"Instructions For Modern Living"

Instructions For Modern Living

Sydney Morning Herald, August 21, 2008

Kiwi Duncan Sarkies's combination of spoken word and music has been described as "stoner theatre".

Testing ideas, one two... Duncan Sarkies.

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Genre

Spoken Word

Location

The Studio

Address

Sydney Opera House, Sydney

Date

3 September 2008 to 6 September 2008

Tickets

$30/$25

Phone Bookings

02 9250 7777

Online Bookings

www.sydneyoperahouse.com

Details

Wed 7pm, all other nights 9pm

"Hang on," says writer Duncan Sarkies over the phone from Wellington, New Zealand, "I've got one of those devices where you put the headset on and you can walk around the house. I walk outside and I continue with my stuff - like putting out the rubbish - while I'm rabbiting away. I think the neighbours think I'm a bit mad."

Sarkies's slightly manic state could be the result of insomnia, if the show he has written with fellow New Zealander, composer Nic McGowan, is anything to go by. In Instructions For Modern Living Sarkies and McGowan perform a series of vignettes about the psychological machinations of those who occupy the witching hours when most of us are asleep, performed against a background of "found" video footage.

"When we put together the show I really dreamed up this mythical world where someone was working from their basement full of old video tapes, so I went out to the tip and bought 50 bucks worth of VHS tapes," Sarkies says.

"They have all sorts of weird stuff on them," says composer McGowan. "From Nan's 80th birthday party to training videos for things you'd never want to do."

The show was born when Sarkies began word-jamming with music loops McGowan created with iconic instruments such as a Moog theremin and a Rhodes piano.

"Straight away," McGowan says, "we were creating great moods and [Sarkies] was dropping text and characters in there just like a musician would on an instrument."

Sarkies: "Nic builds these beautiful loops and they grow on each other and you get hypnotised. I think Nic and I infect each other. He can start playing in a gloomy fashion and I'll roll with him. There are a lot of laughs in the show but it's certainly a gloomy, moody experience."

The show is constructed from the best of the collaborative vignettes.

"It's a bit like watching a radio play being made in front of you," McGowan says, "but with lots of imagery. With the projection behind us you can watch us perform or just watch the screen."

Sarkies: "We do refer to them as songs in a way but of course it's all spoken word. I do have a device that shifts my voice around as I take on a variety of characters all making it through the middle of the night experiencing the same thing - loneliness."

The characters - including a bored astronaut, a talkback radio host without any callers, and a ghost - sound like grim subjects but Sarkies, who has written for hit comedy series Flight Of The Conchords, reassures me it isn't all gloomy.

"It's definitely not like the Conchords in that I don't try and pull a gag every three minutes," Sarkie says. "You know when you listen to Nick Cave or Johnny Cash and they go to quite a dark place in front of you? It's a really nice feeling to hear someone doing that because it proves you're not alone in those thoughts. I do show a side of life that is quite dark - you do need the comedy to go there."

After success in New Zealand, Sarkie and McGowan bring their show to Sydney via a sold-out season at the Barbican Theatre in London, where the themes of ennui and loneliness proved universal.

"They really dug it," says Sarkies of London audiences. "It's really nice when you discover there's whole communities of like-minded people all around the world."

McGowan feels the unpredictability of much of his old analog technology adds to the sense of theatre.

"It really is a live performance," McGowan says. "I get very disappointed by going to electronic acts and they're just stabbing a button on a laptop."

Sarkies dislikes the term "multi-media art" and admits he has trouble labelling the mixture of spoken word, music and visuals. Some have called it "stoner theatre".

"The stoner thing is fair because it's obviously a good thing to watch when you're stoned. We do take people on a crazy, hypnotic ride. I think I would describe what we do as black-black comedy."

So it's blacker than black?

"Yeah!" he says, laughing, possibly as he puts the bins out.

"Brain Droppings"

Press Release:

"Wordjammin", in association with The Empire Hotel, present -

"Brain Droppings"

Grand Opening Night

Sunday August 3rd, 5 - 7pm

(first Sunday of each month thereafter)

an eclectic blend of music, poetry, spoken word, comedy and performance art.

