Jane McDavitt

The following podcast is brought to you by the Creative Arts Team from Secondary Curriculum, the Curriculum Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education. The Creative Arts Curriculum Team recognises the ongoing custodians of the lands and waterways where we work and live here on Dharug Country and on all the lands on which you are listening today.

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Tahnae Luke

Well, welcome to Creative Cast, the official podcast of the New South Wales Department of Education's Creative Arts Curriculum Team.

My name is Tahnae Luke, and I'm part of the Secondary Curriculum Creative Arts Team, and today I am lucky to be joined by Adriane Daff, one of the core artists of The Last Great Hunt, and she'll be discussing their devising process of The Last Great Hunt theatre company. Welcome and thank you so much for joining me today.

Adriane Daff

Thank you so much for having me, I'm really excited to be here.

Tahnae Luke

As are we. The Last Great Hunt is an internationally renowned artist led collective of five theatre makers. But why did you design the structure in this way and that you chose to have this collective shared vision as creators and innovators?

Adriane Daff

Well, when we first, uh, got together, I mean, a little bit of a backstory, we were seven theatre makers that were working independently in Perth and not independently as in we weren't working together. In fact, we were, there was so much crossover amongst all of the seven of us at the time that Kat Osborne, who was one of the original seven of founding artists of The Last Great Hunt said, what if we all kind of got together and then had this centralized core that was like, Handling, um, producing, and grant writing, and all that kind of like back end work, and there's a lot of it, that goes into making theatre.

And so, in the beginning, that's kind of how we started to share resources and kind of formalise what was happening informally, which is that we were all working together anyway. Uh, that was 10 years ago. And one of the reasons I was so excited to talk to you today is that in the last six months, we’ve formalised and kind of like written down and made policies and procedures around what that actually means.

So I wanted to share with you that like the structure that we've arrived at is something that we call our circle structure. The circle structure is non-hierarchical and artist driven and collaborative. So, with our circles we have the art, which sits at the centre, the art is obviously making the shows, that's why we exist. There's vision and culture, which kind of encompasses everything. And vision and culture is how we shape the company, organised as organisationally, operationally, and culturally. And then within that, we have finance, compliance and governance, marketing, prospecting, which is what we call going out and getting money and bringing it back in, and the Clubhouse, which is like our venue in Perth, our Mayland's Hall where we make and rehearse all of our shows. So, with the circles, um, there's five core artists now. I'm one of them. There's also Arielle Gray, Ada Bazaar, Jeffrey Jay Fowler, and Tim Watts. A core artist sits in every circle, but we all don't sit in every single circle, if that makes sense.

So, what that means is that the artist's view is represented in every single circle. And we have this shared responsibility amongst the five artists, our director of operations, Jac Low, and our producer, Georgia Landre-Ord. So those two, even though they're not core artists, they're like super important to the running of the company and there's something about the non-hierarchical circle structure, which means we're aware of everything that's going on in the company at all times, even if we're not directly responsible for it.

And it's just being like, honestly, it's such an incredible thing being able to crystallize this and being able to explain it to you in like hopefully fairly simple terms because it is a real reflection of how we've been working in the past 10 years. And more than that, it's a real reflection of how we make the shows.

So, it's this kind of, you know, this ripple effect out from the centre of this circle. I've been talking about the art and how we make shows and how we're in process when we're devising theatre but it's also how we run the company. So, it’s new. I look forward to talking about it more with more people because it is a little bit out there and sometimes it takes a moment for people to wrap their heads around it. But it's, that's how we work. And that's how it's a formalisation of how we've been working for the past 10 years.

Tahnae Luke

What an amazing way to have the artists so fully in every part of that theatre. Very exciting to see how that continues to grow. Do you still refer to yourself as the Hunters as part of those artistic core?

