radionotes podcast episodes

065 Kerith Manderson-Galvin

by | Apr 19, 2020 | episodes | 0 comments

065 Kerith Manderson-Galvin

Kerith Manderson-Galvin creates unconventional theatre and performance art, with their latest related to queer femininity through a work called ‘Being Dead (Don Quixote)’.

During the Adelaide Fringe they had a chat inside The Little Theatre at the University of Adelaide with radionotes…

To listen, click the green ‘play’ triangle… [note: may take few seconds to load] 

IMAGE CREDIT: Supplied/Promo for Being Dead (Don Quixote) 

Without question, if Kerith is performing in your town (or can get to see them perform) make that B-line.

SHOW NOTES: Kerith Manderson-Galvin

Where to find the show to subscribe/follow:

  • PlayPodcast – this link directs you, to the Podcast app on your device (subscribe to not miss an episode)

….or you may prefer to Search “radionotes Podcast” in your favourite podcatcher.

The socials…  Instagram  –  Facebook  –  Twitter

Feature Guest: Kerith Manderson-Galvin

Next Episode: Brymore Productions

…if you have not already subscribed or following the radionotes – we can be found on Spotify, Apple and Google Podcast, Overcast, Stitcher, PocketCasts and more…

[Radio Production – notes: ]

CREDITS

Theme/Music: Martin Kennedy and All India Radio   

Web-design/tech: Steve Davis

Voice: Tammy Weller  

You can make direct contact with the podcast – on the Contact Page

TRANSCRIPT

First version provided by REV team member Neil M – check to audio before quoting wider

John Murch:
Kerith, welcome to radionotes.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Thank you.

John Murch:
We’re going to start by just talking about the show you’ve brought to the Adelaide Fringe, because that’s where you are right now in the space, which you’re performing of an evening. The show’s been and gone, but I know continues to tour as well. Sorry to be so plain to ask, but what is the show about?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Doing it for quite a few years, and it has sort of changed as I’ve been changing over the time. So, I’ve been refining, what it’s been about. And really, I guess what it comes down to is about finding ways to be heroic in a world that doesn’t see those qualities as heroic. And so for me, those things are feminine qualities and they’re things that maybe don’t always know how to take up space on stage, which is about being weak, and being soft, and being small, and being indecisive and indirect and unreliable. I think that that is coming through in my form and in the way that I perform the work as well, that I try to… I don’t know, because I’ve never seen it. But what I am doing when I’m performing it is I’m trying to fill in spaces in between words and spaces in between and then to invite people into my world and hopefully they will see those qualities as heroic. Is that what you think is happening?

John Murch:
Well, what I’m seeing is a sense of allowing the audience to define their own upon what is real and what is performed and how much of it is the actor talking to the audience and how much is it the actor performing to the audience. That divide. And then when we play in gender, in terms of you saying femininity or masculinity, I guess being the other side of that, your ability to actually push closer to the fem side of that and to explain that you have the right to own the space for which you are inhabiting for the 45, 60 minutes, whenever it may be.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, yeah. Or even to choose not to inhabit it. I think that is sort of what I’m doing and what I’m interested in, in general, in my practice. Like why do I have to take up space and be bold and be strong and be clear? Why can’t I do it in another way? Definitely, you’re right about this sort of real and performed thing that you’re saying is going on, which I think is a bit about like going into a theatre that it’s not, we all know that we’re sitting down in a space of pretend. And so, I don’t want to get rid of that. Like it’s pretend, but I’m also really there and you’re really there, but somehow those things have to meet. And so, I am definitely playing in that with Don Quixote. And also, because in Don Quixote there is his reality and then the rest of the world’s reality. So there’s my reality and the audience’s reality. And sometimes those things meet and sometimes they don’t.

John Murch:
That idea of identity and imagination that of within the theatre, how that is experienced through childhood and a child’s sense of identity. And what I by that is a sense of play.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah.

