Transcript- Interview Jodee Mundy
Kathryn Ryan
Melbourne based artist Jodee Mundy grew up as the only hearing person in her immediate family, filling the role of interpreter and conduit of information in what's known as a CODA child of deaf adults. Her first language was Australian Sign Language and English, her second. She says for her family and the deaf community. Deaf, with a capital D is to have a culture of speaking with hands. She's turned those experiences into a solo multimedia performance Personal that opens to night at the Q theatre as part of the Auckland Arts Festival. Jodee Mundy says one of the challenges of performing to both hearing and deaf audience is to get everyone in the room on the same page. Jodee, welcome and thanks very much. Thanks for your patience too this morning. Great to have you with us.
Jodee Mundy
Kia ora G day.
Kathryn Ryan
Great to have you. And I know opening night tonight, so thanks for making time. Tell us about your family, Jodee in the first instance.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So my mum and my dad and my two brothers and also my mums sister and then also her husband and then my brothers wives are deaf and they come from deaf families and then I have nieces and nephews. Many are deaf and some are coda as well. So yeah, we're a bilingual family. And have been for like 3 or 4 generations now and I feel very lucky to grow up with such a unique heritage and and sign language.
Kathryn Ryan
And as we see your first language is Auslin the Australian Sign Language.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah, that's right. And it's not too dissimilar to nzsl. We all have the same. Route history coming from the UK. So yeah, we understand each other, but there are some, there's some dialect we do laugh at each other sometimes in our signs.
Kathryn Ryan
Yeah, yeah. It's just the same with a verbal language, I guess. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. What was your experience? And it's always been this is the thing. And this is what's so instructive to audiences not familiar. With the experience or we haven't had it in their families, what? You know, what was the experience right from the start with Australian Sign Language? Was there any point when you realised actually our family is, you know, special compared to others?
Speaker
Yes.
Kathryn Ryan
Others, others around us, even a moment.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah.
Kathryn Ryan
Awareness like that.
Jodee Mundy
Oh yeah, absolutely. Look, I didn't really notice any difference. I just grew up bilingual, I guess. But it wasn't until I was five years old and I was looking at some Barbie dolls. In an aisle in Kmart and I lost my mum and I was in my I remember being in my school uniform and looking for her and I went to the front desk and I asked the lady at the counter. I've lost my mum and so she sat me up high on the big desk and I remember my big red socks and my black Mary Jane shoes. And I was looking out for mum while she made an announcement on the microphone. And she made this announcement a number of times saying that Jodee is at the front desk waiting for you. Please, you know, lost child. Please come and find her. And it just felt like forever. Mum said it was only about 10 minutes but in my mind it felt like a lifetime and when mum finally found me at the front desk Basically she I had told her that the lady had made an announcement on the microphone and she signed to me. I'm deaf, you know that. And it didn't dawn on me. I didn't realise that being deaf meant that you could not hear 'cause. There are two very different things. When a deaf person signs. I'm deaf in in the community. It's done with pride. It's AI sign. I'm deaf. We have culture. Whereas in the hearing world it can mean cannot hear. It's focused on what they can't do to them, what they can. So yeah, in that moment the penny dropped and I realised that they were all deaf except for me. So I was kinda left out. And then I guess I've just spent my lifetime moving between the two worlds and this show that opens tonight..it is about that. And that's the real way to tell the story on my terms.
Kathryn Ryan
It's gonna say what happens on stage. Jodee, can you give us, you know, some examples of the journey you take the audience?
Speaker
Yes.
