Julia Gillard made history with 15 minutes of fury. Now it’s Justine Clarke’s turn
When Justine Clarke was preparing for Julia, the one-woman show about former prime minister Julia Gillard, she developed a neat party trick: she could recite Gillard’s famous 2012 misogyny speech word for word.
From, “I will not be lectured about sexism and misogyny by this man” to “The leader of the opposition should think seriously about the role of women in public life and in Australian society because we are entitled to a better standard than this.” All 15 minutes of controlled fury, indignation and withering put-downs.
Justine Clarke on stage in Julia. The play is an imagining of former prime minister Julia Gillard’s life.Credit: Prudence Upton
“It’s an endurance test,” says Clarke. “Just being able to sort of sit inside an argument for that long. I don’t know where she had time to swallow.”
Clarke listened to the speech every day as she prepared for Julia. She even had to change the way she breathes to deliver it, mimicking the way politicians structure their sentences.
“They breathe in the middle of a thought, so they can start the next thought without somebody interjecting,” she says. “So that’s been really interesting to see how [Gillard] pre-empts a response by breathing before, so she can push through to her next thought because she knows what’s going to come at her when she speaks.
“And just the stamina and the power of it. The dexterity and the fact it was off the cuff. I mean, she only did it once and I’m going to be doing it lots more. At the moment, I’ve just been doing it completely like a song, learning it like a song, which has been so fun and wonderful.”
Now, after acclaimed, sold-out runs in Sydney and Canberra, Clarke is bringing Sydney Theatre Company’s production of Julia to Gillard’s political home in Melbourne, followed by a run in Gillard’s hometown of Adelaide. It’s an experience Clarke is looking forward to, but is curious about, particularly as the political winds have changed.
Director Sarah Goodes talks to Justine Clarke in rehearsal for Julia.Credit: Prudence Upton
“It’ll be really great to see what resonances it has now,” says Clarke. “[When it premiered in March last year] that was kind of a new Labor government and things have changed since then, things have shifted, so it’ll be really interesting to be on the floor to hear it again.”
One of things Clarke – who is utterly phenomenal on stage – clearly remembers about the performances last year was the noise and energy that built up in the audience, who she describes as the “missing piece of the puzzle”.
“It was quite a personal response from the audience over certain things that were said about her,” says Clarke. “Or facts that maybe people didn’t know, things that they remembered, and suddenly they’ll have a collective gasp or groan or sometimes a little bit of heckling - never bad - and that gives me enormous energy.”
Justine Clarke in rehearsal for Julia at the Sydney Theatre Company.Credit: Prudence Upton
Written by Joanna Murray-Smith and directed by Sarah Goodes, Julia isn’t a straight biography of Gillard. It’s no Wharf Revue or the ABC’s derided sitcom At Home With Julia, but neither is it like Heather Mitchell’s one-woman show RBG: Of Many, One. It’s an imagining of the former prime minister’s life before that day on October 9, 2012.
“I start in the moments before the speech,” says Murray-Smith. “She’s about to start feeling that sense of absolute rage and righteousness. And she sort of goes back in time and tells us the story that leads her to this moment.
“So it’s not just a streamlined portrait of a politician, it’s really more about a woman who is coming to terms with what it means to be idealistic and ambitious. Because the idealism has to be compromised. That’s the way politics works. You want to stay in power, you’re making concessions to your own beliefs. And how do you manage that?”
Prime Minister Julia Gillard during her now famous misogyny speech in federal parliament.Credit: Andrew Meares
For a quick refresher, Gillard delivered the speech after then-opposition leader Tony Abbott said her Labor government “should have already died of shame” after he challenged her to sack then-speaker Peter Slipper over sexist text messages. Only the year before, Abbott had stood in front of signs that read “Ditch the witch” and “Juliar Bob Browns [sic] bitch”.
It was the latest in a stream of sexist abuse and double standards Gillard had endured – from fellow politicians, the media and the public. From the moment she became prime minister in 2010, her body and hair had been commented on. Her voice was mocked and one particular outfit was described as looking like “a cheap motel bedspread”.