John Murch:
When a child goes to play, they get either a truck or a Barbie doll. Are you looking at some of those aspects as well?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Only through maybe my own continuous coming of age in that I have learned to be okay with the fact that actually I do like Barbie and that actually I do like princesses and I like all of these things and that it’s all right to lean into that even if they are these binary ideas of gender that I don’t have to be afraid of that and I don’t have to think that that makes me conform to a heteronormative or cis-normative things.

John Murch:
So the gender construct of those things, doesn’t belittle in any way that you live as a person that is outside of either of those two binaries.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Yeah. I think, I think of myself as ultra-binary or something, like I’ve gone so far beyond into femininity that it has yet moved on out to the edges, out into the wild.

John Murch:
Whatever that feminine side is that you’ve grabbed onto. And you’ve just kept on going and said, well, you’re defining it as that, but I’m already three miles down the the road.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Exactly. That is how I feel. And that’s what makes me feel playful. You’re right. It makes me feel like it’s something to have fun with, but also makes me feel safe and I understand who I am. And it’s not something that I always felt, because it felt like something that people were putting on me. And that would say that I was fem or is almost insulting way. And so, I try to maybe push against that, but I didn’t feel comfortable until I found fem as a queer identity.

John Murch:
The idea of being queer in itself though can sometimes mean that there is no boundary. That it actually, I think you’ve saved yourself skirts along and really likes to redefine in some aspects what it actually represents. Are you comfortable with the term queer further than outside of that of gender?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Queer is what I both understand and don’t understand at all, but yeah, I think, because queer is this ever-changing thing and that’s the place where I want to be.

John Murch:
What’s changed over the last couple of years through doing the performance by being interactive with audiences and commanding the stage in the way that you do?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I think I got braver. Yeah. Or I just want to connect in different ways. I think I just became a better artist is probably what happened. Is that I got a bit older and I went and did my Master’s and become more comfortable with sometimes my failings as an artist and as a performer.

John Murch:
How important is failure as an artist?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I think heaps important, but I also think it makes for more interesting art watching failure in performance, I think is thrilling. It’s so thrilling. And so, when I say I got braver, I think it’s because I feel more comfortable with things go wrong in a performance and being able to react to it instead of wanting to be perfect, which lots of people want in art and in performance, you want to do the best job. And there’s like a funny thing in theatre where you’re doing all these shows and then you’re waiting to get it right. And when will be the night when you’ve done the show the best that you could ever do. And then you keep wanting to repeat that result. And I don’t think that’s interesting. And I don’t think that that’s what performance is about. I think it’s about doing it differently each way.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
And sometimes it going in a very unexpected, failed direction. And that’s when I think, “Oh, this is a cliche, where the magic happens.” But it is, yeah. That’s this precarity in performance I really like, and that is something that I am getting closer to, I think.

John Murch:
I guess what I’d like to know also with works like this, that it’d be great, if more people were going to the theatre that they’re actually seeing something on program, not reading a review, just going and seeing something and learning. Do you get a sense that people still do that?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I have no idea. And mostly I have no idea, because I can only say what happens when I go to a theatre and often I don’t think that I am open enough to it. I think we’d go in maybe particularly as a performance-maker, you go in a little bit ready to judge the work instead of going in yeah, completely open and receiving it for the value that the work has without saying, “Oh, well it wasn’t to my taste or it wasn’t what I expected or it wasn’t what I would do or whatever.” I think maybe we need to be kinder. That’s mostly just me talking to myself. I need to be a kinder audience member, but I still don’t actually want to go to a main stage play.

John Murch:
Kerith is our very special guest. They are currently here at The Little Theatre with their performance of Being Dead Don Quixote. Now, whilst it’s left Adelaide, it continues. It’s been around for a while. I assume it’s got a few more years left in it.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Not sure.

John Murch:
Whoa, okay.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Not sure. Maybe, yeah. It’ll just keep on going.