First show -

MC: Benito Di Fonzo,

band: The Outer Space Cowboys (featuring Vashti Hughes)

poet: Colonel Funtastico.

PLUS OPEN MIC SECTION

Empire Hotel, cnr Parramatta Rd & Johnson St. Annandale.

A new spoken word and music evening will be happening launching at The Empire Hotel, corner of Parramatta Rd & Johnson Street Annandale, the first Sunday of every month, emceed by poet and performer Benito Di Fonzo, and with special guest poets, comedians, performance artists and musicians.

The Grand Opening Night on Sunday August 3rd, will feature absurdist-neo-retro-spoken-word freak Colonel Funtastico and band The Outer Space Cowboys, featuring Vashti Hughes, who says of the group -

"Think Kraftwerk mixed with Patsy Kline, Bobby Gentry crossed with Roni Size or Elvis done electro clash style and you will get the idea."

There will also be an open mic section for those bold enough to accept the challenge, and possibly some crap encouragement awards found on the street on the way to the gig by Benito.

for more info or interviews contact:

Angela Stretch (Wordjammin) [ info@wordjammin.com ]

Benito Di Fonzo on [ benitodifonzo@hotmail.com ]

Live Comic version of Alfred Hitchcock's 'The 39 Steps',

Benito Di Fonzo
Sydney Morning Herald, July 10, 2008

Alfred Hitchcock's spy thriller film becomes a stage comedy - with four actors playing 139 roles.

"I don't like it when they come out all wicked at the beginning," says playwright Patrick Barlow of his villains. "I like it when they're played so that you think they're a perfectly nice English gentleman, terribly urbane and posh, and then slowly you realise that the guy's a terrible raving Nazi."

So it is that in Barlow's comic stage adaptation of Alfred Hitchcock's 1935 spy thriller The 39 Steps, itself adapted from John Buchan's novel, he has used history to embellish Hitchcock's gentleman villain.

"I made him into one of those extreme right-wing English aristocrat Hitler appeasers," he says. "There was a movement with Lord Halifax and that lot that thought Hitler was quite a good bloke, [which] is all kept quiet in English history books."

The 39 Steps tells the story of Richard Hannay, played by Mark Pegler, who has a close encounter with a beautiful murdered spy and is pursued across the muddy Scottish moors before heading back to England to clear his name and foil the villain's dastardly plan. Hannay famously does all this while remaining unruffled and clean-shaven in his spotless three-piece tweed suit.

Helen Christinson, who plays the beautiful dead spy among other female leads in the show, says the now-peculiar style of 1930s British cinema provides much of the humour.

"As Australians we're very laid-back and the idea of the British stiff upper lip is quite comedic in a lot of ways," she says. "What's particularly lovely is that it's Brits laughing at themselves."

The idea of a comic adaptation of Hitchcock's classic was brought to Barlow by producers after his troupe, the National Theatre of Brent, staged award-winning epic adaptations of the Zulu wars and the Russian revolution with only two actors. Shortly after her death, it even dramatised the life of Lady Di.

"That was our most controversial production," Barlow says. "It was called Love Upon The Throne. [John Ramm] played Diana and I played Charles and the Queen and all the other characters."

For The 39 Steps, Barlow doubled his usual cast, to four actors, to play all 139 roles.

"As soon as I looked at the film I had this instinct that it would work great on stage, particularly because it was such a challenge ... a railway chase, the fourth bridge [scene] and the Scottish Highlands. I said, 'Let's do it with four people and just a packing case and a ladder so the actors are absolutely challenged to the hilt."'

Barlow is right about it being a challenge. The New York Times described it as a "tour de farce" but Christinson confirms that it's no picnic for the cast - herself, Pegler, Jo Turner and Russell Fletcher - to keep up with the multitude of characters they play, as well as changing their minimal set into everything from a moving train to the Scottish Highlands.

