Katie Noonan: Love-Song-Circus
February 2013
Katie Noonan brings to life the tragic yet inspiring stories of Australia’s first female convicts in the new production, Love-Song-Circus – a project that sees the songstress collaborating with a guest-star circus troupe, Circa, directed by Yaron Lifschitz. Especially made for the intimate surrounds of The Famous Spiegeltent, Noonan’s performance explores stories of strength, bravery, hardship, love and longing, winding back the clocks some 200 years and retelling “a woman’s story in a man’s time”.
While collaborative projects are far from new to Noonan – the Brisbane-based singer/songwriter having previously worked with Karin Schaupp, Paul Grabowsky, her mother and opera singer Maggie Noonan, as well as fronting bands george, Elixir and Katie Noonan and The Captains – she claims that Love-Song-Circus is unlike anything she’s ever done.
“It started when I heard about an exhibition at the National Museum called Love Tokens,” she explains. “Basically, when convicts were sent overseas they would get this penny coin which was made of soft metal and you’d be able to brush off the image of whoever was the Queen at the time. So they would inscribe their own message for their loved ones on this coin with images for those they were leaving behind. The collection that was on display had over 300 of these coins dating back over 200-plus years, which sounds like a long time ago when you say it, but it’s really not in the scheme of things, especially in terms of Australian history.”
What particularly “grabbed” Noonan was the romantic symbolism of the penny coins which spoke of love, loss, longing and, most importantly, all the things that make up a great song, according to the singer.
“The male’s story has been told in history books, but the women’s story hasn’t really. They were illiterate and couldn’t even write letters, so not only did these stories interest me but they also touched me and inspired me to re-tell these women’s tales in the form of songs. It’s pretty amazing stuff what these people inscribed on the coins. I came to realise that the women were strong, stoic and quite fierce. It’s so important not to forget that and to keep that alive so each of the songs we’ve done is a dedication to a specific woman.
“What’s sad is that a lot of the crimes they were accused of were just stupid stuff. London was facing extreme poverty at the time and women were desperate to feed their children so they wouldn’t die; things like stealing half a loaf of bread was enough to get you sent away.”
And although the women Noonan celebrates in Love-Song-Circus were fierce and brave, they only became so due to the harsh circumstances they faced once arriving in Australia. According to the singer, this period represented one of the darkest times in our nation.
“The thing that the authorities realised very quickly was that the number of men being sent to Australia was a lot larger than that of women, so they needed to make up for those numbers. The ratio of men to women in the early days was nine to one, so you can imagine the sexual implications of that and the abuse they endured. It was a really, really dark time. Sometimes the only way for the women to protect themselves was to disguise themselves as men.”
Despite dealing with such a tragic theme, Noonan says taking on the project has been a delight in that Love-Song-Circus has allowed her to do what she enjoys doing the most – cross-collaborating with her peers.
“After I found out about these stories, I immediately started dreaming up this idea of getting acrobats and aerialists involved and creating an entire soundtrack to it all. I thought it would be wonderful to work with Circa and we also ended up adding folk instrumentation, a string quartet and piano, and after the fact that our premiere in Adelaide went so well, we realised we had something special. It would be quite difficult to tour this performance around the country – to be honest, it would be a very expensive thing to do – however, I am in the process of trying to get it funded so that we can take it across Australia. The stories of these women are incredible and I think it’s important for people to know about them.”
Katie Noonan performs Love-Song-Circus at The Famous Spiegeltent, Arts Centre Melbourne from March 19 to 24.
spiegel.artscentremelbourne.com.au
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