“Going camp”: Revelations on craft, cringe, and queerness with writer and theatre maker Esther Dougherty

Esther Dougherty is a Meanjin writer and theatre maker who describes their work as magical, comedic, absurd, and symbolic. Their play Pawpaw Dog & Other Dog was published by Playlab Theatre in 2022.

You can check out their show ZAGAZIG from the 21 – 24 June at VENTspace, South Brisbane, an absurd wonderland and a dream-like chase through Brisbane at night time.

Claire Alcock gets the scoop on the craft behind the cringe and the process behind the production, as well as delving into what making art ultimately reveals about ourselves.

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Let’s start broad. What does the physical writing process look like for you?

At the beginning I like collecting fragments, finding universe clues, or feeling like I’m on a treasure hunt, like opening up a big library book and discovering things. So that looks like being on Wikipedia. I especially love the travelling element that Wikipedia has, when you go through all the links. It’s not glamorous, but in my heart, I love it, and I find that part of the process very revelatory.

I also want to populate the work with a poetic or emotional language. A lot of my plays are almost era-specific or energetic-specific for me. I do a lot of my own writing and poetry, so it’s constructed around my present reflective process. As something new comes up, I’ll write poetry about it, like, “Oh, I’m sad about this,” and that finds its way into the work.

Also, this is a very primary school sort of thing, but making a cover page, a title page, having the first page with all the little symbols. There’s an intuition coming from those objects, from the construction of them.

And then alongside this process of excavating and finding links and clues and images and objects, and projecting some profundity onto all of these little things, then there’s the container. I’ll often say I’m using the hero’s journey, but it’s probably even less than that. It’s probably just beginning, middle, and end. I think that’s the interesting part of being absurd-lite, which is what I like to call what I’m doing. You get the sense that it’s made of sense.

Cover image and this image: Giorgia Bellini Photography

That’s so interesting because it sounds like a process of discovery and excavation rather than something prescriptive and formulaic. What sort of things does that bring up for you?

I’m a huge rewriter. Something I’ve really come to reflect on since working with more performers is how two-dimensional my characters often are in the initial writing, how they often have no motivation and they’re not doing anything.

Like with Slippery, I was really obsessed with those Freudian archetypes and creating these dynamics. But the ghost character was two-dimensional. It was like a prop. It could have been a gun, a dog, it could have been anything that just disrupted and caused an issue. It was kind of revelatory because that character was essentially seeing me in the place. And reflecting it back to me makes me wonder: is it that I minimise myself in this space? Or, I don’t think I do actually cause an impact in the space and that I’m not to blame? Or, do I really think I am to blame?

It’s interesting as the artist, because there’s the character you assume yourself to be when you write it. And then (because, of course, you’re everyone), there’s the character you discover yourself to be when you’re making it, the character when you’re watching it, when you wanna rewrite it.

Obviously you’ve worked with a lot of the same people before, because it’s the Brisbane indie arts scene. Has that influenced your writing at all, and if so, how?

I think the short answer would be yes, but it’s a funny process. Because initially there’s this character or this archetype that I’m exploring, and I think “This person fits that!” So it influences that character’s voice and the way they’re interacting. But it’s ultimately disappointing because your friends are always a worse performance of that character. The people the characters are inspired by can’t play them because they’re characters. You ask them to play themselves, but it’s theatre, it’s not a documentary. There’s no small, it’s gotta be big.

ZAGAZIG was written with this “You’ll be this and you’ll be that” mindset. It was from an era of my life where I felt this pressure to just remain in my group, that it would be an insult to not work with everyone in my immediacy. Some of my disappointment in the initial attempts at writing it was because I wrote this play in many ways to please them and create the thing they would suit and they would work well in and that everyone in my life would like. But now I can’t think of any other cast than the cast we have, which is funny because the cast has changed even within the project like four times.

As someone who writes poetry and short stories, there’s a sense of having the final say over the work, but theatre is a much more organic, collaborative beast. Given that you also direct, how do you navigate that space of co-creation with the performers?

Ultimately when writing I’m trying to mimic speech. And that can be to my detriment. Some people who’ve performed my works have found it to be tongue-twisted, because I’ll write dialogue as I think. But since that’s the intention, it’s very easy for me to let go of, because what I’m hoping for is natural speech; the “umming” and “ahhing” and the stumbling. And there’ll be lines that’ll always be missed, that don’t get said because they’re not flowing, so they’ll get cut. Unless it’s a line that’s important to the plot, I feel very relaxed giving it up.

When you’re writing, are you intentionally leaving room for that collaboration?

The blanks that I’m leaving to be filled in are things like the intention, or tone, or motivation. I’m designing the space; now we’re outside, now we’re in a tree, they’re dogs and they’re wearing this. I’m very influenced in making the design elements, the stage design elements, because they’re contextualizing the play itself.

I think some of that allowing is also just the path of least resistance. It doesn’t matter what’s being said, so long as it’s achieving what it needs to achieve. I’m just, “do it how it’s gonna get done”, you know? I want to create lots of room for the actors to play. It’s a gift of creativity to have this foundation to play with, and we can still achieve the goal of sharing this by sitting and reading it, but we’re just going to the end degree.

Image: Spot Willows

Your work is so funny in such surprising ways. How does that comedic element come about?

