What role are you playing?
Sometimes I'm a forty-four year old art historian who is perched precariously on a plug holding back an ocean of shame. Other times I'm a doctor.
Favourite moment in rehearsals?
Partially because he expects me to write this, I have two say pouring two full glasses of water over Michael Drysdale's head. There was some context for that. But, well. It was hiliarious. I'm an asshole. He still loves me (I think?).
What has surprised you most about this process?
Movement. I have an old hangup that I am 'not a dancer' based on some gently traumatising ballet lessons as a kid. But this piece has developed a physical language, a style of movement, that belongs utterly to itself and has been stupidly engaging to explore. I'm a text guy. I like words and what they do. So for me to get out of that at all and find some purchase in kinetic expressions is pretty cool.
What do you think of the Kings Cross Theatre?
I think it exists! I think that King's Cross is evolving at a crazy pace, that the lockout laws et al have forced a violent reconfiguration of the orientation of the place and then a new theatre! A possibility for the performing arts community to actually have a community i.e. a theatre district? Time will tell.
What is the craziest art piece you ever saw/heard/experienced?
I don't know if it's the craziest. In fact I'm certain I've seen crazier (I mean, I have legit seen a dude take a dump on stage in service to some slightly tortured metaphor for capitalism) but the work that stays with me the most, that still feels like a waking dream, was this piece I saw once, years ago. And I couldn't tell you where it was, or who the artist was, or anything else about it. But the image of it is pretty crystal. It was a bare white room, decently large, containing nothing but a suitcase. Which, as I recall, was closed. And that was it. But if you went over and opened the suitcase, you could look down through the floor, through some old iron bars into the body of a lake. Fish swimming about. And there were a pair of feet standing in the water. I know this sounds like I/Salman Rushdie made this up. He swears we didn't.
What is something you're obsessive about?
Not getting up before midday without a damn good reason?
Can art go too far? Have you seen/etc an artwork that went too far?
Wasn't a huge fan of the guy taking a dump on stage. But, you know, that's mostly because it was a shitty (ha!) metaphor. Maybe there's a totally laudable way to use that device? The device in question is I assume All-Bran.
If you had $104.7 million to fund arts, what would you do?
I have thoughts about this. I would divide it up into packages of around $10,000. And then I would distribute it to companies and individuals basically at random. And yes most of the result of that would be terrible rubbish. But I think that outcome directed arts funding (and this isn't just shitting on government by the way, the top end of town does the same thing) ends up producing the utterly unsurprising. It sort of has to. Grant applications are a way of ensuring that your work can be neatly politically and academically categorised before you've even made it.
What will you do when you are famous?
Probably get unduly misty-eyed about the 'good old days' when I was carving out a meagre existence from the odd advertising gig and taking my clothes off for no money. I don't do that last thing in this play though. I mean, as of yet. Probably not though.
Do you ever want to punish others for things you find horrible in yourself?
Sure, but I generally do my best to construct it as 'advice'. Sounds better that way.