Botanical Gardens

The day was spent designing and interviewing strangers (as they enjoyed a quiet moment) in the Adelaide Botanical Gardens.

Below is Sally's reflections.

I have really enjoyed the past few days. It has been really great to meet like-minded artistic fellows. I have always been intrigued by real people and real life, not make believe or 'Hollywood' stories. In the past few years I have loved the films I have been watching (mostly foreign) that have been really 'simple' stories about 'everyday' people. For me that is the most interesting.

I love to delve into the lives of people just living their lives. The last film I can recall enjoying was simply about a Turkish man living in a small rural town close to the Armenian border. He was a wild bee-keeper and the film just narrated his life as a bee-keeper and his son and wife.

Stories that are not filled with SO MUCH action, that are real and with real people. People who are thin, fat, beautiful, ugly, slow, fast, tall, short etc etc stories that portray people not this ideal of people that our social societies have created. Beauty is found within existence. What makes us go on, be real, be honest?

I was moved today by our interviews with the public. That last man I interviewed was magic. He was a poem waiting to be written; a painting waiting to be painted, and he told us just honest things about life...and his experience with life....

Anyway...the workshop this past week has made me think a lot - when I'm home making dinner or driving home it makes me feel glad and thoughtful, so that's the kind of theatre I want to be involved with...nice!

Sally Miller, artist