Dag Pride

Today I was walking back to my office having bought my lunch and coffee. It was a beautiful Melbourne Autumn day. I glanced across Chapel Street because something - or should I say someone - caught my eye ...

Yes! One of my Sainters! Nick Riewoldt! In the flesh!

I walked into a bin and spilt my coffee everywhere. But the public humiliation was worth it. Sometimes I'm just so proud to be a Big Dag at heart.

Madness

David Walliams plays a character in the television series Little Britain who walks through scenes making 'boock boock' noises ... clucking noises ... like a chicken. 'She' is one of the least sentimental characters in what is most certainly one of the bleakest of scenarios in the show ... and I have always been curious about the likely motivations for her inclusion - but no more so than this afternoon, when, on my way to the office with my takeaway coffee, a woman was walking along behind me making identical sounds. I glanced over my shoulder to see whether someone was taking the piss, as it were ... but no. Here, on Chapel Street (the very epicentre of Melbourne's Fashionista set and an almost impossibly ironic choice of location), was a woman as mad as the day is long, clucking away while strolling along the footpath.

Our little gaggle of pedestrians arrived at a set a traffic lights and a Little Red Walking Man. Others, perhaps as bemused and bewildered as I, moved out of her way. Some struck a pose of airhead aloofness ... others giggled. I looked on with a sanctimonious, self-rightedness pity. As the Little Red Walking Man was replaced by a Little Green Walking Man, we all stood completely still. Mad Woman glanced briefly from the middle-distance surrounding her to the ground and said "I hate going first". As I stepped from the footpath onto the road, Mad Woman followed and began to cluck away again.

My thought, as I wandered down a side-street toward my office was: "There, but for the grace of God, go I."

****

Madness has always fascinated me. A large number of characters in plays I have written could quite easily, if not a little too lazily, be described as 'Mad'. I wrote a play many years ago called Memories, Melodies and Madness which enjoyed a world premiere in London (and great reviews!) and a season in Melbourne.

In the play, four dead women relive the final night of their lives and, guided and encouraged by a Virgil character, are given the opportunity to take responsibility for each of their roles in their shared tragedy and cross over to the Afterlife. One of the characters succeeds. The others do not ... and for them, their fate is to continue to re-live the final night until they are at peace with their responsibility for what occurred. As the character who was finally at peace began to cross-over into her new life, the play began again - playing identically to the way the performance had started. It was my interpretation of the Catholic 'Purgatory' ... the Christians' 'Hell'.

In London, it received rave reviews and played to packed houses. In Melbourne, at the height of an unseasonal Melbourne heatwave (such is my fucking luck!) we had to cancel several performances due to the fact that the old theatre we were performing in had no air-conditioning which resulted in a temperature in the back few rows of raked seating of close to 40°C.

At the conclusion of one performance, as the play 'began again', a woman in the audience suddenly realised what was happening. She let loose with an audible gasp of recognition and an almost painful whimper of realisation ... as the lights snapped to black. She sat in her seat in the theatre for almost half an hour after the performance had ended ... staring at the stage. The rest of the audience had long since left and she remained - at one with the work and her experience of it.

I have been incredibly fortunate to experience a number of moments like this throughout the many years I spent making theatre. There was the young man who, upon seeing my play The World ... According to Timothy Cross promptly returned to another performance with his Mum, having gone home and 'come out' to her. He brought his Mum to see my play because he believed that the experience of it would be something that would inform her understanding of who her son was ... and what he was going through.

****

At some point in the not too distant past, something else came to mean something more to me than the collection of these experiences I was proudly gathering to keep my heart and soul fed and at peace.

I wish I knew what it was.

Bonfire of my vanity

I love fire. There is a primal energy about making heat ... and light ... possibly even the manifestation of a Baby God Complex. "Let there be light!" Certainly! Get out of the way and thy will be done, in Northcote as it is in Adelaide.

The occasion was a dear but distant acquaintance's house-warming party ... and having trundled deep into the wilds of Melbourne's northern suburbs with JD and her husband CS, we were ready to enjoy a lovely afternoon soaking up the last of the winter sunshine. As the sun started to disappear, an instantly recognisable chill began to descend - at which point I realised that, unbeknownst even to myself I fear, Firestarter had already selected the patch of back yard that would become his mini inferno: a concrete slab in the middle of a stricken vege garden ... well enough away from the house to ensure no lives (or aspects of new weatherboard rental property were compromised), no overhanging branches ... and enough ground surrounding the soon-to-be fire for people to stand, or sit, and warm themselves.

Firestarter's choice is usually pallets, but on this occasion, there were none to be found. Anywhere. Scouring the surrounds, with able-bodied support from CS, the only objects de burn to be found were sticks. We had found our kindling. CS suggested we go to the service station and buy a bag of firewood ... but Firestarter believes in the classic sport and spirit of Hunter-Gatherer, and promptly slid down a damp embankment behind the Northcote Plaza to find ... yes! dead branches! Armfuls of beautiful, lifeless timber.

Clutching my bounty to my chest, CS and Firestarter began their walk back to the house ... with more than a few bemused looks from passers-by who had, quite possibly, not ever witnessed the pagan ritual of firewood gathering. My biggest branch (well, I should probably call it a bough) was about six feet long ... and other than the briefest moment when it appeared as though one end of it was going to take out the entire passenger side of a passing car, our fuel was returned to the house without incident.

Fire hypnotises me ... instantly. Over the years I have enjoyed countless fires: campfires, bonfires and quaint little open fires. A good fire will calm its attendees. They will focus on it ... sometimes in child-like wonder ... and they will contemplate. Many, many things. They will warm their hands and congratulate Firestarter. Fires connect us to something like another world ... another frame of mind and state of being. Considered silence will descend. Cares will, momentarily, be banished. A hushed melancholia will pervade ... and honest conversation will inevitably ensue. The crackle and hiss will punctuate the silence ... and faces will glow and eyes will sparkle. People look different by firelight ... because we feel different. Fire cannot be bought ... not can its spell be manufactured. Romance and intimacy are almost always accentuated by the side of a fire. A fire demands honesty ... circumspection ... and truth. It is as though when faced with the simplicity of heat and light, our this-worldly concerns attach to the sparks and soar, quite suddenly, high above our heads ... racing into the night sky and away.

*****

Two of the little girls at the party had become Firestarter's earnest and devoted apprentices. They brought sticks and twigs to the fire and, carefully and respectfully, their little sacrifices were placed in the flames. I showed them how to be careful around fire, and ensured they understood that in order for a fire to warm us, it didn't need to be big. When we had enough sticks on the fire, I helped them start a wood pile. Some of the sticks were very wet, and I explained that if wood for the fire is wet, we place it near the fire to dry. One of the little girls asked if one of her pieces of wood was dry enough to go on the fire yet ... and as I pointed out the fact that it was starting to steam, her eyes glowed with the joy of understanding. We lit the end of small twigs and sang Happy Birthday. She blew out the small flame. We did this at least twenty times. She was delighted ... laughing, giggling, singing ...

But someone else was not.

The Alpha Male had been prowling around in the darkness on the fringe of our glowing wonderland. He was, in some way, 'related' to the little girl. (JD later said she thought that he was not the little girl's father, but - rather - her mother's partner ... so perhaps the approval stakes were a little too high? I will never know.) What I did know, was that I was in trouble when he started to squeeze lemon rind onto my fire to make tiny flames leap out. My apprentice was not interested. She was far more interested in blowing out our 'Birthday Candle Twigs' and waiting patiently for her sticks to dry. Failed lemon rind pieces were carelessly dumped in the fire ... followed shortly afterwards by entire lemons.

For his next trick, he brought a dandelion to the fire. For years, we have blown the dandelion seeds into the air and made a wish. On this occasion, he wondered whether 'the fairies' (the dandelion seeds) should be blown into the fire. The little girl shouted 'No!' ... and luckily for him - having already determinedly blown the seeds - the 'fairies' floated up and away from their scorched death potential at the hands of our Hero.

His coup-d'Etat, was to pick up a reasonably sizeable branch and start to beat it against the burning wood. Sparks flew into the sky ... "fireworks" ... "fairies" ... yet more beating ... until the fire started to die - beaten into submission against the concrete slab on which it had joyfully crackled.

My little apprentice was perplexed. Where had her Birthday Candle Twigs gone? Why was it suddenly so cold. And dark.

Alpha Male then went about rebuilding the fire ... prodding, poking and fanning the tiny flames. He grabbed all of the wood I had collected and put it onto the fire ... fanning the flames with an increasing air of desperation. The little girl kept asking him why he had made our fire go out ... and as he fussed about with this stick and that, she encouraged him to leave it alone in case it went out again. But I had ensured a bed of hot, glowing embers - so his endeavour would never have failed. And as the fire began to crackle and hiss once again, he decided it was time for them to go.

Fires connect us to another part of ourselves. In some, it is to nurture ... listen ... see ... understand. In some, it is conquest and control. In others it is to use the wondrous power of a fire to divide and destroy. To eliminate.

And by the side of every new fire, perhaps somehow we begin something. Again.

