I know we are getting to the wind down part of the year when everyone is reflecting on 2024.
I could have many things to say about this year. I have been talking time to write something, afraid what I have to say comes out cliché: how do you summarise it?
“This year was made up of small moments, large challenges (lol), discovering thorns-in sides that have turned into splinters or some thorns I dug out and it was really painful at the time but is healing now’. Amongst other things, in 2024 I learned about comedy, becoming tangata Tiriti, grief, truly backing myself and investing. I said it.
Not quite the goals or resolutions I had at the start of the year but they were close.
My first gig in 2024 was at 1:00am on 1st Jan, where I came out as Jaws- a shark- with simple dreams and goals, who ended up crowd surfing an amazing audience at AUM FESTIVAL. 365 days later I’ll be kicking off 2025 as Jaws Jolie, The Jazz Singing Shark who is auditioning for Ocean’s Got Talent at Twisted Frequency Festival AND doing stand up comedy in the same day.
In between those two performances have been all kinds of gigs, shows, moments and life lessons:
Main marker was going through the process of honing and crafting a show Standing Still which was in Whangarei, Adelaide, Melbourne then upgraded it to Standing Still (Still).
I could go on about that for ages but basically the moral of the story is, though it’s the end of 2024 which has been one year we are reflecting on, I’m thinking bigger picture to reflect on the fact that a month ago marked the 10 year anniversary of my debut solo show “Tinserella: Keeping Christmas Safe”. A month has gone by as I’ve been trying to find the words to commemorate, acknowledge, celebrate this milestone. Something I had to learn pretty quickly if I was going to be able to last any time doing this schtick at all was that being an independent artist means you kind of have to tell the world what’s happening otherwise no one will. So here is an unfiltered look back at that moment then, and a bit of the stuff in between. It might feel self indulgent but I’m posting on a blog hardly anyone might read so it’s more for me/my memoir.
I don’t know if when I started making my first one woman showI thought I’d still be making solo shows 10 years on.
To be honest I made the show because I was sick of getting knocked back from auditions, sick of being a dancer who got treated like a moving prop, whose job is to tell other people’s stories when I realised I might have stories to tell.
I made the show a solo show solo because it was cheaper to not have to pay anyone else, and I figured that if it flopped it would just be me I was letting down. Plus, Elizabeth Dawson Smith gave me the golden ticket of “You should do your own show and I’ll mentor you”. Cut forward to me having sleepovers at her house whilst she taught me photoshop to design posters, read and edited my media releases and her regularly bursting into my living room where I’ve moved the furniture away to make a studio space, her balling in , slamming her laptop onto the table then kicking my butt in rehearsals where I cried several times.
The show was a series of characters and vignettes that were conceived in friends' kitchens, on a rainy street inspired by a pair of boots and time to kill, songs I made up riding my bike, and some loose narrative about not fully knowing who I am or where I fit in.
Here’s some of the reviews from it:
"Joana Simmons has not merely hit, but smacked the solo stage with her debut writer credit, leaving nothing in the tank after throwing herself about and titillating the audience."
https://theatre-press.com/2014/11/
As well as my first NZ Fringe “I get the feeling that those of us smart enough to catch this show will one day be able to say, “Oh yes, I saw her in 2016 before she was so famous.” https://www.theatreview.org.nz/production/putting-the-gday-in-cabaret/#dynamic-original-funny-engaging-and-an-absolute-joy-to-watch
Being my first solo show I was pretty detached from reviews.
I actually was a reviewer at that time (so I could get free tickets) - and when reading a review I used to remind myself “who cares what they say, remember, they are just people. They look at their poo before they flush it like the rest of us!”
My debut opening night at Club Voltaire, Naarm Melbourne, was packed to the brim with friends from dance school, people I performed with, some hospo mates, and a bunch of people from the gym I used to teach at. The show came together thanks to the help of key players: Libby, Alice Pollard- Queen, who worked some lights and sound (too many cues)
Alex Nguyen built me a DIY smoke machine out of dry ice and a chilli bin. Natalie Breakwell stage managed and wiped my sweat and is now my best friend, and also had some somewhat inconsistent help of Dan, my boyfriend at the time.
(Who once told me he was worried I was gonna “make it” before him. Which was really weird to me because I had trained in dance and musical theatre and had been grinding at the stone of self motivation to break through as a professional dancer/ choreographer/ be in community tv/ doing music videos/working it out, and he said he was gonna start to dj DnB.
F**K.