"We all have about 20 costume changes during the show," Christinson says. "As they're walking through the downstage entrance a dresser is following, pulling off wigs and coats and putting on another wig and coat as they walk through the top entrance ... so literally it's a matter of seconds."

Barlow and director Maria Aitken knew the production would work best if the comedy was played as straight as the pleats in the hero's three-piece tweed.

"My obsession with this is to keep the style very innocent, very not-knowing," Barlow says. "They shouldn't know that they're funny, it should be played absolutely straight, very English."

The play also contains trainspotter moments for Hitchcock aficionados such as Bernhard Herrmann's original scores, references to other Hitchcock films and even the obligatory cameo by the big man himself, all done in what Barlow describes as "that kind of British, Pythonesque, Goons-type humour". So is it a spoof or a homage?

"It's a homage to the film, definitely, which is an absolutely brilliant piece of work and a wonderful style of cinema that you just don't get now. It's got a slickness and spirit and dash that is gone now. It's a very respectful homage, even though we do make a few jokes about it."

The 39 Steps

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Genre

Comedy

Location

Playhouse

Address

Sydney Opera House, Sydney

Date

31 July 2008 to 17 August 2008

Tickets

$34.90-$79.90

Phone Bookings

(02) 9250 7777

Online Bookings

www.sydneyoperahouse.com

Benito in Cordite

Have a gander around the newly released Cordite # 28: Secret Cities, now with added Benito Di Fonzo... Just like a chocolate milkshake, only poetry... in particular, one I wrote in a bar in Roma one sultry July night...

6ix Quick Misfits...

Six Quick Chicks

Benito Di Fonzo
Sydney Morning Herald. June 19, 2008

Six Quick Chicks go where conventional cabaret fears to tread.

Lucy Suze Taylor (left) and Annabel Lines of Six Quick Chicks.

Genre

Cabaret

Location

Riverside Theatres

Address

Corner Church and Market Streets, Parramatta

Date

4 July 2008 to 25 July 2008

Phone Bookings

(02) 8839 3399

Online Bookings

www.riversideparramatta.com.au

"We call it comedy cabaret," says Vashti Hughes of the eclectic mix of onion-enhanced burlesque, satire, song and vaudevillian comedy produced by the collective Six Quick Chicks.

Hughes created Six Quick Chicks after years hosting cabaret nights she felt needed more quality control. After touring her own show to Hong Kong, Singapore and Shanghai, Hughes returned to Australia and put together a line-up she knew could come up with the goods.

After 18 months of performances, including a successful season at Adelaide Fringe Festival, Six Quick Chicks are heading for a return season at Parramatta's Riverside Theatres.

Hughes's character and long-time MC of Six Quick Chicks, the "repressed secretary extraordinaire" Mavis Brown, hopes to break her seven-year drought of sex and get lucky out west.

"When we started off it was as if it was [Mavis Brown's] living room and they were having a girls' night in, entertaining each other. [For this show] Mavis has decided she's going out west to find someone out there because here [in the inner city] she only finds gay guys and married men."

Among the melange of strange sisters keeping Mavis company will be her sibling Christa Hughes, formerly of Machine Gun Fellatio (MGF) and Circus Oz, and fellow comic-chanteuse Jackie Loeb. Other regulars of underground performance nights also appear, including Celia Curtis, who plays burnt-out Las Vegas showgirl Anita Douche, Liesel Badorrek as German vamp Iva Sveetvun, and Lucy Suze Taylor as Carmen.Taylor describes Carmen as "a fabulously bosomy opera singer" with a 10-minute, over-the-top operatic tale of "woe, tragedy and, finalmente, death". No doubt with tongue firmly in corset.

One reviewer particularly praised the bizarre Vladimira, played by Annabel Lines. The character is an Eastern European sensualist whose 10-minute act consists of doing strange things with the onions she fries on stage, the skins of which mirror the layers of leopard print she strips off to Japanese sexploitation soundtracks.