I feel like sometimes it can only be done by going camp, you know? By leaning into the melodrama. I feel instinctive in comedy, I love writing it and I feel really good in it. If anything, I need to be a little more resistant to it. I know that there’s a bit of cowardice in it, that I’m not willing to call any feeling or experience horrible. I don't think there's ever a point in any of my plays where a character actually tells a joke. It’s not them cracking jokes with each other; we’re laughing at them. It’s clown, and everyone is invited to uncouple from the profundity, the seriousness, to cleanse the palette.

Then there are the moments when I wanted something to be funny, but people wouldn’t laugh. I’m like, “gimme the validation” and everyone’s like “I’m having feelings.” Yeah, but not the right feeling! There was this line I thought was the funniest joke, so the people we rehearsed with, I’m just like, “You tricked me! You laughed too much at this joke and made me believe it was funny!” Because every night, everyone in the audience would just be gasping, “Oh my god!”

There’s a ContraPoints video about cringe, and it was talking about how so much of queerness has always existed as cringe. It’s something that I experience when I watch anything sincere. I cringe at sincerity. Even conversationally, with people who are overly sincere and earnest and beautiful, I can recoil from it a bit. And I think that’s really evident in my writing is that the people who go to those places are often inarticulate. It’s just like, “Sad story, dude.”

There’s a really fascinating cultural intersection of queerness and cringe and camp, and how queer identity has reclaimed cringe. Where does that come from for you?

It’s never the same, but there are so many similar flavours to the trauma of the queer experience. And I do feel extremely influenced by this sense of uncoolness, especially through my teenage years. I’ve always felt very drawn to those movies, you know, the cringe, the embarrassment, the not cool. Napoleon Dynamite made me cry because I was like, it’s me and it’s not supposed to be me, you know?

Then when I came back to Brisbane, some of the people I was making theatre with at the time had all connected with this established drag queen and started doing drag themselves. So I started going into these spaces, meeting drag queens, and getting to know these older people who’ve really settled into their affect, into their character. And it was such a pivotal moment, just being in the smoking area with someone who’s just telling me these stories and speaking to me in such a way. It was stunning to me, to be around queer people who were so deeply in the belief that they’re the most interesting, beautiful, talented and exciting person you’ve ever met in your life. And it’s true! You know? It’s actually true. And it’s a generous thing to be an interesting person. Most of us are interesting in private, but there’s something really wonderful about being interesting publicly. We have a different set of rules for that person when someone’s this interesting character. The queer community is truly gifted by having these strong, feminine icons.

Image: Spot Willows

Something I love about your work is how it feels effortlessly queer. It’s not tokenised or demonised, it’s just part of the world-building. How does that develop for you?

Obviously I’m queer and an artist, but I don’t really feel like I’m making queer work, you know? Then people remind me that my last two plays were a trans narrative and a queer, polyamorous relationship. But I really forget about those elements of it because I’m hyper-fixated on the odd little elements of it.

Like with Slippery, everyone was supposed to be these non-binary characters. It was never an interrogation of gendered relationships whatsoever. I wanted it to be an investigation of blame, of the characters themselves. What are these inherent senses of right and wrong and blame and guilt and the apportioning of those things? I was just really interested in those little dynamics where no one’s to blame, yet something is deeply wrong, and nothing can be done. We’re all struggling with this quite basic thing, and we can dig into it and think about it together.

You mentioned before about seeing yourself in a character from Slippery. Do you have any other examples of when your writing has surprised you like that?

Definitely. The biggest one is in ZAGAZIG , because it’s such an excavation. It was on the back of the first play I’d written called The Moon Man, and if you were to put them side by side you’d see it’s a continuation; big cast, lots of characters, what’s the meaning of life, just these very big energies.

I started writing it when I was twenty, in 2017, finished it at the end of 2019, and my big lockdown goal for 2020 was to put on this play. I applied to Playlab’s Incubator program, thinking I’ll be able to edit this play I’ve just written, but it was for creating new work, so I ended up writing a new play, which was Pawpaw Dog & Other Dog. Then from that I wrote Slippery. And I think I grew up and realised that I’d lost the fantasy of making it, because it’s this enormous undertaking with a cast this big, and I’ll never afford this, this can never happen. So it’s this really strange thing, looking at this work that I’d devoted three full years to, and then put it down very heavily. It felt so familiar, but at the same time I’m coming back to it and just asking “What is this?”

It’s uncanny and surprising, and it’s become deeply personal. Everyone I thought was the genius of the work is the idiot of the work. Everyone I thought was the idiot of the work is the genius of the work. ZAGAZIG revealed that I wanted to be the expert of others’ lives. I wanted to be expert of even those closest to me. And it’s almost shameful to reflect on, but there was this sense of “this will teach you”. Like you’ll go into my play and you’ll be this character and this will show you something, this will teach you something. Not in a nasty way, in a loving way. So you’ll feel known by me, or this will affirm to you my love, or this will capture you and paint you.

There are so many of these characters that were people who were around me when I was writing it. And coming back I realised, this is me. There’s one character especially, I was so sure that everyone in that work apart from her was me. But it was never her. It was absolutely never, at any point, her. I’m these young women. I’m this young man. I’m this old man. I’d written this fantasy world to make a sense of the other people in my life, like “Oh, this is you, this is what you’d do in this situation, this is what you think.” But it’s all me.

ZAGAZIG plays at VENTspace, South Brisbane from 21 – 24 June 2023.