KATE SULAN

(She/her)
Theatre director and artistic director, Rawcus

12 November 2020
Wurundjeri, Woi Wurrung Country

I’m Kate Sulan. I am a theatre director and artistic director of Rawcus, and a mum of two beautiful girls. I feel like my experience of the pandemic has had all these phases and rhythms, and I think mostly my experience has been shaped around whether we are in lockdown or my children are home, being home schooled or not. It feels like a long experience with different qualities to each moment. I would definitely say it’s been really, really challenging, and that any cracks or anything difficult that was there pre-COVID has just been amplified and exaggerated, and that’s been really hard.

I think the hardest thing for me has been around the children. I have two children and they’re both adopted. My youngest child was adopted as a five- year-old and has been with us for five years, but it’s been a long, slow process of teaching her the world is mostly safe and predictable, that attachment and relationships are safe things to engage in, and that it's ok to trust people. And then, when COVID happened, there were a lot of rules and restrictions and uncertainty, especially at the very beginning. It really set her back.

As a unit of four in our house it’s been extremely challenging, but then there [have] also been these lovely gifts. So already, there was a challenging dynamic in the house. The youngest is very exuberant, and my eldest is a 15-year-old who is doing the normal thing that 15-year-olds do, which is retreat to their bedroom. So that just became a little bit more exaggerated in this time, but then as it went on and on, and we were the only source of entertainment, friendship, all of that, she came out into the shared space more and we started doing much more together. We’d go for family walks together after dinner. We found a different rhythm together, which was really nice. And so, that was good, but I think being a 15-year-old in lockdown is really challenging. She was just exploring how far she can move away and her independence, and she was thriving, and then to suddenly be home...

For us, when our family has been made in a slightly different way, to have travelled together through something, even if it’s something hard, has helped create our sense of being a unit. We now have a collective family story. We were a family in lockdown, and now have a new family narrative that I think will serve us. Even though the time together wasn’t always terrific, we've travelled through something together and come through it stronger. That's a good thing.

In a larger sense, I do hope that this experience will change enough of us to go, “We’re not going back to the old way. We're not going to work in that way anymore. We’re not going to do so many things. Yeah, we’re just going to find space in a different way and discover a different relationship to productivity.” I’m thinking a lot about this idea that the pre-existing cracks and injustices have been amplified both on a personal and global level – I think you cannot not look away from things anymore. I think that's a really, really hard thing but a really good thing, and I hope that we continue to see what has come to the surface.