Henrietta Baird has experienced the blurry divide between art and life. A few years ago, the acclaimed dancer and first-time playwright was rehearsing in Cairns when she received a frantic phone call from her youngest child back in Sydney. Her partner, who was nursing a drug addiction, had vanished without an explanation. He’d abandoned her three sons, then aged 12, 13 and 15, in the process.
“I arrived interstate and had just received the phone call — when I got to the accommodation, I was so nervous that I just blurted out the story to everyone who was sitting around,” says Baird, who graduated from NAISDA Dance College and whose roots are in Kuku Yalanji/Yidinji country in Queensland’s Far North. “Imagine that you’re away for work and you have to get back because your partner is not there and has his own agenda and your boys are fending for themselves. One of the girls, Lara, said to me that I should really think about writing a script. At dinner, she recorded my story and we transferred it to paper.”
Baird returned to Sydney to hunt down her partner. She found him at the home of drug dealer and took out an AVO to make sure he couldn’t return to her house. She also experienced a torrent of conflicting feelings— anger, self-reliance, determination, maternal instinct — that changed her for good. Five years later, this experience became the basis for The Weekend, her debut one-woman play that was first workshopped at the 2017 Yellamundie National First People’s Playwrighting Festival and will premiere at Sydney Festival in partnership with Moogahlin Performing Arts and Carriageworks.
The play sees a young woman called Lara (Shakira Clanton) spend a weekend scouring public housing blocks in Redfern and Waterloo, in search of her partner who’s in the throes of drug addiction. Although the production is partly rooted in Baird’s rollercoaster journey, it also speaks to a universal female tension — choosing between the sense of duty towards her children and the career that provides for them. It’s also an unflinching look at the dynamics of addiction and the ways in which we can become complicit in dangerous relationships.
Playwright Henrietta Baird drew from personal experience for her new play. Source: Jamie James
“I made sure the boys had a cupboard full of food and had to find someone to watch them, so I could work those two weeks in Cairns and although some might say that’s selfish, all the work I do is so they could have a roof over their heads,” says Baird, who has performed at Next Wave Festival and, last year, collaborated with the choreographer Mariaa Randall and dancer on Divercity, a dance work that follows the ways in which Indigenous women carry the stories of their country with them everywhere they go. “When your partner is not answering the phone, you want to know if he’s cheating and it’s a horrible feeling. For me that was the breaking point. I couldn’t believe he could be selfish enough to leave my sons for three days.”
Baird says that this betrayal also led to a personal epiphany that has seen her evolve into a stronger woman. The process of writing The Weekend has also been helped her become a more courageous artist — one that values honest expression and vulnerability. It also led to a period of catharsis that resulted in emotional and creative growth.
“I realised that I was also an addict, but I was addicted to love, abuse and jealousy and from that point on, I changed my life,” smiles Baird, who is also performing in the dance piece Serpent/s, which explores the significance of the serpent in Indigenous and Indian cultures, this month.
“The Weekend is a story in which one moment, you’re at work and the next you’re at a drug dealer’s house waiting for someone you love and all the characters Lara meets reflect some part of my personal story. The play is a wild ride and when I was writing it, I cried every day. Since then, I’ve been single for five years and have [worked] on finding out about myself. But that’s why I’m not performing it. I really wanted to let go.”
Images courtesy of Moogahlin Performing Arts.
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