'We Are Built Out Of Stories': Joelistics Lays His Family History Bare In His Thoughtful New Theatre Show

I feel really good about this week’s piece. Firstly, because I chatted to one of the MCs I’ve admired most in my 31 years on this planet but, secondly, because we’re talking about something that we all have in common but perhaps don’t speak so openly about in public forums: family.

Next week, the Melbourne Festival is hosting In Between Two, a show curated and performed by Joel Ma, aka Joelistics (TZU), and James Mangohig (Sietta). I managed to catch Joel before a performance in Adelaide this week, following the show's journey through multiple shows in Alice Springs, Tennant Creek, Katherine and Darwin.

"We had the pleasure of driving up the centre of Australia, stopping along the way and doing shows … it was a really special tour," he tells me. "We played some really NT-feeling venues like a 100-capacity tin shed, then a civic hall that held like 2000 people and we only had like 200."

"Actually, at one point, James had warned me that NT audiences heckle," he continues. "I thought he was joking at the time but we did a show and at one point mentioned Pauline Hanson, to which an audience member yelled, 'She’s a slag!' We had to sort of stop the show to stop laughing. In theatre, your shows are supposed to be consistent, you hit your marks, stand in the light etc… I don’t think what we’re doing happens often in theatre."

So, how do an MC and a producer living on opposite sides of the country come to such a tour? Ma and Mangohig have toured together musically in the past, but In Between Two is so unique in nature I have to wonder how the show came to conception.

"The idea was conceived four years ago at Darwin Festival," Ma tells me. "We were asked to do a show between Sietta and Joelistics that offered 'something different'. We bounced a few ideas off each other and eventually decided to tell the stories of our families coming to Australia and tie it into our individual songs.

"We sold out the first show and, within a year, a woman named Annette Shanwa came on board as a producer, lifting the standard of the show. We wanted to make something that felt intimate through our lives and family history but also in our own way, something that was subversive and able to call Australia out on its bullshit racist past, how it’s perceived Asian-Australians for the past couple of generations."

(Mangohig’s parents are from the Philippines and Adelaide, while Ma's lineage is from China and Sydney.)

"Our families and stories are incredibly different so, while we address that, we touch on the intricacies of what brought us together," he continues. "We went back through our family’s experiences of upheaval in religion, personal relationships, financial difficulties, love and even lost love … everything that eventually leads to us, where we are today.

"But the show is also very much about music and the connection that hip hop has to storytelling. We tell these stories because it’s as natural as writing verses or sampling records; it’s interwoven into the things we do with our lives."

I can’t imagine delving back into my parents' endeavours growing up. It feels uncomfortable to think they may have been the same learn-by-mistake adolescent I was, let alone what my grandparents must have been like in an time unimaginable to the present. But Ma delved that far — and even further — into his own family history in preparation for In Between Two.

"I uncovered the birth certificate of my grandmother that was born in Haymarket (Sydney) in 1916," he explains. "I looked at her parents, and her mother was born in Victoria, but that far back, I couldn’t find more information. A big part of that is that history, though, was even then she was an Australian citizen … so, way back then, the 'lucky ticket' of being Australian as an immigrant really opened up opportunities for her and her family."

I remember hearing stories from my dad about relatives I never met, what they were like. Or perhaps what he saw them like. Surely delving back that far into family history came up with some gems.

"I unearthed some crazy family history!" Ma admits. "Like, my grandmother lived in a mansion in a open marriage with my grandfather, and her business partner/lover also lived there with them. Now, not just for a Chinese household but for anyone, it flew in the face of tradition and protocol back then ... or how my grandmother losing her fortune had links to the Vietnam War; crazy shit like that!"

Just thinking about my childhood and adolescent years, there are so many secrets. So many embarrassing things I’d disclose only to my closest counterpart. I think my siblings (and my poor parents!) would feel the same. It seems like it would be exceptionally uncomfortable to discover, discuss and share such personal experiences with the world.

"Oh, absolutely!" Ma concurs. "Performing it in front of our families! I had the honour of performing it in front of my whole family and extended family in Sydney. In telling my own story, I was also telling theirs … like, you’re holding these secrets delicately in your hands, let alone a room full of strangers!

"But the things that we thought would be delicate or sensitive, our parents didn’t … They’re more concerned about us getting things right. You see, we all protect our stories and value them, because what we really value above it all is the truth. So that’s what we did. It’s honest, it’s raw and we’re doing it with the utmost respect. You can’t be called out for that. My mum said to me, 'As long as it’s honest, you tell that story, because it’s your life and it’s your experience'.

