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Basically Ingle came to me back in late 2008 and suggested this project to me so it was
before it was written and so we talked about Curtin and he talked about his passion and
his interest in exploring his life.
That's kind of where that conversation left and we had about another year before I actually
managed to commission Ingle to say "OK, come on, write this play, see what comes out."
He'd started his research and he said the period that I am particularly interested in
is 1931 to 1934 where Curtin's out of office. So I said "Great!" because no one knows that
much about that time. It's covered in history books sometimes with a fleeting couple of
lines. Curtin lost office, came back to Fremantle, kicked his addiction to the bottle, became
a teetotaller and then got back in office. That's the sum of it.
So the obvious questions for us were "Well, how did he do that?" So I was interested in
the idea of a play that looked at politics but had really personal guts to it. There's
the polls on whether we had lost faith in our politicians and most people pretty much
have it seems, certainly any that are in or operating in politics at the moment so we
look back at someone like Curtin at a time when there was a man who had passion and had
belief and conviction and he had ideals so this idealistic figure like Curtin and he
is counterpointed against the more pragmatic figures. The only fictional character in the
play is someone called Sidney Barber and Sidney is, essentially he is the faceless men - those
that are more interested in the pragmatic and so the main argument in the play politically
is between those two - the idealism versus the pragmatism and that's kind of where that
sits.
The flipside of that is saying well look this is also a play that looks very personally
at this character. He is going on a very political journey but the person is just as important
if not maybe more important in this drama and so the personal challenges that he is
facing, his relationship with his wife, his relationship to himself, his own self confidence
and self worth. That's the other kind of key conversation in the play and the key battleground.
The old adage is if you cast right then 90% of the job is done so I think we have cast
this right. I mean the cast is superb. My initial approach is to let them discover their
roles and then work with them to show and sculpt the choices that are made. I mean rehearsing
is very much about that - making choices. It's about Ingle and I having made choices
about bringing this play to the first day of rehearsal and then leaving it to the actors
to start making their choices within that and then shaping and sculpting from there.
But yes at this stage the cast is doing a beautiful job and it's really us providing
a platform and a space and a design and a world within that they can operate.
Look I think it's going to be really entertaining. It's brisk, it's fast paced, it's funny even
with the dark things we have been discussing. There's a lot of humour and I think people
will have a good time and they will understand a little bit more about WA and about the period
that we're in and I guess most importantly they will learn a little bit about one of
our greatest Prime Ministers.