Elaine Acworth (left) in the rehearsal studio with the cast of Risk.
Her plays have been published and presented around the world, translated and awarded, and now Australian playwright Elaine Acworth returns with her newest work, Risk, opening in Metro Arts Independents season on 29 October in Brisbane.
Risk is a contemporary thriller, set in the pine plantations that line the highway to the Sunshine Coast. It's an area where the bush has been replaced by straight rows of tall pines, leaving eerie corridors running through the dark forest. A perfect setting for a creepy thriller!
ourbrisbane.com caught up with Elaine to find out how one head can wear so many hats and not grow dizzy. (She's the playwright, co-producer and co-director of Risk.)
How long was Risk in the writing?
I started thinking about it in 2004 but didn't start writing it until 2005 as part of my MA at QUT. It's been 4 ½ years in the making ...
Why a thriller?
I love reading thrillers. They're by far my preferred holiday reading and what I'll turn to last thing at night. When Fin [her son] was born I discovered I couldn't make theatre and babies work together ... some people can, but I couldn't. I tried not writing for three months and went mad! So, I tried writing in a different genre and wrote a thriller instead of a play. I wrote the same thriller three times over ... In retrospect, the purpose of that time was to give me some understanding of the rules of the genre.
What brought you back to theatre?
I desperately wanted to get back to writing for actors. Fin was at school and suddenly some time freed up. My love of playwriting and my love of thrillers coalesced ... I was driving up the Sunshine Coast to visit family when I was struck by the potential of the pine plantations as a setting for a thriller.
You describe Risk as a linguistic thriller. What do you mean by that?
Well the characters are, for the most part, bullshit artists! They're very, very good at it. They make you believe their stories.
Was that a conscious decision? To make them bullshit artists?
I created my protagonist as a bullshit artist. He was a definite conscious creation. The others simply arrived as part of the world around him.
Did you ever lose sight of the truth in all the stories you were weaving?
I was never concerned by what was true and what wasn't. The story reveals itself like peeling back the layers of an onion. Things you believe are revealed to be untrue. Characters are stripped back as the reveals happen until you see a person pared down to the core. And that's how thrillers work: life and death stakes.
How have you found the process of working as director and playwright, not to mention producer?
I hadn't considered doing it before this project - although I had considered working in a directorial or dramaturgical capacity on other people's work. That's one of the reasons why we started Umber Productions ... to expand the facilities in Brisbane for people who want to get their work looked at and workshopped. Umber's not simply about my work. I've realised that it's becoming incredibly hard to find the opportunity to work on a project from the conception of the idea all the way through to its production. Writers have to go shopping for development from different places. All the individual components can function brilliantly but there's something in the continuity of process that I find very useful.
As the playwright, is it hard for you to put on a director's hat and look critically at your work?
It's not hard to step back and see things that don't work. As a writer I'm a slash and burn practitioner. I'm not precious about my work. Having said that, finding the different head you need to function as a director can be really hard. It's not just the different head - it's a different set of eyes. A different way of seeing things.
Can you describe the difference?
Writers think thematically, structurally, symbolically, emotionally and psychologically. We're involved in the emotional and psychological journey of the play and of our characters. Directors think: ‘What is he doing? Where is his hand going?' They think action and reaction ... They think all the writer's stuff as well, but it's a secondary thought.
Is it terrifying, having all this responsibility for the show?
It is terrifying, but I'm not alone. I'm blessed by the skills of my collaborators. Fraser Corfield is co-directing with me and he's been fantastic. I've also had a brilliant assistant director, David Burton. The cast is wonderful and there's also Greg Clarke, the set designer, and Chris Tollefson, the lighting designer, Pete Nelson on sound, and Nigel Poulsen, our fight master. Every one of them has brought a way of seeing, of understanding the play script, that I did not have as a writer. And that notion of extending your boundaries as a theatre person - that idea is something we want to push on with, through Umber. That's why we wanted to bring in Krista Berga to work with Greg. A sculptor who would look at the creation of the corpse. A sculptor, instead of a props maker. Someone who brings with them a different understanding of the purpose of that thing, who would regard the corpse as so much more than an adjunct to an actor's action.
Risk plays at the Metro Arts Sue Benner Theatre from 29 October to 15 November 2008.