Sydney: The Beginning

It was always going to be Potts Point. I never really pretended to understand why. I still don't. I just knew. Maybe I was Mr Potts in another life? Or Mrs Potts? ... but that's all beside the point. I knew where I wanted to live, and even in spite of a brief and entirely unsatisfying half-hour fling with Waterloo, there was nowhere else in Sydney I was prepared to live.

I remember the moment I made the decision to come and live in Sydney vividly ... as though it were yesterday.

I was happily entrenched in a strangely alluring apartment-share with an ex-Sydney girl - MW* - in St Kilda. She decided to go to Sydney for a couple of weeks to catch up with old friends and re-imagine everything this city had meant to her. She left Melbourne and drove up in her red MX-5. As Sydney Girls do ... or rather, did. (Sydney-dwellers should try it sometime - counting them. I bet you won't see one. It's the Peugot 206CC now, in case you're even remotely interested.) One night, she called me. The collision with her past had been slightly more intense than she had been fully prepared for, and my sensible, sturdy, reliable and trustworthy presence was requested. She would fly me up, and we could drive back to Melbourne together. There were places to stay and people to meet. It was an offer I found impossible to refuse. Such is the continuing lead role of Fate in the drama series of my life.

I, and we, had a fucking ball! M was well-connected in this town. We couldn't walk down Oxford Street without bumping in to primed, buffed and gorgeous porn-star quality fags - to whom M was a long lost girlfriend ... sister. The kinship between certain faggots and certain women is a powerful, undeniable force of (un)nature. I will write about it more one day. M's girlfriends were all classic Sydney Girls: size 8 with a powerful (if not life and sanity threatening) determination to be size 6. They all spoke with record-threatening speed and haunted the domains of Kirribilli, Double Bay, Surry Hills and (by fag-default) Darlinghurst. They all had awesome jobs, fabulous cars, brilliant friends ... and a life-expectancy of 40 years. They loved me because M did. I was a well-connected, professional Melbourne fag. I was educated and sociable. I was also tall, dark and (apparently) handsome. That's the thing about Sydney: as long as you fit the grid and don't threaten the status-quo, you're welcomed with open arms - and occasionally legs. Have a contradictory opinion, a (different) world view, a belief in something other than instant gratification, a distinct lack of selfishness, or be able to differentiate (and dissect) Healthy Ego from Fragile Ego, and your days will be numbered. You'll become an Alexander Downer. People will find it difficult (and ultimately refuse) to acknowledge your existence. It's a situation faithful readers of this blog of mine will know I am intimately familiar with. It's like farting loudly in Church ... or a lift. There's really no point trying to redeem yourself.

In the (mid '90s) days since my heady $500 a week Speed addiction, I'd stacked on the weight. Then there was the horse-riding accident which 'crippled' me for six months (8 weeks in hospital) and finally put an end to my three-times-a-week workout routine. Needless to say, I would rapidly descend down the Sydney Fuck Chain once I was living here ... but for the time being, at least, I was Top of the Pops. I snorted cocaine through each nostril (like a true professional) and I could tell entertaining stories (especially while coked off my fuckin' head! I mean, who can't manage that?). I adored M ... and protected and defended her. I told her friends about our wonderful life together in "Melboring" ... convincing them that the city was, indeed, a consolation prize: where damaged souls who had paid the Sydney price of sacrifice, soul-less-ness, suspicion and loneliness came to heal. Or learn to love again. Or step out of the ring for a moment to consider what it is they were fighting for. Or against. Ultimately, it was ourselves ... but I'm getting ahead of myself a bit. Whack that dinner plate in the microwave and rack up another line guys! After all, we ain't gonna be eating anything off it!

It was a beautiful summer day. I was having some 'time out'. By The Harbour. I adore Sydney's sensational Harbour. It has dominated so many moments in my time here. Entirely. The best fun. The best feeling. Without fail. And one day this week, I will go back to where it all began to say goodbye. For now.

I was sitting on a rock in front of Mrs Macquarie's Chair with my shoes off and my jean-legs rolled up. The water of Sydney's monstrously hypnotic Harbour lapped at my ankles. I looked to my left and glimpsed the sight of the sun setting behind the sails of The Opera House. The Bridge was glittering. A little ferry was departing and the bigger Manly Ferry was streaming seaward. A plane was coming in to land and the entire vista was shimmering and shivering. I decided, at that moment, to come and live in Sydney. I said as much to myself. Aloud. I breathed it all in ... and felt like I had taken the first breath of my new life. I was overcome with optimism and excitement. Potential. A dream. A direction and a focus. A new beginning.

A couple of days later, after having done a quick reconnaissance of rental property availability (and cost) in Potts Point, M and I said farewell to Sydney and I drove her (and me) home to Melbourne. M slept almost the whole way ... waking only when we were about an hour or two out of Melbourne. The MX-5 held the road like the race car it truly is. I was at the wheel. I could return to Melbourne at speed because I knew that I would be packing up and leaving. Not straight away, but soon.

In the meantime, there was work to be done. Money to be made. Boxes to be packed. Truths to be denied. Friends to farewell. It was all so final. It was all so possible.

Fantasy versus reality would, yet again, be my downfall. There would be more than a couple of scrapes on the knee ... and there would be a sudden, frightening and ignominious collision with my sanity. But in the meantime, there was the open road and the MX-5.

And an exit clause.

*Initials have been used to protect the identity of particular individuals ... the details of whose lives, even though they are essential to the telling of my story, do not really belong in the public domain without their consent. I will, of course, feature this respectful consideration at my discretion.

Changing places

Melbourne? Sydney? Melbourne? Sydney? Melbourne? Sydney? Melbourne? Sydney?

I have a dilemma. I've just returned from a(nother) weekend in Melbourne where, among other things, I went in search of a new client or two for my communications company. The good news is, I found some. The bad news is, I really need to be Melbourne-based to fully capitalise on the potential they represent. Or is that "good" news?

I missed my blog for two whole days! I made a promise to myself to write something every day, but the business and social demands of a quick trip 'home' prevented me from giving it the attention it deserves. And now I have a choice to make: Melbourne or Sydney?

Anyway, the cute boy jogging in his Speedos is - surprise, surprise - Nick dal Santo from my beloved St Kilda Football Club ... and after Round 4, I'm equal twenty-fifth on gayfooty.com.au's Tipping Competition!

Scraps of distraction: Part 7

The new end

The thing about about abuse of any kind - emotional, physical, psychological, verbal, sexual - is that it stiffles and retards growth and development. On both sides of the act. The act of critical review is essentially no different. Whether they shove their hand down your pants and express like - or dislike - for what they feel, they've still shoved their hand down your pants. In life, it can be many things: rude, pleasureable, invasive, arousing, invited, uninvited, unexpected and a catalyst for many many things.

In the Theatre, it's the same. Ultimately though, it depends entirely on whose hand it is and how much you enjoy it down there. And where it leads ... and how soon after the initial mystery of the exchange, the mutual respect and consideration is lost to selfishness and greed. Savagery. The primal instinct for conquest. The hunger and appetite of the abuser at the expense of the curious consent of the person who might have continued to let them get off on the privacy of their desire.

In reflection, the saddest aspect of this entire journey for me was that yes, I did care about what the reviewers in London had said. Too much? At 25 years old, with your hand down your own pants and on the edge of the rest of your life, just how are you expected to comprehend, let alone know how to maintain and sustain that magical thing called "perspective"? ... not to mention know how to measure - precisely - what is "too much" of anything? It's futile ... pointless ... not unlike trying to measure what is "too long". Admirable sentiments I am sure, but the power of Perspective (not unlike the power of Denial) is not something that belongs in the domain of the young and adventurous. They come later. Like Regret.

Melodrama is drama without truth. And truth is that rare and fleeting almost instinctive breath of a moment in the theatre that is utterly and entirely impossible to capture. But it does exist. It's just very, very difficult to manufacture. You find it ... sometimes where you least expect it. It will sometimes chose to reveal itself in the perfect measure of time and place. But more often than not, it will elude you ... as was the case with many, if not most, of the performances of Tunnels without end I sat through in London.

You strive for it but it constantly eludes you. And the times in the theatre where truth has revealed itself, even fleetingly, remain my most memorable. I understand that now. And I seek it in everything I do.

Ireland's Brian Friel is my Master. William Shakespeare is too ... some of the time. So is Christopher Marlowe - all of the time. Arthur Miller most certainly delved deeply and often for the truth, but the truth of his writing was ultimately sabotaged by the truth of his significance to the lives of others and the turbulent times in which he lived. You need to look harder to find it in his writing. But it is there, especially in All My Sons - a magnificent, monster of play. And Timebends, his utterly compelling autobiography. Alan Bennett betrays truth with circumstance and his finely pleated structure. His becomes a convenient truth and he makes me uneasy. He is the very Englishness of contemporary English dramatists. Right up there with Alan Aychbourn. Aychbourn's truth is entirely of his own making which, in my mind, is akin to admitting that you'll never expect or allow it to appear in the work ... that it shall remain forever ellusive. It's a dangerous claim to stake ... because Theatre without Truth - or at the very least the eternal hope for its appearance - is Dead Theatre.

