2013: A year of development and planning ahead

2013 was always supposed to be a planning year. A writing year. I wasn’t going to put on any shows in Melbourne. I was going to write a lot and aim to get work on in 2014 and beyond.

The biggest project this year was “Who Are You Supposed To Be” for the Edinburgh Fringe. That was on the cards from late 2012, but even from a distance it felt like as much work as putting on a show here. It had to be written. Then Jen had to find a director and another actor. And I wrote press releases and sent them all over the place – trying to get publicity and critics to the show.

Being a Doctor Who-themed show, the publicity almost generated itself. 50^th Anniversary. Change of actor announcement. And the director and other actor we found were perfect for the show.

Then the gang put the show on in London in November for a short season and it sold really well. And more great feedback from our audiences.

It’s weird that I didn’t see the show, but then that happened quite a bit this year. Short & Sweet Sydney. Short & Sweet Townsville. The University of Western Michigan’s Directors’ Festival.

The only production of a play of mine in Melbourne was “About Time”, which popped up at Melbourne Fringe as part of the Bite Sized Theatre series at Broken Mirror.

I did have two readings here, both at the Owl & Pussycat – a development reading of “Who Are You Supposed To Be” and as part of Cold Readings, the first public read of “A Modern Superwoman”.

“A Modern Superwoman” also went to Adelaide for five.point.one’s Reading Sessions. And I went over for that.

Development of “A Modern Superwoman” is nearly two years old now, though the story dates back a long time. And I’ve recently secured a director to direct its premiere production... in 2015. When you want to work with the best, sometimes you have to wait. And I’m happy to wait.

But in the meantime, we’ll use 2014 to make the play as good as it can be – and try to get some development funds to work with the dream cast we’re hoping to put together.

The other project I’ve been working on is a film script. One of my goals for this year was to write/develop/make a short film. Which reminds me, I’m actually working on two film scripts at the moment – a short film version of a short play of mine (that’s never been made) and a feature film script.

I’m always hesitant to talk about works-in-progress, especially when scripts are in flux and you never know what projects are going to go and which ones are going to stall. I’m pretty confident both of the film scripts are in good hands.

Making a short film (which I’ve done in the past, but only as part of the 48 Hour Film contest) was for me to have a project I could show to the world. Theatre shows close. Filming them doesn’t replicate the experience. And a short film seemed like a reasonable way to accomplish what I wanted.

I’ve been hesitant to spend time writing a feature film script, because I spent a lot of my twenties doing that – only to have it not lead anywhere. Plus, if I write a play, I can stage it myself if I have to. Films take a lot more time. And having not written a feature length screenplay in a while, the process of writing it is a lot harder. Not that my plays don’t torture me sometimes, but this screenplay was tough. But, first draft done. And I like re-writing a lot more than I like writing.

I was approached to write this feature by a producer friend of mine, who had a director friend that was looking for a new project. They approached me with a concept and then allowed me to take that away and add in elements that would make it feel more like a project I wanted to write. Not that I didn’t love the concept of what they came to me with, but it took some thinking about.

We worked on the story together – originally it was only going to be a short, but after I wrote up the treatment it was a lot longer than a short. And then we decided to make it a feature and we discussed how to flesh out the concept.

And then I had two months to write draft one. Having outlined the whole film, which is something I don’t tend to do on projects I initiate myself, the writing of the first draft was relatively fun and easy. But it seemed to get harder as it went along, just simply because a film is so different to a stage play – and the genre of this piece is wildly different from anything I’ve written before.

But I love a challenge. First draft is done and emailed to producer and director tonight. I await their notes. The working title is “The Dead End” – but that’s all I want to say about that right now.

And while I’m waiting to develop “A Modern Superwoman” and re-writing “The Dead End”, I’ve started to develop a new immersive theatre work with my old theatre producing partner, Wallis Murphy-Munn. That’s been on the drawing boards for a while now, but the idea is starting to click. I’m a bit protective of that project, so I don’t even want to tell you the working title.

