Hey, Barracuda! Queer TV in Australia, with Composer Bryony Marks
By: Liam Heitmann-Ryce
Tags: Television, Creative Non Fiction, LGBTQ, Interview, Music

Hey, Barracuda! Queer TV in Australia, with Composer Bryony Marks

The mind behind the music of “Please Like Me” and “Barracuda”

Image courtesy of Norman Parkhill, inSync Music

AUSTRALIA, BOTH AS COUNTRY AND CONCEPT, is something of a paradox. An enormous sunburnt landmass dumped at the bottom of the planet, a million miles from anything else, one would be forgiven for presuming the disconnected nature of its inhabitants. Yet this big red rock has housed some of the finest writers, musicians and artists in the English-speaking world, many of them well-regarded for their collaborations and joint ventures.

The big lonely landmass, then, understands the meaning of that old adage ‘no man is an island’. Composer Bryony Marks seems to share that belief, having worked on projects spearheaded by Australia’s best-loved and most highly acclaimed authors. With 2011’s Cloudstreet — adapted from the applauded novel by Tim Winton, an icon of Australian letters — and the ABC miniseries Barracuda listed among her composer credits, Bryony is a Komponistin with flawless taste in picking projects.

“I am drawn to projects which move me,” she says, “which speak to the human condition in all its crazy glory. There’s no one subject, genre, sub or dominant culture that particularly resonates for me. Rather I would say my favourite projects have shared an element of authenticity, of honesty, expressed in manifold ways.”

She is also an artist whose work holds a very special place in my own heart and head.

I was 20 years old when I first saw the small-screen adaptation of Christos Tsiolkas’s novel Barracuda, broadcast on UK television while in my second year of uni. Much of Bryony’s score is driven by propulsive guitar strumming and some more experimental ambience, offering a musical embodiment of our young protagonist’s triumphs, failures and incendiary inner turmoil.

Charting the powerful determination of gay swimmer Danny Kelly, the working-class child of Greek immigrants, as he navigates the latent homophobia and racism of an elitist sports academy in late-90s Melbourne, Barracuda deals with complex themes that the atmosphere of Marks’s music allows the audience to better understand. The small cue that leapt out at me in the second episode, “In the Pool,” really set the tone for just how prominently her music would serve as an emotional aid to this series: a minute-long sparkle of piano and guitar, it patters across a stunning lateral tracking shot of Danny flying over the length of a swimming pool.

Marks had read Tsiolkas’s 2013 novel before she was approached to score its adaptation. “What a visceral, frightening, complex, brilliant read it was,” she recalls. “In part a coming-out and coming-of-age story, with Danny’s richly drawn Greek/Irish family life in contrast to the frigid Anglo restraint of the Eastern Suburbs boys, it was mesmerising.”

Straying from the narrative of the book, neglecting Danny’s adulthood for a four-year period of his adolescence in the run-up to the Sydney 2000 Olympics, the series handles Danny’s troubling homosexuality with more suggestive deft than the shocking slap of Tsiolkas’s original prose. An astounding array of feelings pass unspoken, with many of the series’ standout moments presented in silent closeups or the pointed use of slow motion. The image of Danny playfully wrestling his aloof, wealthy new classmate into a swimming pool — and holding him in an underwater embrace as they slowly sink to the bottom — has forever been impressed into my memory.

The programme’s approach to societal divides of wealth, class, and sexuality at the dawn of the millennium was remarkably poignant, and remains one of my most influential viewing experiences as a young adult.

Unsurprisingly, Marks “jumped at the chance to work on this material with such a talented team — exceptional producers Tony Ayres and Amanda Higgs; and director Robert Connolly, who is rigorous, passionate, highly creative and communicative.”

A textbook example of Marks’s affinity for collaboration, she reflects fondly on how Connolly “extended me and challenged me, particularly in the long musical sequences composed for the swimming races. Everyone I worked with on Barracuda stridently wanted to honour the book, much the same way the cast and crew felt on the earlier adaptation of Tim Winton’s much-loved Cloudstreet. It’s hugely exciting,” she says, “and a little terrifying for all involved.”

Another major credit in Bryony’s body of work is long-running ‘dramedy’ Please Like Me, created, written by, and starring gay Australian comedian Josh Thomas.

Following a fictionalised version of himself, the show delves into everything from suicide attempts, homophobia, family relationships, and the funny, messy process of finding one’s place in the world.