Tom Stoppard, a writer to whom I would be compared in a London review, is far too clever to be obviously seen to be truth-spotting.
David

Mamet

knows

(Beat)

it

will

(Beat)

appear

(Beat)

and

it

(Beat)

inevitably

(Beat)

does.

Because we imagine it has. Something this cleverly written and structured has to eventually reveal truth in one form or another.

****

I have tried many ways to deal with the what Alistair McCauley took from me. I have accepted - and resolved - my responsibility for it. I revisited the script, rewrote it, and staged a production of it in Melbourne which was fantastic. I learned. I developed. I changed. And I am grateful for the lessons.

Today I understand and accept that Alistair McCauley is - essentially - a thief. I often read his reviews (I read one today) and marvel at how he consistently uses the creative energy of others to write - essentially - about hate. And I still marvel at just how much hate he is truly - no, truth-fully - capable of. How bitter and miserable must he be, recognising how incapable he is of taking the kind of creative risks he is forced to endure in the dark with the less hate-filled. He mistakes fleeting Truth for wit, observation and cleverness. His. At least the blood of mine he spilled that day on The Green was bright red. Not black, toxic, poisoned, and oxygen-less - like his. I have gone on to make a great deal more theatre. He has, quite obviously, not gone on. I relish that fact.

Every act of critical review is like a kabob. There's onion, red capsicum, lamb, green capsicum, tomato and you. Having written an inestimable number of reviews since, I know a truth about McCauley - and myself - I wish more than anything I'd known on my knees on the grass in the middle of The Green all those years ago. Because everything that occured after it would have been different. I would have ensured that the responses to him were entirely different. I would not have allowed him to castrate me in the way I allowed him to then. I would not have allowed him to punish me for daring in quite the same way as I did then. I would, instead, have responded with the full strength and weight of my passion, and courage, and the sheer unbridled determination that had placed my magnificent attempt at his feet in the first place. All the saved-up-for way from Glen Waverley, Australia. In short, I would have cut off his fondling fingers - and the hand they were attached to.

His was a position of great privilege to that point in my life that we shared and I will hate - and I really mean Hate - him and his like forever for not deciding, instead, to find what there was to admire about my sprawling passionate ode to Fate and despair - as opposed to finding what there was to hate about both himself and me, as he gazed at his ugly and twisted reflection in the cracked mirror I was holding up to his face.

My solace, if you like, is to know that at the end of my life, I will at least have imagined what was possible. McCauley, and his like, will only be able to look back at how much they truly were beneath it ... and how, ultimately worthlessly, they instead, take anothers' creativity, passion and ability prisoner - captive in their own unenviable, lonely and creation-less cell of complete theatrical and literary insignificance.

They signify only The Reactionary my insightful and quite brilliant Mother dared to hope I would not become. I understand her fear of that happening for me in its entirety now: 'Where," she was asking "is the courage and originality in that?"

And it makes the act of making uncompromising theatre again in my life almost compulsory.

****

My journey through the memory of this life-altering experience abroad has been immensely painful. That much is probably obvious. What is perhaps not quite so obvious is the way I feel today, right now, about where the rest of my life will take me. And I will close this final chapter of a most remarkable reminiscence with this exchange which somehow, quite magically, The Universe delivered to me late last night.

It is an edited transcript from the ABC Radio's PM program in 2005 - and the interviewee, Michael Billington, is a reviewer for London's The Guardian newspaper.

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: I suppose what makes Pinter interesting as a writer and as a man, is that the plays themselves defy analysis. You can offer an interpretation, but you can never quite fully say what The Homecoming is about, what No Man's Land is about, what Landscape is about. I think that's partly what makes Pinter interesting and what links him with the great dramatists of the past – that there is a quality in his plays that is beyond rational explanation. And one of my colleagues ... I think brilliantly said, part of the pleasure of watching a Pinter play is not fully understanding what it is about.

Really, Mr Billington? Well touché.

And the "colleague" in question? Here, and I hope this will give you as great a thrilling and gut-busting laugh as it did me, is the unedited version:

MICHAEL BILLINGTON: ... And one of my colleagues, Alistair McCauley, I think brilliantly said, part of the pleasure of watching a Pinter play is not fully understanding what it is about.

If "brilliance" is defined by "not fully understanding" then I feel terribly sad and sorry for both you and your colleague. And terribly proud of myself and the literally hundreds of people who came to my play in London and loved and understood it - in spite of him.

Truthfully.

Thank you, Masters of Nothing ... and fuck you!

Scraps of distraction: Part 6

Ordinary miracles

Tunnels without end was a disaster. That much was obvious. A couple of the actors, who had been taken by complete surprise by the savagery of the attack, responded accordingly and began acting it as though it were some embarrassingly hideous C-grade drama. There was constant talk of it closing, but Sonia was maintaining the last semblance of her belief in herself, it, and me by keeping it running.

One night, Robert (Piotr) hit Billy (who was playing Valsa, one the maestro's lovers) and almost fractured his jaw. (Undisciplined actors in this particular play of mine would become synonymous with productions of it. In the Melbourne production, Nicholas, who was playing Piotr, would be hospitalised during a performance after a wayward punch to the side of his head from Josephine, the actress playing Sasha, his sister. Discuss.) Billy was refusing to go back on and had demanded that I be summoned to the theatre by management. I raced to the theatre and Billy and I sat in his dressing room while the interval was extended from twenty to almost 45 minutes. Thank God that The Tube runs 24 hours I can remember thinking. This poor audience aren't going to be out until well after midnight!

One night, when I actually happened to be in the audience, the sound system blew up about five minutes into the performance. "Bring it on!" I think I shouted aloud to the three other people that were there. The performance continued and I watched, in complete wonder and every-increasing astonishment, as a pair of impossibly small speakers were lowered from the bio-box window at the top of the right-hand side wall of the stage. They were slowly lowered only when people would have been looking at the opposite side of the stage. I know this, because I couldn't take my eyes off them! And the music duly returned. At interval, I learned that the Assistant Stage Manager had taken over calling the show while Helen had raced outside and up the road a little to rip the stereo system out of her car! The speakers that were being lowered to just above the heads of the actors were the ones from her fucking car! Bless her precious and inspirational heart!

Sadly, we had to let the ASM go. Not only couldn't the production afford him anymore, but he got the offer of another job in another show. I remember him trying to justify his departure to me. He needn't have bothered. The part of me that truly cared about everything that could possibly still happen had departed this production a long time ago.

One matinee afternoon, there was an audience of one (a disturbing fact that would also become synonymous with future productions of this play of mine. In fact, it is so synonymous with this play that I hope it happens again - and fully expect it to - in Sydney next year. I will actually be very disappointed if it doesn't). This charming man was on his way home to New York and he had read about Tunnels without end in the London Theatre Guide and thought he might like to see it. I walked in to the foyer while the staff were informing him that, given that he was the only audience member, the performance might not be going ahead ... and would he mind waiting to see if anyone else turned up. The Union's ruling was (and still is I understand) that if there were more people in the cast than in the audience, then by default, the performance could be cancelled.

The actors were ready. Our audience was ready. The bar was ready. Where was the problem? I asked the cast if they would agree to perform for two - the charming man and me - if he was prepared to become an audience of one. He confirmed that he was. I jokingly made him promise not to walk out (which is ironic really, because that's precisely what would happen in Melbourne.) We sat next to each other and the performance was fantastic ... and our audience member loved it. He cried at the end and apologised for having to rush off to the airport to catch his flight home.

A few nights later, I was at an open air Luciano Pavarotti concert with my friends from the Royal Opera. (We were seated in the row behind Princess Diana.) The concert was fantastic and when it ended, my friends suggested we head to the New End Theatre and have a drink with the actors. The axe was about to fall, and I should stop by and begin preparing myself to finally farewell the theatre which had become my home for the most amazing number of weeks of my life. How soon would it be, they joked, affectionately, before I could again take my friends to a theatre in London where a play of mine was being staged?

It was a wonderful suggestion and we piled into a cab. I immediately knew something was up the second we turned into New End. There wasn't a carspace to be seen. I joked to my friend Ian (who was the Royal Opera's Marketing Manager), that maybe they'd closed Tunnels ... without telling me and put something else on in its place. Our cab dropped us at the front door, and as I marched up to it, it opened from the inside. The front of house manager beamed at me.

"Where have you been all day and all night!" she screamed.

I saw Sonia appear behind her and I was dragged into the foyer. The doors into the auditorium opened and people - not person - slowly started to leave the theatre. Five ... ten ... surely that's got to be it! ... twenty ... thirty. I looked at Sonia who had her hands to her mouth. I felt Ian's hand on my shoulder. Forty ... fifty ... sixty ... I didn't know where to look.

My audience were shattered and many were wiping away tears. Some looked as though they'd just been bored out of their brain, but most of them looked as though they'd seen something. Sonia took my hand and dragged me up the stairs to the bar.

"I've been leaving messages for you at home all day and all night! Where have you been?"