It’s been a really fulfilling year for me creatively. A lot different from 2012. But I’m always trying to flex different creative muscles and that’s what has been satisfying this year – trying new things and spending time making projects they best they can be before releasing them to the world.

Visiting Jesse & Celine: Before Midnight

Celine & Jesse watch the sun set

I’ve known Jesse and Celine for eighteen years now. I met them at the right time, I think. We were similar back then. Their passions and intrigues and romantic notions were similar to mine. They are two or three years older than me, but that’s not much in the scheme of things.

I don’t remember who I shared their first story with. My friends from the mid-90s say they don’t remember Jesse and Celine. Perhaps I met them with a friend with whom I’ve lost contact in the years since? Much like Jesse and Celine lost contact after their first meeting in Vienna.

Nine years later, I saw with the couple again. This time, their lives and my life were very different, though our concerns were still similar – our fixations on the troubles of the world and our discovery that our lives weren’t going to turn out quite the way we expected.

I had, admittedly, never expected to see them after they parted ways in 1995. When I heard they were reuniting in 2004, I was worried. What if the second time wasn’t as good as the first? What if they’d changed too much? What if they didn’t like each other or I didn’t like them?

But as I left them alone in Celine’s apartment, even though that moment was ambiguous, I knew we would see them again. I knew, at least, this time they would not lose touch.

I saw Jesse and Celine together again this year. This time, in Greece. A lot has changed in their lives. A lot has changed in mine, too. They are in their early 40s – I’m not quite there yet. They seem settled, but maybe not comfortable. Their relationship seems stronger, and more brittle at the same time.

No, not brittle. It’s full of the emotional connection that time brings. It’s volatile because of the history they have and the commitments they have made. It’s passionate because it’s love.

The details of my life and their lives are entirely different now. I still love them, though. I’ve known them for eighteen years, after all. I can forgive them their foibles and their bouts of selfishness. I know, deep down, that they love each other. And when they fight, they are the arguments of people who fit together and who work together.

Even when Jesse calls Celine “the mayor of crazy town” and Celine tells Jesse she doesn’t love him anymore, I know it’s borne out of two people who have a lifetimes’ worth of ammunition. Sometimes they don’t know when to use it and when to hold back.

What I liked about catching up with them this time was seeing them not only in a new place but in a new context. We meet other people who are part of their lives, both familial and friendly. This is not just one night in Vienna or ninety minutes in Paris. This is a full day, the last day of a holiday – with  all the joy and regret the final day of vacation can bring. Yet again, they aren’t in their real lives – they are on the precipice of going back to work, taking new jobs and returning to a routine neither of them are quite satisfied with.

They are, after all these years, still a pleasure to be around. They might argue now more than they ever have before, but they also know each other better than anyone else in the world – they can make each other laugh, they are so comfortable with each other, they fit. Sure, there are tensions, but what relationship doesn’t have little tensions throughout a day.

It took me a while to write about reuniting with Jesse and Celine this year. On first thought, it was a bit too painful; it was worth doing, but it was raw in a way my other visits with them never have been. And that negative emotion overwhelmed my memories of that day we spent together.

Thinking back only a couple of months, I have to remember that this time is much like the last two times. This is just a day in their lives. This is just another day out of hundreds of days. If it were just the third in a film trilogy, it might be a dramatic finale. But if it is just another chapter in a book – or another book on Jesse’s bio page, it’s not the beginning or the end, but just the middle. The continuation of two lives.

And if it is just a continuation, if it is just another day, if I get to meet Jesse and Celine again in nine years time, the pain of the arguments they had on that last day in Greece will dissipate. And as with every time I have left them before, I’m never sure if it’s the end for them or not. I guess that’s fitting.

A remarkable ode to the unremarkable: Nature Theatre of Oklahoma's LIFE AND TIMES

One of my favourite novels & films about the act of writing is Wonder Boys by Michael Chabon, where the character of Grady Tripp is in the midst of writing his second novel – which has reached thousands of pages long with no end in sight. The key moment in the story is when Tripp realises that writing is about making choices and the mid-life crisis he’s having is blocking is ability to make those choices, both in life and on the page.

