05.03.26
Dear Grif-friend,
It’s been a while since I’ve been in your inbox. It is my birthday this week and I’m feeling sensitive (textbook Pisces ♓️🐟). I’m steamrolling through my late twenties and embracing my ever-approaching thirties. Which, from what I’ve heard, many people find marvellous and far more grounding than their twenties.
Most birthdays, I think about a particular artwork—Emma White‘s Negative reinforcement 3 (2007). The work recreates small, coloured clay birthday candles spelling out “Time’s a wasting”. A droll declaration made with such a painstaking process… It makes me think about the anxieties around productivity and value with the familiar cycle of birthday existentialism. Am I doing enough with the time I’ve got? Is life happening to me, or am I deciding where to go?
Even (especially?) at work I cannot escape the passage of time… We are currently staging a fiftieth-anniversary play, The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin by steve j. spears. First debuting in 1976 at Belvoir’s Downstairs Theatre, starring Gold Logie winner Gordon Chater, the play won three Obies and had an Off-Broadway production in 1979. There were even talks of it becoming a film, but it looks like the project never went ahead.
Now, fifty years later, we’re presenting it again on the very same stage with the brilliant Simon Burke. Quoting Simon’s chat with our Artistic Director Declan Greene, “It’s like everything I’ve ever done in my life and my career up to this point has prepared me for just the ability to start climbing this mountain.” If the serendipitous nature of the story doesn’t sell you on the show, maybe this trailer littered with five-star reviews will 👀 It is a HUGE show, tickets are selling fast, trust me, you do not want to miss this!
I’m continuing my reflective train of thought by noting that, when The Elocution of Benjamin Franklin first debuted, queer resistance in Australia was building to a climax. To acknowledge how far we have come since then, Community Engagement Specialist Bayley Turner has organised an event on 7 March, We’re Here: In Conversation, with panellists Ken Davis, Trevor Pritchard, Steve Warren and Noelene Williams. It is a free community event, but be sure to register so you don’t miss out on listening to these remarkable legacy-makers. If you can’t make it in person, we will be livestreaming it too.
We had a changing of guard this week! On Monday, we announced the new 2026 Griffin Studio cohort. Congratulations to Erica Brennan, Michael Louis Kennedy and Grace Malouf. Over the next 12 months, these playwrights will develop brand new works in residence with us! I cannot wait to see what these three talented playwrights get up to.
All this introspective spiral, how am I going to stick this landing? With… pop culture IT girl Zara Larsson’s Midnight Sun performed live in the mountains of Björkliden, Northern Sweden at 12.32 am! (A literal midnight sunset because the Earth is a sphere—how magical ☀️) A great reminder that time is something us humans made up! If Swedish summers can stretch a day until it almost refuses to end and winters can fold light into a few short hours, then maybe my own sense of time, of ageing, of productivity, of “what I should be doing” can be a little more flexible too.
Until next time!
Christie
Christie Yip
Marketing & Content Producer