ANYWAY!
Since Tinserella (a made up name Libby came up with and I didn’t love it but couldn’t think of anything better) in 2014, I have made 7 different comedy cabaret shows. Shows for theatres, for parks, in hotel quarantine, a dinner concert, a street show, one stand up comedy show with another in the works.
I don’t know if I’ve “made it”
Or what that means. I’ve only been nominated for one award, received one grant, worked with one publicist, had mostly good reviews, have some people recognise me from coming third in the Wellington Pun Battle and still question whether I have any clout. But I’m still here. I have performed at some of my dream events (Woodford Folk Festival (QLD), Noisily Festival (UK), Solrise Festival (where I got to surf and do a show on the same day and performed under a marquee on a balmy summer Whāingaroa night in bare feet- that show featured the debut of my first public performance of “oh dear, I just stood on a snail.”
Some of these shows were gardens that I nurtured over time: mines of understanding and processing and figuring out how to communicate things in an entertaining way to make the ART hit CathARTsis. Some of the shows were slap dash thrown together to meet a deadline or fill in an application. I’m so privileged to have done it and more and wouldn’t have been possible without the dedicated mentorship of Elizabeth Dawson Smith in the early years. SERIOUSLY MATE.
When someone invites you to go on Australia’s Got Talent to perform an incredible work that involved eating Spaghetti to ‘Hall of the Mountain King’ and you get through to the final and you make a thing together and get totally messed with coz it’s reality tv then you get buzzed out in front of judges and you end up washing blue slime off each other's backs in the Channel 7 bathroom, crying then meeting Dawn French, they are worth doing anything for.
Thanks to my darling friend and stage manager bouncing ideas queen hype woman Natalie Breakwell, the support of Alex Nguyen, Amy Cooper, Chi-Uh, Scott Wings, Fraser Hooper, Kozo Kaos, Ria Simmons, Nikita and many people I’ve failed to mention here.
To the theatres and venues and festivals and platforms, techs. To the friends who helped with posters and posting and door and favours.
It’s been 10 years of shows mostly rehearsed at gym and yoga studios where I teach, in lounge rooms, on walks waving my arms around, in the ocean and in the park. Writing in cafes, in Cambodia, at my parents house, in my van, in house sits, or riding a bike. At parties ducking into a corner to write something down.
THE AUDIENCES. Holy moly. When people ask me what it’s like performing alone, I don’t really feel alone- I’m with peeps who have come to see me- fostering community through the collective experience of live performance! I’ve been heckled by children, dogs, adults, a snail, had people smile and laugh and cry and be potentially a little bit challenged and I’ve met some of you and many of you I haven’t. The friends who have come to every show, then give me feedback in the car when I hound them for it. To people who were in the audience of shows with 4 in them in a Basement in Adelaide to a tent of 350 at Woodford Folk Festival, or a family and some randoms from Palmy on a winter night on Courtenay Place, or on zoom in lockdown. Thank you for your generosity. Thank you for buying tickets, for telling your friends, for being touched, entertained by what I have to share.
And I couldn’t have done it at all without the support of my parents and family. Travelling to see shows, hearing the ups and downs (now I’m crying) sitting on the edge of their seats wondering if I can pull it off, and heckling me- brilliant. I didn’t think I’d still be doing it either.
What really brings tears to my eyes as I reflect on this is not who I was when I was making that show 10 years ago, but who I was 29 or so years ago- the scrappy little girl who loved to dance down the back of her house. Who used to stand on top of a hill, gaze out at the view and perform for the horizon. who used to tell her family she could sing better than Maria from the Sound of Music and tell stories to the dog.
I’m so glad I get to keep her fire alive.
I don’t know whether “living the dream” includes the hustle, the rejection, the wondering when the next gig is, the bombing, the self doubt, the longing, comparison, feeling like I constantly need to be making, fatigue, fear, loneliness, the times of feeling too broke to buy new socks in your 30s.
But maybe following the dream does. In this capitalist society living an artful life and following a dream feels pretty self indulgent. I follow the mantra of ‘hiding your gifts from the world is a disservice to yourself and the world.’ So I’m sharing ALL this with you.
I have more dreams for performances and things to write and sing and dance and cook and I am also doing Post-Grad study next year and getting better at surfing. All going well. Ready for whatever else comes my way.
Show wise, another one is in the works. I am looking forward to sharing it with you and looking forward even more to working on it.
Thank you for reading this and thank you for believing in me.
Jj x
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