SCENE: The Belvoir boardroom.
It is a late afternoon on a day in April.
Director SIMON STONE, actress EMILY BARCLAY and actor TOBY SCHMITZ are seated at a table large enough to bear the weight of big decisions, with DARRYN KING readying his recording equipment for interview.
SIMON is 27. He is the owner of a beard to be reckoned with and the gentle blue eyes of a dreamy self-analyst or sociopath. EMILY is also 27, dressed in a panther-sleek velvet number she wears most days of her life. At odds with her sensible haircut is the mysterious suggestion of hidden tattoos. TOBY is 33, unbearded and untattooed. His hair is a goddamn symphony. DARRYN is 27 with Elvis Costello glasses but is otherwise non-descript for the purposes of this.
A black Maine Coon cat, NEILSKY, is curled into an apostrophe on the floor and sleeping blissfully.
Simon: (thinking wildly as if at a mad gallop through the dark hinterlands of his mind) I’m a sell-out … no, no, I’m so obscure that it doesn’t work … no I’m definitely a sell-out … nobody is gonna like it … no, everyone’s gonna like it and then the people who I really respect are going to hate it. . . the critics are going to hate it … success could all be fleeting … it’s probably not talent … at some point my instinct might fail me … what if it fails me one day … what if I wake up from a lobotomy and don’t remember anything from before …
Emily: (scurrying from one thought to the next in the manner of a panicked ferret) God I hate interviews … is that feeling butterflies in my stomach or did I eat something with gluten in it? … I should think of something to say about the play … what do I think about the play? … don’t swear … think, Emily … I can’t make my mouth work … I can’t make my brain work … I can’t say anything that has any relation to how I actually feel about something … don’t swear, don’t fucking swear! …
Toby: (thoughts emerging slow as molasses in July) You know, I think I actually do really like Chokitos …
Darryn: (brightly) Thanks everyone for your time. Firstly, Simon, can you tell us –
Simon: (bracing himself, thinking) For God’s sake don’t let the question be ‘Why the classics?’ …
Darryn: – what is Strange Interlude essentially about?
Simon: (thinking rousingly to himself in the voice of CJ Cregg from The West Wing) “Simon … stick to the script … don’t say anything spontaneous … remember the context … don’t show off … and for God’s sake watch your participles” …
(gesticulating keenly) It’s either about a woman imagining herself as a 19-year-old, going 'What if I made a different decision as a 19-year-old?" or it’s a play about a 19-year-old imagining herself as a 45-year-old looking back at all of these decisions she’s made. We make massive decisions with our lives that we have to live with regardless of whether or not they were the right decision. And then we make other decisions based on the regret or lack of regret around that decision.
"For God’s sake don’t let the question be ‘Why the classics?’..."
Simon Stone
Darryn: (probingly) As it’s written, the play is nine acts long and runs for eight hours. You’re hoping yours will run about 90 minutes to two hours. Can you tell us about your approach to adapting O’Neill’s text?
Simon: (thinking wincingly) Some will accuse it of being a "simplification" … a "reduction" … an "over-explanation" … a "betrayal" … don’t they know how hard I work on the damn things? … (thinking in the voice of CJ Cregg again) “Forget them, Simon!” …
(determinedly banishing the doubts from his head) In America, O’Neill gets put on all the time. In Australia you’ve kind of got to coax an audience into the larger ideas, in a way. You have to be sensitive about the actual place people are coming from. While ideally I wouldn’t even have to explain what Three Sisters is about in a production of Three Sisters, for example, that’s not the reality.
So it would be a wasted opportunity to put on Strange Interlude in its original version and have 75 per cent-full audiences as opposed to 100 per cent-full audiences. My version is still making people sit through massive ideas but also letting them see themselves in those ideas. That’s the important thing. There are sections of O’Neill’s dialogue where his ideas live very much in the world of the creator and exist in this neverland between the original context and our context.
Darryn: (thinking cockily) They should know I’ve read the play … here’s my chance to say something that proves I’ve read the play …
(coolly) There are some great lines too.
Simon: (thinking indifferently) Am I meant to be impressed that he’s read the play? …
(nodding generously) Oh, there are amazing lines there. And it’s the first time ever, essentially, I’ve adapted a play written in English, so I don’t have to wonder what the best way is to say anything. There are certain lines that are made more extraordinary for the fact that they’re sitting right next to a contemporary line invented by me. They work seamlessly in that reality.
Darryn: (well-rehearsedly) So one of the interesting features of the play is that the characters vocalise their secret innermost thoughts throughout. Toby, you’ve done your fair share of Shakespeare over the years. What are your thoughts on the soliloquies?
