Perth’s Liz Newell launched a theatre company, Maiden Voyage Theatre Company, this year; and this week the company’s debut work, Belated (written and produced by Newell), will be hitting the stage at the Blue Room Theatre.
Belated follows Blythe & Max, friends since they were kids, and Norah (Max’s girlfriend) as they all suddenly find themselves co-habiting the same house. Relationships are tested as inconvenience turns into nightmare.
We caught up with Newell as Belated heads into the final week of build up to find out more about the show and also to discover the impetus behind Perth’s newest theatre company.
What was the inspiration behind Belated?
Belated started with the people in it. I usually end up making stories for the characters I want to write about, rather than creating characters for a story I want to tell.
In Belated’s case, I dreamed Norah up first, then her boyfriend Max and then his hot mess of a best friend, Blythe. I probably based them all on various parts of myself at first, but I quickly became really taken with Blythe as a character and honed in on telling her story. I was interested in creating a character who isn’t easy to like – and Blythe definitely isn’t – and then trying to find things to like about her all the same. Even if it’s that she says the things we sometimes wish we could say ourselves.
How did you approach the writing for Belated?
I’ve only just started forcing myself to make a plan when I write, so most of Belated’s drafting process involved me writing myself into a corner, getting frustrated and giving up on it for weeks at a time until inspiration hit again. So it was a very mature, structured process, clearly.
Mostly I spent a lot of my writing time getting to know my characters and trying to let them push the plot forward in (hopefully) interesting and believable ways. If nothing else, I wanted their voices and their personalities to ring true, for them to feel like people you might actually bump into on the street if you were in the right city.
And I wanted to take all of them on a journey, even if it isn’t a particularly huge one. After all, nobody thinks they’re a supporting character in their own story, as the saying goes.
Who are some of the theatre makers and writers who have influenced your own practice? and how have they influenced you?
Perth is full to bursting with wonderful, talented theatre makers. They do what they love because they love it and they work hard to get better at it because they feel their collaborators and audience deserve only the best they can offer. I find all of these people extremely inspiring and I’m influenced by each of them, to some degree.
I worked on the early drafts of Belated with the brilliant Jeffrey Jay Fowler as part of my time in Black Swan State Theatre Company’s Emerging Writers Group, and I wrote my first play with mentorship from Tasmanian playwright Finegan Kruckemeyer. So they’ve been a big influence. Jeff taught me to push myself, and Fin taught me to love the nitty-gritty details involved in the craft of writing for the stage (I hadn’t worked in theatre until then).
How have your own experiences of flat sharing influenced the scenarios on stage?
My experiences of flat sharing are pretty limited. So it’s not so much that, as my experiences with friendship that have influenced many things in Belated.
I don’t have any siblings but I’m fortunate to be one of those people with an actual Best Friend. We’ve known each other since we were kids. We can communicate far too effectively with nonverbal cues and often get mistaken for a couple. It’s sickening and lovely and not always healthy.
When it came to establishing the kind of friendship Blythe and Max have, I spent a lot of time thinking about what this kind of bond means, what’s required to establish it and how it affects the people on the outside of it.
What has it been like working with the team you’ve assembled?
We’ve got a great team. It’s a great mixture of personalities and preferences, and I’m really lucky and grateful to be surrounded by people who really care about the people in the show and the world they inhabit. When you’re all working towards the same thing, it’s a great feeling.
Director Emily McLean has been on board since last August, and has always had such a strong grasp of the story and the people in it. Being a new script and my first show as a writer or a producer, there’s been a lot of learning and revising involved, and nobody’s been more patient during that process than Em.
And the cast have fearlessly thrown themselves into the world of Belated since day one. Seeing them bring the various characters to life with such energy and compassion is really something. They’re all clever, engaging and hilarious performers.
You’re into the final week before the show opens, how have you enjoyed the process so far? How do you find the run up to opening night?
It’s been a very lovely, very surreal process. The team has been working unbelievably hard these past five weeks of rehearsals and bump-in. It’s a testament to everyone’s efforts that in the lead-up to opening, we’re not all running around in a mad panic.
They’re all allowed to yell at me now if I start requesting line changes, and the herbal cigarettes arrived on Friday.
We’re on track, we’re having fun and we’re really, really excited to share this story with people.
What was it that prompted you to start Maiden Voyage?
The gender gap in the creative industries – not just theatre, and not just in Australia – is almost cavernous. Which is rubbish, and the more you think about it, the more confusing it gets; nobody’s really standing on a soapbox shouting at people to keep women out of the picture (or at least, I hope not).
But if nobody’s behind it, how is it still moving forward? How are we still talking about this in 2016? I figure it’s partly because we could be doing more to push back. MVTC is my attempt at giving things a shove.
Part of your mission statement for the company is promoting gender parity and equality in theatre, ideally what does this look like to you?
For me, gender parity in theatre just means not hearing brilliant, talented actresses lament the lack of interesting roles for women.
It means giving nobody the excuse to think there aren’t many female directors around.
It means not watching people come up short when you ask them to think of a set, sound or lighting designer who’s not a man.
And it means resisting the urge to blame women for not putting themselves out there, for not wanting it enough, for not trying as hard as they could; they’re talented, they’re keen and they’re right there. If you can’t see them, that’s on you.
What’s next for Maiden Voyage?
Well, first of all, a really exciting and fun season of Belated at The Blue Room Theatre, hopefully! Soon after, I’ll start writing something new and continue work on an early draft of something else I wrote last year. At least one of these will end up being a Maiden Voyage show, possibly next year.
I’m keen to go at a pretty slow-and-steady pace for the first few years of the company’s existence, to make sure we’re getting things right. I’d like to try my hand at a Fringe show sooner or later and in a few years.
After I’ve used a bunch of my own scripts as guinea pigs, I’ll be very keen to produce the work of other writers and makers under the MVTC banner. If they’ll let me.
Belated opens at the Perth’s Blue Room Theatre on 10th May for two nights of previews; and then runs until 28th May. For more information and tickets visit HERE
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