Lines, who worked as an aerialist, contortionist, razor-blade swallower and burlesque dancer with MGF as well as circuses including famed new-circus pioneers?Archaos, fears that burlesque is becoming too safe and predictable for performers such as herself.

"When it first got popular in Sydney you could do different things," she says. "Now it's very much like, the last burlesque I did at [club] 34B, six out of the eight acts used feather fans!"

Lines turned to the strange world of leopard-skin onion-stripping in an attempt to give her act a darker edge.

"It's all about layers. I wanted to cry, that's why I came up with onions, but I could never actually cry."

Will she be getting her produce locally? "Well, I'm actually very particular with my onions," Lines says.

"Do you have to connect with them?" Hughes asks.

"Yes," Lines admits, "they have to be exactly the right looseness of the outer skin."

Spanish or white? "I only use the brown onions. I did use a white one once but I didn't like that."

Surely the Spanish onion would be more burlesque? "Yes, but they don't have that good, loose skin."

Vegetables aside, the women admit they were at first wary of taking their bizarre show Parramatta way but felt the urge for new audiences.

"The thing is we are misfits because you can't slot us into anything that already exists," Hughes says.

"But anyone who comes to see us generally really likes us. It's interesting out at Parramatta because they weren't our mates. We don't have any of our normal support groups out there."

For one thing, audiences "weren't the people that go to those nights that are underground comedy-cabaret-burlesque nights that do happen [in the city]. We thought we might not get anyone."

However, their boldness - and the Riverside's - was rewarded with a return season. "I was sitting behind three little grey-haired old ladies and they were loving it, giggling the whole way through," says Hughes before breaking into an old-lady giggle. "I was so excited. I thought, 'If the old ladies like it, we're doing great.'"

Jabbernoir hits the airwaves, and stores!

Benito is happy to report that the first recorded (and written) piece of Jabbernoir (that blend of film noir and Lewis Caroll-like absurdism that permeates http://jabbernoir.blogspot.com/) "Jabbernoir e Lychee Whine" has been released, with backing music by Andy Lane, on Going Down Swinging #26.

Furthermore, as well as local favourites 2SER FM, Jabbernoir e Lychee Whine has also been getting airplay on ABC Radio National, where Tim Richie talked glowingly of the way the authors 'play with words' on his show Sound Quality.


I must say, I feared I was hallucinating when I first switched on ABC RN late one Friday night after stumbling home from the Allen & Unwin party at The Sydney Writers' Festival. However, as Mr Richie said when I told him that tale,

"I really like the way you came across the playing of it on air.... that's about my dream scenario for someone who makes something and then finding it on the airwaves"

You can read Jabbernoir e Lychee Whine here.

And you can hear the track in the mp3 player on the right, or here.

"Celebrity Terrorist Makeover" (in conversation with Van Badham)

(UNEDITED VERSION OF ARTICLE ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED IN THE SYDNEY MORNING HERALD, 6/6/08)

“I don’t do worthy,” says playwright Van Badham, “and [director] James [Beach] doesn’t do worthy. We had to hang out with those worthy people. At one stage in our political development the two of us were sitting in a room full of people who only ate fruit that had fallen from trees.”

So it is that for Poster Girl, the controversial playwright’s return to the Australian stage, Badham has camouflaged her political agenda in a day-glow-pink coat of black comedy.

“Essentially I followed the story of Patty Hearst’s abduction by the Symbionese Liberation Army in the 70s and recast it with what would happen if a similar organisation abducted a celebutante heiress of the likes of Paris Hilton,” says Badham.

“I’m fascinated with celebrity culture of the contemporary period because celebrity has reached new heights since the advent of reality-TV and internet porn. In previous years celebrities were at least actors, singers, dancers or politicians. We now have celebrities who are just celebrities. What would happen if we snatched a celebrity like that and put her in a revolutionary context?”

What happens is celebutante Mindy Xyloine (Shannon Dooley) gives her abductors a lesson in how to work the media. Like Hearst, who assisted her abductors in realising their demands, Mindy gives the Army of Revolutionary Struggle (ARS) a celebrity makeover, teaching them how to stay ‘on message,’ the art of ‘branding,’ and the craft of public relations coups. In this sense Poster Girl comments as much on radical-Leftists’ inability to use the media as on celebutantes’ cynical manipulation of it.