John Murch:
We’re breaking news? This is it.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. When I had to originally made it, then I thought that it would be something that I could do forever and just change it every time to suit what was happening in my life, which has sort of been what’s happening, is that I will remove a bit and replace it with something else. If that is done in a similar way, but yeah. I just sort of slant it differently to fit where I am now.

John Murch:
What music are you currently listening to?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
What am I currently listening to? I mean, I saw Lydia Lunch the other day. So I’m like constantly having a love affair with Lydia Lunch.

John Murch:
Can we talk about it? Because I kind of forgot kind of, didn’t go kind of all scared too.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Why?

John Murch:
Because I adore her so much.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Ah yes. Okay. So-

John Murch:
See, I feel bad, because I’ll go to Henry Rollins every time he’s in town, but Lydia, I didn’t make the effort. Bad.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Because you like her too much.

John Murch:
I used to play her on the radio back in the nineties.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Oh, you’re the best, you’re the best radio person ever.

John Murch:
30 minutes, it’s just like-

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Ah!” It’s Heaven.

John Murch:
Talk to me about Lydia Lunch. Let’s start there.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Lydia Lunch. I mean, I have Lunch tattooed on my wrist because I got her to sign my arm. That’s why I have that, it’s Lydia Lunch. Yeah. Used to think that I didn’t like music, because I thought I didn’t, I just thought I didn’t like the music. I hadn’t found the music that really spoke to me and felt, yeah. I just thought I hated music. And then, I found this band Primitive Calculators that are from Melbourne, because I went to an exhibition and I watched a video of one of their songs. And then, I’m sorry, this is a weird journey of how I got to Lydia Lunch, because it’s important. Then I ended up being connected with Stuart Grant because he’s in Melbourne and we became friends.

John Murch:
Is Stuart Grant in the Primitive Calculators?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
In Primitive Calculators. He introduced me to Lydia Lunch, because he was like, “This song you will like.” And then he sent me Teenage Jesus and the Jerks. He was like, “You will love Teenage Jesus and the Jerks.” And I did. And then I was like, “There is music that I love!” And it was Primitive Calculators and Teenage Jesus and the Jerks,” my best, the most happy music is just that tiny little moment in time of no wave music is perfect for me.

John Murch:
To then see her on stage in A Little Town Called Adelaide.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Seeing Lydia Lunch. And I’ve thought that every time I’ve seen her perform, it makes me feel like I’m on drugs. My whole body, from my feet up to my head starts buzzing. I feel a little bit like I’m going to be sick in my… Like it just goes into my body. I feel ill. Then the next day I felt like I was hung over/coming down, but I didn’t have any alcohol. That is my experience of Lydia Lunch.

John Murch:
When was the first experience with her?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Is it maybe four years ago or something? I saw her play at Supersense. Maybe that’s five years ago now. And then, I’ve seen her played twice in Melbourne at the Tote. And then, I saw her do Spoken Word last year.

John Murch:
How do you see the difference between the music and the spoken word for you as a fan?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I prefer the music, sorry, Lydia Lunch. But I think she’s a remarkable performer and I think she’s such a clever performer. So clever that I think she knows exactly what she is doing to work the performance of it. Yeah, what a hero. Something about her music that really got into me. Yeah, so good. She’s so good.

John Murch:
If it took me a while to get into music as you’ve just confessed there, what was the first album you bought then?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I know that I had this country and western album that had Stand By Your Man on it.

John Murch:
Was it Dolly and Kenny Rogers or something, or?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
No, it was all different artists. But I’ve no idea why I would have thought to buy that CD. So peculiar. Yeah, yeah. And then, this is when I was 11 or something. Do you know at Sanity or something, I don’t know.

John Murch:
Those were the days.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
And so, that and then I can’t remember, but then I feel like the next year, or maybe it’s that same year, then I know that one of my first CDs that I had as a young person, I know that I had Regurgitator, Unit, unless that was my brothers, but I think no, it was mine, it was mine. Yeah, I think it got moved into his bedroom, but it was mine. Yeah.

