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The Threshold

4 March,2023 @ 4:00 pm

An artist’s musings on ageing and the end of life, from the point of view of women

by Judith Clingan AM

 

There will be three performances: 4pm and 8pm Saturday 4 March and 11am Sunday 5 March. Admission is ticketed: $40 full, $30 concession, available online from mid-February.

Background Notes

Judith (Judy) Clingan is a composer, writer, artist, educator and multi arts director/creator. Since early 2021 she has been interviewing many women aged 70 and older, and asking them to write thoughts on a range of issues related to the ageing process, as well as our varying attitudes to the end of life. Their answers have helped her greatly in writing a script, entitled The Threshold. She has also composed fourteen short pieces of music (for choir, strings, wind and piano, as well as bells and singing bowls). She is now (in December) painting a series of visual images to amplify the shifting moods. The ambience Judy is aiming for is a subtle mix of humour, grief and transcendence.

Three performances are planned for March 2023 in the Chapel of the ACC&C – creating an intimate café atmosphere, with the audience invited to take a cup of tea to one of multiple small tables, while the three actors (all ageing women) will speak from small stages interspersed among the tables. Musicians will sing and play from a corner; individual musicians will occasionally interact with the actresses. The main wall of the chapel will be used from time to time for projections of words, especially when they are perhaps difficult to hear well in choral rendition, as well as the painted images. The text will vary between intimate dialogue and the delivery of poems, both whimsical and heart- wrenching. The dialogue and some of the poetry is Judy’s; some is from the classical canon of great English writers; some she has invited from women poets both in Australia and elsewhere. While of course it is impossible to write a piece which will speak equally meaningful to every member of the audience, she is trying to touch on a wide range of experiences, practices and beliefs. Judy has so far held seven script-reading sessions with older women in and beyond Canberra, which have sometimes led to emendations.

Judy says: “I have been very interested to discover, across the twenty months I have so far spent on this project, that while some women are unwilling to explore their thoughts on the topic of ageing and death, others are delighted to be given the opportunity. Maybe death is our last great taboo. At least, those of us living an affluent, western lifestyle very rarely experience the raw reality of death, and very rarely live day by day alongside a person dying slowly. I expect that in those societies where multi-generational families exist together in the one home, the realities of ageing and thoughts about the end are experienced daily. In our society older people are usually sequestered away, out of sight even of their families for most of the time. Certainly it isn’t often that our artists dare to think about the void – or perhaps the unknown something – which awaits us all. I hope that The Threshold might be a step towards a more vigorous exploration of this topic.”

When?

Saturday 4 March2023 at 4:00 pm and 8pm
Sunday 5 March at 11am

Where?

Chapel at the Australian Centre for Christianity & Culture, Charles Sturt University
15 Blackall Street, Barton, ACT 2600

Bookings

Book here

For more information

Please contact Judith Clingan

Details

Date:
4 March,2023
Time:
4:00 pm
Event Tags:
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Venue

Australian Centre for Christianity & Culture
15 Blackall St
Barton, ACT 2600
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