Are You Old Yet? 

Transitioning into Elderhood with Margi Brown Ash (Part 1)

Flloyd

Thunder's Mouth Theatre presents... something very different for you. Today I have embarked on a series of interviews which I'm calling—wait for it—Are You Old Yet? Because the idea is that I'm interviewing people of my generation. I mentioned this to someone who said, "oh, is it all only going to be creative people?" And I thought, I only know creative people. So yes. Now, the first cab off the rank here is Margi Brown Ash. Margi is as well as being the patron of Thunder's Mouth Theatre, and a jolly good friend for good 20-25 years or so.

Margi is, Margi is a theatre maker, she's a performer, she's a collaborative mentor and arts supervisor, and she's a writer and she lives in Brisbane and Sydney, shares her time—she's got family and work in both places. And we got talking. Margi insisted that rather than an interview, we made this a conversation. So I talk way too much. We chatted about—well, you'll find out what we chatted about. I hope you enjoy it.

Oh, gosh, Margi, it really is so great, so great to have you just sitting there and we're chatting and I haven't seen you for at least seven and a half years because that's how long I've been back in the UK.

Margi

Oh, wow. Yeah, that's a long time. That's gone fast.

Flloyd

It has.

Margi

And Flloyd, you're happy with that decision? Because I always think of you and I think, oh, Flloyd, if you're in Queensland with us, you wouldn't be cold.

Flloyd

But you know what, Margi, if I was in Queensland with you, I'd be hot. Yes. And not in a good way.

Margi

There are fires going across Queensland at the moment again.

Flloyd

Oh, gawd.

Margi

The heat is extraordinary up there at the moment.

Flloyd

Yeah, no, I am very happy with the way this has turned out, because when I came back to Australia, when I was in my fifties, the first summer, I just thought I was going to die. I just could not handle it. I could not function in that heat. And it's way hotter now than it was like back in the 1990s.

Margi

You managed to function, Flloyd, you got a PhD.

Flloyd

I know, my son bought me an air conditioner.

Margi

Yes, I get it.

Flloyd

Yeah. So, yeah, I did function, but to not be able to even go for a walk and here I can walk at any time of the day and it's never going to be so hot that I'll get burnt where my skin, just as a child.

Margi

Yeah.

Flloyd

Where did you grow up, Margaret?

Margi

New South Wales. I grew up in country New South Wales, and then when I was at university age I went to Sydney and then from there I sort of launched myself around the world, but yeah, primarily country, New South Wales. So I'm a country girl. Yeah.

Flloyd

Well, I was born in Yass.

Margi

Were you? So you're a country girl too. And then when did you go to North Queensland?

Flloyd

We moved to North Queensland when I was about—well, we went to Thursday Island first, when I was four, and then five, we were in Cairns and I started school in Townsville before my 6th birthday. And then we were in PNG, where it was even hotter.

Margi

So what did your dad and mum do?

Flloyd

Well, my dad was first and foremost, he was a sailor. He adored being on boats. He'd run away to sea when he was 14, I think, and his parents went and got him back. But then when he was 16, he just joined the Merchant Navy and he just adored being at sea. So he was a sea captain. He was also a scally wag who would just, like, take off, have a brilliant idea, forget to send money back. So my mother became a dressmaker seamstress. She always sewed, and a lot of it she did at home, making curtains and that sort of stuff.

But she used to make all our clothes. Yeah. So that's how she sort of supported us.

Margi

And how, did do you sew?

Flloyd

I do well. I don't do very often, but I have a sewing machine on and off. I'll have a sewing machine. I'll move I'll sell the sewing machine and move to a new place and then I'll buy another one. That's how it goes, probably.

Margi

Good.

Flloyd

Well, it's handy. Yeah.

Margi

They probably need replacing every few years.

Flloyd

Well, I get a cheaper one every time. They brought the price down.

Margi

Hugely interesting, isn't it? And I always think of flights like that. But back in the day in 78, I headed for London and to get a ticket to, I went through the US and to get a ticket to New York with only about $1700. That was a flexible ticket. And I think that the price isn't any different now. It could be not post, but now we're in Pandemic, it could be different. But they didn't go up very similar.