John Murch:
What other albums during that time, before we move on?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. This is a funny thing of being a young person. Maybe I’m getting time confused. That must be when I’m like 13 or something actually, I’m 33. Anyway, ah, I know that I listened to the Spice Girls, so I owned The Spice Girls and I loved The Spice Girls. I thought they were the best.

John Murch:
Right. So it wasn’t because everyone else was, “What you want, what you really, really want.” You actually wanted what you want, what… I can’t-

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. I liked them. I still like them.

John Murch:
Okay. Yeah. Which Spice Girl are you and which Spice Girl did you admire? Which one are you?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Well, because I have brown hair, I had to always be Posh Spice.

John Murch:
Right. And which one did you admire?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I like baby the best, which actually is really telling for kind of who I am now that I liked the hyper-feminine one. Yeah, that’s interesting. Which Spice Girl are you?

John Murch:
Well, look, I do like Ginger. But that’s just because she was so forthright. No, I’m going to stick with Ginger.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Great.

John Murch:
Yeah, Geri’s solo career came out at the right time and everything else, so yeah. And I’m going with Geri Halliwell.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
And do you like the movie, Spice World?

John Murch:
I do.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, me too. How good is the bus moment? One of the greatest cinema moments ever.

John Murch:
Well the favorite live performance has to be Lydia Lunch then hands down. There’s no question about-

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
No, no. No, no.

John Murch:
Favorite live performance is-

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, it was Patti Smith. But that was as much about her as it wasn’t about the audience, because it felt like she sung the first note, and then I swear everyone in Hamer Hall went… And then we all breathed out at the same time. Yeah. That was amazing. That was like, I’m just going to say it, that was like a real religious thing. She, yeah. Made it like a church. It was amazing. I think felt like we all were experiencing the same emotions. I went with a friend and afterwards we spoke to each other and we were at this point, “I felt so joyous. And at this point I felt sad.” And at the same point in the show, we had felt really sleepy. I don’t know, there’s just, yeah this amazing on-mass feeling of emotions.

John Murch:
Talk us through that sleepy feeling. Was it a sense of hypnotics?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, I guess so. I don’t know. I just felt really sleepy. It could also be just being overwhelmed. I also once saw Tori Amos when I was 17 and I fell asleep and I loved her more than anything then. I always felt very invested in seeing her and I fell asleep, it was too much. And then, the next day after that I slept for the full 24 hours, because I was so exhausted. Yeah. Well, it’s so weird.

John Murch:
So you were into music back then?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yes I was actually yeah, yeah, yeah. And I loved those two and in high school yeah, Ani DiFranco, Tori Amos all those people. Fiona Apple. And I still think Fiona Apple is probably one of my favorite.

John Murch:
Did you ever go through the Jewel phase?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
No. I like to sing Foolish Games at karaoke. It’s my best karaoke song.

John Murch:
You answered my next question. What Is your karaoke song? So it’s, Foolish Games.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
What’s yours?

John Murch:
I don’t do karaoke. I don’t go out in public.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Okay. Neither do I really.

John Murch:
I’m nervous enough around one person, let alone a whole room of people. I know it’s about Don Quixote, but why bring up Don Burke in your performance?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
“Give me a home. Give me a home.” I just think of it as my childhood, but also, yeah just, “Give me a…”, I think the lyrics are really great. And the more I think about the performance, I’ve done something very clever, which is that towards the beginning, “I have danced with the Sugar Plum Fairy’s play.” And then in the end, “It’s home among the gum trees with lots of plum trees.” I might be a genius. Yeah. Also, I just found out that that song was written about Betty Burstall who’s the founder of La Mama in Melbourne. It was written about her house.

John Murch:
Do you enjoy being in the bush?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Ah, interesting. If I’m given a choice of trees or beach, I choose trees. Yeah. I don’t want to go camping, but I find great peace from being in the trees. Yeah. And being alone.

