Lally Katz Takes Her Theatrical Surrealism to a Resort on the International Date Line for Timeshare
The Australian playwright says there's a lot you can learn over several weeks of 'research' in luxury resorts.
Lally Katz is losing some of her magic, and she's fine with it. Now well and truly established as one of Australia’s leading playwrights, Katz’s development as an artist has brought profound changes in her approach to writing, alongside her move from independent theatre to larger, mainstage audiences.
“You just don’t want to write the same thing over and over again your whole life,” she says. “I think when I was in my early twenties you don’t know where your writing comes from: it’s imagination, it’s dreams, it’s magic, and I didn’t always have control over it.I’m proud of that work but you develop more craft as you get older and you can’t help but use it. There are times where I’ll have a play and I still like having dreams and magic in it, but what I’ve learnt is that when I was younger I wasn’t able to wrangle that stuff in a way that made sense for some of the audience.”
Some of Katz’s later plays have been closely derived from her relationship with real figures — as with her Hungarian neighbour, Ana, in Neighbourhood Watch. “As I’ve gotten older, I’ve got more interested in writing about real people, the characters that I meet, with a bit of myself in there. I think that places the work somewhere different too; if you’re learning the way that someone talks, the story comes out of those characters.”
Her latest work, Timeshare, is just about to open at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre. Starring Fast Forward's Marg Downey, the play takes place on an unsettling holiday resort, one that straddles the International Dateline, and the intersection between time and memory. Last year Katz wrote the libretto for an operatic adaptation of John Marsden’s The Rabbits, and Timeshare gives her the chance to try her hand at lyrics again, with a show she describes as a “semi-musical”, its songs written in collaboration with Jethro Woodward.
This kind of collaboration forms the heart of Timeshare, with Katz and director Oliver Butler (from New York’s The Debate Society) facing an uphill battle trying to communicate across time zones. “Before Malthouse brought Oliver out here last year to do a development, it was so hard,” she says, “When you Skype, the differences between here and New York are so painful, and it was so hard to make progress. Part of what originally inspired this story of a resort on the International Dateline was just that frustration of trying to work together across those times.”
The playwright had to undertake strenuous research for the show, staying in all-inclusive resorts in Fiji and Cancun, usually the odd-one-out loner among families on school holidays. But her travels overseas have also allowed her to see and experience theatre all over the world. “When you see a lot of theatre internationally you realise what a distinct style Australian theatre has," she says. "I’m always interested in seeing what’s going on with new writing in other countries — what’s different about that writing, what’s different about the way writers work with theatre companies or other artists. It opens your mind to different ways of working.”
When asked about what Australian theatre could learn from international practitioners, Katz points to an issue that highlights the challenges Australian theatre still face in generating a sense of community around their work. “Some new writing companies in the US will have a question-and-answer session with the audience after every single performance; maybe not with the actors or the director, but usually with someone like a dramaturg,” she says. “And what it means is that the audience gets to be heard. What they liked, didn’t like, what they engaged with. Even if they hate the show they still feel included and they leave feeling as if they’ve been acknowledged, and then people never go home feeling stupid. Especially with new plays it would be great for us to be having more of those kinds of conversations.”
Timeshare is on from April 29 – May 17.
Rehearsal photography by Sarah Walker.
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