“I think that a lot of the Left fails to compete with these guys like Lindsay Lohan, etc. They are the poster girls of neo-liberalism, the absolute symbols of everything the Right-wing free-market lunatics who’ve totally f*cked-up this planet believe.”

Surely they’re just harmless entertainment?

“No they’re symbols, brands, and they are sending a message – ‘consume, consume, consume,’ because neo-liberalism doesn’t function without consumption. There’s no Market theory if there’s no Market.”

It was Badham’s passionate politics that drove her to “flee” Australia in 2001.

“I’m not a violent person, but five years of Howard was really pushing my boundaries. There are only so many demos a day you can go to. I needed some ‘me’ time so I went to another country.”

Van went to several, working as a playwright in London, Edinburgh, Europe and the US, controversy her only hand-luggage. The US Embassy in Britain even issued a travel warning to American tourists about her play Capital, which foretold Abu Ghraib’s atrocities and how spin-doctors might deal with it. Likewise her play Camarilla predicted a London bombing during a G8 summit two years before it happened. Her musical Ca$h In Christ provoked 7,000 Christian websites to condemn her within 24 hours of it’s London premiere, and got her the front pages of both The Baptist Times and Islam Online. For Glastonbury Festival she staged a musical adaptation of Waiting For Godot performed by a cast of rabbits.

Upon returning to Australia she received a commission from her hometown Wollongong, submitting a play predicting the recent political scandal there, which the commissioning authority refused to stage.

Badham, who claims to read eight newspapers a day, says her Cassandra-like talent to foretell the future is no mystery.

“If you read news media, consume information, you can make predictions about events. That’s what I try to do.”

She believes it’s important to couch those bleak insights in humour.

“First and foremost I’m in the entertainment business, and I don’t think it’s worth mobilising everybody you know and the great unwashed to come and see a show to bore the shit out of them.”

If her predictions are consistent Al Qaeda will soon abduct Nicole Richie for a celebrity makeover. How will that go?

“I think they’d be better dressed. One of the reasons Al Qaeda has stayed very much a fringe operation is because they’re not very stylin’”

Badham believes the theatre should be the one place she can say anything she wants without fearing the consequences.

“That’s the point of going to the theatre. If you want to have a bland evening stay at home and talk to your partner.”

“Poster Girl”

By Van Badham.

Directed by James Beach.

Starring; Shannon Dooley, Fayssal Bazzi, Sam Haft, Susie Lindeman, Peter East, Marika Aubrey, Lucinda Gleeson, Andy Lees, Simon Corfield.

Old Fitzroy Theatre.

$28/$20 ($34 for beer, laksa & show)

Bookings 1300 GET TIX

#

Bob Dylan's Birthday

It ain't he, babe

• Sydney Morning Herald. May 24, 2008
  

A cyberspace homage to Bob Dylan has got everyone drawling, as Benito Di Fonzo found out.

Even Kris Felscher considers Bob Dylan's voice to be an acquired taste.

"I think a dog caught in a barbed wire fence is a good way to put it," he says when reminded of one reviewer's response to hearing Dylan for the first time.

The Florida computer programmer and musician is the driving force behind International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day.

The project began as a website (www.talklikebobdylan.com) which Felscher built last year to celebrate Dylan's 66th birthday. He encouraged fans to record themselves talking and singing like their hero and post the results to the site.

The response was enormous: hundreds of video submissions and more than a million hits.

Today is Dylan's 67th birthday. And with interest in the enigmatic American singer as strong as ever - he recently scored a Pulitzer Prize to accompany his Oscar and multiple Grammys - Felscher is hoping today's International Talk Like Bob Dylan Day will encourage Dylanophiles the world over to find and film their inner-Bob.