John Murch:
So those trees could still be like a leafy suburb. They don’t necessarily have to be out way.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
No, but it is sometimes nice to go and actually be in bushland or forest or wherever, but really? Yeah. I have a house now. I used to live in an apartment now I have a house with a garden and that has changed so much of me feeling happy, having a house where I can look outside at the garden that I don’t know how to maintain and the washing that I don’t know how to hang and yeah. It’s just like it. It’s so pretty.

John Murch:
It’s a lovely thing to say, because I was having a chat to Wil Anderson earlier this week. He’s revealed that he’s moving into a house with a backyard. And he himself wants to get out in the garden. Did it come with anything spectacular that you’ve fallen head over heels for a flower or a tree that was already there that you went, “Yeah!”

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
It’s got vines sort of situation halfway through the garden on a little gate but then climbs up into trees. And then if you pass that little gate, then there’s like another half of the garden. So yeah, it has a very secret garden type feeling to it. But really behind that gate is just the washing line and a shed and a toilet attached to the shed that I’ve been there for three years and I’ve never cleaned. And so, the spiders lived there and I can’t ever access that room ever again. The spiders live there now.

John Murch:
So there’s a true outhouse. For our international listeners, if you’re thinking about redback on the toilet, that’s the kind of scenario we’re talking about. It’s just you to let the spider just live out there. They do their thing.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. I saw the scariest spider in my backyard the other day and it was orange. And it was orange and it was oh, it was disgusting. It was very round. And like a swollen belly type thing. Yeah. It was disgusting. And it made the biggest web ever, but then it was gone in the morning. So that’s the story of horror.

John Murch:
So it’s an obese orange spider-

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Horror.

John Murch:
That you discriminated against and went, “Ooh, it’s awful.”

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
It’s scary, because they’ll come inside and also it will have babies. And then, there will be lots of spider babies everywhere. And I can’t kill them, because I don’t want to actually kill the spider, but I don’t want the spider babies to come inside my house and take over my house. And then where will I sleep?

John Murch:
Maybe it’s a friendly spider.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
No.

John Murch:
We’re having a chat about music, we got to the karaoke bit of it. Do you play a musical instrument yourself?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I can really slowly and badly play guitar. So no. But I tried to teach myself how to play guitar, it’s really hard. And I know how to play chords, but I don’t know how to make the chords become a song. So I really slowly, mostly play Fiona Apple songs on the guitar and it was like, “Pring!” and then it will take me 10 minutes to sing one sentence. And then I go, “Pring!” To the next chord.

John Murch:
What’s the voice instrument like? Is it any good do you reckon?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, sometimes it’s really good actually. Sometimes I have a good singing voice. It’s definitely not being around musicians now. I realised, how incredible singers are or how amazing musicians are and that average musicians are not that good. So my voice is fine. Yeah. But I don’t like singing in front of people.

John Murch:
So you mentioned karaoke before.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
That’s not real though. Karaoke is not real singing in front of people, because you’re not expected to be good or not. And then, if you’re like sort of good, like I am quite good at Foolish Games, but and so if you’re sort of good at it, everyone treats you like you’re the best singer ever, because it was very unexpected.

John Murch:
Kerith is our special guests on radionotes today. We’re having a chat with them as they continue to their original work. I want to move on to Kathy Acker, who I know a little about, but have spent a good two hours this morning diving into them. Talk to me about when you were first introduced to Kathy Acker and what I might need to do know about her?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
When I was 22, I had a boyfriend who said that I wrote like Kathy Acker, he’s being very complimentary by doing that and that I should read her and then yeah, and he was 100% correct, because I love her. I think she’s amazing. She uses cut up style where she would take from different sources of literature and then mush them together to make something else. And sometimes the writing is bad. She does this willfully bad writing or she’ll play with things and repeat sentences a lot. And it will move in very unexpected ways. I remember I read an interview where it said that she didn’t expect you to read her books from beginning to end and that you can just pick it up and open it wherever you want. And that’s really how they read. I think they’re incredible. Yeah, I find her such an amazing writer, because her writing is infuriating sometimes and sometimes it’s very boring and then sometimes it’s beautiful. And I just like that you’re allowed to do that.

