Barking Up the Right Tree

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Date Reviewed: 07/02/2025

The Motley Bauhaus is a tiny theatre at the back of a large pub in Carlton. Its intimate nature lends itself to powerful storytelling and heartfelt performances, and that’s exactly what ‘My Queer Spiritual Entropy’ (a play by Holly Rowan & The Wilderbeans) amply provides.

We are welcomed into our seats by an accompaniment of whimsical folk music played live by three child-like nature creatures. The creatures reveal themselves to be ancient trees and through music and story they begin to share with us the delights of the natural world and their places within it. We are educated about the hermaphroditic nature of some trees which possess both male and female parts within themselves and is something which makes that tree truly special, giving it the ability to self-fertilise and reproduce without external pollinators, ensuring its species survives.

However, this same natural and special ability in trees becomes something of deep concern when it happens in humans. Indeed, it becomes not just concerning but deeply antagonistic when anything happens outside of the binary of male and female in humans.

To help us understand that differences are natural and not something to be feared, the tree shares the tale of a little girl called “Holly’ who was once happy, wild and free, revelling in her unique nature but who slowly, little by little, squashes herself into the tiny gender box assigned and deemed appropriate by society, even as it slowly suffocates her. Holly is berated for being ugly, unnatural and ‘wrong’, rejected for not being a ‘proper’ female. Holly is told that their true nature is unnatural and offensive to the family, society and world in which they live. So they try to be ‘good’ and ‘fit in’, but it slowly erodes their sense of self and their connection to their true selves and makes them desperate, self-destructive and terribly lonely.

If it sounds heavy in parts, that’s because My Queer Spiritual Entropy calls attention to the lived experience of many gender-diverse people and is at times confronting, forcing us to look at our own behaviour, beliefs and binary-centric attitudes to the lives and gender, non-conforming ‘choices’ of our queer folk. At other times, the show is amusing, poking pointed but good-natured fun at the accepted roles of men and women in our society and challenging our unconscious compliance with those ideologies. Plus, nothing is funnier than a little nip at the narcissistic dark side of the personal development world, which was a highlight for me.

As a theatre-goer who was, at first, a little worried the show might disappear too much into ‘experimental’ with a side of ‘end of year school play’, I was both surprised at the complexity of the non-binary narrative and genuinely moved in several places – in particular when Holly begins to find acceptance both inside of and outside of themselves. My theatre-mate, for whom this is a lived experience, found himself reflected very clearly in the material and also shed a tear or two – such was the power of the music, the silliness, the playfulness and the raw beating heart of this eccentric, edgy but very poignant play.

I believe we, as a society, have to do better in many ways, and right now, one way in which we can do better is by learning to shake off the chains of the ‘two gender’ binary because beyond ‘man’ and ‘woman’, in the complex and often challenging landscape of queer identities, there is a vast community of people whose voices deserve to be heard. I urge you to listen.

To book tickets to My Queer Spiritual Entropy, please visit https://www.midsumma.org.au/whats-on/events/my-queer-spiritual-entropy/

Photography: by Anais Stewart

This year’s Midsumma Festival runs from 19th Jan to 9th Feb. For more information, please visit https://www.midsumma.org.au/.

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