Subsidence

By Helen M O'Leary

Subsidence

A daughter longs to guide her mother through the hardest of journeys of memory loss, paving a way with her own remembrance; for memory is an actor's most powerful tool. Before the settling and subsidence of life, Hayley prepares to perform a show to honour her mother, Joan. Death is never convenient and desp

• Language: English
• Publisher: Helen O'Leary
• Release date: Dec 14, 2022
• ISBN: 9780645620801

Helen M O'Leary

Matilda Award winning Australian Artist Helen O'Leary has built a career in Acting, Playwriting, and Voice-over. You can hear Helen narrate the Audiobook of Bone Memories by Sally Piper (UQP / Bolinda Publishing) and perform main cast character vocals for State Library of Queensland's QANZAC Podcast Put Out into the Deep.As Writer: The Confabulator and Shutter C.D. (Woolloongabba Art Gallery, WAG Upstairs), My Paris and Last (Old 505 Theatre Sydney Fringe).Awards: Helen's playwriting and live theatre performance work has received critical acclaim.Matilda Award Recipient - Best Female Actor in a Supporting Role Swallow Sydney Fringe Festival Award Recipient - Award for Excellence in Writing and Performance My ParisSydney Theatre Award Nomination - Best Actress in an Independent Production God's EarMatilda Award Nomination - Best Actress in a Leading Role The Confabulator

Book preview

opening night

Adrenaline ready. Pogo, up, down flexible. Lower-level Gallery space about to go on. Tongue rolls, spine drops. Shaking out stress hormones. Hear my audience on the floor above settling into the performance space. Can’t wait to look them in the eye from the stage. Love every one of their bums on my seats. Secretly willing them not to touch the props. Big week, long nights, early starts. Bump In, swing rig, lighting plot, costumes, caffeine, top and tail sound cues, tech dress stumble through, tweaking, truck runs, publicity interviews, photo call, posters up, flyer drops, cheap lap noodle takeaway, invite list, ticketing sales reports, done and dusted. Too many hats Producer. Sold out. Show fit. The Confabulator premieres. No dinner break tonight. Can’t quite stomach much but the lines in my head.

Snow I’m confabulating not fabricating there’s a big difference. I can see it in your eye you think I lie. This is not deliberate, I’m not capable of deliberate deceit. This ain’t no tall story on my soapbox here no glory. Its sundowner dirty no matter how hard I scrub; I can’t make this mess disappear. My tale’s not under the volitional, deliberate, conscious control of the agent of my mind. Anyway who says I haven’t seen snow?

I don’t know who my family are or how to get home. I don’t even know where I belong. No markers in these sheets of underfoot sleet. You are staring straight through me, and my tears are still wet. Me telling you I know snow, is precisely in order to be able to differentiate it, from your therapeutic lies. Think it’s a false memory like your pearly teeth? A false account of things. Go on correct me. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a memory per se. If you open your eyes, you’ll see my shoes are covered white, and you think snow doesn’t have a mind. Who are you to judge?

Breathe.

This blanket show has no curtain call just snowfall.

With you, for you, without you.

You’ll say you’ll visit when I’m shovelling on my own with a caregiver you pay for.

In.

There’s a false account it don’t balance do the math.

Out.

Stage play The Confabulator I wrote for you, complete in the sharing of it tonight. Need another wee, before I hit the stage. No time. Or is there? Maybe just one more quick one. Not an Opening Night sweater, spitter, or shaker. Can hold a prop and it won’t rattle. At the 45-minute call we unlocked the funky inner-city Art Gallery entrance door to welcome Opening Night in. Smell of peak hour traffic fumes and the French restaurant kitchen adjacent. Excited. Woolloongabba Art Gallery doorbell chiming every new punter ting! My cue to disappear back of house, to the dressing room. Ha! Storeroom broom closet smaller than a toilet cubicle brim filled with wet mop-bucket, beer cartons, bubble wrapped unexhibited sculptures, plinths, broken frames, hanging racks, rolled empty canvases, my yoga mat, makeup mirror and now me.

Venue Bar buzz. Chit-chatter queue of patrons. Reviewers, friends ordering pre-show spirits, colleagues –

‘Darling good to see you!’

