Artist of the Month

What inspired you to get involved in theatre?

It’s weird – I didn’t come from a creative family at all, so you would think there would have been a moment of divine intervention but I just don’t think there was. I mean, I remember wanting to make childhood films at home long after the other kids grew out of it. I also remember taking speech and drama classes very seriously at school. Eventually my parents had no choice but to put me into community theatre and it was over after that, but the inspiration for this remains a mystery.

I think that’s often the case though, isn’t it? One kid in the herd perks up a bit more than most when a story is being told, and (one hopes) everyone agrees that the kid must follow that intuition. I was just blessed to have parents that noticed and nurtured that in me.

Do you remember the moment you wanted to do this as a career?

I do. When I was fifteen I was lucky enough to do a play called ‘Remembering Pirates’ at Darlinghurst Theatre Co. I only had one scene so I would spend rehearsals sitting on the side of the room quietly watching Iain Sinclair direct the likes of Emma Palmer and the late Robert Alexander. It was like a magic trick. These guys would throw things at the wall and play like children, and I couldn’t believe that this was a job.

During this whole experience I was also attending school and studying ‘Away’ by Michael Gow for year ten drama. In tech week, I was in the dressing room and Robert quietly ushered me over and opened a photo album… it was production stills of him in the 1987 production of ‘Away’ at the Sydney Opera House. My essay was pretty much just a recount of Robert’s stories. He was an incredible man and such a creative force on stage, and I remember thinking “okay so that’s the career- that’s the life I want.”

What have been the highs of your career so far? What have been the lows?

Well you got me at a good time. I honestly think I’m in the middle of a high right now doing ‘Grief is the Thing with Feathers’. Not only has Belvoir St Theatre been a dream of mine for years, but I’ll be lucky if I get another chance to speak text as beautiful as I do in this show. Max Porter’s poetry is a pure gift. And then obviously working with Simon Phillips, Nick Schlieper and Toby Schmitz is like attending a masterclass everyday. It’s going to be a really beautiful show I think, and I’m pinching myself that I get to be involved. Oh and ‘Cruise’ with Fruit Box and KXT at the start of this year! That was deadset the hardest I’ve ever worked and the story was so close to the hearts of everyone involved, so that was a high as well. Good year this one, very good year. 

Where do you see yourself going/want to go next?

There’s so much I want to do, but more importantly so many people I want to do it with. I love looking at groups of artists that are still making work together decades into their career. Robert had this. I’m seeing it right now with Simon and Nick. We enter the industry with a cohort and it’s a rare thing to stay by each other’s side the whole way through. 

I’m surrounded by the most incredibly talented friends and we’ve always collaborated on things whenever we got the chance, with the only goal being to make something that we like; a short film, a late night show, a photoshoot. No one was looking and it was just for us, but slowly our work has grown together and our career’s are starting to move in a similar direction. It’s a beautiful thing and I dream of that still being the case as we get older. I romanticise it and joke that we are each other’s ‘contemporaries’, but it’s not really a joke. Ziggy Resnick, Tom Dawson, Anthony Yangoyan, Meg Hyeronimus, Saša Ljubović, Sean Landis, Laneikka Denne, and so many more. They’re my contemporaries. If ‘next’ includes them, I’m stoked.