Jonathan Kneebone, co-founder, and director of Glue Society sat down with a suitably unconventional mix of panel speakers on 14 October at SXSW Sydney. He chatted with Josh Niland, chef and owner of Saint Peter; Suzie Miller, playwright, screenwriter and author; and Tim Minchin, actor, writer, composer and comedian, about why they all felt compelled to beat their own path in their respective creative fields.
The panel speakers have made breaking convention an art form, from turning fish into something unexpected to transforming the real lives behind law cases into award-winning plays and combining a love for acting, music and comedy to create unconventional performances.
Minchin’s Unconventional Path
Minchin’s career was based on being good at multiple things, rather than one thing. Minchin struggled with feeling like he didn’t fit in anywhere, but once he started experimenting and doing things no one else was doing, things took off for him.
“I wasn’t an obvious person for an agent or a record company to sign, because I was doing a bit of everything. Out of frustration, I did a show where I was going to show them that I was clever. It was called Navel: Cerebral Melodies With Umbilical Chords and it was part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival in 2003,” he said.
“That’s when I realised that maybe what I was doing was comedy because everyone laughed the whole time. I didn’t have anything particular to say, it was just fucking weird”.
When the Opera House asked Minchin to do a campaign for their 50th anniversary, Minchin’s reaction was that he doesn’t really do advertising.
“But then I thought, it’s the fucking Opera House. It’s not really an ad, is it? There was a big conversation about what it represents. The physical structure of it is so unconventional and in the face of the rest of Sydney’s architecture. We thought hard about what the Opera House meant to people,” he added.
Minchin worked with The Monkeys to create the “Play It Safe” campaign, which picked up two Silver Lions in the Film Craft and Entertainment categories at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity—and won the Film Grand Prix.
Making 10,000 Lemon Tarts
Niland followed a traditional path to becoming a chef, starting at just 15 years old. He went through all the training and cemented the foundations so he had a broad understanding of not just fish, but pastry and savouries. He left home at age 17 to move to Sydney and positioned himself alongside chefs who had attributes about them that made them special.
“At one job, I had to make a lemon tart every day for three months. Which is why, when you come to Saint Peter, there’s probably a lemon tart on the menu, and it’s just that PTSD of trying to get that lemon tart right,” he said.
Niland and his wife started their own business on their own. They opened the doors to Saint Peter on a slim budget and did everything they could to make it the best version of what was in their heads.
“We could decide to dry age fish and make things that other people weren’t making. If there was an investor or partner there, they would probably pick what would work, what salmon needed to go on the menu that gets all the people to come, rather than just a small audience,” said Niland.
From Lawyer to Playwright
Before Miller became a playwright, she was a lawyer working with homeless youth in Sydney’s King’s Cross. She wrote her first play because she “needed to” tell the story of what she was seeing. “I could see this invisible community that others weren’t seeing,” she said.
Miller’s first play “Cross Sections” premiered at the Old Fitz Theatre in 2004 before transferring to Sydney Opera House. “The actors in that play were saying, ‘this bloody playwright has got 300 scenes in the first act and 50 characters,’ and I went, ‘Is that weird?’ He goes, ‘Yeah,” she said. “I thought it was embarrassing that I’ve exposed myself for not knowing what I’m doing”.
“The play did well, but after that I had nothing. There were no women playwrights getting gigs. Because I went to law school, I knew that women lawyers were starting to gain traction. But I wondered why we weren’t having women’s stories on stage. People told me that no one’s interested, that women aren’t very good writers. And I thought that’s just scientifically incorrect!”
It was based on Miller’s anger that she decided to leave Australia for London, where there were more women playwrights getting gigs.
“But that didn’t happen until I did my 10,000 hours. I kept writing even when no Australian writers were getting good gigs. I think I did it because I needed to. I made sure to build those foundations in a way that worked for me, which was working three days a week as a lawyer and three days a week as a writer, and then being a shit parent for the rest of it,” she joked.
“Of course, we’re all suffering from hindsight bias and survivor bias, with my successful career it’s easy for me to tell you that everything is going to be just fine, but it all depends on what the market wants at the time. We’re all lucky,” added Minchin.
Luckily for the rest of us, it wasn’t just luck that got the group to where they are today. They all put in their 10,000 hours. Niland through making lemon tarts, Miller through writing plays constantly, and Minchin through performing regularly and experimenting with different forms. As Miller puts it, “We all made our 10,000 lemon tarts”.
