dymock’s Books in Bars at the Howling Owl.
Matilda Bookshop is maintaining its wonderful program of local and visiting authors with the launch of Shankari Chandran’s Safe Haven, tickets and further information here.
SA Playwrights Theatre have their next evening of staged readings coming up in May. This is a great opportunity for writers to test new material, and for audiences to be part of the development of new work. It’s an outstanding lineup that includes Sarah Peters, Emma Beech and Dani Lim. Tickets are a bargain at ten dollars, and they do often sell out so book here.
The Ern Malley Bar has readings every Wednesday in April, follow their Instagram page for details or sign up to their ever-surprising newsletter to stay up to date with their excellent range of events.
Theatre
I love plays and performances that experiment with different ways of presenting, so I’m intrigued by the University of Adelaide Theatre Guild’s season of Angels in America which is an “exciting, epic production in two parts.” See one or both parts by booking here.
Therry Theatre are halfway through their season of A Shortcut to Happiness and I am looking forward to seeing it this week.
Workshops, Residencies and Other Events
Two workshops focused on movement coming up at ActNow Theatre, one led by First Nations artist Caleena Sansbury and another by visiting international artist Laís Rosa from Brazil.
Applications for Round One of The Adelaide Festival Centre’s inSPACE program are now open. This a great program offering access to rehearsal space, technical equipment and a contribution towards artist wages. There’s different categories available to artists all explained on the application page.
Along with their usual array of excellent workshops, Writers SA is holding a networking event at the Howling Owl in May (is this the new literary hub of South Australia?).
Help Make it Happen
A fundraiser for No String Attached Theatre of Disability. From their donations page, “Rachel High is the first person in Australia with Down Syndrome to graduate from university, and she wants to share her story on stage - in the hope that it will encourage others like her to undertake tertiary studies. Your donation will help us to launch HIGH into the Space Theatre, AFC, in August.”
Read more and make donations here.
Kaurna Warra Workshop
If you’d like an introduction to Kaurna language, enrol in this workshop coming up at Tea Tree Gully in June.
And Just Quickly …
One month until the Ern Malley bar’s MIKI Prize for Short Stories closes
My friend and a bloody brilliant comedian, Jon Brooks at the Rhino Room
The Adelaide Juggling Convention Gala tickets here
Galleon Theatre Group with a season of Of Good Stock
Optimism in Challenging Times? Yes please! Okay, it won’t be a quick fix, because it’s actually ‘The Lessons of Voltaire and Bernstein’, a State Theatre tangent talk in advance of their co-production of Candide with State Opera. Tickets here
Actually Acting Youth Theatre with a double bill of The One-Act Play Disaster and There is No Play
Free Agents Youth Theatre with a season of LAMBS written by Sean Riley
And to End …
Welcome to the newest section of the newsletter where I will be including more in-depth reviews and responses to works by local artists. To start, I am really proud to offer you Louise Duncan’s response to Libby Trainor-Parker’s Endo Days.
Louise and I first met many years ago when we were both starting out in stand-up comedy, and we have been friends ever since even though I left stand-up long ago. I love Lou for her warmth and her generous spirit. I also love her because she reads a lot—she definitely reads far more regularly and widely than I do. She has a new substack newsletter Camels and Coffins where you can read about some of her most passionate interests including most recently her beautiful pooch.
Endo Days by Libby Trainor-Parker, as read and reviewed by Louise Duncan
Endo Days is published by Wakefield Press and is available here.
Who knew that a book about chronic illness could be so informative, yet so warm, hilarious and engaging at the same time? Endo Days is a medical memoir with heart and sass.
Libby Trainor Parker is many things, performer, teacher, writer and mother to name but a few. She also suffers from severe and debilitating endometriosis, as well as more than a few comorbidities. Endo Days is an emotional roller-coaster through medical gaslighting, misdiagnosis, pain, love and loss. But you’ll laugh, I promise.
We meet Libby in a place sadly familiar to many, with a doctor all too ready to write up a scary medical episode as a regular case of ‘knickers in a twist’. From here we follow not only Libby’s story, but that of a diverse group that know intimately the indignity of having their pain ignored, their symptoms dismissed, their concerns invalidated. Their frustration is palpable and the burden of shame heartbreaking. At the same time, Libby masterfully weaves their journeys into narrative of hope and connection, acceptance and recognition.
If you come to this book without much knowledge of endometriosis, you could google the stats, like the fact that one in nine people who menstruate suffer from endometriosis, or that on average it takes 6.8 years to be diagnosed in Australia. You can read a list of symptoms or a breakdown of medications and surgeries available in a thousand places on the internet.
However, what you’ll find in this book is so much more than that, it’s community and advocacy. It’s how to navigate the social impact of fluctuating pain and energy levels, it’s how to support mental health through surging hormones, it’s how to have more comfortable sex and finding a good finger-bang doctor (sorry, pelvic pain physio).
Libby traverses often extremely heavy territory with her trademark wit. It’s no surprise she’s one of Adelaide’s most sought after comics and MCs, as well as an absolute powerhouse in the cabaret version of Endo Days. As the pages turn and Libby graciously invites you into the most intimate parts of her life, you’ll fall in love with her loving family, irreverent humour, selfless advocacy, creative energy and persistent positivity.
Endo Days feels like a reassuring hug, and Libby is the best friend that’s always in your corner. You will laugh and cry together. For all people with uteruses, and those that love them, this book is a testament to the resilience of endo sufferers and a beautifully inclusive must-read.
Louise Duncan
The End of This Issue of Sunday Night In
Remember, if you think you know someone who might enjoy Sunday Night In: An Eclectic Selection of Happenings and Goings-On please do share this with them and encourage them to subscribe.
Talk soon, Tracy xx