Stephen House Interview, Almost Face To Face

Stephen House, Almost Face To Face.

 
Written by Lee Bemrose

Almost Face To Face is the latest dramatic monologue from peripatetic award-winning writer/performer Stephen House. It's been a couple of years since the South Australian drifter performed his quite powerful Appalling Behaviour here, so I caught up with him to find out what he's been up to in that time, what drives him, and what to expect from his latest work.

So, what have you been up to since your last visit to Melbourne?
 My last show, Appalling Behaviour, kept touring. I did an Adelaide return (local council shows), a Tasmania Theatre Company season and a season at The Street Theatre in Canberra. I then spent some time in Sydney. I did an incredible writing development project with some blind artists at Tutti Ensemble SA, and had an extended stint in Whyalla SA doing a community youth theatre project for D-faces Youth Arts. Then as I often do… I disappeared from Australia and spent many months in Bali, Thailand and India – travelling, writing and existing.  

How was Appalling Behaviour received in those other cities?

The Hobart and Canberra seasons were both very successful and had incredible responses and reviews. It was wonderful to see it sit in a bigger company program at The Street Theatre (where it saw its 100^th show). It always astounds me how that show pulls people in and sees them discuss what it means to them and what it says about our current world. It still feels like it’s an important theatre piece for the here and now. And that’s rewarding. Also, it was selected for publication by The Australian Script Centre. 

Have you ever taken Appalling Behaviour overseas? Or is it something you would contemplate? 
Well no, I haven’t, but just recently I’ve been in a conversation with a company in New York who are keen – which would be awesome. Also, for the last year or so I have been chatting to a company in India who are also keen. And if I do take it overseas next year I’m pretty sure I’d head to Edinburgh Fringe. I’ve never done an Edinburgh Fringe. So yes, it is kind of looking like maybe travelling overseas in 2015.  

How long has travel been important to you?

I’ve been pretty much on the road since living in the back of my station wagon for a few years when I was an 18 year old hippie surfer. And I still am on the road (not in the back of the car... well, not too often these days). That’s about 35 years travelling. Fuck… where has my life gone! I’m always travelling. Though I do have occasional bouts where I settle in somewhere for a few months a time.  

Why is travel so important to you?

I feel alive, challenged, inspired, amazed, free, on the very edge (sometimes), and excited. I’m addicted to being on the road, often alone, but not always. I love new people that come into my world for an hour, a day or night, or a month… or forever – crazy, beautiful encounters that come along, like unexpected gifts. But also sometimes I feel isolated, lonely, frightened, confused, excluded, and wondering what the hell I’m doing with my life. But all the feelings that go with just disappearing into the world and sometimes not knowing where I’m going are real, and make me feel so very much like I am living life.  

In what circumstances do you feel excluded?Just now and then in another place in the world, watching locals go about their familiar lives, it hits me that I am often an outsider, a wanderer, a nomad… this isn’t my place, or my home or my way. I have flown in like a migrating bird stopping off on a long flight to somewhere else. Excluded kind of; but that doesn’t always mean feeling bad though, sometimes it means just being on the outside of, looking in. It can also be empowering, to not be a part of something.  

Do you feel you are more creatively stimulated when in a foreign country?

I’m quite creative wherever I am. Even in my new Melbourne life (a room I just scored in Brunswick Street), I will feel inspired, I’m sure. I often have a current project I’m working on when I travel. I’ve just come back from several months Indonesia and Thailand. I was learning lines for Almost Face To Face while I travelled. I was also thinking about my novel (still in thinking and writing stage). Often when I’m in another place I do have a new idea, so take a few notes. In fact the first draft of Almost Face To Face, was written years ago on an Australia Council Irish literature residency, then put it away and forgotten about. Sometimes it takes me years to get back to something that sprung into my mind while travelling around somewhere. 

You don't exactly do the tourist thing when overseas, do you. Typically, what do you do when in a new city? What kind of experiences do seek out?