Adriane Daff

Yes, we do. And so, the Hunters are the five core artists and then our Director of Operations and our Producer. And the Hunters, it's a term that we use, you know, it’s a little bit of a nickname, but what I love about it is that it actually, you know Jac, Director of operations and Georgia producer, yes, they're not like making the shows with us, like on the floor, but they’re such a part of the lifeblood of the company, that the Hunters is just a really lovely way to acknowledge that shared responsibility, that collaboration, a term that refers to all seven of us as running the company. I think sometimes there can be a little bit of a temptation to be like, oh, there's the artists, and then there's the people who aren't the artists. And I mean, in terms of my own perspective, I think everyone is inherently creative and everyone who's working in the theatre company is making creative decisions all the time. So, it just feels like a lovely non-hierarchical term to explain that you're in The Last Great Hunt.

Tahnae Luke

Yeah, beautiful. I think I want to come and be a Hunter as well. What are your core values that you've kept through from the beginning of this is that you're creating rigorous, relevant and entertaining original work. And so, it's such a powerful statement of intent that you've created there. Why is this philosophy so important to you and the work that you create?

Adriane Daff

Yeah, and I'd love to actually tackle like each of those adjectives one by one, like starting with rigorous. I mean, one of the reasons why they're called The Last Great Hunt, it's an unusual name to call your theatre company. We were really, really meaningful about it when we first came together and The Last Great Hunt for us is something about going out there in the pursuit of something. We're really process driven, we're not about outcome. And so, the idea of The Last Great Hunt is that like, it's got this grand feeling of like, all right, we're going out there. It's going to be the last time we do this great hunt. Now, obviously we hope when we're going to make a show, it's not the last time we're going to make a show, but it's that spirit of throwing everything we've got at it.

So, how that plays into rigor is that when we approach a show, I mean, we've been doing this now for 10 years and we've got some really successful shows. There is a version of our company where we're like, we know that works, let's just cut and paste, change a few little things, we know that our audience love this show, blah, blah, blah. And we could then sort of let's sit back and make that happen. But we're not those kind of artists and we're not those kind of people. So, the whole point is the rigour is like, what's the thing in the show that's extending us? What's the challenge? What's the thing that we're reaching for? And for me, it doesn't matter that we even achieve that it's, it's not a completionist attitude and it doesn't even matter that the audience might not know this particular challenging piece of the rigour that we're going after. But what I think the audience can feel is that energy of like, we're stretching, we're reaching for something. And it's an energy that I think really actively draws them into the exchange that happens between audience and artists when you're performing., There's just something like a little, extra energy or electricity in the air where they're on the journey with us. and they can feel that we're kind of really rigorously going for something. There's something I think energetically attractive about effort. And so that's the piece of the rigour. That is always, you know, and that can change. It might be a new piece of tech. It might be a new way of writing. It might be working with new people. It's sort of limitless what that rigour piece could be, but it is an energy that I think audiences really love.

And then in terms of the relevance, this also ties into making original theatre. So, we're not a company that puts on Shakespeare or other scripts that exist. I love that there's theatre companies that do that, by the way, it's really, really good for the theatre landscape. We just don't do that. And we make shows that are original, and I think that hopefully in turn makes them relevant because there might be something that is interesting to us as artists that we want to explore theatrically and that could be anything from like climate change to the story about friendship and sometimes it's both.

But I like to think that if it's interesting to us as human beings that live in this world, it's relevant and interesting to other people as well. So, there's that relevance piece that I think is also refracting what's going on in contemporary life. And I think that it's that part that hopefully makes it relevant.

And then the last piece about being entertaining is that, you know, when you're making theatre, it doesn't exist without an audience. And I think when people are using their disposable income to come and watch you tell a story, I kind of think you've got a little bit of a duty to make it entertaining. And that doesn't mean it's not going to be thought provoking. It's not going to be moving and it's not going to make you laugh, cry and anything in between. But it is at the end of the day, it is a piece of entertainment, and I think the entertainment piece speaks to how we are always thinking about our audience.

We're always thinking about like, what, you know, what does this look like to them? What does this feel like to them? So, there we put that entertaining piece in to, to that statement so that they are, the audience is really, really included in our hearts and minds when we're making shows.

Tahnae Luke

Amazing, and absolutely, you can see and hear that how you're talking, that it is such a big part of that philosophy that goes into every part of the work that you're doing.

