In celebration of Douglas Leonard
“The Douglas I knew”
(By Margi Brown Ash)
I have called my dedication… A TRAIL OF SONG…for that is what Doug has left us, as he flees to the land of the poets.
“I have a vision,” says Bruce Chatwin, one of his favourite authors
“I have a vision of the song lines stretching across the continents and ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song”
Doug has left many trails of song, stretching back in time and space. He was the first director I worked with here in Brisbane. We both arrived twenty-one years ago within six months of each other. He and Anna came to Brisbane to devise and direct the show “Songs of the Hut”, a contemporary piece incorporating the works of Bruce Chatwin and Eve Langley. We had moving tractors, scaffolding, mud, water tanks…his sets were always outrageously sensuous and he pushed us to our danger limit. I have never risked so much as when I work with Douglas. He takes me into the land of the poets, drops me there without a map, and says, “Ok, find your way home”.
Doug’s vision was both local and global. The Douglas I knew was dedicated to deep collaborative practice, so in this spirit I talked to some other Brisbane artists this week: independent artists Brian Lucas and Dan Santangeli, and Liz Burcham of Metro Arts.
This is what they said:
· There aren’t very many honest reviewers in Brisbane and there are fewer who really understand contemporary theatre. In reading Doug’s reviews, you get a sense that there is a man out there who really "gets" what we are trying to do.
It is comforting to know that there is this man, out there, who actually cares about our practice and likes all the stuff that is weird and strange about it.
It’s easy to feel alone in this industry - Getting his review makes me say to myself, “I’m okay. I’m on the right track. I’ll keep going. Keep making work."
His history as an art maker precedes him and weirdly, it will now become a myth.
Dan Santangeli.
Liz Burcham writes
· Doug undertook his work as a writer with integrity… Yes he was a rebel but when it came to doing his job of critiquing performance work he did it with focused commitment. It was nothing for him to see a work multiple times in order to fully understand what the artist was trying to achieve. In this role he appeared to have such patience but I suspect that wasn’t so. He just loved the contemporary, and challenged young artists to be bolder — believing they were risk adverse in comparison to him and his peers.
I wanted to see his theatre-making craft first hand. He was to direct and co-devise Eve with Margi in the 2012 Metro Arts Independent Season.
With that acute eye for detail, wry humour and sharp conceptual thinking, there was no doubt that the rumour of his talent was true.
And finally, BRIAN LUCAS writes:
· Doug was a champion of independent work.
He didn’t only come to see and hear work - he came to experience it, to feel it, to think about it, and to reflect on it.
And – importantly - he came to write about the work.
To every performance, he brought a keen set of eyes and ears, a passionate heart and a razor-sharp mind.
His artistry came through in his words, and his words proved to be like gold to all of the artists he wrote about. He gave us a profile locally and nationally, and helped to validate and spotlight the work of a huge range of makers and performers. Doug was definitely a champion of independent work –
More importantly, he was a champion of art and artists, and his life reflected and radiated this.
I will miss him dearly.
We will all miss him dearly. That incorrigible, frustrating, brilliant and un-tamable bear of a man.
I would like to finish with a quote from our co-devised show Eve, which WILL be performed at Metro Arts in May 2012. Doug WILL be directing long distance…for his understanding is what I need, his vision and his irreverence…because…
That’s the worst of it.
I can only remember the fragments.
You come into this world expecting to find all men like the poets you love.
That’s the reason for our madness and confusion you see.
The world is still here. But the poets have fled.
Doug, you have now fled to that world of the poets that Eve writes about.
God speed.