Jodee Mundy
On. Yeah, absolutely. So it's like a performance lecture, I guess, but. There's projection. So family archives old Super 8 footage, interviews with mum and dad. My brothers. There's an interview with me. When I was in primary school, there's excerpts of me interpreting myself so. It 'cause obviously. Sometimes I speak and sometimes I sign on stage and. I have myself also as like a hologram, interpreting myself, if that makes sense. So there's kind of two of me on stage in. Languages, yeah. And some part at all. And there's captioning everywhere. So it moves all over the stage, and it uses the aesthetics of the 1980s. When we go back to a time when there was no Internet, when there were no captions on TV when there. No interpreters. And takes the audience on a journey of a young child. Realising her family were deaf in Kmart and kind of the highs and lows of that. And how society treated my family? And how I managed that as a child growing into teenage. Teacher and audiences love it. They're deeply moved. Deaf audiences come out, really touched, you know, seeing a story from their own community. CODA's like me like, oh, my God, that that's me. And then hearing people. Who may not know much about the deaf community know, know a bit more and their eyes are opened. They they see not just disability, but actually yeah, there's a community here and a language and a real drive for self determination. Access and equity, yeah, so.
Kathryn Ryan
So literally breaks down some of those walls in. In some ways, just right there on right there on stage.
Jodee Mundy
Absolutely.
Kathryn Ryan
Yeah. Could you share a little more without giving the whole play away or off some of those experiences like it's a it's a. It's an incredible example that came out example. I can see I can see this moment of dawning for you about. Yeah, about the the, outside world. Right and and and what it what it doesn't get. And could you give us another example? . What you did have to navigate, particularly as a young person.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah, sure. Look, I mean, when you're a 5 year old or a 7 year old interpreting a a conversation with a lawyer for example, or you, you're in a doctor's room. Or in a hospital. And you're, you know, I haven't personally, but I know of coders that have had to tell their parents they've got cancer and their children. Yeah. And it's still. This still happens. Not not so much here. But say in America where you know, health isn't, health isn't funded.
Kathryn Ryan
Oh my goodness.
Jodee Mundy
So interpreters aren't either, so there's a lot of CODA's out there, and children of migrants, many children of migrants. Relate to this show. Where they are. Yeah. The one that has to break hard news. Because the support or the resources aren't there. Yeah. And you know you have to be there because there's no one else. I think other people may relate if they're a carer in their family, like children, carers or. Even people caring for their elderly parents, you know. So there there's this moment where you're kind of isolated and you're you're with your family and you're there because you love them. But yeah, there's a load there. And it's a hard load because it's filled with love and grief, and you want to make change, but you don't know how. And the only way really is to keep talking about it and telling our stories and sharing. That collective responsibility. So yeah, that's why I made it. I really wanted to. Open doors between between. World and and the hearing world. And so people can see each other better and more clearly.
Kathryn Ryan
How much challenge to put together the performance that would? Work for both audiences at once, just to calibrate just right. Obviously the sign language, there's video, there's photos. So when you were when you were thinking of it from a creative perspective.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah.
Kathryn Ryan
For both audiences was that particularly challenging or is it not as challenging as? As we might try and make it to be.
Jodee Mundy
Look, it actually was so I collaborated with an incredible team of artists. Many of them don't sign at all. And then there were a couple of deaf artists, and there were moments where there were clashes. Like we need to make every scene accessible. And it has to be the same for everybody. But in the end, we made a decision where, well, actually this is about my perspective. It's not about deaf people's or here. This is from my point of view. And in my from my perspective, there are moments where one will not understand the other. And so in the show, we chose to keep that there sometimes so. But there were things that only deaf people will get. There are things that only. People will get. So we can still make sure that people still experience what it's like to miss out and use exclusion as a tool, as a creative tool. Because so often I think people with disability, when we make theatre, were expected to make everything accessible all of the time. But I think it's important that we also use exclusion as a creative tool. Obviously not for too long. But yeah, when there are moments of like, oh, the deaf audience are laughing at something, there's an in joke and I don't know. I don't know what that is and what that feels like to be left out. And so I play with that. I play with that in the show as well, and they're they're done on purpose. Yeah. And I think, yeah.
Kathryn Ryan
Powerful. It's it's a very powerful part of the of the performance, yeah.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah. And that's from my point of view. I'm not. Yeah, they had to. Artists had to kept telling me. This is your story, not their story. And for so long, I'm always thinking about making sure everyone's on the same page. Age. Whereas initial, sometimes getting people on the same page is by them actually missing out on things so they can go. Oh, right, that's what it feels like to be left out. And deaf people left out so. You know, so I wanted to flip it. A bit for hearing people.