She didn't wait for an answer before placing a large newspaper clipping in one of my hands and a glass of champagne in the other. With my friends peering over my shoulder, I read something I barely recognised: our first good review. Not a great review, but a positive one all the same. Sure, the "destination of the journey" was "a little vague" ... but the drama was "Magnetic!" Magnetic! ... and the costumes were "stunning!"

The review had come out in one of the local Hampstead newspapers and apparently, the reviewer - a woman - was notorious for determining the success or the failure of productions in the local area: and "the journey" with Tunnels ... was, apparently for her, "certainly worth it!" The bar slowly filled up with people who toasted me and applauded. My friends hugged me and, as the actors got news that I was in the house, they too came up and celebrated. It is Helen's hug I will remember as long as I live. It said "This is actually what you deserve! This is what we all fucking deserve!"

And Tunnels without end played to almost capacity audiences for the rest of his run home. I know, because every night, I would stand outside and watch - in complete wonder and with great pride - the audiences pour out of the theatre. The conversations at the bar were epic, intense and incredibly rewarding for me - as they often are when you are among friends.

One day shortly before the end of the run, Sonia called me and told me to come to the theatre. Something else quite amazing had just happened.

I dashed to the theatre and raced up to her office. She handed me a fax: a request for fifteen tickets. The 'charming' man who had dropped by and watched the play on his own was bringing fourteen of his friends all the way from New York for the closing night performance. Not only had this never occurred at the New End Theatre before, but this booking for fifteen plus the bookings already made on the day - in person and on the telephone - meant that I had broken the New End Theatre's record for the most number of tickets sold in one day!

My dribbling, snotty-nosed little spastic had found his home ... and, more importantly, his audience.

****

The final performance was one I can barely remember. I knew it would be over and a great part of me desperately wanted it to be. Still. And as it came to its conclusion, I felt more overwhelmed than I had ever felt before ... and possibly since. As the actors came out onto the stage for the first time to take their final bows, fifteen people stood up and threw red roses onto the stage. I was actually quite unsentimental about the occasion until I saw Michaela in tears. She bent over and collected a rose and held it up, high in the air and looked at me like I have never been looked at in the theatre since. Everyone but me was on their feet. I couldn't stand up.

I managed one final look at the image that I had created on stage and buried my head in my hands.

It was the first time since I had left my beautiful dog Kimberley with my friends in Australia all those months ago that I had actually been able to cry.

Scraps of distraction: Part 5

The Reviews

The telephone at home started ringing uncommonly early. It woke me, but - as Fate would have it - not in time to answer it. I threw on some clothes and raced out the door to the newsagent. I knew there would be at least one review this morning. A dash through the park and then across The Green, one of those quaint little parks and gardens that try, valiantly, to save London from turning in on, and suffocating, herself.

The fatigue of the weeks beforehand had coloured the production a rather pleasing rich shade of chocolate-pink grey - almost as though it was happening in spite of everyone associated with it. And the bookings were strong. I had had many glorious conversations with members of the audience, some of whom had once sat with me at the bar until sunrise.

Later today there was also to be a meeting at the theatre with a couple of Producers who wanted to mount a touring production of it. A Number One Touring Company - whatever that meant. In the meantime, my heart, my ambition and I rushed to confirm that we were a success. I grabbed copies of all the morning newspapers (no mean feat in London) and started my return, bubbling with nerves and anticipation, to the house. My landlady (and great friend), Annie, would have the coffee going and together, we would pour over the reviews: "An important new voice in the theatre ... " ... "Brilliant! Stunning!" ... "Don't miss this amazing production before it transfers - as it inevitably will - to the West End!"

I am halfway across The Green. A review! The Financial Times! A quarter trademark pale orange page, right across the bottom! "Wow! Geoffrey! Look at you!" I scream, guiltily and silently, to myself ... "look at all that space they've dedicated to a review of my ... "

"Poor Tchaikovsky! His life was sad enough and one would have liked to spared him some of the rubbish that has been made of it since - of which Ken Russell's The Music Lovers and this play, are, alas, prime examples."

It is like someone has suddenly removed both my legs. I can't feel them ... and I drop to the ground like a wing-less bird. Hard. Thud. I try and keep a hold of all of my newspapers but they slide from my arms onto the damp grass around me. I grapple with The Financial Times and read the opening paragraph again ... and again ... and again. To be sure it actually says what I have just read. My heart is beating so impossibly fast. There must be some terrible mistake!

There is ... and apparently it's me.

The review is by Alistair McCauley and his review is as painful to imagine as it is to read. He slices the actors, my play, my production, my dialogue, my direction, my ambition and my imagination - my everything and my all.

My mind flashes back to many years earlier. I was working as a stock controller for an abbatoir when 'the boys' thought it might be fun to take me on a tour of the slaughterhouse. I remember watching, helplessly mute, as a wide-eyed and terrified bull was clamped into place on his muddy death row. Seconds later, the bull-bolt penetrates one side of his quivering head and appears out the other side. How do you describe that look on his face? The bull-bolt retracts, and with an unbearable shudder, the beast crumples to its knees. Staring balefully. Twitching. Its jaw hits the ground. And eventually dead.

There is no way for the heart and soul of an artist to know how to respond to the slaughter of everything they imagined they were. It is a complete annihilation of everything I have held so near and dear to my heart for months. And everything that was to be my future. McCauley ridicules the emotion and relentlessly eye-gouges every aspect of the thing I have dared to put before him. He picks "particularly awful" lines of dialogue with which to misquote me. I can't sort out the array of nauseous reaction I am having. It's like a fatal internal hard-disk error. Irretrievable. My memory is erased and I only have this damning evidence of my complete and utter worthlessness as a risk-taking creative being. (People often ask me why I don't get a chest x-ray. It's actually quite simple. I've already had the worst news of my life.) Here, on my knees, pathetically surrounded by my newspapers and fighting to contain a sound I don't recognise - my creative being has been hacked to bloodless pieces. And I am not actually sure how I am going to survive my reaction to it.

Of course! I'm not supposed to.

I don't see Annie running across The Green toward me. She has answered the telephone to someone from the theatre telling her to keep me away from the newspapers. It's been a wholesale slaughter of the highest order and they're concerned about the effect it will have on me. She has jumped in her car and driven around toward the newsagent to find me.

I choke on my breath as Annie drops to the ground beside me, collecting my newspapers and encouraging me to stand up.

There's nothing to say and there's no way to say it.

I am suddenly a long way from home. I think of my Mother and Father in Glen Waverley and how shattered and sad they will be. I think of my Sister who will be equally as embarrassed by - and a little for - me. I think of the actors and the sudden and unexpected shock of realisation that they were right all along not to trust me entirely. I think of the script, and the actual versions of the lines misquoted by McCauley - wishing I had not given up on my right to cut them from the script while the actors still had time to adjust and re-learn. Fuck their precious Egos! Look where it got them! Fuck them! Look where it got me! I thought of Sonia and her dreams and expectations for this marvellous play and the wonderfully talented fucked-up dreamer of a boy who had written it. She had plucked him from obscurity for their crazy mad dash onto a mainstage in the Theatre Capital of the English Speaking World.

The shame and the horror of it changed me forever in a split second.

****

Over the coming days the bad reviews continued to appear. Shockers. I can't quote them. I don't have them anymore. Once, not that many years ago, I burnt them all. Including McCauley's (which is actually quoted from memory here). They were like seeping, angry herpes blisters: every time I caught sight of them, all the fun had to stop.

Tunnels ... limped along. The Number One Touring Company, which ended up being the consolation prize to a West End transfer, never eventuated. At the meeting later that day, they informed me that they wanted me to write two characters out of the script. I responded with "Which two? Tchaikovsky and ... ?" I was merciless. They were fools. There was no other way I could even begin to defend myself from the events of the morning. As far as they were concerned I was no longer the boy with the goose that laid the golden eggs tucked under my arm. Instead, I had somehow miraculously morphed into the parent of a dribbling, snotty-nosed, spastic baby - who was desperately trying to find it a good home. But I have always believed in life after death, and I scoffed at their ridiculous suggestion. Sonia was finally convinced I was utterly mad.

The box office telephone stopped ringing ... almost overnight. A Jewish critic in a Jewish magazine loaded the final bullet into the chamber by referring to the play as "... roast pig's ear ..." - which, when you think about it, is actually quite astonishing in its brutality. People stopped turning up to collect their tickets. The length of the play did, in fact, come back to haunt me - with one critic writing something along the lines of: " ... never mind the tunnels, this terrible piece of theatre is positively interminable!" Or something witty and droll like that.

Regardless, they had achieved their end. The public and private humiliation of me and my beloved, spastic child, was complete. And I was grateful for the silence in my life.

It is impossible to know how to behave in these circumstances. People suddenly stop acknowledging your existence. For my front of house friends, I metamorphisised from someone who had single-handedly guaranteed their rent for weeks, maybe months, into someone who had just kicked a puppy to death on the footpath out the front. Sonia is suddenly, not so sure. She knows we share the responsibility for the crime - but it's quite obviously proving a little too complicated for her to resolve her guilt by association. Box office staff are instantly laid off - I know, because I watch them gather their belongings and leave.