Toby: (thinking in the manner of one whose thoughts have been elsewhere all this time) Who would win in a fight between Boba Fett and Darth Maul? … wait, what was that? … something about Shakespeare … ah, right – soliloquies …
(casually) That’s really the first thing that grabbed me. I suppose it’s really obvious, it’s the same thing Shakespeare was doing: you can see an internal dramatic irony, a difference to what’s going on inside the characters as to what they’re saying or what their body’s doing.
One of the basic drama school rules of an aside or a soliloquy: you’re never talking to yourself. You’re always having a dialogue with yourself or you’re talking straight to the audience or to an imagined other person. It’s got to remain a dialogue somehow. So I thought, wow, that talking to myself stuff is going to be fun.
(thinking bitterly) If only it paid as much as a stint on Underbelly …
Darryn: (nodding, thinking) How does he get his hair like that? … astonishing … conditioner surely …
(chin-strokingly) What about the fact the play encompasses 25 years in the lives of these characters? How do you tackle the hugeness of that?
Toby: (smoothly) Simon – I think this is quite refreshing – doesn’t want us to do aging acting. Like in Thyestes. People just kind of get it.
Simon: (suddenly glowing with internal pride at the mention of Thyestes, thinking) Thyestes … my baby … “a masterpiece of writing” The Age called it … “a piercing, dangerous, and brutally executed interrogation of what tragedy might mean to us today” … “One of the highlights of the year” said The Australian … that’s right … a glowing review from internationally respected critic Alison Croggon … but it won’t last, it won’t last …
Toby: (continuing pedagogically) What O’Neill does, and what Simon amplifies, like he did in The Wild Duck in a way, is give you snapshots.
(NEILSKY THE CAT’s twitch in his sleep at the mention of ‘duck’)
Emily: (thinking with increasing rage) Duck … reminds me … I wish I could forget it … I was in a movie with a duck … oh God why … I’ll never live that down … goddamn IMDB … goddamn duck … I swear, if I weren’t in the running in PETA’s Asia-Pacific Sexiest Vegetarian of the Year Award that bird would have ended up a roast …
Toby: (continuing animatedly) In Duck it was snapshots over a week; in Thyestes it was snapshots over decades. It’s kind of a return to that: the characters may be in completely different mindsets when we see them again after only a minute’s absence or even less sometimes. But Simon doesn’t want any physical changing of age.
Simon: (shruggingly) Twenty-five years is a long time but I’ve got a lot of friends who are 44 years old and they don’t feel like they’re massively distant from my life.
(thinking keenly) I’ve thought of a sound-bite …
(with conviction) While it might seem like a long time, we’re all still scrambling around in the dark trying to find our own version of truth.
Toby: (thinking grinningly) Man, this has got ‘Helpmann Award’ written all over it … it’s my year at last … oh yes … always the bridesmaid …
"Goddamn duck..."
Emily Barclay
Darryn: (gently coaxingly) Emily, not that your past performances weren’t excellent, because they were, but how much do you feel the pressure of playing one of the 20th century’s great female characters?
Emily: (thinking worriedly) Oh God … “one of the 20th century’s great female characters” … no pressure … Simon better not be expecting me to get naked for this … think again, director-boy … heard about that scene in Thyestes … if I see a dildo on the props desk I’m fucking out …
(inhaling deeply) It feels different in the sense that there’s more of it. But I think I’m approaching it in exactly the same way that I would anything else that I’ve done, ultimately. I don’t think you can put any more importance on one thing than you can on another.
I guess the other thing is, you experience more of the complexities of life the older you get, you know? I feel like even in the last six months of my life I have a different perspective on things than I did before. And, you know, it’s an obvious thing to say… but it never fails to blow my mind how much a play that you’re doing or a film that you’re doing can so terrifyingly narrow the place that you’re at or the experiences you’ve had…
Simon: (in agreement) It’s the way in which kind of reading an amazing novel can make you see your life in a very different way and kind of go, "you know, I need to be making some different decisions…"
Emily: (delicately) And to be honest, reading this play influenced recent decision-making in my life.
Darryn: (indelicately) Are you getting married?
Emily: (embarrassedly) No, quite the opposite.
Darryn: (thinking horrifiedly) That’s blown it … now she’s upset … quick, get her back, change the subject … what else is there to talk about? … that owl movie she was in … the ‘Big Jet Plane’ clip … meeting William Shatner … snogging Michael Cera … no, none of that has anything to do with the play … abort, abort …
(quickly) Simon, you said initially that you chose Strange Interlude partly as a vehicle for Emily. What was it that struck you about her?