Nature Theatre of Oklahoma’s Life and Times (Parts 1 to 4) is full of a lot of very deliberate choices, particularly in the creation and development of the script – but also in its direction, production and acting styles. But where it reminds me of Wonder Boys is in its unfinished nature and its insistence that it not conform to typical narrative tricks or structures.

Life and Times is the story of the life of one of the ensemble of actors who works with the Nature Theatre of Oklahoma. She has been interviewed by phone by the artistic directors of the company and the show has been developed around these recordings. Parts 1 to 4 comprise a marathon 10 hours of theatre, though it was presented in Melbourne in both three parts across a number of nights – as well as the full four parts in a day, which I attended last Saturday.

When the project is completed, there will be anywhere between 10 and 16 parts that stretch across a full twenty-four hours of experience. Part 4.5, for example, is a short animated film. Part 5 is a book for the audience to read in the theatre. Melbourne Festival only presented parts 1 to 4.

What we see on stage is a replication of these recording about this life, a typical middle class, white suburban life. The stories are embellished by theatrical trickery, to enhance our experience of interacting with these words – but in another way, what we get is very raw.

There’s been no attempt to sanitise the language or polish it up to make it feel theatrical or dramatic. As many of us would do, when trying to recall all the parts of our lives from birth through the later teenage years (the show so far), the speaker punctuates a lot of her stories with “ums” and “like” and nervous laughter.

Early on, I thought I might get tired of hearing so many of these awkward moments – moments that playwrights would normally polish out or not even put on the page to begin with. Dialogue on stage is most usually artiface, even when a writer is striving for naturalism. Life and Times strives for hyper-naturalism with the recreation of this exact phrasing, even though the rest of what we’re watching on stage is as far from natural as you could expect.

But as the show progressed, I fell under its spell. It is genuinely funny and uplifting. There are moments of darkness, but it doesn’t tend to dwell in them. The actors are fully commited to telling this story, while also embodying this woman’s life through deliberately choreographed movement and dance – and in parts 3 and 4, parody and farce.

The thing about telling the story of an unremarkable life, though, is the many moments that evoke memories of the audience themselves. As a playwright, some of my writing is inspired by moments in my life – even if it’s just based on a feeling, rather than anything resembling my actual experience. And in writing, I strive to tell stories that will connect with audiences. Usually, though, the point of storytelling is often to transport the audience. With this show, it feels genuinely like they want the audience to regress, to remember and to fill those awkward, repetitious moments with memories from their own childhoods.

The ten-hour marathon was broken up by three intervals, including a dinner break where hamburgers were prepared by the actors in the show. And much of the audience at the Saturday marathon was made up of actors, writers and directors of the Melbourne and Australian theatre-making scene. The sense of community was palpable. We were in this for the long haul. We wanted to be witness to this life and where it was headed.

Of course, unlike most theatre where stories end, Life and Times is still part way through its creation. The subject still lives. The show is still in development. And it’s a long way from completion.

But,  in the meantime, the first four chapters of this unremarkable life is told in a theatrically remarkable way. And all those “ums” and “likes” and awkward “hahahas” are gaps into which our own memories flood, making connections in her life, in their lives and in ours that were not apparent before we were witness to this extraordinary show.

What I saw, you won't see: The Rabble's ROOM OF REGRET

Room of Regret
Photo by Guy Little

I want to tell everybody to rush out to see The Rabble’s Room of Regret at Theatreworks.

But I need to warn them they will not see the show I saw.

I want to try to explain what I saw and how I felt.

But I don’t want to give anything away.

I want to see it again.

But I don’t.

Room of Regret, The Rabble’s response to Oscar Wilde’s “The Picture of Dorian Gray,” is an immersive theatre piece that explores notions of vanity – but refuses to let you see the whole picture. The audience is broken up into small groups, led to one or other of the many rooms – and then the show asks the viewer to confront hilarious, graphic, absurd and brutal scenes, while refusing to give anything away. At least, to begin.

And yet I know some audience members never left the seat they were first assigned. I know some who were given freedom to explore, didn’t explore. I know there were moments too gross to watch and some too brutal to look away from.