I’m generally looking for somewhere new that I want to live for a while, or returning to a place from before. I have a few regular stops. One is Rishikesh in India. In Rishikesh, I do Yoga classes with amazing masters, I wander alone along the banks on Ganges and bathe in her clean icy holy waters – direct from the Himalayas. I wander through dense city throngs and lose myself, completely. I catch up with old local mates, meet travellers from all over the world, and I write, think, and wonder. In big cities, I usually have different routines than in quieter places (more art, music, theatre, partying etc.) After Melbourne I’m heading back to Bali, where I’m making a life. My days there are often writing, swimming and surfing, and wonderful mates from all over Indonesia… and the world, other nomads. I also try to work out how the hell I’m going to survive! But don’t get me on to that! How the hell am I going to continue to survive, like this? 

Your new play... tell us a little about it.

A fragile travelling writer arrives in Dublin after a devastating stint in Paris. His trip to Dublin is not without a few dangerous elements. He quickly falls into a chaotic underworld, inhabited by off-beat characters, and finds himself living in a small upstairs room with a woman trapped there by the way her life has gone. But he ventures out on to the street and falls further into the hidden underbelly of Dublin. His creative muddled and indulgent life sees him fall into this new world and write it all down (again). But nothing comes without repercussions and consequences, and he is finally forced to face up to what he has become in life. It’s a play about having the courage to move on from what is no longer needed or valid, and having the empathy and understanding to realise that not everyone else can do that. Some of us are trapped by who and what we are, and always will be. And that’s ok. The play hits that home, I think. 

So how autobiographical is it?
There is a part of me and my story in every work I create. Even Appalling Behaviour had more elements of me in it than people could ever know. There are parts of me and my life in all of my plays, and there are parts that grew from those parts and took their own life. My characters are not me, but they are a big part of me and my life, and I’m a big part of them and their life. But I never reveal too much about what (exact) part is me and real. I fall into worlds and write about them. I utterly live the worlds I write about.

What kind of play is Almost Face To Face? Drama? Comedy? Other?
It’s a drama with elements of stream of consciousness story-telling and streaks of dark comedy. But others are better judges of that than me.

Given that Almost Face To Face is set in Ireland, a country famed for its story tellers, do you thing you will take it to Ireland?I would love to take it to Ireland, and have thought about it. If fact regarding your question, the story telling tradition of Ireland had an effect on the style of this play and my inspiration for writing it. I performed a story telling type piece in Dublin many years ago. That experience has always stayed with me and had an effect on me as a writer performer, as did my time living in Ireland.

The dramatic monologue (it is what you do, isn't it?) would appear to be the most difficult form of story telling. Why do you do it when you could simply write a story to be read or a play for actors to perform?

Each time I embark on this journey with this form, I think why, why, why? It is so hard to crack. You can’t tell, not completely. It needs to be crafted in a way that some things are told, some are discovered and that the story filters out through a range of forms working together. Maybe the reason I do it is that it is such a challenge to get right. I love literary challenges. I never know if it is working until I get it in front of an audience. Its okay if they don’t like it (not everyone falls into the unusual worlds that do), but if they are with my story and engaged, then it has worked. That’s what I aim for. That they follow my story and want to know what happens. Dramatic Monologue for an hour alone on stage is a real challenge. Ah, scary! Why am I doing this, again?

What kinds of people will Almost Face To Face appeal to most?

I like to think that it’s a moving, human, sad and sometimes funny and beautiful story bubbling out of the underworld of Dublin. I think (and hope) that most people who see it will be taken on a real ride, somewhere special. My work is written for everyone; not only those who like to take risks. People that are interested in the human experience and condition should go with this work.

Do you have a line or passage from the play that encapsulates its spirit?

I don’t know if it encapsulates the spirit of the play but it encapsulates that moment of the play, and it’s a piece that often brings tears to my eyes, performing it…

Don’t’ go, he says. His call is like a knife in my heart. I so want take him away from this and them – from all that I am and have been too… find some of what is dragging me to escape and try for change and offer it up to him. But I can’t… I just don’t know how to give him anything at all, except money… I’m incapable… because I am struggling so hard to somehow help myself… to try to not be what I‘ve been for so, so long… that I have nothing left to help him along. And I’m nearly an old man. Fuck, what happened? Where do the years go?

