Three weeks down, three to go

On the one hand I can’t believe I’ve only been here three weeks; on the other, I’ve done so many things in so little time it feels like months.  Friday I met with the Criminal Justice Task Force, the Victims Task Force, the ministry of education and children and the magistrates’ court.  I’m learning tons and still have other partners needing to brief me.  After I gather all this information I then come home and think.  I’m juggling a legal system that is both foreign and familiar and a new political system as well.  It is hard but fun.  My cultural foray into Adeliade’s theater scene was one of the grander disappointments since I’ve been here.  A  company named Malthouse Melourne put on a play called “Knives in Hens” by David Harrower.  I didn’t know a thing about it but was invited by Kerryl Murray who works in the Thinker office and I accepted her kind invitation.  When I read the program and discovered Harrower’s inspiration came from “a Scottish history 1650-1829” I knew we were in trouble.  The program also stated he did not remember writing the play (?!?) Not Guilty by Reason of Insanity or Mental Defect? 

Kerryl Murray, Project Coordinator

I then discovered why there was no intermission.  Everyone would have left on the break.  One character, Woman (as in, “Woman, bring me some food.”  “Woman, stay out of the barn.”) spent much of the play in a dressing gown ensemble and galoshes (read “Wellies” for my Australian friends) sloshing around in water.  Her husband Pony William so named because it suggested bestiality (no, really, I’m not making this up) and the the Miller spent a lot of time yelling and banging about.  Miller and Woman did manage to have a sex scene.  Sigh.  If that weren’t enough, the chairs were major bottom biters and by the end of the hour and a half my lower extremities were sound asleep … as I wished the rest of me were.