Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This is an ABC podcast. Now you say you're lonely You cry the long night through Well, you can cry me a river Cry me a river I cried a river over you.
Cry Me a River, sung by my guest today, Paul Capsis. On stage, Paul can transform into the great divas, from Janis Joplin to Judy Garland. He can also take on the character of a bingo caller or a trans sex worker. But Paul is, at the same time, so distinctively himself that he's also a muse for directors and portrait artists.
When he was growing up as a Greek Maltese kid in working class inner city Sydney, Paul was regularly beaten up. He was bullied for exactly the qualities that people celebrate about him today. His gorgeous distinctive looks, his flamboyance and his ambiguity. Helping Paul survive those brutal school years was the love and protection of his Maltese grandmother, Angela.
And some years ago, he created a Helpman award-winning show about her called Angela's Kitchen. I spoke with Paul Capsis about his life and story in 2018. Hi, Paul.
Hello, Sarah.
Listening to yourself sing that song, Cry Me a River, comes to mind.
I just think I wish I could have recorded that again and sung it better.
What do you mean? What do you hear there that I don't hear? Because it sounds amazing to me.
I just hear things like my breath control was limited or something in the recording. I think about the musicians foremost, actually. The first thing I heard was the big introduction and I thought of those three great musicians, Alistair Spence, Lloyd Swanton and Toby Hall, who played on that track. And they're so good. They're such great musicians to work with and to be in a studio with.
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Chapter 2: What challenges did Paul Capsis face growing up in Sydney?
He was part of the, now I might get this wrong, the Smyrna War in Turkey. and he was captured and he was a prisoner, I believe for around six years. He'd been shot. He could speak fluent Turkish. And then he went back to Greece and had been affected by the war. And he got into some trouble in Greece. He's from the south of Greece, my grandfather, from the Peloponnesus, from Birguelia.
And his father paid his passage, a one-way passage, to Egypt and to never return to Greece. And my grandfather never did. And then when, in the late fifties, when the Egyptian government forced my family out of Egypt, there was a possible chance that they could return to Greece, but my grandfather didn't want my father and my uncle
my father's younger brother to go to Greece, to go into the army, the two year forced army that they had to do. So he chose Australia because my grandmother had siblings in Australia, several, because when her, she had eight siblings and when everyone was forced out of Egypt, they went all over the world. She had a sister go to England, a sister go to Canada, three of them went to Greece.
Three went to Australia. So they went all over the place.
And in that era where you just never saw each other again, I guess.
That's right. Except she did.
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Chapter 3: How did Paul's family support him during difficult school years?
She won the lottery the year I was born, my grandmother in 1964.
She won the lottery.
She won the lottery in Australia. And she used the money and she went to see all her siblings.
Like a world tour.
And for the last time. And she never really saw them again. And that's what she did. I have these great black and white photos of my grandmother outside Buckingham Palace and seeing all these cousins and nieces.
That's not where her family lived, presumably.
No.
It was the sightseeing bit of the tour.
So, yeah, they're from Egypt, but they always identified as Greeks. And my grandmother, her ancestors are from a place called Volos. And from an area called Sangha Nava. And I was always fascinated by her life because, my father's life in Egypt as well, because so different from my other side of the family.
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Chapter 4: What role did music play in Paul's life as a child?
And had he found work in Sydney?
Well, it's a very interesting story with my grandfather because his father died in the First World War in a submarine, was blown up in the First World War. So my great-grandfather, Charles, was killed in that war. And my grandfather's mother remarried and they were also from a village in Malta called Goudia.
which is a tiny village and close to a bigger village called Rabat, which is where they lived. They lived in Rabat and they lived in Limdina, which is like the ancient capital, ex-capital of Malta. And I was there last year and I was taken to this place by a friend of mine who was doing research about her family. And I went with her and she said, you might as well come along and find out.
You might be able to find the original papers from your grandmother's trip to go to Australia. And whilst we were there, I said, my grandfather's brother migrated to Australia, I think in the 20s. And all I know is his name is John, surname Benisi. That's all I know. I've never seen a photograph, but he was the reason my grandfather was able to migrate to Australia in 1948.
So out comes this paper in mint condition document from 1925. She opened it and there's a photograph of my grandfather's brother at 18. Handsome. And he migrated to Australia in 1925. And he never returned to Malta. I cried because I'd never seen this man. I'd heard about him. And I knew he was the reason my Maltese family were able to migrate to Australia.
So my grandfather sent a letter to Sydney to the Maltese club in Darlinghurst. No number, just Maltese Club, Darlinghurst, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. John Benisi sends a letter, six months or whatever, he gets a reply. Yes, come, but come by yourself. Because your wife, you may not like Australia, it's very different from Malta. And that's how that happened.
So last year I got to see the face of this uncle.
With those two different ethnic groups, how did your mum and dad meet?
Well, I think my mother was attending a dance. There was a club. I can't remember the name. And I think my father, my mother was, um, my mother was 17 when she met my dad and he was 18. And she was a virgin and they had her first sexual experience and she got pregnant.
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Chapter 5: How did Paul's Maltese heritage influence his upbringing?
The initial one was from boys, always from boys, you sound like my sister. And I'd be like, is that bad? At that stage it was just a verbal thing. But then it got physical. And the older boys were... a problem because they couldn't stand me. And I was still a performing kid. I remember there was this girl in my class, Susan, and her and I, we did this dance together.
And she was blonde and from the Ukraine, I think. Her and I did this dance to this soundtrack, Popcorn. And we went around the classes, touring the classes. So it still kept going, this thing. The problem was my voice and I sounded female and I was called this thing called a pufta. I didn't even know what that was. I had no idea. about any of that.
And that's another thing about the public school. I was so protected or naive by my Maltese family, my Greek family, I didn't even know any of that stuff, sex. I didn't know anything about sex because I was a kid and didn't know. But I found out at that school on the playground. And then I found out, you know, I was different and that I was strange. And I remember going home
and turning on the light and looking in the mirror, in my grandmother's mirror, and I would be looking for this thing that they all saw. I was trying to see it in the mirror. And I remember distinctly just studying my face, my hair, and I'd be looking at myself in the mirror for a long time trying to find what it was that made me so hated at school. And all I saw was this plane.
I saw myself as plane. I just thought, I don't even have an interesting nose. Back then. Of course, the nose kept growing as I got older. And I couldn't find it. So I was confused.
About why there was such anger and such violence towards you.
I mean, I got an idea, I guess, from the Greek side of my family, from my father, that... Boys are boys and you're meant to be a boy. And I remember very young, I thought I was a girl when I was very young. And I dress up in girls' clothes and my grandmother just let me be because she saw me as a child and I was just playing and having fun and I was quiet, wasn't making trouble.
You know, and she let me be. But then I discovered that I was this thing called boy, a boy. And it came as a shock and a disappointment. But then I had the thing at school. So then I thought, whatever it is I am, people do not like me. They don't like me for this thing that I am.
You know, so after the belly dancing, that all just ramped up and then it just stayed there until I left school pretty much. Until about year 10, because by year 10... most of the boys who were the type of boys who would go out of their way to call you something or to hit you or punch you or bash you, they, most of those boys had left by year 10. So year 11 and 12,
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