Almost Face To Face is part of the Melbourne Fringe Festival. Season is at La Mama theatre from September 17 - September 28, 2014.

Appalling Behaviour, La Mama, Review

Appalling Behaviour

Written and performed by Stephen House

Directed by Justin McGuinness

Reviewed by Lee Bemrose

I once heard about a play that was performed in an elevator. It was at one of those arty fringe festivals. Appalling Behaviour took place on a stage much more intimate. Seriously, I think this was the tiniest stage I have ever seen. Did it work in this shrunken version of La Mama? Hell yeah. This is a case where intimacy really works.

Stephen House wrote this play and could sit back happy that he has done a good job of writing it. It's one of those scripts (it's a monologue) that makes you want to read the words on the page as you watch the performance. It's lyrical. It's savage. It gives eloquence to people most of us ignore.

Story? There's a guy on the streets of Paris. He's broken and lost but clinging to the hookers and the dealers and the schemers who get him through each day, either in reality or the hallucinations and memories he needs to survive. You live in a big city, you see them each day. But you ignore them. You never enter their world. But you wonder, don't you. You wonder how they got there. You wonder what their life was like before they became grimy and fucked up and forgotten.

Acting? There's not one minute of this 75 minute performance that isn't convincing. This guy just a metre or so away in his shitty clothing with his bag of drugs and his tales of sorrow and his yearning for admiration and love and for things to be the way they should have been... he's like the forgotten ones we all see on the streets but step over or close our ears to. This homeless human that Stephen House has created gives a voice to these people. They are human. They have feelings. They have a past. Sometimes they are even tragically funny, just like the rest of us.

This is a big performance on a small stage that was hugely impressive.

Addendum: I was lucky enough to have an accidental post-show chat with Stephen House. Apparently the La Mama stage was so small due to the 6.30 performance of Blackbox 149, which explained the mysterious curtain at the rear of the stage that didn't do anything; it was not a prop in this show. House said that he was intimidated by the diminutive size of the stage and initially didn't think he could do it. He was used to performing Appalling Behaviour in bigger spaces and had to pull back his performance. On hearing this, most of us were surprised because this very intimacy enhanced the performance. You could feel the energy, the anger, the frustration, the sadness and longing.

There was a young kid in the audience who was from time to time disinterested and occupied herself by playing with her rubber ball. But even for her, as distant from this broken character's life as she was, she was frequently engaged, the toy falling still in her lap. House has indeed taken this performance to schools as well as theatres for us worldly grown-ups. However he said the most nervous he has ever been was when performing for homeless people. Understandable, because this was the acid test. Seems he got it right; Appalling Behaviour went down well with the very characters he was portaying. That's how good this performance is. That's how real it is.

As to why the story was set in France? House has spoken to many homeless people who have said that they feel they are speaking a different language, such is society's deafness to them; they feel like aliens even in their home country. He also likes the contradiction between the impression we have of a place like Paris and the reality. Indeed, spend a bit of time in, say, Pigalle, and you'll understand what he means. It's a short walk between vomit in the gutters and the shiniest shopping Paris has to offer.

At La Mama

205 Farraday Street

Carlton, Melbourne

September 21 – October 2

The Maids Review

The Maids

Review by Lee Bemrose

(Photo by Joe Calleri)

This was one of the oddest plays I've seen in a while – not the least because I went in pretty blind as to what I was about to see. I don't really remember what initially interested me. It was on at La Mama. It looked like a bit of a dark comedy. The promo shots hinted at something a bit strange; might be worth checking out.

Basically, The Maids by Frenchman Jean Genet follows the story of a couple of maids playing naughty power games in their mistress' absence. They dress up in her clothes, wear her make-up, mimic and tease, both her and each other. Their game escalates until they dare themselves to murder her. She returns, almost discovers what the mice have been up to while the cat's away and... well I've already given away too much.

Although this is a one act play, it is constructed of three parts. There is the opening revelation of the curious nature of the maids followed by the return of the mistress, followed by what happens next when the mistress leaves again.