And when you do look at a lot of your work, you're using a lot of multidisciplinary theatre processes and you're combining different styles and forms in very new and exciting ways. What excites you most about this kind of approach to creation and why do you do it in this way?

Adriane Daff

I really love this question because it also speaks to that point about being relevant.

Like, as people who exist in the world where there's new technologies that pop up and there's new things that are happening all the time, to bring them into our practice as theatre makers feels like such a gift. And I, I always liken it to, I mean, not that you or I or anyone listening to this was around when this happened, but when the camera was first invented, all these painters were like, what's going to happen to painting? It's the death of painting. This evil little box is going to do me out of a job. And I mean, that even has, uh, reflections in our modern life when people are talking about AI and whatnot, but like, what it did was when the camera was invented, they could do here's a photo of the beach. Here's exactly how it looked. Here's a photo of the forest. It's exactly how it looked. And then painting went, oh, now we can do abstract, we can do cubism, futurism, expressionism, blah, blah, blah, all the isms that came out of that because they didn't have to catch, slice of life realism anymore. And one of the things I love about making theatre is like there's movies and TVs and documentaries and all this wonderful stuff out there that will give you the realism,

it will give you the absolute snapshot of, of life exactly as it is. But with theatre, we can be a little more abstract, a little more playful, a little bit more impressionistic. And again, I think in doing that, there's that active energy exchange between audience and artist where they're like, oh, that's what I think this means that. I'm going to join these two pieces together. And it's just, I mean, I find it, that's why I love theatre. I find it such a fun way to kind of watch and take in art. And then, you know, kind of practically what that means is we work with a lot of cameras, and we work with a lot of projection and a lot of technology. I mean, sometimes even infusing like filmic aspects into the work that we're making as a way of being like this stuff exists in modern life and here's how we can kind of juxtapose or implant it into the, into the theatre that we're making to just, sort of as a little experiment and kind of see how that sticks. So, it's kind of interesting to be part of this movement in theatre that they're calling cine theatre, like cinema combined with theatre. But, audiences really love it and I think we really love making it. And it's a fun thing to watch in our company, how it's evolving and how we're continuing to use it. We don't always use it, but it is just one of those textures that's out there in the world that we often are interested in playing with.

Tahnae Luke

Incredible. And we see that in a lot of your work and it's really exciting to hopefully see some more of it in upcoming work that you've got. So, let's now move on to looking at a little bit more about your actual process. So, like when you're creating these amazing shows, you're starting from nothing at the start.

And at the beginning you use this term that you begin with free play and I was just wondering and curious, like, how do you actually use free play to then help you move towards building a performance?

Adriane Daff

Yeah, absolutely. So, we call it free play, or we call it wild play. And I, when you, and all five of us approach wild play a little bit differently, but I think the things that unify it are, it's like the step before early-stage development.

And the, it's a really, really, really important part of our process. And it's really built into how we run the company. In fact, there's even with our funding, there's funding that is permanently earmarked as wild play funding because again, as a company that makes new work, we, you know, we're constantly making new work, works at all different stages of development, but wild play is about going into a room sometimes with, I mean, I often go in with no idea. I did my wild play week, not last week, but the week before with a dancer in Sydney called Emma Harrison, who's from DMC. I'd worked with her on a dance show last year, and we just really clicked, and I was all like, I'm kind of interested in making a piece of dance theatre. I've never made a piece of dance theatre, but I was all like, oh, I should, if I'm going to, I should probably work with a dancer. And we just artistically got along so well that I invited her to come in and do a wild play. I didn't know anything about an idea. I just knew that I wanted to work with her. But after five days, boy, did we have an idea that will now go into early-stage development. And that just came from improvising on the floor, doing movement, improvising scenes, talking about what's going on in the world and what's kind of interesting us. And then that we, we got an idea out of it and other people, other artists in The Last Great Hunt might go in with the seed of an idea, and by seed, I mean, it might be a character, or I want to make a clowning show, or I want to make something about this little sketch that I drew one day. And you're like, I don't know if there's anything in it, but the not knowing if there's anything in it is really, really important because if you get the whole point is not, is not outcome, the whole point is to go in, play around in the dark or in the light, wherever you need to play, to see if there's something there.

