Now that Brisbane is released from yet another Covid lockdown, I wanted to release this podcast to you, my Wandering Journo tribe, straight away so hopefully you have some company on your trip if you’ve hit the roads and the onslaught of traffic escaping the big smoke and heading to the coast for Easter—that great Australian tradition.
While I was in Adelaide recently for the city’s world renowned fringe festival, it was wonderful to see the city buzzing again in the aftermath of the Covid-19 devastation on the region’s all important arts sector.
All the little theatres throughout the city were full of innovative creativity and people happily walked through alleyways underneath glittering lights as they made their way from one show to the next. Seeing people fizzing with excitement in this post-Covid world just set my heart alight.
One of these little productions I stumbled upon absolutely blew me away, “Happy Go Wrong” by Andi Snelling. Keep an eye out for the show coming your way later in the year as she is planning to tour this emotional roller coaster ride as much as her health allows.
This one-woman show takes you from the heights of elation, to the depths of despair, with clowning, performance art and rollerskating—much in the same way as Lyme disease has totally upended this performer’s life.
“I really have gone to the brink and come back, which is of course in the show,” Andi says.
“There’s a real sense of literally clawing my way back out of a deep dark pit.
“Even now I still have phases where I’m very unwell still, so it’s still an ongoing thing that I navigate. I have to set aside, on average, two to four hours every day to undergo medical treatments, just to be functional. That’s still my reality.
“It’s very normalised for me, so it can sound shocking to other people, but it’s become just a part of my acceptance, I suppose.
“That’s not to say there’s a resignation, because I am working towards full recovery, and I believe that’s possible for me, but it’s that, I know that the more I just accept this is part of my life, the happier I am, basically. The happy in the wrong, which is the point of the show.”
I interviewed Andi after her sellout season of Happy Go Wrong at Adelaide’s Bakehouse Theatre. We sat at a peaceful cafe at Henley Beach overlooking the endless waves, and talked about how she has turned around one of the most devastating periods of her life into this incredible show.
Andi has been a performer and creator her whole life, making her onstage debut before she was even born inside her Mum’s tummy while her Mum featured in a dance concert.
But she had to build her life and identity again from scratch, and is still unravelling on stage and off, the ramifications this tick-borne disease has on her existence. The disease forced her off stage for three painful years.
“It feels like a microcosm that represents the macro of what has happened in my life over the last five or so years as I’ve gone through a life-changing chronic illness journey with Lyme disease,” Andi tells us on Streets of Your Town podcast.
“I seem to surprise even myself that I am really able to go there every single performance, even to the places that may seem a bit dangerous emotionally.
“It was important to me to create something with elements of the abstract that gives me a distancing from myself, and this is why as well, the character of Lucky the French angel, he sort of acts as narrator, Greek chorus, wink, wink with the audience throughout, is a really vital role that allowed me to have that distance, to look back on the experience I’ve gone through and to be able to comment on it, and make sense of it, I suppose.
“That allowed for that distancing, because my health is my number one importance in my life now, and that includes my mental health, so I take that very seriously.”
She hopes that when people see Happy Go Wrong, that they can also see the beauty in their own struggles.
“I think about the term healing a lot, and I feel like it’s just an ongoing long process for me, and the show has been a crucial part of that,” she says.
“In fact, I would say it was a turnaround point when I started working on this show. It just started giving me a different perspective and making me realise I can actually do something with all of this crap I’ve gone through, that can be put out into the world.
“It has ended up reflecting the experience of so many people with disabilities, chronic illnesses, and even frankly, just other human experiences, because I’ve had people come up to me who don’t have chronic illness or disability, but who’ve just said, “I feel like I do know your story, because I’m still a human with invisible struggles going on inside me,” because everyone has invisible stuff going on. There was a certain point where I realised this show is actually very universal.”
Andi particularly enjoyed being part of the great big Adelaide hug that is Mad March every year—the city’s world renowned Fringe Festival.
“Oh, it is magic. It is a magic time of year in Adelaide. It really is,” she says. “There’s not a lot of festivals, especially in Australia, where the festival overtakes the whole city.
“We don’t really get that in Australia. It doesn’t really happen with Melbourne Fringe, or Sydney Fringe, or other Fringes, or even other festivals in the way that it happens here with Adelaide Fringe Festival.
“The whole town actually knows about it, and you can strike up conversations with random people in shops and that, and they’ll actually genuinely want to know about your show. People ask me for a flyer here in Adelaide!
“It’s been probably one of the best seasons that I’ve had in a show of my life, actually, if I really think about it.
“It sort of ticked every box and dream that you would want to achieve as a performer. Every show sold out. There were standing ovations, five star reviews. I got some awards. Just mind-blowing, but even all of that stuff aside, I think what you’ve just said is what I appreciate the most as well, is that sense of a bubble with the audience. I really felt that every single show.”
More podcasts!
Well this sets a new record—it’s a triple dip newsletter! Three poddies for the price of one!
First…my big news is that my Indigenous Fire Practices documentary podcast that I produced for Griffith Review earlier this year has been picked up by the National Indigenous Radio Service (NIRS)! You can listen in by tuning into one of their affiliated radio stations all around Australia. Just go to this link and you can find the radio station closest to you: https://nirs.org.au/category/locations/
You might remember I did some news reading for NIRS late last year from the amazing studios and working with the incredible team at Brisbane’s 98.9 FM — Murri Country. You can listen in there or any of the other stations in the NIRS network from 6pm on Easter Monday to hear my Indigenous Fire Practices story go out far and wide.
This week I also released a new podcast for those interested in the findings of the recent Aged Care Royal Commission, called The Ageing Equation podcast. While the federal government is a bit distracted with other issues right now, the aged care sector is grappling with how to implement the more than 140 recommendations from this report, which exposed widespread problems in the sector including abuse. You can listen to The Ageing Equation podcast featuring myself and aged care consultant Safdar Ali with the first episode through this link:
What else I’ve been up to
This week I managed to somehow scrape in seeing the utterly fabulous show Come From Away at the Queensland Performing Arts Centre in Brisbane, just before lockdown again caused chaos. You can see my comments and some pics on my Facebook page.
Now that the sultry Brisbane weather is finally turning into something cooler and perhaps slightly resembling Autumn, I am spending more time in Mildred the Cantankerous Kombi on little story gathering trips away. You can always get in touch with me with your story ideas if you know someone or something that would make a great Streets of Your Town podcast—it’s as simple as hitting reply to this very email!
Thankyou, my ever-loyal Wandering Journo tribe, for helping to keep independent journalism alive by supporting my endeavours.
See ya on my travels soon I hope!
Nance AKA The Wandering Journo
Andi Snelling on going to the brink and back