Last week, I had the privilege of interviewing Leah Shelton (Dangerous Goods, ON HEAT, Terror Australis) to discuss her award-winning play, Batshit, which returns to Edinburgh at the Traverse Theatre, 23-25 October.
Ria Manvatkar: What inspired you to get started with Batshit? I think it has to do with your family history and your grandmother’s experiences?
Leah Shelton: The story of Batshit is partly an homage to my grandmother who was locked up and given shock treatment and a bunch of drugs for wanting to leave her husband in the 1960s, so the show is very much inspired by her story. But also, there was a lot that wasn’t spoken about of her story within my family. I’ve also had this real passion and interest in the idea of the ‘mad woman’, that trope that we all know, that’s held against us.
I think because we had this story and we knew this happened to my grandmother I’ve always been drawn to these stories, and through the making of this show we did a whole lot more research into my grandmother and uncovered these medical documents that were horrific—much worse than we could have imagined. The handwritten doctors’ and nurses’ notes saying things like “Mrs Cooper is still dithering about whether to leave her husband, so I think the full course of ETC was warranted”. It was both very patronising and very extreme in terms of the treatments and the ways they treated her.
So, it was partly the way they treated her and partly an homage to the many women who were victims of that stereotype of being called crazy and hysterical.
Ria: Did you feel any sense of matrilineal influence throughout making the play?
Leah: Yes, it really does have that, partly because I wanted to tell the story in a respectful way as I wanted to look after my mum’s feelings. I was sort of agonising over this and so we actually just brought her into the rehearsal room, and we ended up making her part of the process, which was quite beautiful.
We ended up recording her talking about her memories, and I did this thing where I wrote some letters to my grandmother Gwen, and then Mum wrote a letter with a list of questions she wished she could have asked her.
Also, because I made all the costumes in the show—just reflecting on matrilineal lineages, my grandmother used to make costumes and outfits for my mother and her sister, and they would make them for me, and now I’ve made them in the show. So I was reflecting on this direct legacy being passed down.
There’s something we use in the show; it’s this face washer my grandmother made for me, lemon yellow with Leah embroidered in green on it which is this beautiful memento that I talk about in the show. So yes—there is a tangible thread of that going through the play.
Ria: did you at all feel the ‘weight of history’ of all women who have been labelled as mad when writing the show?
Leah: There is a piece that I do about sharing the history of women and their wombs and the idea of history, so yes, there is that idea of looking back. And then the show has a TV and there’s some old ‘60s footage which is interviewing people on the streets of Australia, saying things like “do you think Australian housewives lead a dull or exciting life?” We then reference things like the Johnny Depp/Amber Heard trial, where she was pathologised and she was given a psychiatrist’s diagnosis, and he was not.
What the show is trying to do is to show, on a continuum, where we are: yes things have changed, but are they better? Do we still have a lot of work to go? This has also been the impact with talking to audiences afterwards, I think rage, and they feel empowered, but also the way it’s important for us to keep talking about these stories, and also about language being so important.
The way we call someone hysterical, and I think I do it myself, or I’ll call myself hysterical or crazy. Or, of course, being told to calm down. I think all of those small things are on a continuum and the way women are still disbelieved in a court of law, particularly when it comes down to trauma or assault cases, or the way women are often disbelieved in a doctor’s office. I think we’re trying to encourage a conversation about how to make things better.
Image by Joel Devereux, provided to The Student as press material.