The Varnished Untruth (14 page)

I wandered among the tribes people, searching for the ‘mud men’, a fascinating group of people who cover themselves with ash and grey mud. When I found them, they were waiting patiently for their turn to dance. In contrast to their grey bodies, hair and faces, their mouths were bright red from chewing the ubiquitous beetle nut that invokes an amphetamine-style ‘high’ and destroys one’s teeth. One group of mud men were carrying a closed canvas stretcher in which a child was cowering. Hmmm. There is a strong history of cannibalism in these parts and only a week ago the local newspaper carried a story about a man who ate a baby. ‘Why would a man eat a baby?’ I had asked a local chief. The answer was chilling: ‘The baby was fat and the man was hungry.’ Ask a silly question . . .

You travelled alone for some time after you left Australia, didn’t you? Was that intrepid-style travel, too?

If I could have, I would have travelled by balloon. It was 1975 when I set off to explore the world alone, and I’d seen the movie based on the Jules Verne novel
Around the World in 80 Days
; that really whetted my appetite for a bit of similar, cross-continental madness. Instead of a balloon, I flew by commercial airline from Sydney to Manila in the Philippines. Actually, although I had thought the place would be interesting, I was immediately disappointed to discover it was a shambolic, traffic-laden and fairly westernized place. I didn’t stay long. But my next stop, Japan, was a different story. I was fascinated by Tokyo, and was especially tickled by the startling juxtaposition between ancient and modern Japanese culture – punk teenagers in kimonos made from black plastic bin liners were smoking weed within spitting distance of robed monks performing a morning chanting ceremony at a central Shinto shrine. I saw businessmen, in grey western suits and briefcases, installing prayer cards (presumably hoping to land that big client account) in the designated cubby holes outside an ancient Buddhist temple.

How exactly does being in the presence of people whose culture is vastly different from your own speak to you?

I’m really not sure. Perhaps because I was deprived of that growing up in such a homogenous, WASP society, or perhaps because I have this other, foreign culture inside me – my Maori roots – that I have never explored and is so mysterious to me . . . But experiencing and getting to know people from other cultures is something that I have loved since that first sea voyage when I was eleven. And despite my ambivalence about my parents, I do have to thank them for instilling in me a curiosity and enjoyment for the wider world, and an appreciation of the diversity of its inhabitants.

But as a young actress, I was also very keen to see the way different peoples of the world performed. I was determined to see theatre wherever I travelled. For example, when I was in Tokyo I found my way to a kabuki performance. The production was slow and indecipherable, but I sat transfixed. The show takes many hours, with a long break in the middle for a meal, although I had not known that when I bought my ticket. The ticket-box vendor kept showing me plates of weird plastic food and wouldn’t stop until I picked one. When the lights came up for the interval I followed everyone else to an enormous canteen full of tables bearing Japanese numbers, and I stood there confused – until I saw a man waving and pointing to the only table in the place with a lonely little flag bearing an English number ‘1’, beneath which sat a bento box containing the edible version of my plastic food choice. That just tickled me.

I was entranced by the extreme theatricality of that kabuki performance, the histrionic characterizations, the highly elaborate costumes and make-up, and the magical way the actors changed on stage before our very eyes. The scenery was also elaborate, and actors made surprise entrances from trapdoors hidden at various points on the revolving stage. I was intrigued to see how long the performers could hold their traditional poses – with open mouths, flared nostrils and eyes crossed. Craig Revel Horwood would be in his element! It was a bit like a cross between early Shakespeare performances and English pantomime. Oh, and
EastEnders
. The audience seemed perfectly familiar with the story. Even though it was apparently in an ancient form of Japanese, some of them got quite noisy and shouted back at the actors from time to time. Highbrow Japanese hecklers – what a concept! Not knowing that most western people dip into a kabuki show for half an hour then make a run for the nearest sake bar, I returned for the afternoon portion of the show, and actually stuck it out until the bitter end. Apparently you can now get earphones with an English translation which, I must say, would have been nice.