There is something strange about this production right from the start. The two maids, Solange and Claire, are played by male actors Matt Crosby and Ben Rogan. There's nothing wrong with seeing gender played by opposites, but in this case it was strange because... well because it was all very obvious. Matt and Ben are very masculine men playing very feminine roles, but in a very over-the-top way; women cast in these same roles would have played the parts very differently, I feel. There's a self-consciousness about it which adds to the feeling that all is not as it seems.

Looking around at the faces in the intimate space of La Mama, I did see a few staring on occasion into the middle distance rather than the actors on stage who frequently rubbed shoulders with the audience. There were jokes which occasionally raised quiet laughs, and there was this constant, unsettling feel about the thing. Why have male actors playing female roles? Why this campness? And what, exactly, was going on here?

In what is basically the second act, the limelight is stolen by Butoh and burlesque star Yumi Umiumare. This is also over-the-top camp, but somehow, suddenly, there is electricity. Yumi's Mistress is a loud Japanese pop-punk drama queen who struts, demands respect (the maids have become suddenly subservient in her presence after being so bold in her absence), and she also demands answers. What has been going on in her absence? Why these misplaced objects? Why traces of her make-up in unexpected places? Much of her barked sentences trail dismissively into Japanese, making her dominance even more comical.

The plot to undo the mistress is thwarted and as she leaves for what is basically the third act, the maids resume their power games, but with added edge.

Unfortunately, once Yumi left the stage, a bit of that middle-distance gazing came over again, and this third section felt a little too long. I'm pretty sure I wasn't the only one present who thought okay, I've seen the fun bit, let's get this over and done with.

Discussion afterwards between plus one and myself was along the lines of the opening line of this review. It is an odd, unsettling play. It's a play from a bygone time. I don't think it's timeless or even relevant to our times. I do thinking acting from all three cast members was very good. I am curious to see another production of this play because I'm not sure why gender came into this... although it was certainly about power and dominance, both of which often dance with gender and the roles we have to play. (Note – in reading about The Maids after writing this review it seems the playwright himself wanted male actors, so this production is being true to the spirit of the thing).

Like I said, one of the oddest plays I've seen in a while. Not entirely a bad thing.

Season Over.

The Revengers' Comedy Review

THE REVENGERS' COMEDY

Written by former Age theatre critic Leonard Radic and directed by Stefan Mrowinski, The Revengers' Comedy is interesting for a number reasons.

The the plot basically follows the breakdown of two middle-aged, middle class relationships. Max (Martin Mulvany) is bitter after being sacked from his job as a book publisher and is attracted to younger, former colleague Mallory (Jenita Spirtovic) in an unrequited way, all creating friction between he and his materialistic wife Helen (Lesley Harris). Meanwhile Robert (Steven Kennedy) has grown bored with his wife Jane (Renee Palmer) and is in the throes of leaving her for younger woman Polly (Beth Litson).

Billed as a black comedy, the story examines relationships without really coming up with anything new. These are pretty stock-standard characters caught up in all too familiar situations – which would be fine if the comedy was, well, a bit funnier. It has it's moments but also misfires a bit too often. Having said that, the title seems to allude to either Thomas Middleton's The Revengers' Tragedy or Alan Ayckbourn's The Revengers' Comedies, works I am not very familiar with so perhaps there are layers or references I didn't appreciate. The characters were uneven, often switching mood too suddenly and just not quite fitting together even in their fragmenting lives the way they need to to be fully convincing. It felt to me like a script that could benefit from a little more work.

As for the acting, sorry to say but two members of the cast appeared to be well beneath the task. It's early in the season so we can only hope they improve. They really need to because the other four actors are very good.

When Kennedy, Liston, Palmer and Spirtovic took to the stage there was real chemistry and energy. All had their moments to shine, all were clearly immersed in their roles and in lesser hands I'm not sure this play would have been as enjoyable as it ultimately was. I still found some facets of their characters sometimes a little unconvincing but by then was engaged enough by the overall dynamics of their relationships to let this slide and simply sit back and enjoy.

Set design was minimal, something that always puts the script and acting under a harsher light, and that being the case the script needs to sing and the cast needs to be rock solid. A good local production worth checking out, flaws and all.

At La Mama Courthouse, Carlton until 20 March

LEE BEMROSE