1975..1980

the unravelling

   The descent into the abyss hasn’t finished yet...There is the Monkey Grip year with Helen...bouts of bingeing followed by withdrawals. Lots of waiting around in other people’s living rooms waiting for the “ingredients”. Scamming to procure the necessary funds, busy achieving nothing.The self-perceived “outlaws” living highly regulated lives.Tragic. Curiosity had got the better of me. Lots of waiting at Pitt Street in Carlton. Khorshed and Phil. Lots of shabby behaviour.I was everybody’s friend and nobody’s friend. I always thought I was broke even when I had $50 dollars in my pocket. Then as my options diminish and all the bridges around me are burning, I would disapear back to Tasmania, my tail between my legs, just hurting from the tips of my toes. A fortnight of insomnia and pain that could be easily be alleviated by my chemical friend. Tasmania was perfect. Its so small that it couldn’t support a drug sub-culture.

       Then in 1976 Lindzee Smith came back from the USA with a bundle of scripts from New York Sam Shepard, Patti Smith, Franz Xavier Kroetz. And the the skills that the rest of the group were desperately crying out for. I managed to get a small walk on part as the Lobster man. Phil Motherwell was playing Slim and Michelle was playing Cavale. Then 3 days before the performance Michelle spits the dummy and walks out of rehearsals. Crest fallen we stroll from the theatre space around the corner to Tamani’s to lick our wounds. Lindzee then suddenly suggests that Phil should take the part of Cavale and I should step into Phil’s role as Slim. Phil knows the cues and I have  to learn my lines in 48 hours. We rehearse for the next 40 hours. Red Symons arrives with the music he has composed. We dash to the pub for a conference and the curious barmaid asks what we’re up to. We tell her the story and she says ‘You mean you’ve been rehearsing for 48 hours straight”.... Yes we are the nightshift at the pram factory. The name stuck and Nightshift was born.

         Phil Motherwell, Carol Porter, Lindzee,Billy Tisdall made up the core group. It was great writing. The story was always the motive. Be it one of Phil’s dark portrayals of the lives of the convicts on the hulks of port philip bay. The young girl bleeding to death in Kroetz’s Michis Blood. The Fitzroy Yank ..a prison cell stream of consciousness.

            The aesthetic was stark and flattened. slide projecters and hard framed images. para method macho soul. We are getting great reviews  in newspapers like The Age and The Melbourne Times. NIGHTSHIFT GIVES APG NEW DIRECTION. Betsy Sussler produces Rosa Von Prauheim’s Red Love