It was like the award winning Child Care Centre I had left my child at had suddenly burned to the ground - and I was the parent of the only child inside who hadn't managed to get out. Everywhere I turned, there was nothing but suspicion, shame, embarrassment and resentment. I wanted - and needed - to defend my play but I needed people around me who believed it was worth defending. None of those people were here. Anywhere. I had been tipped upside down and exposed as a fraud. A cheat. I had coloured their worlds with great hope, passion and inspiration, only to now be the cause of their creative poverty and actual penury. And it had all come as a complete surprise. We were in shock ... not the shock of a somewhat high telephone bill, but the heart-stopping shock of someone facing what they innately recognise as their impending, and instant, demise.

There was really only one thing to do. I left the theatre and decided, in spite of the distance and myself, to walk somewhere ... anywhere ... home. I had been introduced to the concept of Damage Control.

And as suddenly as it had ended, several quite extraordinary things happened. Unexpected miracles which, to this very day - somewhat astonishingly - make me grateful I dared.

There was, after all, still one more New End Theatre record to smash.

Image: The park near my home in Ealing, London.

Scraps of distraction: Part 4

Opening Night

How should a boy from Bairnsdale feel about the fact that his play is opening in London? And what should he spend the day doing? He can't go to the theatre because they are painting the entire inside of it black. By lunchtime, the paint will be drying and the dry-cleaned costumes will arrive shortly thereafter. Cleaners will be going through the place from top to bottom. Instead, he messes around at home and fields phone calls from Australia and from all his friends in London. He will get to the theatre in time for a drink or two and sit down with Sonia to go through his schedule of formalities, including a brief meet and greet with some local dignitaries, the West End producers and a couple of directors from the RSC.

I had been 'seeing' a wonderful boy - whose name escapes me completely. He worked for some kind of impossibly secret service agency in the United States. The first time we had a dinner party at his place, there were five of us. I was the star, of course, and I held court with due aplomb. I was still a very different person then. I had performed in musicals and plays all over London. I had sung Sondheim for Sondheim. I had trained as an actor, writer and director there and had visited Mel Gibson on the set of the film version of Hamlet he was making somewhere or other. I had flown in more jump-seats than I care to remember (including one especially memorable and delightful experience with Aer Lingus, which I will write about in more detail another time). I had spent a week in Luxembourg wandering about, wide-eyed, in the Ardennes. I had flown to Paris for dinner.

Life was grand. Impossibly.

My boy always offered our guests a wonderful cocktail at the end of the evening. It was called a "Security Leak" ... and within minutes of consuming it, you would be unconscious wherever it was you were sitting ... or reclining. Nothing, and no-one, else has ever managed to stop me mid-sentence. Except Alistair McCauley. But we'll deal with him shortly. And when you woke up, some half an hour later, you would be unable to remember a single thing about the entire night. He and another friend of ours - a colleague of his - were to be my guests at Opening Night.

I don't recall much about the day at all. My mind was totally preoccupied with the night ahead. There were still a couple of flat sections in the performance ... and an especially messy transition into the final scene in Act One. But the music took over. Tchaikovsky was my fallback. How could I fail?

The theatre foyer and office was full to bursting with flowers and cards. The bar was being stocked and I collided with the caterers who were delivering the Opening Night Finger Food. Sonia was buzzing. She looked gorgeous! She had mirrored my blanket enthusiam and love for this difficult child of mine from the start. I had sent it to her as soon as it was finished. To the best of my knowledge, there were two 'transfer' theatres in London: The Hampstead Theatre and The New End. Fatefully, I picked hers.

****

Sonia had rung me some days after receiving it and told me she thought it an amazing script ... but that her theatre was full until the end of the year. There were weeks of pre-Edinburgh try-outs and something else was currently limping toward the finishing line. I thanked her for liking it and we wished each other 'all the best'.

My problems actually all stem from one simple fact: I had never really expected anything to come of this play. I had written it in three days after months of research and hours and hours of intense and illuminating discussions with several renowned Musicologists - each of them a Tchaikovsky 'expert'. They had guided me through the canon in prayerful and awe-inspiring ways, highlighting the journeys of particular instruments within each score. Tchaikovsky, unlike almost all of his peers - past, present and future (his and ours) - wrote for the entire orchestra. Every single instrument. Most composers write for the instrument of their expertise (generally piano) and work with someone else on the orchestra parts - or hand the responsibility for the orchestrations over to someone else entirely. Not Tchaikovsky. The journey of every single instrument through every single one of his compositions was mapped out by him. I first became captivated by him for this reason: what the fuck must this have sounded like in his mind?

This is also why he is the greatest composer to have ever lived - and I also believe that this little known aspect of his powers of creation go most of the way in explaining why he was, and still is, so popular. Even if the lay-person really has no definitive idea of why his music moves them in the way that it does. My understanding of Tchaikovsky's music literature is something that, to this very day, gives me great pleasure. An example, perhaps, is to find a really great recording of his Fifth Symphony and listen to the journey of the trumpet. It was once affectionately described to me as 'a symphony for the trumpet and orchestra'. In a really really great recording, it's actually quite easy to hear why.

If a ballet company anywhere in the world is struggling financially, they'll whip on Swan Lake. You might like to listen to the flute in the maelstrom that follows Siegfried's realisation that he has been deceived by Odile. The manner in which the orchestra drowns out the flute is utterly heart-breaking in a great recording. And Swan Lake gets 'em in every time. Without fail. (Within the space of six months this year, there are two Swan Lakes in Australia: Matthew Bourne's and The Paris Opera Ballet's.) A mind-bogglingly high percentage (something like seventy-eight) of people who have ever attended a live orchestral concert have chosen to attend for the first time because Tchaikovsky was on the programme.

I have certainly picked an incredibly popular subject with which to plummet to the very depths of unpopularity. Ken Russell would end up looking like David Lean by the time Geoffrey Williams was through with Maestro Piotr Tchaikovsky!

Less than a week later, Sonia called me again and told me that she could not get my play out of her head ... and would I come to her theatre and see a play. And have a meeting. Of course I would! A couple of days later I danced into the New End and met with Sonia for the first time. She had a problem. The play that was on at the moment was playing to almost empty houses (a concept of Sonia's I would help to utterly redefine for her in the weeks ahead). So ... if she closed this current catastrophe early and brought one or two of the pre-Edinburgh try-outs forward, would I be interested in bringing Tunnels ... into her theatre (she pointed to a date in her diary) here?

What I should have said - and very nearly did say - was said "No." "Thank you."

It is very, very clear to me now. In the lush embrace of hindsight. "No" was the right answer ... as it so often should have been - and only occasionally has been - ever since.

"Thank you anyway, Sonia," I should have said, "but are you out of your God-damned fucking mind? It's a play about the greatest composer that ever lived, to be staged in the city of his greatest fulfilments ... not to mention his most ardent admirers and defenders!? Tchaikovsky himself said that English musicians performed his music better than anyone else in the world! I'm Australian you Stupid Woman! The English press HATE Australians! In their gruesome, post-colonial paranoia they still thought that there were wooden ships sporting the Union Jack conquering great, previously unchartered continents for the acquisition of King or Queen and Country! Most of the sad little perpetually soft cocks still do! Sorry guys, but your Piotr The Great is actually Piotr The Great Big Pillow-biting Shirt-lifting Turd-burgling Arse Bandit! ... and if you don't believe me, I'm gonna show you because he's going to spend - what is it now? - at least three pages of somebody else's artless and ultimately pointless fucking dialogue in bed with a Russian Prince who didn't even fucking exist! There are monologues in this crap that run for four pages. That's four A4 pages Sonia. Jesus Christ! There's one monologue in there that's so fucking long and verbose it's practically a short fucking play of its very own!"

What was this woman thinking? What was I thinking when, instead, my Ego said "Yes".

****

Tonight she was on fire. Her theatre was glittering with artistic, creative and theatrical potential ... and the bar was doing great business. As a Director, I don't interact with actors before a performance. I acknowledged their arrival with a smile and a wave ... or a kiss ... and watched on proudly as they gathered up their flowers and took them down in the direction of their respective dressing rooms. They were certainly nervous, but I was already well on the way to complete sensory obliteration at the bar. My friends had started arriving with flowers and gifts and as early as the half hour call, I was already propping myself up on the bar.

The foyer bell suddenly started ringing ... and the second I heard it I had to excuse myself and go into the office toilet where I promptly threw up. I have had many deep, meaningful and lasting relationships with any number of repositories of my turgid and tormented fear, but this one was unique. "This one will go down in theatre history!" I remember thinking, somewhat obliquely. I tried to stand up, but couldn't. Every flaw, doubt and anxiety about what all these people were about to witness punched hard at my eyeballs - from the inside of my head. I tried to get up, but slipped on the tiles and cracked my lower jaw so hard on the toilet bowl I thought I was going to slide into a technicolour coma on the spot. Vomit stained rented tuxedo and all.

It would have been preferable.