Flloyd

No, they kept—new airlines would come in and undercut, and they managed to keep it that way. My first trip overseas was by sea. I got one of the last sea voyages when it was cheaper to travel by sea than by air. So, yeah, I took off June July 66 with a friend that I'd met at Brisbane Arts Theatre.

Margi

Was that on the way to London?

Flloyd

Yes, our big plan our plan was... it was a Greek ship and it stopped in Athens. Well, Piraeus, the port for Athens. And then we overlanded to London, stopping off to do some au pairing on the way.

Margi

Do you have very fond memories of that trip?

Flloyd

I do. Very fond, yeah. It was exciting. It was scary in the best possible way Being a good Australian socialis—I don't know where I got it from, but I was. When I discovered what socialism was after I'd arrived in London and I fell in with a group of Marxists, rabid Marxist Leninists, and and I said, well, what is it? What is it? And they said, well, it's about everybody sort of clubbing together to look after people, making sure that's community and I said, well, isn't that just being a decent human being? That's my politics for you.

Margi

I like those politics because I agree with you. I think that's why I like leaning to the left, because it is a way of acknowledging that we are all one. But that has gone by the by for a little while.

Flloyd

Well, if you look at the history of the Labor Party in Australia especially, but here as well, those ideals weren't actually what—they were quite—they were just about looking after their own. I found myself teaching modern Australian history at ACU in Brisbane for a year, so I had to rapidly learn some. Fascinating, and I learned just how deeply, deeply racist the Australian Labor Party had been from its inception.

Margi

Hopefully our Albo (Anthony Albinese, current Prime Minister of Australia) isn't like that. I've got a lot of time for his politics. Not everything I agree with, to be honest, but I think we're on track to change here. But you know what I'm interested in, because I think in my life, it's happened too, that the biggest trip, the first trip, like, my first trip away was in 70, and I was an exchange student in Houston, Texas, for a year. And I think that that trip had a profound impact on my life. And I'm just wondering whether that trip that you did in 66 had a profound influence.

That first trip that we do away as adults, we not got parents looking after us, but as adults,

Flloyd

yeah, I think it did, because it gave me well, it was that. I mean, I was 21, 22, very naive, emotionally very immature, and so it was just Kathy and me with my idealistic "no class" system. We booked on a ship that was one class. However, it had about six decks, and if you paid more, you were on the top deck looking out. And so we went for the second bottom deck, and the first thing we did was sort of ask around. Was there anybody—what groups could you join? And we fell in with a bunch of young people who were all theatre people.

There were musicians, there were actors. There were about a dozen of us. And we sort of formed ourselves—when I think back, you could say we formed ourselves into a concert party. So the ship, they had certain events, like crossing the equator, some festival things that— there was a fancy dress costume, and they just called for volunteers from the passengers to entertain. There weren't entertainment troops on board. You did your own and sort of coming out of the sort of pro am Brisbane Rep and Brisbane Arts, which is what I'd been involved in for, like, the three years that I'd been in Brisbane.

Suddenly I found myself in a situation of initiating stuff rather than doing what I was told. And so you have an idea. Somebody says, what are we going to do? And I say, well, there's this Goon song that's just silly. And they said, how does it go? They said, what was it? [SINGING] "If you're feeling pimply and your knees are turning blue, don't be nervous, simply go ee-ah-oo-oo-oo". So I pulled all my memory of ballet lessons when I was eight years old and tap to choreograph a little sort of thing to go with it. So I found myself doing that and working with these people.

They were mostly from Melbourne, some much more experienced performers as well. And it was a really fun—once I got over the seasickness—experience and then finding myself in Greece. And I can remember an occasion we'd gone to, I think it's a beach just outside of Athens, and just looking around and thinking, this is a country that has had to fight for itself here. And that feels different from Australia, obviously, white girl perspective and in ignorance of a lot of what had gone on as well at that stage. I learned so much more about what Australian settlement effect had in Australia, in this country, from watching documentaries than I ever learned before I left.

So much more, but yes, and that whole experience of just being in other cultures and with no sense of judgment, just, oh, is that how you do that? Oh, that's interesting. Just complete washing. Washed awash in it, immersed in it. Yeah, it was pretty amazing.

Margi

They talk about it's a baptism of fire, like we all went over. And I think it's quite different now because our kids, even with parents, travel so much more than our generation and just seeing the different generations. Something I'm really interested in is how do we deal—I guess my thesis at the moment is how do we deal with aging, making sure that our generation has motivational and interesting and challenging ways of being in the world rather than playing bingo and going to the RSL and playing bridge. I just see a vast difference between our generation and our parents generation.

Not that my mother ever played bridge, but my mother in law did. It was very big in her life, that sort of friendship. But I just think it is so important and I don't think we're there yet. I don't think that we've worked out how to deal with ourselves as older people. And I guess that's a mission that I have that I really want to interrogate around the world, how people are doing that and how organizations are doing that. Because I think gone is the time where you can just go up to an old person and say, "hello, darling, how are you? Do you want a cup of tea?" I think we've gone beyond that. "Can you help me with this political issue, please?" It should be something like that because supposedly the new research shows that our brains get stronger. We may forget superficial things, but we actually have far more capacity as we age because we also have patience woven in there and the ability to reflect. Now, I'm not talking about everyone. Some people don't have the ability to reflect, and that how the Internet could actually be at the same time as building us up, tearing us down. The idea that we can't concentrate and there's a book that I've just bought called 'The Stolen Focus'.

Probably, you would probably be interested in this 'Stolen Focus', and it talks about how the social media and things like that, the bytes we can't concentrate longer than a byte of information anymore. And that means that we can't focus on the issues that are truly destroying us, like climate change. We can't focus on that long enough. So it's like, oh, climate change... we've gone. We've allowed it in for a minute, and then we're on to the next post. This is incredibly concerning, and how do we, as elders and I think our job is to do this, how do we help that next generation coming through? Avoid the pitfalls, and then maybe help the next generation. I think that we've got to start small. Maybe we've just got to help ourselves.

Flloyd

Yes, absolutely. Yeah. Lovely that you dived into that. And I'm hearing where you're coming from, because I don't know if I told you, but when I had the idea, thinking, oh, I could interview people of my age, nobody else is doing that. I can do that. And as against the podcast, which is called "Am I Old yet?" Because this was the question that I had originally, I would call it "Are You Old Yet?" At some stage of the interview, I will hit my interviewee with this question, and because you dived in there, I'm already going, okay, Margi's where I was ten years ago.

This is so interesting because, again, my brilliant idea when I first had it was I'll interview people over 70. You're not over 70.

Margi

I am.

Flloyd

Are you?

Margi

I'm 70, yeah.

Flloyd

Oh, you hit it, all right. Old. In that case... [PAUSE IN THE INTERVIEW]

"How do you oh, Flloyd, you look marvellous for your age". And I hate it! What? I either look marvellous or I don't. You know, it's got nothing to do with age.

Margi

I agree with you totally. I just—they're the sort of things we're going to get rid of.

Flloyd

So I have been thinking about this stuff for years now. I've been examining myself. So this whole idea of "what is my problem?" I can remember my mother in her 90s, being very cross with my older sister, who would then have been in her 60s, calling herself an old woman. My mother was outraged at this. But my sister is one of these people who has kind of always been an old woman. It's interesting, her attitudes. She's one of the ones that she doesn't play bridge or anything, but she's settled, she settles the stuff and I never did. We're just two different, totally different people. So the idea that when you're young, you're young, and then we had this youth culture that started really pushing itself out in the where young people were allowed to say well, speaking is a young person, and me in my forties and fifties going, "what's that got to do with it?" So then there comes a point where you have to go, "well, I suppose I'm middle aged, I'd rather be young, but I'm middle aged". But then there comes a point where you're not middle aged anymore, but you're not allowed to call yourself old.

So I sort of set off on a mission to reclaim the word old and that's how the podcast came about. But the more I had Helen in the podcast examining this question and debating it with her friends and her daughters, the more I realized there is so much—it's the baggage attached to that word "old", which we as a culture, and it's not just Western culture either, it happens in just about every culture. There comes a point where you're past it in the eyes of younger people and you don't want to be thought of as past it. So you can't say you're old, because if you're old, you're past it.

Old means decrepit, useless, worn out, death door, all of these negative things. So we don't have a word that's just states this is the generation I'm in. It's this generation.

Margi

What about elderhood?

Flloyd

Elderhood's great, but it's for special occasions. It's just not—I love that you just use it naturally, it just flows out of you. But society isn't there yet.

Margi

And if you look at the word "old", when we say," oh, that's old", like we're looking at a chair, "oh, that's so old, there's no way I can let's just toss it". I think that we use it in so many ways that that infects when we're talking about people, if we can, some words aren't appropriate to apply to people and why I just like to replace it. Old can be old for other things, but I think that it's so deeply entrenched old. We discard because we society in the west that eldership I embrace. I love being an elder.

I don't think I've ever wanted to be younger than I am ever. Because there's so much richness as we age and as we understand and not talk, because we know that things change and so you hear young people talking. Now, I could interrupt that and sort of add a little bit of wisdom, but perhaps it's not even necessary because they will reach their own wisdom at the perfect time for them. So I think that as I have aged, the need to fix things has certainly reduced enormously. And that could have something to do with my therapeutic training because that's what we're training to do.

Well, of course it has something to do with that, but it also has in my private life, I think. "Is it worth it?" You weigh up before you... So it's the reflective thinking skills that we develop as we grow older and the fact that it doesn't stop. You used the word "settling" earlier, and I thought that was a marvelous word because that's what I think in our world, we cannot afford to do. Can I add the word next to "settling"? "Comfort". We want to be comfortable. And I think the more we [MARGI DEMONSTRATES HER NICE CUSHIONS] says on all these pillows! we have to be comfortable—

But we don't have to have pillows from the most exclusive shop in town. "Comfort" is scary for me. As soon as I start to feel comfortable, I go," oh, Margi, turn on your reflective skills again". I think it's the downfall. And I'm not talking about basic needs. We need you in England. I do worry about you, Flloyd, being cold, because I hate being cold. You hate being hot, so you worry about that. I think that there are things that it is good to have some sort of comfort in and a safe house, I think is very important.

My PhD was "Home and Belonging". I mean, I investigated that thoroughly. But yet settling and comfort—danger.

Flloyd

As someone who has always moved from my childhood, we were moving every three years, if not more often. Right through my childhood. I went on into adulthood feeling three years are up, I better move. Whereas my sister, who had exactly the same upbringing, she didn't. She just wanted to be there with the nice house and the hubby and the kids and do her thing there and not move. So it's not just the upbringing. Obviously there's something in the genes. A lot of my father, I think his rat bag," I'm off. I've had a brilliant idea, I'm off" sort of thing.

Margi

Yeah, but Flloyd, have you been reading Bruce Lipton's work on epigenetics? Now, I think you might be interested in this. He's written this book called The Biology of Belief and he believes deeply, and he's a well renowned scientist, that the genes have about 1%. It is environment because the genes change with environment. The environment impacts the genes and can turn them on. And to me that is such a beautiful freedom because I'm working on a play at the moment with Zach Callahan, used to be Stace. Callahan. You know, we've got a grant from Pride, Australia and some other organization to write this play about transitioning.

And they have a mother, and I'm going to be playing the mother, but I may not I might get someone else to play it. I don't know if I'd want to perform anymore. They have a mother who has dementia. So what comes up with the children of people who have had parents with dementia? "Oh, that might be me", but in fact, that's not necessarily the case. It can be the case if you don't change your behaviors because it's the environment that dictates as opposed to the small influence of genetics. Epigenetics.

Flloyd

Yeah, I should check it out. What are we talking about?

Margi

I think that we were talking about settling and comfort and old and the word "elder". And the other word that I'd love to talk a little bit about is "wisdom", because unless we develop our wisdom, growing old is not a guarantee that we are growing wise.

Flloyd

No, absolutely.

Margi

It's another thing that's scary about our world because I think it's even more now because we can escape. We can escape into our fluff hood.

Flloyd

But yes, but I come back to—I really admire your passion and your ambition in this, and I hope you succeed. I have a very cynical brain, which I

Margi

I know you do!

Flloyd

My mother modeled this cynicism for me, very much so. And it doesn't matter that when she got into her fifties and she married my lovely stepfather Monty, and she found Jesus, and a lot changed. She changed a lot of her behavior and her attitude. She changed in her 50s, but still, that cynicism was there. It's a habit. So, yeah, I look forward to seeing how it goes.

I do feel, again, just my experience that there are people like, there are people—just as there are people who do things, and there are people who let things be done, to have things done to them. They don't have whatever, the thing that says, "I'm going to be just doing this thing now, I'm going to change, and I'm going to do that". There are people who stay, as you say, they are modeled. They grow up in a stable environment. And the thing you do is you get married, marry the girl next door, you get a job just like Dad or Mum, and you have kids and you do that.

And they are the majority of people worldwide, they just want a comfortable life, and they will do the thing that they believe is going to give it to them. And then there is the minority, which is us, who want something else, who want something more than a comfortable life, who actually want to be creating something, making something out of nothing but ourselves, if you like, which is what art is. I saw— this is a total diversion, but two things. Having a conversation with Ira Seidenstein and then watching a video of a wonderful Mime, a Polish Mime artist that I'd never heard of before because they both had very fascinating stories about how they got into being the clown or the mime, the teachers that they both became.

Margi

Who was the Polish Mime? I studied Polish Mime in New York City.

Flloyd

The one that you studied with. I looked him up. I couldn't pronounce his name.

Margi

Stefan Niedziałkowski.

Flloyd

Thank you. Yes, him. Yes, I saw that you'd studied with him. I went, "who is this mine?" So I found him. So the question came into my mind to ask and never to answer, if you like. Are artists born? Can they be made or do they make themselves? Now, he clearly made himself with the help of his teachers and his mentors, Ira, exactly the same. He made himself the clown that he is with the help of all the teachers and the mentors and the wonderful artists that he's worked with as well. But this also comes out of that.

Did I say I was on this Zoom call with these voice teachers last night, or was I? No, I was telling Iain, forget who I've said things to. It was a young woman voice teacher. She's trying to form a panel for the VASTA Conference in May or June or August, whenever it is. And the first question she asked was, "how should we be teaching? Should we be teaching the way we are taught, passing on what was given to us by our teachers, their pedagogy? Or should we be arriving at our own way of teaching"? And I had to leap in and say, "Please do the second please, please, pretty please".

But it is that question about how we teach, how we train for you. And for me, it's not about, oh, I have a methodology, and if you do my methodology, it'll be wonderful. It's about who are you, what do you want to do? How can I facilitate you to do that thing that you want to do.

Margi

Using my methodology, please.

Flloyd

Well, absolutely, because my way is the only way. [LAUGHING]

Margi

I think that binaries can get in the way. It's a little bit of this and a little bit of that. I think it's really useful.

Flloyd

That's exactly what it is, it's use. And your way of doing it is going to be the way you do that methodology.

Margi

If it's a collaborative practice, which is what I'm sure, but the idea of collaborative work is what I've studied for decades—I think that then people have a choice. So even though I have a rigorous framework in which I work, people have enormous space within that framework. Whereas there are other methodologies. For example, probably back I mean, it's so long ago since I did Polish Mime, but it certainly has influenced my work enormously, back in the— also, the other physical theatre work that has influenced me greatly was Frank Theatre, John and Jacquie. But the methodologies were very strong and very "you do it this way", but I think that is fabulous as a base.

And if you have developed your critical thinking skills, you are then able to force that into something that is more suitable for the generation that you're teaching. Because every generation is different. The generation we are dealing with at the moment. My grandkids are younger than yours and they are growing up in a pandemic world. One has never knowns anything else. One has known three years of something else, but nothing since. Very different. Everything will be different for those young kids and and the importance of turning up for them and helping them through those differences.

Flloyd

Well, now I'm hitting the pause button on this conversation between myself and Margi Brown Ash here, and I'm calling this Transitioning into Elderhood Part 1. Part 2 will follow in due course. The music you heard is written and performed by composer, arranger and multi instrumentalist John T. LaBarbera. You can download his music on Bandcamp or via his website. JohnTLabarbera.com Now, my devious plan is to actually have a return to the Adventures of Helen as the Chosen One, up and running by next week. So normal service is about to be resumed. And then I'll post more of these episodes of my chat with Margi and some of my other friends and colleagues down the track in the new podcast series "Are You Old Yet?

Series of interviews. Okay, now, if you are enjoying this, I do hope you will spread the word with your friends that's the only way we grow our audience is by word of mouth. So spread the word. Thanks for listening. Stay safe.