In Conversation with Tom Stoppard

Overview

When Tom Stoppard first visited Australia it was as a 3-year-old Czechoslovakian refugee. Since then he’s not only fulfilled his childhood desire to become an “honourary English gentleman”, he’s also been acknowledged as one of most important and most internationally performed living playwrights.

His plays, toying with themes of censorship and human rights as well as linguistics and philosophy, are rarities in that they have lapped up by both the critics and the masses. 1966’s Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead was his first hit, followed by a whole heap of award-winning productions including 1998’s Shakespeare in Love. And it’s likely that if his original script for The Golden Compass wasn’t rejected that the film would have turned out way less lame than it did.

He’s been back to Australia a few times since 1940, doing things like talking culture at the Town Hall and presenting his hilarious Travesties (1974). Now he’s coming back again to talk about some more things, because talking, like writing, is something that he does extremely well. This is someone who famously said “It is better to be quotable than to be honest”, so chances are this conversation, though slightly elusive, will also be a hilarious, insightful and ultimately relevant one.