John Murch:
To not self-censor I’m thinking.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. And to just play and she’s playing with yeah, ideas and with language. I also think she’s really cool. And also she came to my house. This is after I had decided that I loved her. I found out that she came to my house for dinner when I was a child.

John Murch:
There’s a story that needs telling.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Well, I don’t know, because I was only little. She came to my house with, I think John Giorno who is the poet artist person, and they both came for dinner at our house.

John Murch:
Now why would those two be at your house for dinner?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, that’s a really good question. I think it’s that my dad… Had something to do with my parents. Not sure. Not exactly sure. My mum is an academic. My dad at the time was on the board of a dance company. Maybe that’s why I’m not sure. But that’s yeah, my dad used to be a public servant. They’re not cool people that hang out with avant-garde artists. I don’t know why.

John Murch:
No, but you’ve said there, the father, whilst in that job had an interest of being in a board of the art. So had some part of them that want to invest in the arts.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, yeah. My parents have always been in some way connected to things. My dad was also an actor for a bit. Probably he would say for a lot. He was an actor, but he’s also like his main job was being a public servant. And then, his main job was being my dad. And he was like a stay-at-home dad and did the tuck shop and all of those things. And my mum, yeah. Is a medical anthropologist was a way a lot of the time.

John Murch:
Traveling the world.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Yeah. Which I think I’m sure that that has shaped a lot of, kind of who I am as a person and how I view gender and how I view relationships as well, because they don’t have a necessarily conventional relationship, because my mum was away so much and he’s away so much. My parents, I did a show, a play with them two years ago now with my parents and my brother and me.

John Murch:
With them included.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
And we were all acting in it. Yeah.

John Murch:
For someone who sees themselves as an actor that must have brought your father great joy.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. I think it was good. He was stressed about having to learn lines, but we didn’t have to learn lines, because we read off scripts, the whole thing. And then my mum did learn the lines and that was really irritating to me, because the premises of reading. So we were meant to be reading off the page. What a show off that you learned the lines and they were the best, my dad and my mum really outshone my brother and I.

John Murch:
Getting a sense that it was your father who got Kathy Acker to the house, not the mum.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I think so. Yeah. It must have, must have, although now Lenore will, yeah call me up and say it was me. I don’t know the specifics of this story, I’m sure they both did. I feel like probably my mom would have organized the dinner, but maybe it was through connection and my dad one day I’ll find this out.

John Murch:
Decade before the partner at the time at 22 was asking you to investigate this artiste, that’d been part of their life and now a decade on, are they still informing the work that you write?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
100%. yeah, because I use that process. Always, I use that process that I will take one text and then I will steal stuff from that and then at the same time I will be reading philosophy or queer theory or whatever. And then I’ll be like taking stuff from that. And then I will go down some kind of weird rabbit hole of research and all the while I will be collaging things together. And then sometimes at the end of that process, it will have nothing to do with that stuff. I will have found my own way of writing or sometimes I’m yeah, still keep all that stuff collaged together.

John Murch:
You once said, “Why can’t words just be words?” What were you relating that to? I scribbled that down this morning.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Ah yeah, yeah, yeah. That was from a show that I did Don’t Bring Lulu. I was thinking about that. Oh, just because I was so sick of everything having meaning, I was really just not a very happy person at the time. But I was really sick of one thing having to mean 10 other things. But anyway, that’s actually not how I think anymore and not how I work, because now I’m really deliberately, at least in this show.

John Murch:
So there has been a change.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, yeah. There has. It was a weird time in my life.

