Sydney Reviews

Left – Julia Gillard. Photo – Peter Brew-Bevans

Festival: what a feast a writers festival is! We can gorge on others experiences; we can wallow in their world of fortune/misfortune; we can cry and laugh and get angry about the injustices suffered by many (or singularly); we can discuss, at length, common problems and past histories (and all that landscape in-between) but more than all of this, we can, ourselves, walk away inspired.

Inspiration: so many wonderful minds all in one place at the one time, from the Somalian displaced person (Abdi Aden, Shining: The Story of a Lucky Man), telling his tale of survival and admitting he is a “positive person” and “lucky”, to Julia Gillard speaking candidly with eloquence to a packed crowd, reminding us again the qualities a Prime Minister should possess and how sneaky and snaky politics can ultimately be. There is a story behind everything we do: it is the creatively driven who need to commit pen to paper and get that story out of their heads and into our lives.

Commitment: some writers take their lives in their hands by ‘telling it like it is’ and be the writer a journalist (shrinking laws for getting the truth out there) or scientist (yes, there are some left in Australia, praise be) or philanthropist or economist/ecologist or any gist for that matter, the very fact that information has been collected and collated for our easy-access, so we can bear witness, and possibly OURSELVES make a difference, is overwhelming.

Overwhelmed: clever phrases; passages read from their own works; how a story can change a person and how that person can change a system; how that system can either support or neglect, empower or devastate. What’s in a word? A punch to the psyche or a wake-up call of information that tools up an individual to make a difference: we walk away from the tent a little more aware of our world and ready to receive.

Receive: writers chairing panels of other writers and all that depth plumbed to perfection, with political writers, art writers, playwrights and poets, musicians and spinners alike, all sharing their experiences or mystical stories – how they got to this point in time and where they might take it from here. Revelations and revolutions can all be subscribed to with the use of a timely sentence, paragraph or thought bubble. History (or Herstory) painstakingly addressed and timelessly recorded, keeping it real for future generations to read. Creating ideas through collaboration and discussion.

Creating Theatre Without a Playwright was just such a journey. Listening to Julian Louis and the cast of Dreamer, NORPA’s new ‘work in development’ the audience were drawn into a script reading session. Wonderful to hear Julian Louis evolving the “delicious magic bits of theatre” building story and character through improvisation and knowing when the script is “fully baked.”

Writers Festivals are not just for lovers of books, or aspiring authors, or people who just want to witness, first hand, some famous people all milling around the same area. Moreover it is a feast for our senses; an opportunity to hear great minds at work and the workings of contemporary ‘great thinkers’. For three full days in beautiful Byron Bay, we can share views and ideas; experiences and traumas; anxiety and the feeling of estrangement, only to be revealed that half the audience feels the same way.  It is, by and large, a feeling of belonging, of being part of the greater literary family and knowing that, as long as there are books to read and writers to write them, we are not alone. 


Byron Bay Writers Festival

Venues: Byron Bay NSW (Various)
Dates: 7 – 9 August 2015
Visit: nrwc.org.au