"Every single family in the world is full of crazy, fucked-up things that, when you lay it out, you go, 'Fuck, that’s weird!' Because every family is full of love, and coincidence, heartbreak, betrayal, things you are and aren’t proud of but when you only talk about the things you are proud of, you’re not doing any of it justice."

Joel’s narrative is descriptive, eloquent and thoughtfully poetic. I hadn’t asked him about himself yet but I can almost imagine what a little Joel Ma must have been like, especially given the strong drive he has to this day to create work informed by a familial, community focus.

"Well, almost unconsciously, James and I are drawn to work that centres around communities and marginal communities, particularly young people," he reveals. "We’re constantly working with people that don’t have much of a voice in society, trying to empower them and generally diversifying the arts in Australia … this show is a distillation of that attitude we have; where does it come from, and why? It’s a rallying cry for marginalised people, that’s what the show is. Actually, that’s what hip hop is, I think…"

In Joel’s expansive career, he and group TZU have never been afraid of confronting politics, looking straight into the eye of the ugly political beast and... oh! That reminds me. I have to know how Pauline Hanson came into the show.

"I grew up at a time where the swing to the right, a sort of new, 'neo-con politic' started to infect Australia, and that has absolutely taken root now, in the world," he muses. "I was turning 18 around the time John Howard was pushing for a white-centric version of Australian identity, which really was the early dog-whistle politic/racism politic that Hanson was responsible for. That feels a lot more blatant these days but I felt compelled to respond to it in music because it’s something I grew up with.

"The experience of racism in Australia is embedded in my family history and in a lot of minority groups. Hip hop was a great vehicle to express that. TZU were rapping about wrestling our own identity as Australian musicians and I’m proud that we were approaching that conversation in early years of Australian hip hop."

I recently went travelling overseas and, in meeting new people, discussing home, culture and social fibre that perhaps shouldn’t be discussed, after several drinks I found myself completely lost in my own cultural identity. I don’t agree with so much of what our country does and, while proud to be Australian, I can’t help but ask myself — and Ma — what that actually means.

"I think a byproduct of a multicultural society is the 'rubbing up against' of cultures," he muses. "Of course, it creates friction, but it also creates bridges and opportunity for understanding and connection. Not everything is fairy bread and warm hugs. Some of the most multicultural cities in the world can also be the most racist because if you have a majority of one cultural background or even gender that has to seed part of their power, that creates friction!

"But confronting it is so important. That’s what this show is doing; we’re asserting our identity as Australians. People call this a classic immigrant story show — it’s Australian! It’s as fuckin’ Australian as it gets. The Australia I know is not white-bread; it’s a diverse and mixed-up place. Wrestling with the hard truth that Australia still hasn’t owned up to Indigenous rights and politic as well as its acceptance of its diverse background is a way of showing how much you love a country; you’re participating."

"Doing this show is my way of asserting my belonging in Australia," he adds. "In that way, it’s probably quite offensive to an old white cohort who might see it, and that’s good; fuck 'em!"

I also think there’s a real conversation about the language we use. For example, 'tolerance' implies we tolerate or 'put up with'. It has a sort of critical stigma attached to an understanding of a people — and that's just a single case.

"The language around race politics has changed a lot today; it’s a lot more sophisticated," Ma reflects. "But in the noise of the internet, there’s a lot more bald-faced hate that is also spewed out.

"Now that I’m older, it’s more of an insight into [systemic] racism… it's more about access to opportunity, a place at the table in positions of power. That level of perception, of who mainstream Australia allows consciously or unconsciously to take those positions… that’s what I’m trying to subvert and change. From AFL to Arts Australia, there’s a lot of discussion on being 'more inclusive' or a 'representational vision of Australia' but until you have a diverse range of voices making the decision on who gets backed or funded, the discussion is really just lip service to diversity."

There was so much more of our conversation I wanted to include. This is such broad and unexplored territory for me. But hearing Ma's deep reflection about his own family history also makes me want to call my parents and ask about the Australia they knew growing up.

And, if you can, I'd encourage you to ask the same questions of your own family, because when they're gone, so too are their stories — and, at the end of the day, stories are one of the most important parts of a person; of a people.

"I think the take-home message is we are built out of stories," Ma summarises. "That history created you; you can’t get anything more relative than that personal history, [in] which you’ll find also ties into our common history. When we talk about culture and identities, we’re talking about you and your family and your lived experience; that’s the important part, and you have access to that.

"They say you can’t choose your family. You can choose your friends, where you work whatever, but you can have agency in that. Your family are just a bunch of strangers that somehow are connected, that’s pretty powerful, that we still honour that."

In Between Two is playing Wednesday 11 October until Sunday 15 October at The Arts Centre.

Tickets are available now.