So, if you got to the end of the week and you were like, Oh, there's nothing here, then that's fine. It's not a failure. It's the lesson you kind of go, oh, I thought maybe there was something, but there's not. But, nearly always going in with no outcome in mind and just playing around and seeing what's there, an idea does come out. Even if it's not the idea you thought was going to come out, something comes out. And this is a little bit like a little bit woo woo and a little bit magic, but I like to think when you take the pressure off yourself as an artist, and that's really hard to do, especially into the modern era. If you can just go in and think, don't think about outcome, just think about play and think about playing with the ideas you've got in the room, the show, as this kind of mystical force, it will tell you what it wants to be. If you're patient and you just really commit to kind of like playing, it will appear. It really will. That's like the most out there kind of like philosophy I have, but I really believe it. It always happens. And it's like, it's kind of magic and beautiful and I love it.

Tahnae Luke

It sounds magical, but also that sense of fun and enjoyment comes into that creation. So, you start with this wild play, then you go into exhausting the toolkit.

So how do you then move it from that sense of play, moving it, you know, along to becoming something more fully formed?

Adriane Daff

Yeah and look, the toolkit's really important because again, in the modern era, we have so much at our fingertips to play with. And I think that one thing that we talk about with the toolkit is, let's say, so we've got a show called Lé Nør, which is a foreign film told live on stage in front of the theatre audience.

So, with Lé Nør, we knew we wanted to use cameras, and we wanted to do like camera tricks that you would see up on the screen, but you would also see how they're being made. So, it looked like this beautiful trick and then you'd be like, oh, that's just Adriane, like laying on her side, pretending to like work at the desk.

So rather than then being all like, oh, we've got cameras and we're going to bring in and, we were like, let's just figure out all the tricks, the funny tricks using gravity or turning the camera upside down or trying to create camera effects that they do in Hollywood, but on stage and just with a camera and with bodies.

So, you sort of go, all right, that the kit is these cameras and a projection screen. So, if you kind of can limit the toys that you're playing with and then really exhaust every single thing that you think can think of and even when you're like, oh, I don't think we can think of anything else, there might be a couple more things that you can think of, but by limiting it, constraints are really useful when you're making art, really giving yourself some constraints.

And then if you're like, I think we really need a, I'm going to give you a silly example, a forklift in this. All right. Well, if you're going to bring the forklift in, you've got to use that forklift in like many, many, many, many ways. And look, that's kind of a personal artistic taste thing. There'll be people where they're like, oh no, there's a forklift on at the end for like two seconds, but it's really, really worth it. And you know, I've seen shows where I'm like, yeah, that really was worth it. But with us, we try and be all like, if we're going to go to the effort of bringing in a forklift, let's really make sure we use that forklift.

Tahnae Luke

So, now we've, so you've used the toolkit. And then you've got to find your best bits.

How do you know what are the best bits? Because it might be the best bit for you, not the audience. Like, how do you determine which is going to be, like, what parts are going to be kept or changed?

Adriane Daff

I mean, this, this is kind of definitely for when you're working with, when you're collaborating with other artists. But even, we don't necessarily always work in a more traditional theatre setup where you've got a director sitting outside looking and being all like, Ooh, that was good, that was good. Like the director often is doing that bit where they're making decisions based off like, I think that's the best or whatever. But with our collaborative mode of working, we’re often like and they're kind of holding something up while someone's pretending to fly. And, you know, so we film it, we'll, we'll film things, and we'll watch it back. And then we're kind of our own audience being all like, oh, that looked cool or that was funny or gee, wasn't that surprising that I didn't think that was going to look like anything, but looking at back on the archival, that actually looks really, really great. So, there's the video, which I really encourage people to use because you can just do it on your phone now, like it's just so easy.