(EMILY looks at SIMON expectantly. TOBY looks at SIMON expectantly. NEILSKY THE CAT’S eyes blink awake and, from the vantage point of the floor, look at SIMON expectantly.)
Simon: (wistfully) Lindy Davies, who was the head of the VCA Drama School while I was there, said this single line on acting that I still believe is the most essential description of what acting is: "acting is turning lines into experience".
There’s something that happens with about ten great actors in this country, and Emily’s one of them, where there’s a pinpoint deconstruction of exactly the idea the playwright had when he brought it into being. It feels utterly like it’s from your world when you're watching it. That idea has just become an experience.
Emily looks at the world as if it’s got all sorts of hidden messages about her own life and (to Emily) this is why you say you make all these decisions about your own life, because you actually can’t tell the difference, and it’ll drive you mad at some point.
It’s like, "I’m seeing everything that any person who’s been through that has ever gone through and I’m seeing very specifically you in your world go through that…"
You meet these people very, very, very rarely and you just kind of go, "I have to bottle that. I have to bottle it and use it."
Emily: (tearing up, thinking) I’ve never heard anyone say anything so nice about me …
Toby: (thinking disgustedly) La-aaame … I bet Stone thinks Ewen Leslie is one of those ten actors … I'm glad he's not in this … snotty-nosed bastard …
Darryn: (appreciatively) That was beautiful Simon. Emily, how much do you reflect on your process as an actress?
Emily: (thinking worriedly) I don’t reflect on my process as an actress … but I can’t exactly say that … can I say that? … I need a coconut water … he’s expecting an answer … WHY IS THE CAT LOOKING AT ME? …
(honestly) I don’t have any process or any method or anything. I don’t know what the fuck I’m doing or if it’s any good, I really mean that. I have no idea but all I try to do is make it feel real when I’m doing it. When I know it hasn’t worked I hate myself, but when it does it’s the most incredible feeling. You feel like you’ve channelled something, like you’ve been completely transported into someone else. You create this imaginary world and you just go there. You go, (with sudden, strange, unexpected emotional intensity) "I am this person! (NEILSKY THE CAT scrambles startled to the ledge of a window) I’m this person whose fiancé has gone off to war and has been killed and I have got nothing left and I’m…" that’s fucking heartbreaking. If I sat here and told you guys about that having happened to me you’d be in tears you know?
Simon: (warningly) And that’s just the beginning…
Emily: (reflectively) To me, the play is about someone who gets to a point in their life and they look back and ultimately realise that the choices that they made or didn’t make have created their life. That’s what the most powerful part of the play is for me. So it’s about letting yourself go there – which is hard. I find it hard a lot of the time. You get to the theatre and you’re like, "Oh my God I so don’t want to go there tonight…"
(thinking with equal parts fear and excitement) I’m going to be an emotional wreck after this …
"Man, this has got ‘Helpmann Award’ written all over it..."
Toby Schmitz
Darryn: (brow-furrowedly) Toby, you have the advantage of having worked with Simon before… What’s he like as a director?
Toby: (thinking spitefully) A self-obsessed egomaniac, that’s what … constantly in your face, no sense of personal space … look at him … look at him and his would-be Jesus vibe … a Helpmann under his belt … and Emily with her AFI … I’m surrounded by self-satisfied 27-year-old punks … but which one of us was on the cover of Spectrum first, A-holes? …
(forcing a smile) He’s a delight. Watching him is great and watching people who haven’t had the experience of working with him watching him is great too. He takes what he sees in the moment and goes, "OK, let’s run with that". Really in-the-moment stuff; visceral planning. It’s a pretty refreshing and dynamic and youthful way of working.
Darryn: (concludingly) Well, that’s about all we need. Thanks again for your time. See you at the photo shoot.
(turning off recording equipment, thinking suddenly) Shit – I forgot to ask Simon "Why the classics?"…
Simon: (resuming thinking at his typical furious pace) Maybe I can still get in five hours of writing tonight and watch some Bergman … oh, why do I bother? … they’re going to hate it, they’re all going to hate it …
Emily: (exhaling deeply, thinking) Photo shoot? … no one said anything about a photo shoot … oh God what if I look like an idiot in the photo shoot? … okay I definitely ate something with gluten in it …
Toby: (thinking decisively) Yeah … yeah, man … Boba Fett would totally win in a fight with Darth Maul! …
Neilsky: (yawning and falling asleep again, thinking contemptuously) Bloody auteur-wankers … Belvoir’s really gone to the dogs since Neil left …
Toby Schmitz, Simon Stone, Emily Barclay, Darryn King
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