Everyday People

In a 1973 essay, French writer Georges Perec staked a claim for the interest that lies in the infra-ordinary: the everyday, the quotidian, the banal, the habitual. This, he claimed, was of significantly more interest than what is deemed historic or revelatory by media. The work of theatre maker and artist Rosie Dennis shares that interest in the every day, she's concerned with the stories not of the few and great, but of the everyday people that populate the everyday suburbs of Australia.

“I just love people. I originally went to uni to do psychology because I was fascinated by people and so that was the first whole chunk of my degree and then I flipped over and I started doing theatre and I realised actually I don't need to be in this kind of world and have a practice or anything like that,” Dennis suggests. “I can work really intimately with people and explore stories and storytelling that is of the everyday. The everyday is what connects us all.”

This interest in the everyday, in neighbourhoods, shaped Dennis's 2011 work Driven To New Pastures, originally inspired by the high proportion of public housing in her own suburb, Waterloo. The work was later adapted for the Campbelltown Arts Centre, where Dennis received a residency, and focused on the western Sydney suburb of Minto. It was a serendipitous move for Dennis, who has since been repeatedly inspired by Minto and its residents, as her latest work, Life As We Know It, a look at the life of older residents of the suburb, attests.

“At first I was acutely aware of being an outsider, so as part of the residency, in the first week I joined a whole lot of groups; I joined the walking group, there was community lunches that happened every week at a place called The Hub, so I was going to those, I went to resident action group meetings, I went to tenant meetings, I went to a golden oldie meeting, I just started going to things that were already happening in the community,” explains Dennis. “I was really transparent, I let everyone know that I was an artist and that I was working up in this place at The Hub and we started from there. I tried to base myself a lot in Minto, so I was familiar to people, so they would see my face around, so I wasn't this outsider. One person invited me for a cup of tea, then I went to another place for a cup of tea and there was the lunches and you just start to meet people and they get a sense of what you do, even though, I'm sure, they all thought I was a bit mad,” Dennis jokes.

Mad or not, her approach worked, and across her development of …New Pastures and live arts event Minto Live, Dennis forged meaningful relationships that have allowed Life As We Know It to become the quaintly insightful and incredibly personal show that it is – a patchwork of relationships forged throughout Dennis's artistic practice in the suburb.

“Now I just have these relationships there with all these people that Life As We Know It kind of feels like the closing chapter on what would have been five years work.”