"I get a lot of people sitting in front of their webcams playing Dylan songs," says Felscher, 31. "And quite a few saying 'here's a song inspired by Bob Dylan."'

While most of the films are simple productions, a few fans have gone to extraordinary lengths to honour their hero. One hilarious spoof, No Direction, Period, claims that Bob Dylan has written every pop song since 1964 and includes impersonations of Dylan singing such unlikely material as Sir Mix-A-Lot's Baby Got Back.

Felscher and his friends need no excuse to talk like Dylan - they do it all year. But he hopes the event also makes a comment on today's music industry.

"A lot of the music you hear now is just manufactured and fabricated and you don't hear popular music like Dylan writes," he says. "His songs really come from the heart and mean something and really speak to the soul."

So far there's been no word on what the man himself thinks of a day designed to make people adopt his drawl. "I hope he would find it amusing, but certainly if he were to call up and say 'stop it! You're pissing me off', the site would be taken down in a heartbeat," says Felscher.

He believes the secret of Dylan's longevity is the uniqueness of his voice, as well as his lyrical substance.

"Part of the magic and the appeal is that he isn't pretending to be something other than he is. It's not something fabricated for mass appeal. He's presenting himself naked on stage. I think it's a hunger for substance that has brought him back into the limelight."

Yet Dylan, born Robert Allen Zimmerman in Duluth, Minnesota in 1941, is also famous for his many noms de plume. They include Elston Gunn, Blind Boy Grunt, Lucky Boo Wilbury, Elmer Johnson, Sergei Petrov, Jack Frost and Robert Milkwood Thomas.

Is it possible Dylan might post a video to the website under a pseudonym?

"It would be especially awesome to see whether he wins," says Felscher. "Jerry Lewis once came third in a Jerry Lewis lookalike contest, so you never know. He may not sound Bob Dylan enough."

FOR THE FANS

In 1966, when Dylan was asked for his thoughts on Australia, he said: "They don't have a baseball team here." The answer didn't suggest any great familiarity with the country but nor did it diminish his popularity.

More than 40 years later, Australians can celebrate Dylan's 67th birthday today by tuning in to 2SER-FM, 107.3, for its five-hour Bob Dylan Birthday Marathon from 8pm to 2am. Now in its 24th year, it is produced by Bill Kitson and Bruce Williams, who say Dylan was not at the peak of his popularity when the show first went to air in the 1980s.

"The Empire Burlesque album had disappointed many fans with its messy production," says Kitson. "Many were still getting over his 1979-1981 religious conversion."

However, the marathon created immediate interest and inspired the formation of the Sydney Dylan Society (www.sydneydylan.org.au).

"There were many people out there like myself and Bruce … who thought they were alone in their inordinate interest in the man and the music," says Kitson. "The show brought us together and soon we were having monthly meetings."

The society watched keenly as Dylan's fortunes improved with the release of critically lauded albums such as Oh Mercy (1989) and Time Out Of Mind (1997), which won three Grammys, including album of the year. His most recent LP, Modern Times (2006), went to No.1 in the US which, says Kitson, "in 1985 you would not have believed".

The Sydney Dylan Society also organises Dylan Conventions that occasionally coincide with his tours. Amanda Rose, 31, an Egyptology student, went to her first convention in 1998. She obliterates the stereotype of Bobfans as grizzled-hippies who trade bootleg recordings in beer gardens and says the society gives her a place to discuss the twists of Dylan's ever-evolving life-narrative with like minds. "From the '60s right through to now he has so many different threads," she says, "and they're all quite different."

Those not wishing to stay glued to the radio can attend tonight's Tangled Up In Dylan tribute show at Canterbury-Hurlstone Park RSL (tickets $25, bookings 9559 0000). It features Karl Brodie, Steve Balbi and Brett Hunt, and will be repeated next FRIDAY at The Basement (tickets $32/$25, bookings 9251 2797).

Says Hunt, "when you get inside a Dylan tune and really learn it you get centuries of songwriting. It's all in there - blues, folk, early rock; he had it all down."

in coversation with jay ryan & jeremy lindsay taylor of The Packer.

