Vale Douglas Leonard, director, critic, writer, friend

This week we are celebrating Douglas Leonard's life. He passed last week, and his funeral celebrations will be on Thursday at 1pm (see facebook for details on Douglas Leonard's memorial page). Doug was to direct my solo show "Eve" one of the MetroArts Independent productions for 2012. Doug was a dense and deliberate writer and has possibly critiqued most art productions here in Brisbane for RealTime.  He had the uncanny ability to write about challenging and sometimes incoherent work  in an affirming way. He often saw things that others did not, and made the reader think broadly with different lenses.  And it was often what he did not say that resonated between the lines. He was the first director i worked with here in Brisbane. We both arrived in Brisbane within six months of each other (1989 and 1990).   He came to Brisbane to direct the show "Songs of the Hut", a devised piece incorporating the works of Bruce Chatwin and Eve Langley. Here is a quote from Bruce Chatwin from his Songlines, and it could so easily have been written by Doug: 'I have a vision of the Songlines stretching across the continents and ages; that wherever men have trodden they have left a trail of song; and that these trails must reach back, in time and space, to an isolated pocket in the African savannah, where the First Man shouted the opening stanza to the World Song, "I am!"' Doug 'trod'  the Australian bush and he was dedicated to deep research of Australia's artists and guests, constantly challenging his cast to  read seminal texts such as 'Songlines'.    He also discovered the writings of Eve Langley (it was possibly Anna Mac, his partner of decades, who guided him towards Eve and "The Pea Pickers"). In 1994 Doug, Anna and I created the beginnings of a new show, Ionalympus, based on Eve Langley's writings.  Eve was a prolific and descriptive writer born early 1900's.  She partied hard and worked hard, a bit like Doug himself.  We all fell in love with Eve, and 17 years later we decided to return to the work and  create a piece of work about art and artists, creativity and despair. This new show, now called "Eve" will launch itself in May at Metro Arts Independents.  Doug will, no doubt be directing it "long distance".  He definitely is capable of it...for he too has left "a trail of song"...