And then sometimes it'll be one of us will be standing out if we're not needed. And we'll be like, yeah, I think there's something there. So, we're kind of trusting our own intuition as artists. And we're kind of being our own audience and being all like, if we all think it looks good, there's probably something in it to keep wanting to explore it.

And look, I should touch wood when I say this, but I actually can't think of a time when I've been working on a Last Great Hunt show with my collaborators, my other artists in The Last Great Hunt, or even external artists where we couldn't agree that something looked good because you know, you, yeah, I mean, that's also a little bit of an educated guess when you bring people in, they normally have the same taste and the same theatrical interests as you, but I can't think of any time where we were like, no, that's amazing and then another artist in the room was like, really? I don't see it. So, there's a little bit of that as well at play of, of acting as your own audience.

Tahnae Luke

So once you've now found all your best bits and you've all agreed, yes, this looks amazing on the stage and we want to keep it, how do you start stringing those pieces together into, you know, a show that's going to be more ready for an audience?

Adriane Daff

Yeah, this is, it's interesting. It's like, sometimes when you've made something, I mean, this is also wonderful and again, one of the things I love about making theatre, something will kind of be like, it'll just sort of happen. You're improvising, whether that's improvising, making an image or improvising a scene or whatnot, and then you're like, this is why I love filming things because sometimes when you're in flow, improvising, you're like, I don't know how I did that. I don't even really remember saying that. Like, so like, when you're deep in it, sometimes you're like, you watch it back and you're like, oh, I don't even like, you're deep in kind of almost like subconscious land. Like, it can be hard to remember. So, when you filmed it, you've got to be like, oh, I went, I did that. Then I did that. And then I held that. And then I said this. So, it becomes, you're trying to make lightning strike twice sometimes.

So, I actually really want to say that don't get discouraged. If something happens effortlessly and it was this beautiful moment, regardless of the moment when you're then trying to recreate that, if you're like, why does this now look so bad? It's, it's actually part of the process to be like, let it look bad. Like, let it, let it, your best bits be like, there's something here, even if they're not perfect, that's fine. That's what rehearsal’s for. So, you kind of, you are trying to make lightning strike twice with some of these moments. And it's possible. It's just it's the rigour. It's just hard, but it's possible. But yeah, if it looks a little bad at first, it's not that the idea wasn't good. It's just hard. It's hard to make theatre. It really is. And then when you're stringing things together, there will be, we like to storyboard sometimes, especially when you're making really visual theatre, where we just get A4 pieces of paper and we'll write like Adriane holds the umbrella, then the this, then the that, so that on these like A4 pieces of paper that you can kind of like lay out in front of you, and then be all like, yeah, that feels like that will kind of naturally go into that, which might be a practical thing, like, this person's already on the stage at that point, holding such and such, so it feels right and effortless to move into another visual moment. Or there might be scenes that are like, oh, we need to hear that piece of information before we see this piece of information. And just on these pieces of paper, you can move it all around or do it on a white board, and you can sort of start to storyboard it out and see what might kind of flow really well.

But one thing that I really like about stringing it together is you can make logical decisions, like we need to hear this information before we hear this information, but sometimes there'll be something where you'll be like, that just seems to flow really well, but I don't know what it means in terms of story. But once you put it in the sequence with other bits, you start going, oh, that's what that means. Like, you don't have to know. I mean, especially when you're kind of like making something where you're like, there's a gap here. I don't know what that gap's going to be yet. It can be patchy, but you can have these sequences that once you start running them together, again, I don't want to sound magical and woo woo here, but sometimes through running them together, you'll be all like, oh, we need a bit where she goes to visit such and such, who tells her something that gets her to the next bit.

So those, those stringing together, things can be like go from gut. Like if it's just an intuition that tells you it should be like that, there's probably a reason that you have a feeling it needs to be like that. And then sometimes there'll be logic decisions. So, the paper means, or whiteboard means that you can like move things around to be really robust with your order, like not to get too attached to it. And then it just becomes a really useful way to sort of be like, oh, what if we lifted this whole section? And that's how we started the show. Should we just try that? And you can, you can just sort of still play around with it as like big building blocks.