– catch ups, family flower laden, VIPs, plus ones, paying punters; all Foyer milling on the other side of the wall. Old faithful rabble, theatre supporter noise, music to my ears. Chipboard partition not what separates us. I made something out of nothing, one of my favourite things to do. Crowd about to suspend their disbelief and play with me. Bloody lucky to host them. Tippy toe stand to see in the small mirror that’s propped on an upturned carboard box. Photo of you when you were well Mum, clipped to the plate of transparent glass, thin reflection grounding. Headphones high power music pumping. Your voice in my head: ‘Just-keep-doing-what-you’re-doing’. Run lines.

My agent lives OS he doesn’t suffer fools. He knows my version of events is actually happening. He booked with Air New Zealand. I’ve got my boarding pass, there’s just no Gate number yet. Someone will call my name over the loudspeaker. He got his 10% alright, just the forecast was wrong, plus GST.

Greasepaint bold red lips. Dramatic pout, dull sunken eyes. Look bald, stretching my hair as tight as I can, bobby pinning it in place, so it doesn’t get caught in my radio headset for the Telephonist and Lawyer speeches. Tricky section. Last night in the tech dress my long plaits got tangled up in the microphone earpiece cord. Stranded unknotting myself in the dark. Music ran out. Had to go back. That transition was way too long. Got to tighten all of them up on the fly tonight no time to re-rehearse cues. My partner volunteered to Stage Manage. This is a two-hander. As SM he controls the technical side, calling sound and light cues at the desk. Pre-set lighting states all keyed into the dimmer. Using Parcan 64 LED’s. In the plot we were able to alter the intensity and mix the colours but have no capacity in the DMX unit for fading in or out. General state colour washes. Once each lighting state was finalised, we had to make it work. He’s got a heap of cues to remember but apart from quick costume changes onstage and triggering the dry ice, I’m just the actor. Trust my gut. Trust him. Trust the text.

Snow flurry, snowstorm, blizzard. My snow event is punctuated by freezing and thawing and even you’re cold enough to retain snow seasonally, or concern, just feign it perennially. I know you only close one eye to wink. I’m no flake. Say no. No snow? Goggles on!

Lip trill.

You’re consulting me it’s your ninth session. Is your scar a craniotomy? Yes, apparently you haemorrhaged into the ventromedial aspects of your frontal lobes. Not much we can do until you admit that carpet of snow has a mind. All we need is the specifications. Why don’t we order a CT scan? When your cardiac pacemaker was fitted it was snowing out. Now it’s in. I’m not lying to you. That would just be cruel and ridiculous when you can’t even draw a tick tock.

Partner texts me:

‘Most of the audience are here darling. Just waiting on the big wig from Qpac who RSVP’d they were coming. Do you want to wait for them, or shall we go?’

Text back:

‘Come down so we can talk. Let’s wait.’

He’s been upstairs seating the patrons with a mate from work doing Front of House. 5-minute call. Rush of nerves. Speed run the rest of Snow.

Is it terrifying? Well, you’ve no scarf no coat, nothing waterproof. What were you thinking buying swimmers instead of skis? Good now we’re getting somewhere. Snow! Not no! Well done. Confabulation comes to the rescue! Clearly understandable, comprehensible, from the point of view of your subjective experience, from the point of view of your feelings. We’ll just make sure we put your mittens on before we take you to the other Ward. It is cold out there. That lie didn’t reassure you, did it?

Back under the seating bank above, hopping. Jaw release. Partner pops his head out from the top of the stairs. Wide grin gives me a thumbs up. Beginner’s call, jolt. This is it. Wait for him to hit the first sound cue. House lights snuffed out. Shadow. Scale staircase, silent drumming final lines.

I’m so pleased we are progressing making leaps and bounds. My cortex, a critical part of my cortex, ventromedial frontal cortex – my thinking apparatus is jet lagged. But it is snowing outside. This is a pathological example. Illustrates a distorted wishful use of memory. My cognition crystals formed in a supersaturated air trend. So as Nakeya discovered – lacy, delicate, ornate – this is my snowflake. Oh. Snow!

brush

Lights up. Onstage in action the same actor seated strokes her long hair with an invisible brush, playing two roles, Mother and Woman. Mid performance of The Confabulator. Woman speaks first.