John Murch:
Sorry to bring it up, but I wanted to know if there had been a change.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I had so many opinions about things that I don’t agree with anymore at that time. Yeah, I just was sick of meaning in language, maybe also in the body, which is still remains. I’m sick of people reading things into something and it not just being able to exist Being Dead Don Quixote. I’m doing the opposite, because when I say one line in my head, I know that I mean a lot of things. So what’s an example? A really basic one is at the beginning, when I say, I tell the audience that if they want to move, they can. And if they want to change where they are, they can. “You can change where you’re sitting, but also if you want to change where you are in life and in the world, then you can. If you want to move, you can, if you want to leave, you can.”

John Murch:
But yet, no one walks onto the stage and takes a seat on the stage. No one turns their back to you. No one literally normally would probably move, because it’s so confronting that the performer is giving such agency to an audience.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, and hope maybe that goes with you when you leave off into the world and you’re like, “Ah, I can leave society. I can move in different ways in the world.” But yet every line in that show has a lot of meanings that I wish somebody would notice, but yeah, a lot of work.

John Murch:
And I think that’s why it’s crucial that people see the work more than once.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah, I think so too. I think it can be seen more than once. You will take something different. And also there’s multiple readings that can be done. I might say that it’s my main thing at the moment is queer femininity. But actually there’s at least four or five ways that I could also read the work. And so, there’s probably, 100 ways that someone that is not me can interpret the work. And I hope that they do. I hope they trust their own experience of it.

John Murch:
The do-it-yourself aesthetic is something beautiful that I think you have a great engagement with. What do you mean by the DYI aesthetic?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I don’t know how to do a lot of things, but I should try. So I make a video that is imperfect, because that’s where my skill level is, but it’s mine. I did it all myself. Yeah. And also a little bit in performance. This is sort of cynical, but I don’t have the money to make the Robert Wilson spectacular that maybe exists in my mind. So there’s no point trying to make that image. Yeah, this big thing where the set disappears and then becomes something else. And then something is lowered from the ceiling that you didn’t see was going to happen. Yeah. I don’t have the money or skills to do that. So then I have big images like that in my brain. And then I refine them and keep going back and stripping them back and stripping them back into something that, to me feels the same at that. But is what I can do.

John Murch:
That brings it back to the essence of the performance though, doesn’t it?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. As well. So really I’m finding the thing that I wanted to do without all of the bells and whistles.

John Murch:
Distractions even.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah.

John Murch:
Let’s get you back to music. What music brings you a sense of joy.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Sense of joy. Joy is a really funny word. I can tell you what gives me a sense of yeah, of a high.

John Murch:
Yep.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Which I already mentioned, which is Primitive Calculators makes me feel just thrilled and high. What else makes me feel like that? Well, it’s because this is about to happen here at RCC. Is that, what gives me a sense of sort of bliss is listening to people like Steve Reich or maybe that’s joy, maybe that gives me joy. Yeah, and because it-

John Murch:
Well, there’s a sense of an anticipation there obviously.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Entering a space of you don’t have to think is maybe what I think joy is. Oh my gosh, that’s weird. Yeah. What brings you joy?

John Murch:
You’re not completely comfortable with that are you?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
I don’t know. I’m just trying to work out, what brings me joy? But sometimes proper pop music does too, I guess, which is the same of not having to think.

John Murch:
You did ask me. So I’ll answer by giving you this nugget of sometimes the joy isn’t in the happiness of it, but just in the familiarity of it that sometimes I’ll find that sense of joy in terms of knowing that that was that place where everything was okay. And whilst it may not be the most happiest of music, it gives that sense of understanding and knowledge of where I was at that time and that things are okay. And that’s where that joy sense of idea comes from.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
But is that joy or is that comfort?

John Murch:
Well, you can find comfort in joy and joy in comfort can’t you?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
These are all just words. This is a thing of what kind of word?

