My Life in the Theatre – and Afterwards

What follows is a copy of a 'talk' that my husband, ALLEN HARVEY, gave in Sydney recently, at the National Conference of the Australian Aphasia Association. Allen had written the text over the previous two months, and rehearsed its delivery for weeks prior to the conference, which had the name: 'Beyond Words'.

Primary progressive aphasia, the condition which is slowly eating away at the part of Allen's brain that controls speech, was the subject of one strand of the Sydney conference. Allen's presentation, which was accompanied by a slide show containing 90 photos, formed an interlude between papers presented by speech therapists with a special interest in this form of aphasia. The text of Allen's talk and a selection of photos from the slide show are included in this post.

Allen read his talk from a written text, because even though he can no longer converse fluently in complete sentences, he is able to read just about anything aloud from a written text – word-perfect, in this case. Indeed, one of the conference participants congratulated Allen afterwards, saying: "Your speech was so clear that I understood you better than any other presenter at this conference!" The training of a lifetime still serves, I guess.

Here, then, is Allen's talk...

I was born with holes in my heart.


The doctor told my mother: “He will not live beyond his thirties.”

Look at me now! 81 and still going strong.

I had my first open-heart surgery in 1962. Last year, I had open-heart surgery again. The heart was fixed OK, but I had big problems after the operation.

I have Primary Progressive Aphasia, and my brain didn’t like all the drugs I had during surgery. So! I was in Intensive Care for nine weeks.

The doctor told my wife: “You’ll never take him home.”

Well, here I am again! Just stubborn, I guess.

Aphasia is a sneak. I didn’t feel anything. I never had a stroke, and I didn’t get hit in the head like some others. Actually it made me laugh when I said the wrong word, or when driving my wife asked me to turn right and I turned left. At first, I took no notice. But my wife and kids noticed.

I couldn’t remember names. I would say the wrong word and even stutter a little. This went on for some time. Eventually, we decided to see a doctor. We thought maybe I had a stroke.

 I had a brain scan, and the doctor told us: “No, not a stroke. You have Primary Progressive Aphasia. There’s no known cause. And it will probably get worse.”

Let me tell you about my life, so you will see what aphasia has meant to me.

All my life I’ve worked in the theatre. Here’s how I got started.

When I was twenty a friend asked me, would I be in a musical comedy? “We need men for the chorus”, he said. So I said: “All right”.

I went to a rehearsal and I saw a lot of people of all ages, talking and laughing. Suddenly a voice called: “Attention, please, ladies and gentlemen. I want to do the scene in the ballroom”.

I found out this man is called the producer, and he tells the actors what to do. I decided: that is what I want to do.

In the Sydney paper I found the Independent Theatre in North Sydney. It pre­sented plays and also had a Drama School. So I started doing two classes a week.

Over the next five years, I learned stage management at the Independent by watching the plays, and I learned producing by watching rehearsals.

So that’s how I got started. After that, I worked six years in stage management, production and acting, in Sydney, Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide and Perth.

These pictures show a few of the shows I worked on.

I also did tours to country towns...

...and several tours of New Zealand

In 1960, Canberra Repertory asked me to be their Manager and Producer. I said yes. With my wife Meril (Grace) and sons Julian and Andrew, I was in Canberra for four years.

Next, the Elizabethan Theatre Trust and the British Council gave me a scholarship to study acting and production in the UK for one year. And the French and German embassies added some money.

And so I visited drama companies and saw plays, operas and musical comedies in England, Germany, Italy and France – one hundred and twenty-nine different productions. On my way home, I saw twenty more plays in New York and Canada.

Back in Australia, the Theatre Trust made me production director of the Theatre Royal in Hobart. During two years there, I produced about fifteen plays, one opera and two musical comedies.

Next I went as director to the National Theatre of Perth, and after that back to Canberra for a while.

Through someone I met in Canberra, I was invited to Hawaii to open a new theatre for the Bishop Museum. I stayed two years in Hawaii, producing plays, exhibits, dances and songs – all relating to Hawaiian history. I also wrote, produced and acted in a play about Robert Louis Stevenson, who came to Hawaii many times.

Back  in Australia I moved into arts administration, first at the Australia Council and then as Executive Officer of the Tasmanian Arts Advisory Board.

Then I wrote two plays – one for the ABC and one for a theatre-in-education company. I also wrote dozens of radio and TV scripts for ABC education.