Tahnae Luke

It's interesting that you've used the word it's hard, because I've heard you refer to the last part of your process as the hard bit. And so, I was just curious, why do you use that term?

Adriane Daff

I think I like to use it because I like to acknowledge that it is you know, and again, it's embedded in The Last Great Hunt, this idea of like, all right, we're going out there and we're going to try and pursue something. It is really difficult to make a good show.

Like it’s a lot of work and it's a lot of really rewarding work, but I think that it's also to sort of, it's also to really communicate to people that it's like, it's just as hard for us as I think it is for people starting out. Like it is, it's difficult to make really, really good art. So that's why you want to try and put these processes in place and give yourself time.

I think that there's that part of acknowledging that give yourself process and give yourself some like some structure when you're going in there to the murky waters of like making a show so that you've got time to really play an experiment and like figure it all out. It doesn't, there's things that can happen quickly, but the overall making of a show. I don't think happens well in a rush. It's not a nice feeling to do things in a rush. I don't care what industry you work in. Sometimes you have to and you're like, oh wow, I got away with that, but if you can plan it in such a way that you're making sure you're giving yourself some time, you're also acknowledging that like, what you're doing is a, is a tremendous undertaking of spirit, energy, and brainpower.

Tahnae Luke

So knowing all of that and all that you know from all of your experiences, what would you tell your teenage self if you were devising work?

Adriane Daff

Oh gosh, it's so funny. Almost like makes me quite emotional when I think about like, you know, I do think that when you are called to make theatre, like when you're like, that's what I want to do. It's like, it is, first of all, I would say go for it. And welcome to the wonderful world of making theatre. So I think that what I would say to my, to teenagers or even to my young self is that I would be all like just if you've got this calling and you've got this idea, even if everyone sort of says, I don't know how that's going to work because I can't see it or I don't understand it, really back yourself and give it a go.

Because even if you, the original idea is not the one that ends up being the idea that comes to fruition or last 10 years later, it'll still be because you, put your neck out there and you were like, no, let's try this, I've got, I just, I can see it. It's really, really clear in my mind. And I think that that is exactly what's happened with The Last Great Hunt. There's a lot that's happened in the past year to really crystallize formally, like where we are, but it's the same spirit from when we very first got together. So back yourself, I guess, is the short version of that.

Tahnae Luke

And then looking ahead now to your future self, as you'll say, what excites you most about what the future of The Last Great Hunt looks like?

Adriane Daff

It's now our international touring networks are starting to open up again. One thing that we always had as a real strong suit for such a tiny company, there's only seven people in our company, is the amount of international touring that we were doing. And we're starting to see all of our networks through Asia and North America open up again. And as a company that makes shows that we want to show to audience, just the very prospect that we've got more audience to show those shows to is incredibly exciting. Watching those tours come in and seeing the planning that's going on for 26 and 2027 is really, really exciting.

It's really, really exciting to be able to get back to those places and the rest of Australia as well. We just love making a show and then touring it rather than having one life and then going back in the box. It's something that's really, really important. So, seeing that's coming back after a few dormant years as the world was recovering is, yeah, warms my heart and excites me greatly.

Tahnae Luke

Well, what also excites me is seeing your future shows. And I just want to say a massive thank you for your time and your sharing of this. This is an amazing talk about your process and philosophy and it's going to really help other people understand different ways to come into devising. So, thank you for today. It's been incredibly inspiring.

Adriane Daff

Thank you so much. And again, I, it's, I have loved being here. It's something I'm really, really passionate about. And as I said to you just before we started, I think the opportunity to be engaging with these ideas at a high school level is like such a gift. So honestly, thank you for having me. It's, I've had a ball. I could talk about this all day. You could probably tell.

Jane McDavitt

This podcast was brought to you by the Creative Arts Team from Secondary Curriculum, the Curriculum Directorate of the New South Wales Department of Education. Get involved in the conversation by joining our statewide staff room through the link in the show notes or email Jane McDavitt, at creativearts7-12@det.nsw.edu.au. The music for this podcast was composed by Creative Arts Advisor, Alex Manton.

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