But sitting there in the kabuki theatre, watching that highly melodramatic, all-male performance, I was trying to imagine what it must have been like 400 years ago when it was an all-female extravaganza. Apparently those women were sex workers and their sensual performances were so popular they caused riots – which led to their being banned by the Shogun’s officials. So men took over the performing, and I imagine kabuki theatre became a perfect home for male-to-female transgendered people; however, they too were in demand as prostitutes and the audience mayhem they inspired led to another clamping-down. I wish I’d seen it in its heyday. In a way, it seems a shame that kabuki theatre is now so formal and respectable. But some of the actors who play female roles (
onnagata
), are extremely famous in Japan – even revered as ‘National Living Treasures’. Honoured transvestites? Well, I suppose the British value their pantomime dames. I thought of Les Girls and wished Australian society appreciated them more, rather than considering them simply to be tacky figures of fun. Strange that, years later, I would conduct a psychological study of transgenderism as it is expressed by people in various cultures throughout the world.

I was inspired to seek theatre in every place I visited during my trip. In fact, that was my main focus. I was a terribly serious young performer. Everything had to be a ‘valuable experience’. Other young Australians who hit the hippy trail would be partying and getting laid – but ‘having a good time’ was way off my radar. I’ve just realized that’s why I love a party now; I completely missed all that fun when I was young.

You are beginning to allow yourself to play . . . ?

Yes, it’s only taken forty years. And I never feel quite right about it – there’s still someone inside me wagging her finger . . .

And who exactly is that person?

Ah. Yes. Mum gets everywhere, doesn’t she? Even Bangkok back then – the ultimate party town – did not summon a desire in me to cut loose and enjoy myself. Well, then again, I suppose it was always a male-focused place. But the smog-filled, overcrowded city certainly offered an eclectic range of performing events, from the highbrow, traditional Thai temple dancing, with its intricate finger gestures and eye movements, to the shocking, sleazy sex shows I witnessed in compounds on the city’s outskirts. I tried to view the latter without judgment, but I felt very conflicted about it. These were family businesses and the people performing live sex acts were related to each other. And these places had evolved largely due to the demand of westerners who would pay top dollar to attend. It seemed abusive to even watch. On the other hand, I reasoned, Thai society has a more relaxed attitude towards sexuality than many other cultures. I learned, for example, that Thai men could openly take their mistresses to official events – and, by law, they had to provide for them. But was this a good thing? Did it help the position of women generally in that society or not? What about the growing prevalence of sexually transmitted diseases? Even back then, I was intrigued by sexual mores. And in Bangkok, there was certainly a lot to think about.

It doesn’t really surprise me that you were fascinated by it, that you wanted to study sexuality and eventually made it one of your professional fields. After all, the most significant moment of trauma in your life – being kicked out of home – occurred as a direct result of sexual behaviour, didn’t it? As a result of not just the behaviour itself, but the attitudes and beliefs and mores concerning what happened that were held by your parents – as products of their own upbringing and society . . . I suspect that even then you were bright enough to be able to see that it wasn’t just you; you were a product of your environment, and the prevailing zeitgeist strongly influenced those events . . . ?

I guess . . . to some extent. And I suppose that’s actually why I always wanted to search for answers concerning all kinds of human behaviour, not just sexuality. And that’s one of the things that spurred me to travel. And to experience different kinds of relationships with different kinds of people. For example, after Bankok I flew to India where, in Delhi, I was sidetracked from my theatre studies by a brief and heady romance with a young American peace worker called Jerry.

Well, that was just bound to happen, wasn’t it?

Yep! With curly, long, blond hair and a beard, an electric blue, crushed velvet suit, strings of coloured beads around his neck and a guitar slung over his shoulder, he was a vision of seventies splendour, and I was unable to resist. I remember he had an amazingly confident, maverick approach, and I saw far more of his well-toned body than I did of the fascinating Indian capital. I felt guilty about Gareth, but reasoned that if something like this could happen so quickly and easily, I had been kidding myself to think I was still in love with him. Besides, he had already been married twice, and had two children. He wanted to settle down with me, but I just wasn’t ready. Perhaps this whole trip was really about finding a way to leave him.

Anyway, I managed to wrench myself away from Jerry’s arms to catch my planned flight to Moscow, but I was so sexed-up and discombobulated, I boarded the late-night Aeroflot flight wearing a sleeveless summer dress – forgetting that the temperature in Russia would be minus thirty-two degrees. Twenty minutes before we landed, the flight attendant tapped me on the shoulder. ‘You have a coat?’ she asked. ‘Afraid not,’ I replied. In fact, I did have one, a black rabbit fur I was extremely proud of, but it was locked in my checked-in suitcase. I don’t remember how I managed to survive the intense cold of that winter arrival. The aircraft steps and tarmac were pure ice and I was wearing flip flops. The handle of my suitcase had frozen off, so I had to carry it under my arm as best I could. It was brutal.

