Until very recently, actor and playwright Morgana O'Reilly’s preteen diaries were kept under lock and key.
It was the late '90s, early 2000s – an era intensely focused on body image, when photoshop reached new heights and a small selection of magazines dominated the conversation about women’s bodies.
It was the only time in her life O'Reilly had written in a diary every single day.
In her latest solo show, Stories About my Body, she read excerpts from them.
“That was probably the real start of where my brain was going and how it was so awful to me – how I was so awful to me,” she tells Kathryn Ryan.
Photo: Andi Crown Photography
An empty theatre is one of Morgana O’Reilly’s favourite spaces.
As a child she spent hours immersed in the world of contemporary dance, and in theatres as her mum – dancer Mary Jane O’Reilly - packed in before a show.
She first stepped on stage herself at primary school, playing the sun in Maui and the Sun - “And I am a Leo, so I’m sun sign, which is perfect.”
In high school she took acting classes, following years of tap-dancing lessons, and began to write.
“As you are in high school, sometimes I feel like I was older in high school than I am today, just the boundless confidence to just be like, I’ll write a play and then we’ll do it, and then I did it.”
When you acquire more skill, a technical brain, and are more discerning, you start to pull away from instinct alone, she says.
But it’s something to which she’s now returning.
O’Reilly has starred in several well-known television series including Neighbours, Housebound, Mean Mums, Wentworth and the Emmy Award winning series Inside.
She says as an adult, she’s really interested in the relationship she has with her body.
“I don’t know if that’s more than others, but I know that because of the industry that I work in there is probably a little bit more of an external understanding...it’s not the camera’s fault but I definitely am more aware of my body.
“I have got a body that is naturally a bit juicer and always has been, all through my teenage years especially.
“And then I had two babies, and my body has again changed and done things that...on the surface, I’ve found distressing...But on the other hand, it’s done such awesome things, it’s had these two babies. And it turns out I’m really good at giving birth.”
When you think about other people, it's very rare that you think about their bodies and how they’re shaped, she says.
“It’s in your own brain. Whilst I do refer to societal pressures, I'm interested in unpacking for myself why am I picking on myself for that. Nobody else cares, it’s not what other people see when they look at me.”
O’Reilly begins Stories About My Body with "a little something something just to get us all on board".
“Basically, I just try to make boobs funny. Because boobs are often not treated as funny, they’re treated as either very sexy or revered mum cushions.
“I move through all this, the body, the wrinkles, all of this stuff, I'm moving through it as a conscious person, not a terrified teenager lacking any guided self-reflection about the intersubjected Western ideals about a woman’s beauty and worth.
“This time I can make some decisions that might change the road and I can just be a bit more specific; my body is still a scapegoat, I still consider removing my double chin in a moment of pure self-consciousness but I think now I’m in a place where I understand what I need to do, I understand why I exercise now, I understand that it’s not to lose weight and go in a calorie deficit, I do it now because it really does shut up the demons in my head, which is a nice relief, and I can focus on other things.”
Solo work harks back to the bard, moving around each village, she says.
“There’s something really comforting in that for audiences, just to be told a story by one person is still quite thrilling. But in the same breath, you get to offer the spectacle of one person...it’s a trick.”
The overarching skill of a solo performer is understanding the sense of what you’re trying to say. You’re communicating to an audience, she says.
“You have to have a sense of a feeling for where the audience is at, keeping them running along next to you, sometimes just a little bit behind, trying to keep up, and then every now and then letting them ahead so that they understand more than what you’ve just said. It’s a dance in that way.”