John Murch:
Just mean a word.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Yeah. So many, it’s all subjective and changes every day of what is joy? What is comfort? What are all of these things? Yeah, sometimes just pop music though, it also just really like proper, sugary pop. I really like lesbian pop music. There’s a person, Hayley Kiyoko and her music is beautiful. Like it’s so poppy.

John Murch:
Why is it defined as lesbian pop, but not just pop?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Because they’re lesbians, the people that write it and they’re singing about girls, because you don’t hear it all the time. So yeah, it’s special. It feels special hearing her sing, “Girls like girls like boys do.” It feels special even though it’s so simple.

John Murch:
Oh, and I guess this, while we’re in that sort of sphere, a little bit to the right of that, the appropriation of queerness within the music scene in the last couple of years or so how’s that made you feel?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Oh yeah. Just boring. It’s just really boring. Also, same of pop musicians appropriating stuff from sex workers, like stripper culture. It’s very boring. It’s so boring. Inappropriate, because they don’t have to experience stigma, which the same of appropriating queer things. It’s like, well, that’s all well and good for you, because you don’t. Yeah, there’s no risk.

John Murch:
Did you have that same sense of feeling when you’re working in the industry and seeing it, or was it after you left the industry that became obvious that it was being appropriated?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Well, I still sometimes work as a striper. I come back to it. I quit for many years. And now I’ve come back to it in a very part-time way.

John Murch:
So it is very much now-

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
It is now, but it also was… Yeah. I can remember. I don’t even know what song it is, but there was a Rihanna song and in the film clip, it used something to do with strippers. And then I was interviewed for an article about it and I was like, “Yes, I do not like this, correct.” It’s just yeah, mostly it’s boring. Everyone’s very boring.

John Murch:
Kerith, how much longer do you think performance will be part of your life? Do you see it as being that ongoing companion?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Yeah. Sometimes I-

John Murch:
You’re smiling a lot.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
No. No. Yeah. Because I think I spent a lot of… Sometimes I don’t think it will and sometimes I’m like, “I’ve got to get a job. What am I doing? I’ve got to get a real job. I’ve got to do something good for the world. And making art, doesn’t always feel like I’m doing anything, good.”

John Murch:
Talk us through that. That upsets…

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
It can feel like what does it actually achieve? But then sometimes I don’t feel like that. And right now, I think that I love performance and I think it has value and I’m not sure what impact it has on the world, but maybe there is some. I don’t think it has a… I must say, I don’t know that I believe that it does as much good as other things might do.

John Murch:
There’s a lot of people in theater that might not do much. But then there’s people like yourself that are actually trying to put new works forward, that aren’t doing a reworking of some Shakespearian play.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. I think maybe actually it adds benefit to people’s lives, daily lives to feel.

John Murch:
Ruby Jones, who are they? Should we be getting into their music?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yes, absolutely. Ruby Jones is a friend of mine and a very talented musician. And Ruby works with Jules Pascoe who is in On Diamond. I first heard it in a room downstairs in my old house/apartment. And they didn’t show their music to anyone for a very long time. They had been in another band that had been touring quite a lot and then that band stopped existing. Now they make this music and I think it is very beautiful and honest. And I can’t wait to see where it all goes. And I very much hope they have an album coming out this year. Sometimes I cry when I watch them perform as well, which is usually a really good sign.

John Murch:
Are you a big crier?

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yeah. Yeah, yeah. But it’s, I either will cry and it means it’s really good or I cry and it means it’s really bad, but if I don’t have a cry, then what was the point of me leaving the house, like I didn’t experience anything?

John Murch:
So it is very much a heart, eye kind of reaction through a soul kind of thing.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Yes.

John Murch:
I want to finish on that. So the radio people can play some Ruby Jones.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Ah, cool!

John Murch:
But for everyone else listening on the podcast, thanks very much Kerith for joining us.

Kerith Manderson-Galvin:
Thank you.

 

Submit a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *