On the killing of self
The Age
Saturday September 26, 2009
A young playwright who took on Australia's worst massacre as a subject turns his eye to the difficult territory of suicide and euthanasia, writes Andrew Stephens. NOBODY gets to say goodbye. The news comes €” a phone call, a doorbell, a ghastly pale face €” and it is devastating. Along with it, impossibly, there is worse news: neither an accident nor a sudden medical crisis has taken this loved one's life. They did it themselves, the killing of self.It can't be undone €” not by the dead, not by the living.Tom Holloway is in Norway, about to return to Australia to see in the final rehearsals of two plays. One, which he has co-written, deals largely with male suicide. The other, written on his own, dances around euthanasia. Scandinavian countries have a reputation for high suicide rates, especially among males €” Finland nears the top of the global list €” but Norway's rate, not nearly as high as its neighbour, is closer to Australia's where in 2006 17 men per 100,000 took their lives (compared with 4.8 women per 100,000).Tasmanian-born Holloway, who's wife is Norwegian, divides his time between Melbourne and Oslo. He is enjoying success as a playwright, especially since his recent plays Red Sky Morning and Beyond the Neck met such wide acclaim. He is young (30) and imagining his life ahead. And yet here he is writing about death €” and not just death, but two of its most disturbing forms.Holloway has a penchant for difficult territory. Beyond the Neck explored the aftermath of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre and was based on interviews Holloway did with people affected by that tragedy. It won an AWGIE award for best new work last year. Red Sky Morning looked at depression, loneliness and alcoholism in rural settings.It might seem like a heavy diet for a young, thoughtful playwright who loves humour, but Holloway also seems to have a talent for exploring his themes in surprising, lyrical ways. For The Suicide Show, for example, he is working with the cabaret genre.This emerged when he and friend, co-writer and director Martin White (who have formed the new theatre production group A Bit of Argy Bargy) were having a drink last year and discussing a recent conference on men's mental health, reflecting on the idea that the issue needed to be discussed in contexts other than doctor's surgeries. They decided to tackle it. Cabaret, bizarrely, seemed to fit."Cabaret gave us that structure and freedom to push it," Holloway says. "Whenever dealing with this sort of subject matter, humour is an important part of it because it is a natural part of how people respond to things they find too difficult."He had been amazed while doing the interviews about Port Arthur to discover how often people had funny stories to tell about the hours and days after the massacre had happened. This seems preposterous but it was, he soon realised, a crucial part of the grieving process, of coming to terms with the random, tragic and senseless events that can turn life around abruptly €” or end it altogether.Holloway sees the use of humour by survivors as a coping mechanism to protect them from what was really happening. "A subconscious way of distracting themselves," he says. "The times when it was about looking back on something and seeing the humour in a moment seemed to be more about reaching a stage of recovery where you can start to come to terms with what you've been through. I think the word 'closure' is a terrible word and many of the survivors I talked to talked of the word with a real poison, because there's no such thing really. But there can be a moment where you learn to accept what you have been through."His Port Arthur interviewees spoke, too, about sudden loss, that there was no chance for them to say any of the things they wanted to say to the murdered loved one: a spouse, a child, a friend. "It's just that last moment that should be a normal moment of sitting in a cafe €” but it is the end. When it is a suicide, it is that as well as not being able to say why. You are left with thoughts that you may not have done enough to help them."What if those who took their own lives had lived? In a 2003 New Yorker report on Golden Gate Bridge "jumpers", journalist Tad Friend interviewed survivors €” men who had jumped but miraculously lived, almost always to tell how they had immediately, desperately regretted their decision while in midair. "I still see my hands coming off the railing," one of them told Friend. "I instantly realised that everything in my life that I'd thought was unfixable was totally fixable €” except for having just jumped."What Holloway sees underneath Australia's male suicide statistics €” which are particularly alarming among the 35-49 age group €” is a crisis of masculinity, the tension men experience in feeling they have to compartmentalise their public and private selves. With physical theatre, dance, live music, video and stand-up, The Suicide Show explores this crisis. Created by Holloway, White, Mark Jones and Stephen Taberner, development of the show involved the four men sitting around and talking, inevitably, about their personal experiences. They also did much research, with an Arts Victoria grant, interviewing families, professionals and men's groups to find out more.What was apparent to Holloway was the enormous gulf between the way men want to be perceived, and the way they feel they might actually be seen. A long history of patriarchy in the West, followed by the much-needed shift towards gender equality, has meant that masculinity is still finding its new place and identity, he says. "We are now, perhaps, entering a period where masculinity might be comfortable with itself . . . This show is about looking at where masculinity can go and where it needs to be."According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics' most recent social trends report, while suicide was high as a cause of death for young men, intentional self-harm €” cutting, poisoning and attempted suicide €” was twice as likely among young women than young men. But Holloway suspects young men "self-harm" in other ways."The way that Australian men self-harm is that they go and get very drunk, get in fights and drive too fast," he says. "That is the way it was described to us €” the masculine version of cutting your flesh. Putting yourself in that position of aggressive danger. I had never really thought of that. It is always said the figures, already alarming, of suicide rates among men are actually much higher because you get a lot of car accidents that are really suicides."Euthanasia, by contrast, can involve a protracted letting go.In his play And No More Shall We Part, Holloway has explored terminal illness and the decision to euthanase. It is not, he says, a political tract but the story of two older people who have spent most of their lives together and are struggling to get to the point of being able to say goodbye.While, with suicide, there is no chance for relatives and friends to say goodbye or prepare, there is much opportunity with euthanasia. "Which is wonderful, but it can actually be very difficult because we spend our lives not saying these things. And then you are faced with knowing that's what you've got to do €” it can be very hard to find the words, or a way to talk about it. Time is running out."The other side of that, perhaps, is that you can get the words out and talk to each other. That is quite beautiful."The Suicide Show and And No More Shall We Part are on September 30-October 10 at BlackBox, the Arts Centre. melbourne fringe.com.auFor help or information, visit beyondblue.org.au, or call Suicide Helpline Victoria on 1300 651 251 or Lifeline on 131 114.
© 2009 The Age
