Elara Rose Cusack is a Melbourne actor and radio presenter who plays Madame in Camp Therapy, an independent queer comedy satire currently in post-production, and co-presenter of Trans-creator Radio on 3CR.
Elara talks about the long suppression that came before transition, including the jazz ballet class she argued her way into as the only boy and then walked away from when she was cast in the boy’s part.
Of Camp Therapy, Elara speaks about the inversion of conversion therapy logic and what that inversion exposes about which behaviours get treated as normal and which get treated as a problem to be fixed, and what it felt like to make a film in a space that belonged to the trans and gender diverse people making it, rather than a space they were merely welcome in.
Written, directed and produced by Finnish Australian filmmaker Saara Lamberg, Camp Therapy is set in a world where queerness and transness are the norm, and follows a therapy camp run for people whose cis toxicities have begun to cause harm. The film was shot over ten days in Briagolong, Gippsland, with a majority LGBTQIA+ cast and crew, and trans and gender diverse people in the lead creative roles.
The conversation also covers philosophy as both a hiding place and a way out of one, the belief that creativity is not a talent some people have but something transition can unlock, and why so much of the joy in this community is in the making of things rather than the finding of them.