My boy was finally sent in to get me and - for what would turn out to be the final time - he looked at me with so much love for my pain. He couldn't comprehend why I wasn't going to watch the performance ... no matter how much I tried to convince him I knew what was going to happen ... better than the people who were about to make it happen.

Once he finally had me on my feet, he doused me with breath-freshener and we walked together out into the nearly empty foyer. He reluctantly let go of my hand and disappeared into the auditorium. The doors shut and the moments between then and the music starting were laced with an indescribable panic, mixed with hope and fear. I stood by the door and listened. It had started. There was no stopping it now. And I walked up the stairs to the bar.

"The horror." "The horror."

I sat at the bar drinking vodka and orange juice. It's hard to remember precisely what I was thinking. I could see it unfolding and falling over ... dazed and confused ... a scratch on his knee. Bandaids. More bandaids. OK, this is serious ... we need to get him to a hospital. The bar staff and front of house staff eventually started to busily prepare for the interval. Covers came off the finger-food and champagne started to be poured into glasses. Ooops! Here we go! The end of Act One. Is there still anyone awake in there? Alive? The barman looked at me and then looked at the back door to the very top of the auditorium. Ha! I remember thinking. Wouldn't it be funny if I snuck in to watch, only to discover that the audience had all walked out an hour ago and were up the road at the pub? Or gallantly throwing themselves in front of oncoming traffic ... anything but this! Anything but this terrible, terrible play!

I nodded ... and he quickly and quietly opened door into the auditorium. I poked my head in and looked at the stage. There he was, Robert's and my version of Piotr Tchaikovsky, supporting his chin with the back of his hand, and fiercely conducting the end of the Fifth Symphony. Antonina was stage left in her 'cell', madly scribbling a slogan in chalk on the jet-black wall. Nadia von Meck, his patron, was tearing up music and letters on the opposite side of the stage before collapsing onto the floor in a fit of jealousy, hatred and rage. Act One was certainly ending.

And Blackout.

Silence.

Polite applause. The worst kind. Sustained for an almost impolite amount of time. Maybe, I thought, they would refuse to stop clapping in the hope that they may prevent - or prohibit - what was to come. Were they demanding the curtain calls? I know I wasn't ... and I ducked back out to the bar to be met with the concerned frowns of the entire theatre staff. They had heard rapture all week. This was something they didn't recognise. But The Universe stepped in and made sure I did. She wanted to soften the blow. Immediately, and instinctively, I knew it had failed to lift off the ground.

I tried to lift my spirits as the foyer bar filled with punters ... but the buzz was hopelessly subdued. Act 2 was lighter, and shorter ... the fruits of the labour which was Act One were waiting to be harvested. Drama is tough on Act Ones. Audiences often conveniently ignore the fact that there's still much more of the story to come. Act Ones do the hard yards. Act Twos get to stand on the podium. (I remember a conversation with a theatre manager at another production of a play in mine in Melbourne who thought my Act One was "a dog", but he adored Act Two ... so much so that every night he was on duty, he would sneak in to watch it and sob quietly to himself in a curtained off alcove. After many conversations, he finally agreed that Act Two was only as good as it was because of the work that Act One had done to set it up.)

Sonia made a point of coming up to me and gripping me a little too tightly on the shoulder. My boy and his colleague left and I never saw or heard from either of them again. I picked at least two notebook-wielding critics, stealing food and engaged in quiet, almost catatonic, conversation. They didn't dare look at me. But sitting here today, I recognise the expressions they wore. I've worn one like it myself on those nights when you curse the obligation that prevails over your right to run as far and as fast away from this travesty of what some people think is theatre.

My friends from the Royal Opera were fighting with all their might to increase the buzz in the room. One of them called it 'compelling' ... a little too loudly. I just wanted it all to be over.

It would be. And it was. The only thing I was less certain of was the extent of the damage. Not yet anyway.

****

Following the performance, the company were invited to an extravagant supper at a nearby restaurant which Sonia and Roy had booked out for the purposes of our Opening Night Party. Forced jovial congratulations punctuated tense, deprived silences until Sonia made a speech about how proud she was to have my play in her theatre. She was actually quite convincing. I made a speech about how wonderful it was to have made it to Opening Night ... and how proud and grateful I was for everyone's efforts to get us here. I was genuinely moved by the impression this rancid beast of a play of mine had made on everyone. There may not have been plaudits galore, but there was creative and spiritual exhaustion ... the best kind.

In the days that followed, Sonia and my relationship would crumble underneath the most painful layers of betrayal, legal threats and toxic, unspoken blame that neither of us - in that blind passion-fuelled meeting so many, many weeks ago - ever imagined possible. In the meantime, I went home in a cab and lay awake all night ... hoping, against hope, that my instincts were, in fact, wrong. Until I fell asleep - dreaming of The Reviews.

Scraps of distraction: Part 3

In order to even begin to take on The Theatre, you need to believe yourself to be endowed with the greatest and most dazzling array of capabilities and understanding. It's a marvellous conceit. Time and timing, space, reason, science, poetry, mathematics, fantasy, chemistry, reality, character, purpose, illusion, angles, shapes, psychology, darkness, light, half-light, habits, shade, patterns, distance, sound, beats, silence, phrasing, pace, tempo, relationships, juxtaposition, the myriad beginnings, middles, and ends, punctuation, breath, vowels, consonants, entire sentences, past, present, future, archetype, stereotype, cliché, conversation, dialogue, monologue, duologue, design, technique, swoops, drops, holds, tastes - and silent stillness, the master of all. Each and every seen and unseen element of a work in the theatre combines to power the communication of a single, precious moment. The honour the theatre provides for us is the opportunity to luxuriate in a shared moment of creation. Of our making. More than one would be implausible ... greedy ... not to mention impossible. More than you could possibly hope for. But it's what you aim for. The power to change lives. To change minds. To challenge. To teach. To entertain. To undeniably Be. Exist.

It's a fair exchange. The nights when the performances of this play were well-received were thrilling and life-enhancing. It should be against the law to feel this enriched and enlivened by what you have achieved. The conversations with audience members at the bar afterwards, if I had been at the performance or had dropped in for a peek and a free drink afterwards, were almost always fascinating. But compliments have always been impossible for me to accept. They still are. I never know how to process them.

But who did I think I was fooling? By the time Tunnels ... closed, I would be so roundly changed and profoundly defeated that the direction of my life would be changed forever.

****

The play is barely breathing. Helen quietly suggests that the "Top and Tail" is actually my new best friend - especially given the fact that the actors are now suddenly wholly suspicious. She gives me a impromptu lesson in shaving. Time. Good Stage Managers are actually the unsung heroines of great theatre. They are mostly women. With good reason. And whenever I work in the theatre, they always are - and always will be. I'm not sure I will ever fully understand why.

We disagree on a tense, ego-challenging detail: precisely how much shorter do I want it to be.

It's a magnificent question. A true mark of her genius. But it is a question I am unable to answer. I am not experienced enough in making theatre and I am still too attached to this thing that is lying, comatose and bleeding, on the greyest of black decks at my feet. The two Geoffreys are are fighting for perspective. Geoffrey The Director wants to keep directing a shorter version, while Geoffrey The Playwright just wants the best view from the best seats. And to get to the foyer bar sooner.

And for a fleeting moment my greatest ally considers abandoning me to my destiny. It's one thing to own your skills and imagination, it's another thing altogether to know how to prove them. And from this moment, our relationship begins to unravel. I have 'handed it over' to her, but I'm still in the way ... fussing around over the fall of the fabric. It's a masterful art, the balancing act of the transition of power in the theatre. Helen - had she held the total (as opposed to to the sub-total) sum of power and influence that was due her - could have saved me in ways I, only now, comprehend. And not even fully. We respect, and need, each other too much. This monstrously passionate play defies and devours our creative intellect and all our previous experience. Her way would be to force Tim to his dressing room wall with an elbow pressed tightly against his throat. Then, she would instruct him, almost cursorily, that there would be no point in him trying to deliver the monologue because the production would have moved on without him. She would ensure that he: a) vanished from sight in the blackout; b) drowned in the music cue; and/or c) was physically moved out of the way by the scene change she would not even bother telling him was now going to be take place around, and instead of, him. Or all three. And if not, a replacement actor can be at the theatre within fifteen minutes. A list of replacements is being drawn up as we speak ... and I can look at it at any time. I think she is joking ... until after we close, when she tucks the list inside her thank you card.

And I have dealt with recalcitrant actors very differently since. Partly to honour Helen, partly myself, but mostly to honour them. Actors become blind to the consequences of their actions. Everything is mapped out for them ... everything they say, think, feel, and do. They adopt. It is never a child of their own. The art of acting is, after all, the art of creative lying. It's why there is so rarely truth in it ... and it is why, when watching truly great actors like Sean Penn, the fact that they have made such unquestionable truth from such obvious deceit is mind-altering.

But loyalty is the Queen of The Whores in the theatre - and when a production is transitioning from rehearsal to sell-out previews in London, there's no knowing who'll swallow.

It will of course, in time, be me.

And, not for the first or last time, this work of mine defeats me.