(unedited version of preview published in The Sydney Morning Herald.)

“The Packer”

By Dianna Fuemana,

Directed by Jeremy Lindsay Taylor,

Performed by Jay Ryan.

Old Fitzroy Theatre,

20 April to 10 May.

$16 - $34 (for beer laksa show deal)

Bookings 1300 GET TIX

“One-Hander Job” by Benito Di Fonzo.

“That is definitely one to come and see,” says New Zealand born actor Jay Ryan, best known for his roles in Neighbours and Sea Patrol, of the multi-character sex scene he performs solo in Dianna Fuemana’s The Packer.

Ryan, who plays all eight characters in The Packer, has just come from rehearsing said scene in which an older Islander man engages in congress with a ‘gin-addled’ expatriate-Aussie named Joyce.

“It’s something that we’re working on at the moment,” says Ryan, “different positions.”

“He’s coming up with some crazy ideas,” says director Jeremy Lindsay Taylor, “I don’t know from where.”

The Packer tells the story of Joyce’s son Shane, a ‘white-trash Westie’ from the streets of West Auckland attempting to make it as a hip hop artist and escape a life packing boxes in a factory. By spending 24 hours in West Auckland through the eyes of this working-class hero audiences gain insight into the lives of those around him.

“He’s getting to that age where he wants to step up and live his life but he feels a responsibility to care for his mother,” says Taylor of the protagonist. “You get to learn a lot about all eight characters, they’re all multi-layered individuals.”

Ryan, who like the playwright is an Auckland ‘Westie’, has received glowing reviews for what one Edinburgh Festival critic called a ‘virtuoso performance’ of all eight characters, four of which are female.

“Well, three females and a trannie,” Ryan corrects me.

“That’s the challenge,” says Taylor, “to make them individual ladies. You’ve got to have the audience believing that it’s not a characterisation, they’re not stereotypes, they’re real, and they’re all different. It’s a tour de force for an actor. There’s not many actors I know who could even attempt this.”

While the original production was directed by the author, Ryan asked his Sea Patrol co-star Taylor to direct this Sydney debut, a mission that entailed a road-trip around New Zealand to see where the characters originated.

“A lot of them are based on Dianna and my friends,” says Ryan, “so I took [Taylor] to meet these people - my mother, a couple of my mates who still live in West Auckland and don’t really do much with their lives, but they’re still good mates.”

They devoted each day on the road to a character from the play, finding relevant characteristics in the locals, such as when Ryan found the template for his transsexual.

“I’d had a big night and I was just driving home, legally of course. On Edinburgh Street, which is the street where all the trannies hang out, just as the sun was coming up [there] was this huge black woman standing there right by the Edinburgh Street sign. As I went past she waved at me and winked and I went that’s her, so I’ve got her image in my head and that’s who I bring on stage.”

Taylor, who grew up in Campbelltown, saw much similarity between Sydney and Auckland’s ‘Westies’.

“The people were very similar, doing it tough,” says Taylor. “There was no difference but the accent really.”

“And a few more Islanders,” adds Ryan, who originally helped Niuen/Samoan/New Zealand playwright-performer Fuemana conceive the play as they waited backstage during a production of A Streetcar Named Desire.

“[Fuemana] was playing the prostitute and I was playing the young collector that Blanche seduces so we were on stage for like 10 minutes out of a three hour play so the rest of the time we sat backstage and ranted about family life. She had written a one-woman show which she’d won awards for and was really successful and I think she thought I’m going to give it another go but write from a different perspective. She wanted to have it from a white person’s point of view but still have the Islander culture-clashes and me being a white boy and giving some stories over gave her that freedom.”

After his experience in Melbourne and Edinburgh, where the author declined an offer by British filmmakers to buy the script and change the nationality of the characters, Ryan feels vindicated in the universality of the tale.

“It’s a love story and love stories work anywhere don’t they?”

