Nine degrees of isolation: live-streamed monologues unlock home truths

The dominant first-person stories to have so far emerged from the pandemic have been, largely, at two ends of the scale – terrible frontline stories from healthcare workers and patients’ families, and the more cosy tales of people baking bread and fostering puppies.

But there are countless narratives in between. Stories which, says Malthouse Theatre artistic director Matthew Lutton, we can expect art to respond to over the coming months and years.

Lutton expects the pandemic to shape theatre in different waves. The first, he suggests, will be escapist – “the joy of not thinking about reality”. Later, he imagines, the government might want us to forget what happened, and art will have a responsibility to counter that.

“That will be a stream that is quite angry, dealing with the mistakes we’ve made as a country and as individuals,” Lutton says. “I also think there’ll be some inspiring art imagining the future and what to do together after the collapse, that creates an opportunity to collectively come together and rethink.”

The immediate wave, processing what we are still going through, is something the Malthouse is already exploring, with a new project launching next week.

The theatre, which remains closed, has commissioned a series of works designed to be live-streamed. The Lockdown Monologues, funded by a grant from the Malcolm Robertson Foundation, includes nine works based on the experiences of real people.

Three playwrights – Jean Tong, Jane Harrison and Tom Holloway – have each written three five-minute monologues, fictionalised accounts of people they have interviewed.

“At the moment we need a lot of affirmation that what we are experiencing, other people are experiencing,” says Lutton. “I think there’s a deep craving to know the funny stories, but also the heartbreaking stories, and the hardship that we are all experiencing.”

The series aims to cast a broad gaze: “From extremities where hardship is incredibly difficult, or people that are trying to communicate with families internationally, to the people working relentlessly making decisions every day, working in premiers’ departments, and healthcare and social services where they’re actually run off their feet,” says Lutton.

Each monologue will be recorded live in the actor’s home. Bridget Balodis, Malthouse’s director in residence, will direct the pieces via Zoom. It’s not, she says, as complex as trying to direct an actual play remotely, but “it’s still a new experience for me”.

“Doing it in Zoom, the screen is the frame they’re performing in and it’s not like trying to direct a play virtually; there’s no movement, they’ll be relatively still,” she says. “The whole process … is being done in the same form in which the audience will receive the final work, so it’s there at every stage.”

Balodis says the nine monologues will tell a mix of stories. “We wanted a balance with some voices that we maybe haven’t been hearing,” she says. “Without giving specifics away, we have shut-ins, the corporate persona, people in arts.”

Melbourne playwright Tom Holloway, who has previously written plays based on real events, prefers to create “something separate” from the people who experienced the events.

“I don’t do verbatim theatre,” he says. “Theatre’s main job is a kind of ... empathy – it’s not a job of facts and figures; it’s not journalism or documentary. It’s a chance to walk in other people’s shoes so the most important thing is to get the theatrical journey right to give the audience the experience you want.”

For his three monologues, Holloway interviewed several people, including a colleague, a friend and, most intriguingly, three clowns – a circus clown, a rodeo clown and an international clown. Actor Daniel Schlusser, one of three actors who will perform the monologues, plays the clowns.

“To begin with, I was thinking that clowns are both in front of audiences and on the road all the time – the two things we can’t do right now,” Holloway says. “My kind of … prejudiced opinion was that they were probably interesting people if they’ve chosen to pursue life as a circus clown, and what does someone so driven to pick such a peculiar life do when they’re just locked up? I imagined they’d be bursting full of energy and the need to perform and to move.”

Holloway was surprised by what he learnt.

“People who choose to be a clown have a big heart; they want to entertain and please,” he says. “Some of the things the three of them have said to me about what it means to be a performer – for people to gather together, what it means to be human – have just been really insightful and surprising and really warm.”

He was also eager to record the experience of someone who had had the virus; he tracked down an opera singer he knows from his time as a librettist in Germany to talk about his experience – “including what does it mean for an opera singer to have a respiratory illness” – and again, the conversation took him in unexpected directions.

“He speaks many languages and we talked about things like what the word ‘person’ and ‘community’ mean in different languages, the literal translations of those words, things that tell you about the ways different people around the world view these things,” says Holloway.

His third piece is drawn from one of his closest friends, a high-school teacher grieving a friend and mentor, who died without having a proper send-off or being able to say goodbye to his children in person. His story, says Holloway, is about the two sides of his experience, “what it’s like being a teacher, a kind of frontline worker, and then as a mourner, and the kind of extra, unimagined complexity involved in that”.

“This crazy time is throwing up all these ... wonderful and funny stories, and then these heartbreaking stories that will stay with people for the rest of their lives. Grief is hard at the best of times.”

Holloway says he has finished each interview feeling energised and inspired, “and surprised by the things I’ve learnt”. “And there will be some funny bits, I think, in all of these; humour is how we deal with trauma and crisis too, so it’s important.”

The Lockdown Monologues doesn’t aim to replicate theatre, but with each performance being live-streamed, Balodis hopes there will be some feeling of virtual gathering.

She will introduce each piece, and the Malthouse team is working on some kind of a forum where people can discuss the works afterwards, like a virtual theatre foyer. The dates also correspond to what would have been opening nights for some of Malthouse’s now cancelled shows.

“It won’t be the same,” says Balodis, “but it’s something nice for our team – and also our audiences – to mark those occasions.”

The performances, including three monologues per episode, will be live-streamed on June 3 and 17 and July 3. Free to watch, but register at malthousetheatre.com.au to receive the link.