Our reaction to theatre is always our own. We bring our own lives to that performance. Critics can’t be objective; their reviews are subjective – beholden to their own experiences. And theatre, that tricky and ephemeral beast, is always changing, never static. Each night will be different, because live performance changes with the energy of the actors and the energy of the room.

An audience can always change a performance. Do they laugh at the right or wrong places? What are the right and wrong places? Do they engage with one actor’s performance or another? Do they allow being taken by the hand from one room to another and another? Or do they slink quietly into their seats to just observe?

There was a moment early in my experience of Room of Regret that was dark and intimate and very confronting. And because of that moment, the rest of the show resonated with me in a deeply personal way. Had I been deprived that one moment, I’m not sure how much I would have enjoyed the show. I’m not sure how I would have experienced it at all.

But because the veil had been lifted and my eyes were clear, I felt more deeply what they were saying about vanity and celebrity and self-perception and sexuality – in The Rabble’s own dreamlike/nightmarish way.

I could tell you about Room of Regret, but I’d only be telling you about the show I saw – which will not be the show you see. What I saw, I loved.

But, if you missed it, I couldn’t even tell you what you missed.

Room of Regret runs until November 3. I saw it last night at its first preview.

"What the fuck was that?" My opening lines of dialogue

I've just copied down the opening lines of dialogue from all of my plays, just to see if there was any pattern. I'm not sure if I've learned anything from this yet... let me know if you spot anything significant.

“So many of my days feel like they are repeating themselves.” – About Time  

“I’ve got to go.” – Cleopatra’s Shadow  

“The sun has just exploded and the Earth has eight minutes until it feels the effect.” – Eight Minutes  

“You have to imagine this place is packed.” – everything. First time for...  

“Sorry for the wait.” – The Fidelity Act  

“Where were you last night?” – It’s Not the End of the World  

“When I’m not Lady Macbeth, I’m a figure in my husband’s art.” – Lady M  *

“I set fire to a brothel once. “ – Like a House on Fire  

“My mother was born into a cage and she was raised there.” – A Modern Superwoman  

“Throat cancer.” – The New Normal  

“There once was a girl from next door / Who moved in when she was four...” – Poems a Dead Boy Wrote  

“Excuse me, sir? Do you have the time?” – Richard Di Gregorio: On Time  

“I have a two hour break on Thursday afternoon, where I need to get to the library, stand in the lunch queue and be on the other side of campus for my three o’clock tute.” – Sibling Loyalty  

“I know. I’m early. Eight, forty-five.” – The Twelfth of Never  

“This is exactly how it was. A hot day. Those two sitting side-by-side.” – [untitled]

“What the fuck was that?” – who are you  

“Who are you supposed to be?” – Who Are You Supposed To Be?  

“Remember the letter I sent when I was thirty? That was five years ago for me... I hope you get these in the right order!” – You Will Be Kissed By Princess Leia  

* technically the first line of dialogue of Lady M is "Come you spirits, that tend of mortal thoughts..." - but I stole that

4 Shows: Savages, The Cherry Orchard, Columbine, night maybe

We’re two-thirds of the way through the year and a quick look at the theatre I’ve seen this calendar year, I’m almost certain that many – if not all – of my Top Five shows of the year, I have seen in the last couple of months. Across main stage and independent theatre, I’ve been quite disappointed in the quality of shows I’ve seen in Melbourne. Until recently.

The tide began to turn with MTC’s Neon Festival and ever since then, I’ve been much more impressed. Here’s some thoughts on shows I’ve seen recently.

SAVAGES

Patricia Cornelius and Susie Dee have designed a confronting but poetic examination of masculinity and misogyny at 45 Downstairs. The angled stage is disconcerting to look at even before the four men begin to prowl around it, but this simple design choice adds a lot of weight to Cornelius’ already dense script. The four characters are beautifully delineated, even though they have so many thoughts and instincts in common. What I loved most about it was Cornelius’ use of language, to heighten the experience, but to also dig under our skin and expose the dark heart of these average blokes.