Helen goes about her business and I suddenly feel like a paedophile in a playground. Watched. The first indiscretion will result in my banishment. Until Anna Scheer, the only Australian in the cast, braves the intimate distance between me and the not even one-year-old object of my affection. (Anna has since gone on to a career in performance art in Berlin. I hope, more than anything, that one day I can meet her again and talk. She was a wonderful, intuitive energy. And she didn't give a fuck about the length of anything.) She kept a barely respectable distance, but told me that there was still much work to be done. That 'length' was a purely subjective consideration. That my play was steadfastly refusing to run to somebody else's schedule. That good storytelling takes time.

And Helen called the Act One beginners to the stage.

****

Chaos.

Tim's little revolution has broadsided the ensemble and damaged it in ways I was not even aware of. They knew I wasn't happy and yet, it was only me they lived to please. It was only me who would take them with me when my play transferred to the West End as it was hotly tipped to do.

And they started walking into the furniture - AS it was being brought on stage. They didn't even have the good grace to wait until it was there.

A note was whisked into the theatre: would I do a publicity call this afternoon in the foyer and a photo out the front? No, I wouldn't. Buy another ad instead. They used to mean the same thing to me.

The "Top and Tails" eventually ended and Helen called another in fifteen minutes. I asked her how long I had before I no longer had the option of canceling this evening's preview. Given the fact that she ignored me, I assumed that she didn't think it was an option.

Tim was like the leper in a beauty pageant and the fat, ugly, tiny-dicked queen in a porn film all rolled into one. Robert (who was playing Piotr) couldn't look at him ... which was incredibly useful for an hour of the time they spent on stage together, but entirely and utterly inappropriate for the other two and half hours of stage time they shared. He had committed the cardinal sin of an ensemble: putting his own selfish, ego-centric opinions and vanity ahead of the needs of the group. He had betrayed himself, them, and me ... but ultimately 'us'. I thought momentarily about replacing him. It was, in retrospect, the only thing to have done. A new actor would have had the rest of the week to learn the shortened version of the role and, in the meantime, his isolation from the ensemble would suit the character perfectly. And I could have had the pick of the crop. This play, after all, was transferring to the West End. Sonia, unbeknownst to me, already had her lawyers drawing up the contracts.

But there was something about Tim's performance - like everyone's performance - that I truly, truly adored. We had travelled a long and incredibly difficult road together. I had cast him, from the nearly 200 actors who turned up to audition. The first time he had to strip in the rehearsal room was so painful and confronting for him that I still remember the look on his face as he demanded I order him to disrobe. It was like he was peeling off a layer of skin and I was astonished by - and grateful for - his vulnerability to the work (and to me) more than anything else. The scene was never rehearsed again. He was rivetting in it. (One night during the season, under the covers with Robert, he would not be able to contain an erection and, by midday the following day, we would be dealing with the first major legal challenge to the season - a 'Closing Order'. Ironic, really, in the country responsible for Fred and Rosemary West ... not to mention Myra Hindley.) And with only one or two exceptions, I despise the English to this day.

The Previews were, however, fantastic and the audience exit polls were incredibly positive. I poured over the feedback every night ... into the early hours of the morning. The red and black costumes (except for Antonina's asylum 'dress'): superb. Yvonne Kower's artful and inspired freeze-frame choreography for the opening party scene - where Antonina and Piotr's marriage collapses: brilliant. Much of the work was amazing ... yes, it was long ... but that was fine. It was getting shorter and faster. Security and confidence were nestling in amongst the fear and apprehension. There had not been one, single walk-out. The audiences were staying the distance.

As I heard the thunderous conclusion of Swan Lake followed by the rapturous applause following the end of the final preview, I slipped - pissed - from my bar stool upstairs and walked, haltingly, down the stairs to the foyer. The applause was still going ... my retarded child was being sent off into his season with great enthusiasm. It is apparently a theatre tradition in countries where theatre actually really matters. The final preview audience know they are witnessing a work in a state in which it will never exist again. A pen and ink study of the huge, sweeping canvas it is to become.

I stand and watch as the audience file out to a quiet and reflective section of the maestro's Piano Concerto No.1. Many are in tears. Most are fatigued. An elderly woman is the last to leave by a good fifteen minutes. I hope she hasn't died in her chair from boredom, but she stands slowly and reluctantly walks out of the auditorium. She stands at the door - moved beyond measure. I am concerned she is going to collapse. I glance nervously at one of the front of house staff who immediately comes over and supports her arm.

"Where is the writer?" she asks.

I am inclined - almost instinctively - to deny my role in the fiasco. Maybe she hated it so much that she wants to hit me ... and the front of house staff are trained to not identify anyone associated with the production without that person's consent.

"He's upstairs", I say.

The woman glances at the stairs and contemplates taking them on, but thinks better of it.

"His great, great suffering."

"Whose? The writer's?" I ask.

"No, you fool. The Maestro's! This writer ... the play ... has captured the weight ... the truth of his pain and suffering which was his music. His greatness."

"It's three hours! Don't you think it's a bit too long?" I ask.

"Pffft!" she discards, with tired contempt. "Of course not! What a ridiculous thing to say! You don't know what you're talking about. The time it takes is the time it needs to tell the story of such great pain and accomplishment. I hope you never have to suffer to the extent he did."

And with that, my Muse is supported out the door and into her waiting taxi.

"Suffer"? You ain't seen nothing yet old girl! But in the meantime, I bound up the stairs to the packed theatre bar to a spontaneous, heart-felt round of applause. I am touched, hugged, kissed and cajoled. The actors gradually appear and there is a great sense of unity, hope, expectation and a dream-like air of a monumental success.

Tomorrow, there is our sold out black-tie Opening Night. There will be flowers and telegrams.

And in the days that are to follow, the slaughter of the innocence.

Image: The Suffering, from the 'XBox' image library.

Scraps of distraction: Part 2

There's to be a week of previews. I arrive at the theatre early every morning. The actors are called at midday. They need to sleep. The play runs for three and a half hours and they are exhausted. I check in with the theatre staff and look at the bookings sheet for the next preview. Sonia is ecstatic! The Previews are all nearly sold out ... and there is a buzz about "the Tchaikovsky play". Glenda Jackson (who played Piotr's wife - Antonina - in Ken Russell's Tchaikovsky film The Music Lovers) has been invited to opening night. So has Ken Russell. Jackson sends an autographed photo and Russell sends a note: 'Thank you for your invitation, but I am unable to support someone who appears to be making the same dreadful mistake as I did.' Or something like that. I left Russell's note at the theatre. By the time it was all over, I would hate more than anything how insightful he would turn out to have been. In the meantime, he can't be right: there's a waiting list for the black-tie opening night and the box office staff are fielding telephone calls all day.

Helen, our Stage Manager, is devoted to me and our play. She's always at the theatre before me, and over strong coffees, like neurosrugeons, we go through my notes. One morning, Sonia's husband Roy brings Jane Torvill and Christopher Dean into the operating room. They are clients of his and the three of them are off to a media call somewhere. They are looking forward to seeing the play tonight and glance excitedly around the space. I'm annoyed that they're there. A Director and Stage Manager's time together is sacred. Personal. Private. Sensing my impatience, Helen fluffs and giddies them out the door.

"Who were they?" I ask.

She ruffles my hair. "They're ice-skaters darling."

A note goes up to the office: we are not to be disturbed.

The stage is tiny and the rehearsal room was huge. That's my dilemma. The drama has shrunk from an horizon-less vista of possibility to a pinhead of reason. And it's no longer working. The ocean currents of air, space and 'room' around any creative work - both for spectators and practitioners - has vanished. The whole thing is feeling - and looking - pinched. My rehearsal process has failed us. Permission, safety, passion and consideration - by their very nature - lack economy.

The play exists around the music - not the other way around, so the music cues are analysed first. If Tchaikovsky's not onboard, this ship doesn't sail. We re-mark the beats.

Set changes are taking up far too much time. The crew will just need to get faster. The actors will need to get offstage quicker. We re-plot the scene changes. The actors won't exit ... they'll merge with the change. More needs to happen onstage in the blackout than off. Blackouts become cross-fades and I ignore the collisions and confusion that instantly appear in my mind. The morning is getting away and the actors will shortly start to arrive.

The cuts. To the script. Helen is concerned. The actors won't like it. We talk through them and she frowns. The whole time.

The actors start to arrive. Like excited children at a new playground. They are all early, which I like ... and as they all settle in the auditorium with their scripts on their knees, I wait on the stage for their attention.

"We need to make some cuts."

Lips purse. The steaming fresh turd in their sand-pit is obviously mine.

"It's too long."

The actors haven't yet mastered the art of disobeying or ignoring me, and the scripts are dutifully - if not reluctantly - marked. Tim, who is playing the Russian Prince Alexei, looks away. Tim trained as a ballet dancer and handles the physical vocabulary of Alexei magnificently. His painful and compulsive strip to nakedness in Act 2 is pure instinct and all courage. But he hasn't the actor's skill to deliver Alexei's bad poetry as subtext. He is playing it as cure, when it is actually disease.

