New Theatre Show: Difficult Conversations

On stage at the Seymour Centre, Sydney in September

Friends, are you well?

I’ve just returned from summer in Scandinavia where I saw the Midnight Sun. I feel so refreshed, as if I’ve hit the reset button. I’m trying to lean into that for as long as it lasts 😂 For now though, I want to share my latest project with you and I promise to tell you about my Scandinavian adventure next time.

Difficult Conversations with Jane Hutcheon is officially on sale and it’s coming to the fabulous Reginald Theatre at the Seymour Centre in Sydney for two nights only; Wednesday 11 September and Thursday 12 September 2024 at 7 pm. It’s less than a month away! I’d love to see you there.

The show is a talk/event which explores human conversation; our dialogue public and private at this moment in history. As the title of the show suggests there will be difficult conversations (what are they? how do we face them?) but I suspect there’ll be some fun and audience involvement too. With hand-picked panellists who have very different lives and experiences we’ll explore together what’s working in the realm of conversation and what isn’t.

I’m thrilled to be welcoming student debating champion and law student Jeremiah Edagbami, writer Benjamin Law and artist and advocate Dr Debra Keenahan for the Wednesday evening show. For Thursday, University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Mark Scott takes over Benjamin Law’s place on the couch.

What thrills me about this project is that it’s a new beginning. In the past two years I’ve developed a corporate workshop and in-conversations about the art of conversation. The show is the next step. I’ve been longing to have conversations about our conversation; to listen and understand, to hear people talk about their emotions, vulnerability, frailty, compassion, resilience, succeeding and failing, shame, silence and starting again. I sense that this is a good time to do this given the polarised world we live in.

Background

As many of you know, I finished a long career in TV journalism in 2019, ending on a high with my own interview show called One Plus One. I adored doing that show: sitting down with around fifty prominent individuals each year for a decade, teasing out the strands of their lives, how they coped with life’s ups and downs. We discussed meaning, loss, art, families, mental health, careers, passion, luck and love and much more. After a decade at it, I felt burned out and didn’t know where to turn. I felt at odds with my workplace. So I quit. But the notion of civil, passionate, deliberative conversation had embedded itself in my core.

During the pandemic I sat down and wrote out about what I’d learned about the art and process of having conversations. I wanted to keep the book short so that it could be read and re-read with plenty of takeaways. I printed copies of the manuscript and sent them to close friends for feedback. After a few more re-writes, Jon MacDonald from Brio Books, became my publisher and firm supporter.

Rebel Talk - the art of powerful conversations is the result of the lockdowns. Apart from everything else that went on, the pandemic was a forced lesson in slowing down and listening. REBEL summed up what I’d learned about conversations from a long career in journalism.

Too often we don’t really think about what we say, when we say it, how we say it or how it lands. We don’t think about listening or using silence. Giving advice or opinions are the defaults. Social media can encourage us to become shouters pouring kerosine on the fire of an ever-polarised world. Most of us don’t even recognise that polarisation starts with us, not them.

For the past few years I have taken Rebel Talk to traditional in-conversation events. I thought I had ‘done’ that project, yet curiously, the book wanted more. It wanted a stage and an audience.

In 2019 I had my first foray into theatre. I travelled with beloved British actor Sir David Suchet in the première season of his show David Suchet Poirot & More, A Retrospective (Here’s the interview I did with David for One Plus One a few years earlier).

We conducted a semi-scripted on-stage interview in two acts during which time he also performed excerpts from his iconic theatre roles. David kindly wrote the foreword to my book.

©Kay & McLean Productions

Theatre hooked me. Theatre is a foreign country you have to get to know. It has a language, landscape, processes and its own characters that you have to engage with to understand where you fit in and how you can work. It’s a temporary state and you know that the show will be set up and then packed down when it’s over. But unlike some workplaces I’ve experienced, theatre has a giant, soft-pile welcome mat at the stage door. Since 2019, I have stepped into more than thirty theatres. I always feel at home.

In 2020 I began working on Lost in Shanghai, the story of my Eurasian mother’s life growing up in the Chinese city during the Roaring Twenties. I worked with the inspiring team from Contemporary Asian Australian Performance (CAAP) and the show opened to sell-out houses at Sydney Festival 2022. Our third and final tour closed in March this year.

Lost in Shanghai ©Greg Kung

I hope you’ll join me on my latest adventure.

I’m so grateful to you all for reading this and supporting my work.

See you next week.