So when Gillard sat through Abbott’s spiel in parliament that day, writing notes, she wasn’t just angry, she was ready to defend herself in a speech that has only grown in significance in the decade after it was delivered.
Initially dismissed by much of the media in Australia, the speech became a viral sensation. The Macquarie Dictionary broadened its definition of “misogyny” – from the old-fashioned “hatred of women” – to something closer to sexism “with a stronger edge to it”. While Guardian Australia readers voted it the “most unforgettable moment” in Australian TV history. Even then-US president Barack Obama’s staff have admitted to watching it whenever they were “really annoyed at Abbott”. You can even buy it printed on a tea towel.
When I spoke to Clarke and Goodes before the Sydney production last year, both women were in awe at the power of Gillard’s speech, not just for its content but for the theatrical way it was delivered. It’s a one-woman show in itself, veering between rage, high drama and, yes, comedy.
Playwright Joanna Murray-Smith with Clarke and Goodes during rehearsal for Julia.Credit: Prudence Upton
“She was at the height of her parliamentary powers and her oratory powers had been worked like such a muscle all her life,” says Clarke. “To hear someone in flow mount such an extraordinary argument – and the poetry of it, the rhythm, the repetition – it was striking.
“If it was me [delivering the speech], I would probably shout and cry and storm out of the room. But it was 15 minutes of sustained argument – it’s virtuosic.”
Would Goodes have any directing notes for Gillard?
“You wouldn’t want to touch it,” she says. “It’s so alive. Because, ultimately, directing is about working with the actor and the writer to make sure the performer has it in their atoms. So that when they’re stepping into it, they’re not thinking, ‘Am I going to put that there?’ You want them to be just channelling that emotional drive or the argument, and that’s where the magic is.
“And once you really understand it and get it, then you’re free as a bird to do it. Which she was. It was such control, but she was free.”
Murray-Smith was commissioned by STC to write the show, a co-production with the Canberra Theatre Centre, and before she started writing, she contacted Gillard’s office to let them know what she was doing. Murray-Smith had decided if Gillard said no, she wouldn’t continue because, “I felt, just on a woman-to-woman level, she’d been through enough without having any more anxiety”.
Justine Clarke on stage during Julia, which is imagining of former prime minister Julia Gillard’s life.Credit: Prudence Upton
Gillard, however, agreed. “She said, ‘I won’t endorse it. But I’m fine with you writing it,’” recalls Murray-Smith. “Well, I didn’t want her to endorse it. Because I didn’t want to feel beholden to her. I wasn’t sure how I was going to feel about her entirely. Because there were certainly areas that I was disappointed in, in her leadership. So, I was not at all uncritical.
“But once she said she didn’t mind, I thought, ‘OK, let’s run with this.’ It’s an incredibly audacious idea to imagine your way into the head of someone who is still alive and somewhat well known. But I couldn’t resist it.”
Murray-Smith then interviewed Gillard and they clicked. “I assumed that someone who had been so badly treated would be, quite rightly, defensive and wary. I couldn’t find her remotely defensive or wary. She was open, generous, helpful, and really delightful person to talk to. I wanted to just have a coffee with her and talk about shoes.”
The result, says Murray-Smith, is “absolutely my version. There are a few quotes that are directly from her, but not very many. And there are some quotes that were lobbed at her. And the chronology is correct and a lot of the detailed factual detail is correct, but all her ruminating in the play is completely hypothetical.
“But I’m hoping that it’s persuasive. Because the thing is, she’s never going to let us in. That’s just not who she is.”
The last word though, belongs to Gillard.
“Her last incredible statement [in the speech], is the thing that stayed with me,” says Clarke. “She just comes back to women – ‘You should think seriously about the role of women in public life and in Australian society.’
“She says we, she makes it about women. That last moment is just the clincher. And it was the clincher, in terms of when you listen to it, you just go ‘Oh, wow. Yeah, we did that, actually. We did think seriously about that.’”
Julia is at Melbourne Theatre Company’s Southbank Theatre from May 31 to July 6.
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