As well as the creative force behind the show’s script, what ultimately drew Marks to the recording studio was the prospect of working with one of her favourite, long-standing collaborators — and indeed her husband — the director Matthew Saville. The husband-and-wife duo have worked on numerous projects together, and Bryony’s eagerness to work on Please Like Me was further heightened by her admiration for the show’s creator.

“Josh is one of the most honest people I know. Please Like Me’s hilarious and devastating take on coming out, learning how to live as an openly gay man — as well as its portrayal of struggles with mental health — as juxtaposed with the banalities and oddities of its characters’ domestic lives, was quite extraordinary to score.”

Such was the strength of their creative partnership that Bryony and Josh united once again for his new American show Everything’s Gonna Be Okay, “which has been fantastic to work on as well. Many people want safe scores that deliver a literal reinforcement of the action or emotion of each scene, but because Josh trusts me, I’m able to experiment.” This is an arrangement that has allowed her, as she puts it, “to play like a kid in a sandpit — which, as you can imagine, is quite joyous.”

In many ways, Marks is a composer driven more by emotion than any formal approach to making music.

Indeed, much like one of her contemporaries, Australian film composer Antony Partos, she is a musician in tune with the reactions drawn out of her by the material. “I think my strength as a screen composer is not the actual sound or style of the music I write, but more the response I have to the pictures.”

It was while enrolled at the University of Melbourne’s Conservatorium of Music that Marks says she refined her critical thinking, “which has helped me in the way I view the content of the stories on which I work.” Music, above all else, “is the primary way I express myself. As a very private person, I can hide in its abstractions and say everything I want to say. It’s an emotional outlet.”

Marks is one of the most purely emotive composers I have ever encountered through a television set. Her music has a beguiling hushed quality, creating a gentle sonic cradle within which the audience can house their personal reaction to the drama unfolding before their eyes, leaving those feelings to simmer quietly or sparkle sharply.

A chance encounter with Australian-German independent production Berlin Syndrome, broadcast on TV the night before I had an interview for a job in Germany, was another major bridge to Marks’s music. Set in my favourite city in the world, the film not only tugged at my heartstrings with its location shots of Berlin, but was an eerily prescient viewing experience on the eve of a Skype call that allowed me to live and work in one of my favourite countries. Few other moments in film have brought as many tears to my eyes as the closing minutes of Berlin Syndrome, as scored by Bryony’s achingly beautiful piece for string quartet “Out”.

The point at which Marks is now, as a commercial composer, is one she considers to have been “a dream run,” particularly given her minority status as a woman in a predominantly male-driven industry. Marks is keen to underline how clearly she recognises her own privilege as a “tertiary-educated, able-bodied woman,” and, unlike many of her female colleagues, does not “feel as if my career has been negatively impacted in any way by dint of my gender. Not only have I had plenty of work so far, but I’ve also been fortunate enough to enjoy creatively fulfilling work alongside exceptional collaborators.”

Above all else, Marks recognises her privilege and feels she is lucky to be where she is.

As a citizen of that big red rock a million miles from the rest of the world, Marks recognises the need for partnership and exposure, and is a keen advocate of platforming other experiences. “I’m so heartened,” she says, “by the initiatives in Australia aimed at diversifying and expanding the very limited pool from which talent has been traditionally sourced.”

She is proud to be a part of this change to the status quo, as a component in the presentation of media that portrays experiences beyond that of the “white, hetero, middle-class” majority. Having created the soundscape of Australia’s two most high-profile queer television shows of the past decade, she is a keen supporter of minority voices, “working with great people, who happen to be gay, on fantastic, meaningful stories.”

As a gay viewer myself, this is certainly the basis of my connection with Bryony’s music. I believe she is the sound of stories that are not always told, and need to be heard. At the end of the day, she feels simply grateful to have been given such exceptional opportunities within an especially fickle industry. “It wasn’t until I was 33, and pregnant with my first child, that I started working professionally, and I haven’t stopped since. Music allows me to contribute to the world in a way I find meaningful, and this seems the greatest privilege of all.”

It is a craft she is still learning, and she doesn’t believe she will stop learning. Between her own identity and the music she makes, “there is no separation, and that’s the way I like it: it’s all just living a life.”

And what a generous, evocative, sensational life it is. May I be forever thankful for all it has given my open ears.