Thanks to the shambles that accompanied the mass redundancies at my most recent workplace it’s been difficult – nigh impossible – for me to get a job.
Not actually because of the redundancy but because of the psychological damage that redundancy does. It took me at least a year to recover and my sense of my self-worth is still pretty much rock bottom. It’s not my first redundancy so I’m rodeo-experienced, but even that last one in 1995, while challenging, wasn’t as bad as this. At least Christchurch Council were pretty damned decent about it. Kindness salves so many wounds.
The way AUT went about it exacerbated the hurt to the point that many of us just bled out, no salve, no kindness, nothing. Considering I’d worked in the School of Hospitality for seventeen years, ‘thanks’, and a cup of tea would have nice. Not just for me, but for all twelve of us. OK, I went relatively quietly, and with my history it might have been anticipated that I’d have a bit to say but, truth is, I was glad to be out of the place. Some of my colleagues had a lot to say, in person, in the corridors, and online, but none of us were granted a forum in which to say goodbye and that was shameful.
Hence the grieving was all done in private, and this keyboard moment is part of that.
How hard would it have been for the Head of School to send an email acknowledging the years I’d been there. That would have been nice. Like a simple statement of service. I didn’t need a ‘thank you’, I’ve had plenty of them from past colleagues and students. Just something.
Nothing from the Vice Chancellor either. He said nice generic things acknowledging how the staff had gone the extra mile during Covid 19 – extra bloody marathon more like it and that’s OK, it was satisfying in itself and needed nothing more – but seventeen years and every teaching award imaginable you might think would have been worth a word or six.
But no.
My dean sent me an email which was pretty much what I’d expected, full of vitriol and hate. What a vicious, nasty, frightened, worried little man. Yes, I know stuff but your attempt to bully me into silence was never going to work. If I’m silent, it’s because I choose to be and it’s no guarantee I’ll stay that way.
I’ve applied for a number of teaching positions, and I have been arguably the best applicant for all of them but, in 2024, if you add age and gender identity to the mix, ‘best applicant’ doesn’t mean very much.
Oh, what a joy living in New Zealand in the twenty-first century really is.
I suspect all of the roles I applied for went to teachers already employed and already doing the job and I’m fully OK with that.
To be honest, working in the theatre has never felt like a job for me and in the broader performing arts it’s just the same. It’s never been because the pay is so poor though it is, it’s more that being a performing artist seems more than a job, especially when having the privilege of working in the profession, rather than as an amateur, is factored in. Not that there’s anything wrong with being an amateur, that’s a joy too, it’s just a different sort of joy, and often a joy with no coffee at the end of it.
I’ve done both and a quick look back over my work at Theatre Corporate, the Mercury, Centrepoint, the Court, and the Fortune, in TV, radio, film, and as a freelance actor/director/teacher makes me feel incredibly humble and proud. I’ve worked with outstanding people, some mid-career and at the top of their game, some at the very beginning, and some at the arse end as I am now, and all have enriched my life beyond words.
I hope I’ve contributed something of worth to theirs as well.
I know I’ve used the word ‘amateur’ but that’s incredibly loaded and I don’t mean anything negative, I simply mean unpaid or occasionally paid which is different. Nothing beats making your own work and I’ve had the privilege of doing heaps of that. So many great people have opted into joining me on those journeys, and I’ll love them all forever.
I now work as an Associate Editor for Theatreview and I’m responsible for coordinating review services in the Auckland area. I love the job for all the reasons I’ve already outlined, and I have such respect for the Theatreview Trust for their attempt, every year, to get the funding they deserve, funding they need to simply carry on. It’s a unique service and without it we lose the most extraordinary record of performing arts activity in Aotearoa New Zealand over decades. Managing Editor John Smythe and his team have kept going for nearly two decades through seldom thick and often unbearably thin.
When funding is obtained, I receive a stipend, small by comparison to what might be defined as a ‘normal’ job, but still extraordinary in the performing arts. John, my colleagues up and down the country, and the Trust have my never wavering admiration. They’re the best of the very best.
We’ve not been well served by successive governments for as long as I can remember, and we just know that this current lot will redirect every ounce of the funding that’s essential for everything in the country that’s of value to projects that will destroy the environment and the cultural soul of our people. We know this, yet we continue to stand up to this destructive and cruel austerity.
I’ve been doing it for years and it’s soul-destroying spending hours on funding applications only to find out two days before Christmas that you’ve been unsuccessful.
It’s heartbreaking.
It also generates a fair amount of unnecessary anger and it’s difficult to know how best to channel this to support the applicants who have been unsuccessful. If ever that becomes my lot in this wonderful job, I’ll keep doing it anyway as long as what I’m doing is seen as providing a service, is of value, and supports the the great people who stand behind, and provide, this outstanding service.
There are times when being a ‘woke’ working class, radical socialist is ‘something to be’.
Perhaps, even, the only thing to be.
So much so that I’ll share the entire lyric of John Lennon’s iconic song:
Working Class Hero
As soon as you’re born, they make you feel small
By giving you no time instead of it all
Till the pain is so big you feel nothing at all
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
They hurt you at home, and they hit you at school
They hate you if you’re clever, and they despise a fool
Till you’re so fucking crazy, you can’t follow their rules
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
When they’ve tortured and scared you for twenty-odd years
Then they expect you to pick a career
When you can’t really function, you’re so full of fear
A working class hero is something to be
A working class hero is something to be
dykiegirl 