"Nobody can tell your story in the way you can."
Interview with author, performer and educator Jan Cornall
Following on my post last week about learning how to take a loss and not letting it overwhelm you, I felt it was right to mention that my recent conversation with Jan Cornall, an Australian avant-garde theater performer, writer and educator, delves into not only this topic but provides generous advice to writers and artists alike about how to make a life filled with creative work.
Jan is the first person I’ve interviewed in this series that I don’t personally know. She and I met randomly in one of those weekly networking forums that Substack used to host where you could potentially find other Substackers on here. Some of you who receive my newsletter met me through these networking “office hours” (I believe that’s what Substack called them).
I had posted during one of those office hours that I was interested in interviewing writers and artists about their lives, how they’ve maintained a creative practice and the things they’ve also struggled with, as well as any advice they would offer to others.
Jan answered the call and the universe connected us together. After learning more about Jan, I realized that I had to get in touch with her. The conversation we had made me realize how much we have in common. Like Jan, I have long admired French author Marguerite Duras, whose life she went searching for in 21st century Viet Nam. She wrote a memoir about that search, “Looking For Duras, Finding My Mother: A Mekong Journey” which she published on her Substack, Writer’s Journey.
Jan and I also both have a background in avant-garde theater and performance art, a love of international travel and adventure, and the art and practice of writing. I was in awe that we had so much in common. Speaking with her allowed me to see how generous she is with her advice and how interesting her mind is.
Jan’s work goes beyond the theater though. She is an accomplished novelist as well as the founder of Writers Journey, an organization that offers international writing retreats in beautiful places like Nara, Japan, Bali, Morocco and Queensland, Australia. She also mentors and coaches writers who, after working with her, have managed to publish with well known publishing houses around the world.
Her bio speaks for herself. If you’re interested in learning more about Jan, come spend some time in conversation with her and get to know her work and, if you’re looking for guidance as a writer or artists, how she might be able to guide your next creative work. She truly believes that “nobody can tell your story in the way that you can.”
P.S. The poet she mentions in the our talk below is Seamus Gilkey.
Jan Cornall - author, performer, teacher
Jan Cornall began working in theatre in 1969 at La Mama in Melbourne, Australia, then at The Pram Factory Theatre, becoming their first writer in residence in 1979.
There Jan wrote the acclaimed feminist musical, Failing In Love Again before taking it on tour with pianist/composer Elizabeth Drake. Settling in Sydney in 1980 Jan was a leader the women's comedy revival, performing alongside Wendy Harmer, Gretel Killeen and Denise Scott and showcasing her one-woman comedy shows, Woman On the Run and Standing Up Bent.
Awarded a number of grants and fellowships Jan went on to write plays and musicals for community and mainstage theatre including: Working Women's Lunch (for women’s worksites), At The Crossroads (about Australian farming women), Girls of the Reel (about Australian women in the silent movies), Binge (a show about teenage drinking), Housewife, the Musical (an acapella show for women of all ages), Escape From a Better Place (an absurdist comedy about the nuclear family), Hanging Onto The Tail of a Goat (the story of a Tibetan refugee).
From 2005 Jan taught writing at universities in Sydney including UTS, UWS, writer’s centres and community colleges and has taken part in numerous literary and performance festivals in the Asia Pacific.
In her early years (1974-78) Jan’s love of travel took her to the USA (where she joined an all girl Latin jazz band), Central America, UK, Europe. She didn’t come home for four years and didn’t travel again until 2002.
Since 2004 with her company Writers Journey, Jan has been taking groups of writers travelling and writing to international locations like Morocco, Bali, Vietnam, Laos, Japan, Bhutan, Burma, Tibet, Nepal, Italy.
Jan has written screenplays, a novel, a book of poems and short stories and a travel memoir. Her feature film Talk toured international festivals in 1994/5. Her show Take Me To Paradise based on her novel of the same name, was performed at OzAsia Festival In Adelaide in 2008. She and Elizabeth performed their 80s cabaret Failing In Love Again at Mardi Gras 2020.
At the age of 73 Jan is currently working on a novella, a new one woman show and planning her next Writers Journey trips for 2025.
Watch the interview here (also let me know what you think about the branding!):
Thank you Autumn for facilitating this most enjoyable conversation. I so enjoyed every minute of it. It was wonderful to compare notes as theatre practitioners, you the 'younger' and me the 'older' . As you say in the vid we could easily have kept talking all day. Thank you for your excellent questions and comments, for the places you were able to take us in our discussion. Wonderful too that this broadcast originated in Las Vegas, Nevada, because something I didn't tell you, is I wrote my first song in 1974 on the Utah border, looking out across the Nevada desert. My friend Ruth and I were hitchhiking to Mexico from Montreal and had gotten a lift in a big semitrailer with the road crew for Crosby, Stills Nash and Young. Yes true! they were taking all the sound gear from east to west for a big concert. So there's a little bit of history that links us in another way.