In coversation with Brendan Cowell & Toby Schmitz

Ruben Guthrie

Benito Di Fonzo, Metro, Sydney Morning Herald.
April 3, 2008

It's not easy working in an industry that encourages the odd night on the turps.

Just water thanks ... Toby Schmitz, left, and Brendan Cowell.
Photo: Marco Del Grande

Preview

"Yeah, the nights are hard," admits playwright and actor Brendan Cowell of his latest stint of sobriety, "but the days are unbelievable - the day's a whole new world."

Cowell's experiences during his first period as a teetotaller in 2005, the year he also won a commission from the Philip Parsons Young Playwright's Award, inspired his new play, Ruben Guthrie, the first production in B Sharp's 2008 season at Downstairs Belvoir.

"I got this incredibly raw, vivid perspective on myself and the universe," says Cowell of the time, "and a lot of my relationships changed completely. Some of them fell away, new ones started, everything looked different, myself included. Then I started to notice how society was completely geared towards drinking. Everything I went to, everywhere I went, everyone I met with, said, 'Have a drink, let's sit down and have a drink, we'll have a drink,' and I was like, 'My God, this is out of control.' "

Cowell's epiphany clashed with his love of pub culture, which still tempts him: "When the sun's just calming down a little bit, and you've worked really hard all day, and you want to take that f---ing edge off."

Ruben Guthrie tells the story of an enfant terrible of advertising who, after an industry-awards night, jumps off a rooftop into a kiddie pool, which leads him to consider temperance. All the inherent changes and challenges it brings into his life come into focus when his old drinking buddy hits town after being fired from his job in New York.

"I don't think what happened to me was as interesting as what happens in the play," Cowell says. "They were just little things I realised that I've dramatised for effect."

The problem for Guthrie (and Cowell alike), is that he works in an industry that encourages the odd night on the turps, as Toby Schmitz, who plays Guthrie, explains.

"Our industry has no office," Schmitz says. "It has no meeting place other than the foyer and the bar, which is hard for the ginger ale drinker. I've been cast in plays, sealed deals, over a glass."

Cowell: "I went to an opening night last week and there's thousands of glasses of wine. You've got to pay $4.50 to get a soft drink but you can drink a shit-tin of champagne, white wine, red wine or beer and not pay anything. I had two lemon, lime and bitters: I had to go to the bar [alone], so you're actually isolated."

It's this social isolation that Cowell and Schmitz, along with director Wayne Blair and designer Jacob Nash, will recreate in the intimate space of Downstairs Belvoir. Cowell hopes the audience's guffaws will have an uncomfortable edge as they see themselves reflected in the black comedy.

"For me, as a writer, that's heaven," Cowell says. "You've kicked your goal in the grand final as a playwright when you hear people swallowing their laughter or laughing out of an obscene discomfort."

Schmitz: "Ruben is what you could classify as a good drunk but the cracks are appearing from the beginning of the play. I think one of the great reveals of the play is how deep the cracks are."

Cowell: "That's exactly it. Because when I quit drinking everybody said, 'But you didn't have a problem? You never beat anyone up, you were a fun guy!' "

Schmitz: "You were still coming up with screenplays at 4am."

Cowell: "It's scary that you can lead two lives, because now [training for his role as Bell Shakespeare's Hamlet] my life is completely different. I'm up at seven, I'm at the gym. I'm reading more novels. I'm a nice guy. You end up doing weird things, like packing your bag the night before. And you call your grandmother, like you're really thoughtful. And then if I go back [to drinking], your life really switches - and who is the right person to be?"

Schmitz: "There's a problem with all artists, who are expected to retain their inner child. I think an inner child is a fantastic thing to have as an artist, even as a lover, person and conversationalist, but should inner children be allowed in the pub after 11pm? Or to have meaningful relationships or drive cars? I don't know. It's a good question."

Genre

Theatre

Location

Belvoir St Downstairs

Address

25 Belvoir St, Surry Hills

Date

17 April 2008 to 11 May 2008

Tickets

$20-$29

Phone Bookings

(02) 9699 3444

Online Bookings

www.belvoir.com.au