And I wrote and produced a series of musical revues.

In Tasmania in the late 70s I also met my current wife. Carol and I have been together for more than 30 years.



  Our family includes my sons Chris and Julian, daughter Zoe and three grandchildren.

Son Julian marries Teri in September 2009

  

Daughter Zoe marries Brandon in July 2009

Another son, Andrew, died in a motorbike accident. 

Julian & Chris at my 80th birthday

Andrew Harvey 1959-1968

When I finally retired in 1996, I had been a director, stage manager or actor on one hundred and sixty different productions. 

For the next 10 years Carol and I lived and travelled in developing countries, where she worked on aid projects.

We lived in the Philippines and Laos, and we stayed in Vietnam and Cambodia. We would visit villages and schools. Carol says I was like Prince Philip. I would walk behind her with my hands behind my back, and chat with everyone. 

Now I have a new job: dealing with aphasia! I’ve had speech therapy several times. I had two semesters at a University clinic for people with aphasia.  

This year, Carol and I took part in an aphasia clinic on the Sunshine Coast for eight weeks. The seven couples from that clinic have now formed the Sunshine Coast Aphasia Group. We meet two times a month for conversation and activities.

At home, I spend my time writing memoires and letters, reading, doing word puzzles and computer programs for aphasia, and singing every day.

Sam helps Granpa Allen with his speech therapy homework

I also try to keep active. I go to rehab twice a week for exercise and therapy.













And I help Carol in the garden.

Well, that’s my life so far. I’ve gone well past thirty. Wouldn’t my mother be surprised!

Ode to the first day of Spring

It's been a long time since I posted anything here. So this is a modest beginning to what I hope will be my blogging comeback! Friends have asked if anything's wrong to account for my recent silence. Quite the opposite.

We've both been doing very well. Allen's been busily engaged in a rehab program for the past three months, and this will continue for another six weeks. At home, he's working every day on his presentation for the upcoming national conference of the Australian Aphasia Association in Sydney. (We'll post that here in a few weeks, with accompanying photos.)

As for me, I've been working many hours each day in the garden, making up for almost two years when all I had time (or energy) for was borderline garden maintenance. I'll be showing the results of some of my work in future posts.

For now, here are just a couple of photos of a few highlights on the terrace and in the garden.

This beautiful orchid was a gift to me from JW. For me it's a living reminder of her late husband, our very dear and much-missed friend RW. He grew these and other orchids, so when we visited JW a few years ago on our way home from Sydney, she gave me one to take home to Qld. Since then the plant has sat in a corner of the garden, in what should be a perfect microclimate, but it has never bloomed – until now. This year the plant threw up two long flower spears, each of which has a half dozen exquisite blooms. That has to be RW wanting to share the better luck we've enjoyed in 2010.

Not far away from the orchid, two of my begonias are also blooming. (I'll try for a better picture in sunlight; this one was taken as the day was darkening.)



In the light-coloured pot between the two begonias is a ponytail palm I offered to rescue from Zoe's terrace, where it wasn't able to compete with her showier native plants! I'm not actually a great palm lover – most of those I own I inherited with the place, except for half a dozen I planted around the swimming pool. But I am rather partial to ponytails because ten years ago, when I was recovering from breast cancer, my mother sent money with my sister, who visited during my recuperation. N had instructions to buy a plant for my garden. I selected a ponytail palm, and planted it near the pool. For quite a few years it grew and developed into a fine fat specimen. Then, mysteriously, something – I think maybe termites – ate through the 'bowl' at its base and the plant collapsed and died. Now, I have another down near the pool, but I'm still partial to this little orphan.

Finally, today, my little Brazilian cherry bush (it's not big enough to be called a tree) is in full flower. I included this fruit in an earlier post (Summer bounty), where I also showed a photo of the jam we make with it, which is a great favourite of ours. This year the plant is flowering so profusely that if even a quarter of the blossoms develop into fruit, we'll be swamped.

Even from way up on the house terrace, where you look down on this area of the garden, you can clearly make out the snowy appearnace of this little beauty. The hundreds, maybe thousands, of little flowers may be individually insignificant, but en masse they turn the plant into one big powderpuff. Now let's hope that mushroom compost I've just spread underneath the canopy does its stuff. There must be a dozen bottles of Brazilian cherry jam here!