In those days it was very unusual for a single woman to travel alone anywhere behind the Iron Curtain, and I can’t imagine that anywhere could have been more uncomfortable than in Moscow. I was OK inside the hotel, though. I was staying at the art nouveau Hotel Metropol, which seemed like a set from
Dr Zhivago
. Sitting alone at supper in the dining room, men in military uniforms would send oranges to my table initially (highly prized in the Russian winter time), then turn up at my side, click their heels, bow, and then whirl me awkwardly around the dance floor. At first I was oblivious to the fact that I was being observed – rather, spied on – by the KGB. I was terribly naïve about the political climate at the time and I made some stupid mistakes, such as thinking it was OK to speak to ordinary citizens (at least I thought they were ordinary – who knows?). I found it very hard to get around the city with no signposts or maps and the lack of help from Intourist (I imagine that was a KGB-run ‘tourist bureau’). It was impossible to know what to do when people offered me black market exchange rates for my dollars. Eventually, even I could not help noticing that there were some glaring hypocrisies; when I attended the opera and saw important members of the KGB sitting in the best seats beside their wives who wore the latest Paris fashions, I understood that I had seen the reality behind George Orwell’s
Animal Farm
. Under the Russian Communist regime, all were equal, but some were more equal than others.

I tried to see good theatre and naïvely thought Chekhov would be playing somewhere. But instead of sending me to
Cherry Orchard
, as I had requested, Intourist sold me tickets to a dreadfully cheesy Russian variety show. However, the KGB was not responsible for my worst moment of confusion. At one point I was searching for a taxi outside the hotel. Night had fallen and it was absolutely freezing. I was desperate for transport. Eventually, I spied a dark car with a sign above it, waiting on the corner. I ran thankfully towards it and hopped in, handing the driver a paper on which was written my desired address. But his reaction was a long way from what I expected. Instead of nodding accommodatingly, he stared at me furiously, with flared nostrils. ‘Nyet taxi!’ he snorted. It was a military police car.

I took the Orient Express from Moscow to Budapest. I have since visited the twin cities of Buda and Pest and found them attractive and charming, but for some reason that was not how I found things the first time. For a start, I was getting a little low on funds and had to board in a decrepit building where a bomb had fallen during World War II. I swiftly moved on to Warsaw, where things were very different. I was enormously impressed by Poland and its citizens. In particular, I found the painters, cartoonists, film directors and actors were highly original and tremendously exciting. I met people I really liked and admired, and didn’t want to leave. I was lucky enough to meet Alex Brooking, an Australian diplomat stationed in Warsaw, who, I suppose, was detailed to keep an eye on me (I was amazed to discover Alex had grown up in Boronia Park). Knowledgeable and passionate about Polish film and art, Alex was extremely kind and informative. I gradually discovered the underground political theatre and found it absolutely thrilling.

In those days, a strong anti-Russian sensibility abounded in Polish society, and this was reflected in the satire. There was an underground political cabaret company called the Pod Egida (‘Winking Eye’) to which I managed to find my way. In order to avoid discovery, Pod Egida performances took place at the last minute, in a forest on a Sunday afternoon or in someone’s house. I saw one of those clandestine performances in the basement of a small café. The backdrop was a satirical rendering of Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’, except that the faces of Jesus and His disciples were replaced with members of the Politburo, the Polish United Workers’ (Communist) Party that many in the audience had decided was too bureaucratic and essentially Russian in style. Someone I met there translated for me, and I my heart began to beat faster and faster at the thrill of seeing such a dark and biting comedy that truly meant something important to this audience. At one point a man leapt to his feet and shouted ‘
Solidarność
!’ Others followed suit, until the place was chaotic. The feeling in the audience was absolutely electric. I think it was at that moment I truly understood the thrilling, life-changing power a performance could wield under certain circumstances. I did not know it then, but it was the beginning of the anti-bureaucratic social movement ‘Solidarity’. Five years later, Lech Wałesa would form the first non-Communist-party-controlled trade union in a Warsaw Pact country, and eventually become President of Poland. But the power of that performance profoundly affected me. I had never before seen theatre that could stir people like that. It was the true beginning of my passion for satire.