At the age of 80, pioneering artist William Yang offers this wisdom: just keep going. The Queensland-born artist has done just that since the 1970s, using his camera lens to record candid images of his life and the queer and Asian-Australian communities he is part of. Yang is best known for documenting Sydney's gay scene, from before the city's first Mardi Gras in 1978 to the HIV epidemic of the 1980s, and more recently the gay marriage plebiscite in 2017.
After starting out as a playwright, in 1989 he began performing monologues accompanied by projections of his photos - a unique form of theatre which Yang has since toured around the world. The latest of these storytelling-with-pictures events is titled Milestone, and it will also be accompanied by an original score from composer Elena Kats-Chernin. Milestone will premiere as part of the 2025 Sydney Festival at the Roslyn Packer Theatre in January, followed by a one-off performance for the upcoming Asia-Pacific performance triennial in Melbourne, Asia TOPA.
Yang will perform for his biggest audience yet at Asia TOPA, which is returning after a five year hiatus. The audience capacity for Milestone at Hamer Hall is about 2500 but the understated Yang says he's quietly confident about the crowd. "I've never played to that many people, but I guess I've got a microphone, and I've seen monologues in quite large places .
.. It's just a case of holding your nerve," he told AAP.
Yang's Chinese-Australian heritage is one of Milestone's.
