‘Poofter-bashing’ was the ugly name given to a dreadful sport practiced across Australia throughout the 1970s, 1980s and beyond.
In the state of NSW alone in that time, baying packs of violent young homophobes murdered up to 88 men, their victims’ deaths now memorialised by the artwork Rise in Tamarama’s Marks Park.
In some cases, such as the recent trial of Scott White for the 1988 murder of mathematician Scott Johnson, those responsible have finally been convicted. Dozens of other cases remain unsolved.
The 1972 murder of University of Adelaide law lecturer Dr George Ian Ogilvie Duncan is one such crime.
Fifty years after he was drowned in the River Torrens – allegedly by members of the South Australian police – no-one has ever been convicted of Dr Duncan’s death.
Commemorating the anniversary of his death, Duncan’s story will be told in music and song in March as part of the 2022 Adelaide Festival.
Watershed: The Death of Dr Duncan is a new oratorio co-commissioned by Feast Festival, Adelaide Festival and State Opera South Australia, and supported by Arts South Australia. Initiated and directed by Adelaide Festival’s co-Artistic Director Neil Armfield, the work features a libretto by playwright Alana Valentine and novelist Christos Tsiolkas, set to a score composed by Joseph Twist.
Doing justice to a private life
Alana Valentine is no stranger to setting words to music, having previously written the libretto for The Street Theatre’s Flight Memory and co-written songs for Belvoir’s Barbara and the Camp Dogs. She said she jumped at the chance to work on Watershed after hearing Neil Armfield’s intentions for the production.
‘Neil said he was going to direct it; there would be a 40-piece choir on the Adelaide Festival Centre stage; and most intriguing for me, Neil said he wanted to use the oratorio form, which was really exciting for us. It’s a form that is usually used for sacred music and we were keen to embrace it as a gay form, a gay and lesbian and multi-queer form. So that was that; I just listened to him and then said yes,’ Valentine explained.
Christos Tsiolkas, who has written for the stage and screen before but never a libretto, said honouring the life of so private a man as Dr Duncan was both an honour and a challenge.
‘He was so enigmatic; we know so little about him. What we know about him is the murder – and that’s the right word to use. It was a murder that happened that night in 1972.’
Christos Tsiolkas
Like Valentine, using the musical form of the oratorio to honour Duncan was an intriguing prospect for Tsiolkas.
‘We wanted, from the outset, to use the oratorio form, the musical form and the element of the Requiem to actually honour Duncan through a lament; a lament for what happened to him. We use the oratorio form to do that,’ Tsiolkas said.
Composer Joseph Twist is a self-described ‘choir nerd’ and has considerable experience writing choral works. He’s also scored a variety of screen projects and arranged music for the likes of Missy Higgins and Kate Miller-Heidke, but admits he was unfamiliar with the story of Dr Duncan prior to beginning work on Watershed.
‘I came to it, shamefully, as a bit of an ignoramus, really,’ he told ArtsHub. ‘But I would venture to suggest that sadly, there probably are a lot of other young gay men in a similar position – though I’m not as young as I used to be – but I’ve come to discover how much of a literally watershed moment his death was.’
Duncan’s death shocked South Australia and in 1975 led to the state becoming ‘the first English-speaking jurisdiction to legalise homosexuality,’ Twist explained.
Under then-Premier Don Dunstan, homosexual offences were repealed, male homosexuality was decriminalised and South Australia established an equal age of consent at 17 regardless of one’s sexual orientation. Other states took years, even decades, to catch up.
Duncan’s martyrdom was the spark for this monumental change, but Tsiolkas says it’s important to remember that the mild-mannered law lecturer was far from being the only victim of such crimes.
‘It was Duncan but it was not only Duncan. This homophobic hatred had been happening for a long time and had been happening to a lot of people,’ Tsiolkas said.
Consequently, Watershed features the voice of another character who represents all those unknown others – a Lost Boy.
‘The Lost Boy is this character who’s there alongside Duncan and who [represents] all those queers who were murdered, bashed, violated who we don’t know about,’ said Tsiolkas.
‘And we still don’t,’ Valentine added.
The story of a city
One important aspect of the work, Tsiolkas continued, is the acknowledgement that it was Duncan’s social status that fuelled the public’s anger over his death.
‘One of our critical questions or responsibilities – without undermining the seriousness of the lament for Duncan – was to also say it was the fact that he was a professor that meant people got outraged. He had a particular cachet in terms of who he was, his class and person. Whereas, and to be really brutal, there were other faggots thrown into the river who weren’t as nicely presented that no one talked about,’ Tsiolkas said.
Valentine added: ‘Both Christos and I have written a lot about [the question], how does change happen? Because we’re both queer, because we’re both gay and have lived our life subject to the law, I am fascinated by how change happens.
‘Not just like how we say it happens, but how does it really happen? Who actually has the power to do that? And the oratorio kind of looks at that. So we have Duncan as the catalyst and we do try to embody him but it’s very important to realise that the whole piece is not a memorial just to Duncan. It is about the whole city,’ she said.
Ideas around community and belonging have been very much on Joseph Twist’s mind as he composed the score for Watershed.
‘As a member of the LGBTQ community the gravitas of this piece has really hit me a number of times, but then I calm myself down and dust myself off and sit in front of the piano,’ he said.
‘This is a story that that I’m honoured and proud to tell.’
Musically, Twist has written Watershed so that it is ‘accessible; so that it speaks to people directly’. Simultaneously, he wants the work to be ‘expressive and emotional and cathartic’.
He’s also written the piece with an eye to future performances. ‘I’ve really written it in a way where particular sections could be picked up by a community choir to perform, and it would be a stunning piece of music that they would eat up. I get the importance of it and the emotion of it and how it impacts everyone, and therefore I want to give back as well,’ Twist said.
Can art change history?
Valentine and Tsiolkas are also conscious of the future impact Watershed may have.
‘Justice for Duncan remains unsolved and we’ve got a very powerful song about that,’ Valentine said. ‘At least I hope it’s a powerful song. But I also really cleave to what Christos’s guidance all the way through this project has been, which is that one man’s solved murder does not in any way solve or obliterate all the other hundreds of gay and lesbian people whose lives have been destroyed, one way or another, by homophobia.’
The attention around the 50th anniversary of Duncan’s death (which includes a forthcoming book by Adelaide-based historian Tim Reeves, whose insights have helped inform the development of Watershed) might yet spur one of the guilty parties to come forward, Valentine acknowledges.
‘Maybe that would be a good thing. But we’ve been really, really keen also to not make this just about the police; to not make this a story about “if it was solved, then everything would be alright,”’ she said.
‘Yes, Duncan is a catalyst. He has been a symbol and he should have justice because that’s his right. But I also think that the work will make people reflect – with melancholy and celebration – on where we’ve come from and what has been achieved in the years since his death.’
The world premiere season of Watershed runs from 2-8 March at Adelaide Festival Centre as part of the 2022 Adelaide Festival.