Until Sept 8th at 45 Downstairs

THE CHERRY ORCHARD

Simon Stone may be controversial when the matter of adaptations arises, but when examining his work as it stands, he’s one of our most exciting directors. This somewhat modernised adaptation of Chekov’s classic play is entirely faithful to plot and character, but beyond that the design and direction is bold and very memorable. The stark white frame enlivens the comedy but makes stark the tragedy that is befalling the family. The cast is superb and I love the way that Stone plays outside inside the proscenium. This didn’t change my world, but it did reaffirm that Stone is an exciting director and his adaptations are fascinating.

Until Sept 25th at Southbank Theatre, Melbourne Theatre Company

COLUMBINE

Director Daniel Lammin and students at Monash University have explored their memories and the evidence of the Columbine high school shooting in this perceptive and insightful piece of verbatim theatre. Lammin is an exciting director on the independent scene and this is his biggest work to date. He also calls it his most important. The show is both the actors recreating moments from that fateful day in 1999, reciting quotes from interviews, reneacting videos and talking about their own recollections of the events. The devised script and Lammin’s direction keeps moving, enhanced by beautiful performances, evocative lighting, affecting music and choreography that is sometimes frightening and sometimes amusing.

Until Sept 6th at Monash University Student Theatre

night maybe

I was so enamoured with this show, I saw it twice. I haven’t seen any other shows more than once this year, not necessarily because I didn’t want to but because I couldn’t (sold out) or I didn’t have time (so much theatre on in Melbourne; also I have theatre to make, as well).

Every element of this show comes together to enhance every other. It may have started with Kit Brookman’s insightful script about growing up, burgeoning sexuality, gender confusion and familial discomfort (and perhaps abuse), but it’s brought to life inside Mel Page’s incredible set and lit to perfection by Richard Vabre and evocatively scored by James Brown.

Luke Mullins’ assured direction pulls everything together, keeping the performances suitably restrained but always somewhat otherworldly. This play feels real and like a dream and like a nightmare, sometimes all at once. Central to the performances on stage is Sarah Ogden’s subtle, complex and layered turn as Sasha, who is both lost in the woods but also able to navigate her way through the trouble she finds there. Ogden is always magnificent, but here she flawless.

The rest of the cast are superb in supporting Ogden, Tom Conroy and Marcus McKenzie play multiple roles – Conroy standing out as Tom and Sally. Brian Lipson is suitably unnerving as a character referred to in the programme as “Ghost” but he’s much more menacing because he feels so real.

The play is non-naturalistic, though it tricks the audience with its somewhat naturalistic dialogue at the start. Some of the events seem muddled, but the production is so evocative in so many ways – and so beautiful to look at and to listen to and to watch, that even when you can’t quite understand what is happening, you can appreciate the beauty and feel the characters’ uncertainty anyway.

Until Sept 1st at Theatreworks

About Time @ Melbourne Fringe, 27/28th Sept

Back in late 2010, I wrote About Time as part of the Melbourne Theatre Collective 48 Hour Playwriting Challenge. It got a reading at the end of that weekend, but hasn't seen the light of day since. It was re-written once in early 2011 and just this past weekend for its upcoming production.

As part of Melbourne Fringe 2013, Broken Mirror is staging a mini festival of short plays under the umbrella, "Bite-Sized Theatre". Like Short & Sweet, winners from the first two rounds are voted through to the third week finals by audience and judges. Unlike S&S, there are only 12 plays in this festival and can be longer than ten minutes.

Don Bridges will be directing the piece, which will feature in week two of the "Bite-Sized Theatre" programme: Fri Sept 27th, 9:30pm and Sat Sept 28th, 4pm and 9:30pm.

Tickets on sale for all three weeks of the festival on sale now.

About Time is the story of two women moving in together - and the exact moment six months later when one of them says she has run out of time. She has to go.

Starring in About Time are:

Whitney Duff as Megan

Lauren O'Callaghan as Layla

About Time will play during Bite-Size Theatre, at Broken Mirror - 27th and 28th September. As part of Melbourne Fringe 2013. Tickets on sale now.