Kathryn Ryan
Those were the key words just there. Those were the key words. That's what it feels like. And that's what you want from theatre. And that's why we go to. Yeah, theatre as particularly as an artistic form is it's so intimate. Yeah.
Jodee Mundy
Yeah, it's a the show is. Sensorial in the you? You people will feel a lot. They'll laugh a lot. It's. Well, and the soundscape is incredible. Like we've got subwoofers attached to under the seating bank. There's like multi directional speakers. The room vibrates, it's really designed. To give deaf. That vibrational sense as well so.
Kathryn Ryan
Yeah. What it. The power? Yeah. What is the power of theatre, Jodie to you? It is a creative. Like, what's the life force of it if you like?
Jodee Mundy
Yeah, I. Look for me. I'm not kind of into the theatre. That sort of the play. I do like contemporary performance, so that might be a mix of installation and film and it's very 21st century theatre, if that makes sense. Look, it's the oldest. Form you know it's we we saw we see the amphitheatres we see ceremony in First Nations communities. It's the oldest art form to is to see. Wait and tell a story by the fire. It's how we acquire our language as children when we grow up, we learn through symbols and learning through copying and. That's how. Acquire language is through watching and learning. I've. For me. It's just that's just where my heart burns is in performance and ceremony and bringing people together to talk about harder things and making sure that everyone's there at the table or. At the fire. That it's accessible to everybody. Yeah, I think that's all I can say about it.
Kathryn Ryan
You're a powerful advocate, obviously, for the the deaf community for you have been for your own family, for the deaf community. You've been awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to the Arts. You're also advocating now for those with lung cancer and.
Look, in 2019, I was diagnosed with stage 4 lung cancer while I was pregnant and that was November, so it was just before we all went into lock down in March. So yeah, I was there with a newborn baby lung cancer in a pandemic. Which was massive and it's incredible. I'm still here. I I take targeted therapy. So it's a tablet a day. It's the latest kind of therapy. I'm responding incredibly well. No evidence of disease for 4 1/2 years. I'm not in remission. It's incurable, but I'm just responding very, very, very, very well. While there are people who have passed on that I know. But look, it's. Me. It's been it's been a real gift. It's given me a lot of time to think and reflect on what it means to be alive and what to do with the time we have here. And it was funny when I got sick, the disability community and the deaf community are like finally, you've joined the club, you know. Like it's almost been, it's quite easy for me to transition into because my body is not the same as it was and now identify as someone with an acquired disability. And it's funny now I'm kind of part of the gang, you know, and. 'Cause I was always doing this work in, in, in kinship or in allyship. But yeah, now I'm part of the gang and. Work very much around disability led arts and I ran a festival called Altar State, which is a disability led festival for Australia and and Altaroa actually at Art Centre Melbourne and there were over 100 deaf and disabled artists and. Yeah, I'm very excited by the art forms that deaf and disabled. People create. We've got stories that haven't been told yet and we've got things to say that will help us understand what it is to be human and how we can see each other more clearly, especially in a time where diversity, equity and inclusion is under attack. As we know by. Our friends in America and across the world. So more than ever, these stories, diversity, equity, inclusion stories are critical. To. Preserving or maintaining respect. So what it is to be a human being and yeah, just having a civilised society, yeah.
Kathryn Ryan
Jodee, the audience are you know are are in for an absolute treat, I'm sure. And and thank you and thank you for sharing coming in today. I know it's opening. It's. Busy day. The setup is everything else, but really appreciate your time go well.
Jodee Mundy
Oh, thank you. You take care.
Kathryn Ryan
Thanks Jodie. Monday and her performance is on at the Auckland Arts Festival. It's called personal. A very poignant personal story of her own, of being a CODA. And this is a performance for all. Through the various mechanisms used as part of it for def audiences and for hearing audiences, more details on our website r&z.co Dot NZ Forward slash 9 to noon.