The cuts are harsh ... and the general consensus is that they should have been made days - if not weeks - ago. I refuse to blame them for taking three of the eight week rehearsal period to even begin to connect to the passion of the piece. That would come later ... when I would find myself limb-less, gripping my steadily deflating life-raft with my teeth, alone at sea, at the height of a perfect and terrifying storm.

Bits and pieces here and there go. I justify each cut with extreme precision. I talk about tempo, pace, clarity and over-writing. I praise their abilities as an ensemble and remark that all of the dialogue we are losing is simply because they are acting so well. It might sound like a flabby embellishment, but it's true. I had simply written too much emotion. I still do.

The shark takes a huge bite out of one of Alexei's monologues. Tim rises out of his seat, throws his script to the ground and storms out of the theatre. I let him go. (There had been tantrums galore in the rehearsal room and there were some gob-smackingly memorable tantrums to come.) He needed to react. He was very good at it. And I knew he had met his match.

We continued the vivisection. Nobody argued.

Until the doors to the theatre were flung open and Tim stormed back in.

"I thought you were stronger than this". He was trying not to let me know he had been crying. "I think we all did."

I looked at Michaela, who was playing Antonina. Michaela was my anchor in the cast. She had secured the role at the auditions in the final showdown with Madonna's understudy in David Mamet's Speed The Plough on Broadway. If I had made a mistake, it would show in her eyes. Tim, it appeared, was telling the truth ... or at least part of it.

I faced him.

"Go on."

"Your ... beautiful words ..."

"The Playwright is not in the room, Tim." This had been a device I used, and would always use at work in the theatre everywhere, to differentiate between Geoffrey 'The Playwright' and Geoffrey 'The Director'. A safety-valve. A necessary mind-set. A creative schizophrenia ... which would also, years later, fracture the Melbourne production of Maestro ... but I digress.

"Well, I want him here. Because I, for one, am not going to cut one word."

The Playwright wanted to kiss him. The Director wanted to sack him. I needed stronger medication.

"If there's something you can suggest that might make this speech work more effectively as far as you're concerned, then let's have it. Because that's your only option. I'm going to deliver it, as it is, whether you like it or not!"

Helen wanted to kill him. I'm actually surprised she didn't. She, better than anyone, knew we would read about the length of this play in the reviews. (The extent to which it would bury us - and at the same time save us - was yet to be revealed.)

But the anchor of my theatre-making process was a concept called "Actor Ownership" - and Tim knew it.

"You gave this wonderful work to us. You are not going to take it away from us now."

My medication arrived as Sonia bounced into the theatre and rushed up to hug me. The Previews are now all entirely sold out ... and for the first time in the New End's recent history, the "House Full" sign had been dragged out from the pitch black of storage.

And for the last time in my theatre making experience, I gave up.

I had written the rule book which was now being used to penalise me. Actors in almost complete (as "complete" as it ever is) performance readiness are awesome foes. I had struggled for eight weeks to strip their Englishness away. They had run from the rehearsal room in tears. One of them had disappeared for nearly a week, so confronted had she been. English actors train in cause and effect - not emotional truth. It's all about the way it sounds and the way it looks - not about the way it feels. My ensemble were raw and their power was immense. I had made sure of it.

I looked at Tim, with honest eyes, for the last time. I would never be able to look at him in quite the same way again. (And once the reviews began to appear, he would never be able to look at me in quite the same way either.)

I didn't realise it at the time, but he was to become the last person to ever deny me permission. To my face, at least.

Helen let the company go with a half hour call to the "Top and Tail".

It would now be a matter of tweaking the length in other ways.

But Ego was to have other ideas. And, unbeknownst to me, I was squarely in Her sights.

Image: The New End Theatre Auditorium.

Scraps of distraction: Part 1

When I was cleaning up 'my room' the other day, I found my Theatre Scrapbook. And with the heart-attack inducing speed and efficiency of Jason Voorhees, it always closes a particular window on my world. It's a point of impact. Hard ... and I always have to prepare myself to consider it again. Like a surgeon considering the length of the first cut.

The detritus of my time as an Independent Theatre Maker occupies lots of little nooks in my environment. Like landmines. I'll be searching for something else and suddenly find myself at the knuckle-whitening climax of a rollercoaster ride before idling in the company of familiar ghosts - back in the musty and haunted old Carlton Courthouse.

And beyond.

I also found this quote:
"It is the nature of the artist to mind excessively what is said about him. Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others." – Virginia Woolf

My relationship with reviewers and reviews is complex. I have known many critics. I am one of them. And as an Independent Theatre Maker I have endured more than my fair share (which is actually a lie - on both counts). The questions that are often raised about how a critic should respond to a work constantly fascinate me. What is their purpose? Is anyone else ever really guaranteed to know? Is the act of criticism, much like the act of creation, essentially selfish? The kitchen is closed, but you sit down and read the menu anyway - fully expecting to be served.

I am preparing to make theatre again. It's a more significant statement than it might, at first, appear.

But first, I am going to dissect the single greatest love affair of my life. I am going to do something for myself that I have steadfastly distracted myself from doing up until this point in my life: I am going to remember. I was done with auditioning years ago. I'm done seeking validation and I don't need permission. I never have.

Many, many years ago I lost hold of something.

And now I need - and want - it back.

*****

London. 1991.

My play about maestro Piotr Illyich Tchaikovsky - Tunnels Without End* - is about to preview at the tiny New End Theatre in Hampstead. The owner of the theatre - Sonia Saunders - has taken a huge and significant risk. She loves this play, and has bumped six weeks of pre-Edinburgh try-outs out of the way to make room for it. And 'it' has arrived: costumes, sets, furniture, audio tapes, props, passion and hope. We absorb every particle of the theatre's being into our anticipation.

It is a ridiculous time.

Previewing any play is impossibly fraught - and this one was a breach birth. As a Director, you literally writhe in the agony of internalised (and sometimes externalised) reaction too vast to truly comprehend at the time. Lines are fucked up. Entrances are missed. Lighting cues are late ... or early. Fades don't and pauses extend ... and emotional truth is suddenly sacrificed at the almighty altar of Actor Insecurity. You are helpless as you watch your babies study recall. The light of comprehension in their eyes switches off ... leaving only panic in the light through the window. Meaningless stares into the middle distance. Nuance becomes a noisy hiccup. The carefully plotted interspatial relationships and complex stage patterns look like sloppy guess work. Silk threads become fence palings ... and snap. The tips of your fingers ache as you scribble notes ... veritable cures for cancer ... in the dark. Your internal organs strangle each other while your ankles tango and your knees embrace.

As a Writer, it is - quite simply - a sadomasochistic death-defying stunt of the highest order ... and leaping from The Empire State Building onto a matchbox-sized safety net would be like a walk in the park by comparison. It is not what you wrote ... nor what you heard, remembered, meant or intended.

As a Writer/Director, you want to leap out of your seat! You want to start again and again. "This scene is actually quite wonderful when they do it the way we've spent the last fucking eight weeks rehearsing the fucking thing!" you silence. "I actually do know what I'm doing - it's these lazy fuckwits that don't!" you mutely protest. He's too far downstage, upstage, offstage ... she's not even on the fucking same stage!

And all evidence of every whiff of creative potential is lost in the maelstrom - like a tea-candle in a typhoon. There is no contest. Or hope. But there will be Notes. Lots of them.

Tomorrow.

* Piotr Tchaikovsky once described his life as being "like a tunnel without an end". After seeing the rehearsed reading of the piece at Melbourne's Malthouse Theatre, Joan Harris AM suggested I change the title of the play to Maestro. So I did ... as you would.

Image: Outside The New End Theatre, 27 New End, Hampstead London NW3 1JD

And the winner is ...

... Google - by far the most constant and entertaining way I distract myself. Like my nicotine and caffeine addictions, I am beginning to wonder whether there is such a thing as a Google-addict. I think there is and I think I am one.

Many years ago I was addicted to playing the pokies. Admittedly it was symptomatic of the personal misery I was accommodating during the death-throes of a particularly heart- and soul-destroying relationship. All the same, the final straw for me came when I lost an entire week's pay in a little under two hours. It was a Friday night and I remember walking home so impossibly depressed about not having a cent to my name over the weekend. You know that kind of internal pain that actually elicits an audible response, even when there's no-one nearby to hear it? Some people punch fences, cars, their partners or complete strangers. I just remember exhaling a hideous moan of utter despair. I will never forget it.

The Gambling Helpline was very helpful ... and today I am entirely cured. Today I deal with misery in a totally different fashion ... by distracting myself online with the help of my new best friend - Google!

Just lately I have discovered (and not in any particular order): my ex-business partner is being wound-up by a printing company in Newcastle; my ex-business partner is being bankrupted in The Federal Court; one of my best girlfriends Jane is a published author with Scholastic; that one of her friends spent lots of money on his 40th birthday party; that my ex-business partner still uses all of the design work I did before we went into business together to promote her business; and people might confuse me with someone who lost his eye in a shooting accident.

Is it ironic that I may need to consult Google to search for a Google-addict helpline?

What have you learned from Google?