I was getting quite low and to the end of my thinking around even directing and I didn’t know what to do. I was a bit disillusioned and then I thought, maybe if we do something bigger and more accessible. I drove past the Lismore Railway Station with the Producer and thought Wow! Even as a boy I’d always seen those platforms as beautiful moving picture stations and stages, so Railway Wonderland was formed. It was so beautiful. My long time collaborator Janis Balodis who I met here in Lismore, is a writer and he and I formed this partnership and we worked on things. Railway Wonderland played for 5 weeks and it was a sellout. 260 people a night so 3,500 people saw that show. The beautiful thing about that show was it was a chance to tell part of Lismore’s history, with the Italian migration and the Proxy Brides and also do a series of hellos and goodbyes across time. It was very emotional and quite personal to me as well because the lead character Katia Molino played who is a very important actor in the NORPA productions since then, she played a character who was inspired by my mother. We played Railway Wonderland again 2 years later which was also a sell out. I remember it was pouring with rain and we had to pause the show. People were yelling from the seats, Don’t worry, we love it, keep going. I embraced nearly every audience member as they left that night because they were so brought together. Theatre is about community and this is why I’m a theatre Director.
Next was Dreamland which was inspired by the small halls and the stories of halls. We did that at Eureka and it returned again later in Bangalow A&I hall and it played to sell out shows too. The next one I did was Wildskin indoors in the theatre and then ‘Love for One Night’ at the Eltham Hotel. It was a head turning show. I’m really proud of the body of work because it’s all inspired by community and place. I’m not pulling a play off a shelf and doing my version of Chekhov. I’m trying to work collaboratively with local performers and Artists. I’m working collaboratively with the community because I want to animate place and story. That’s not particularly common in theatre across the country. What I’m getting at is that body of work, and a whole other tangent on this is with other Artists, Directors and Associate Directors like Kirk Page, Darcy Grant, Jade Dewi and Tyas Tunggal, Kate McDowell and a bunch of other people who have been contributing to this vibrancy of NORPA, It’s not just my work.
We are funded now Nationally. When I started I had no money to make work. We had no money to make work until about 5 years ago. There were small amounts there but we really had to make it work at the Box Office. Then the flood happened in 2022 and knocked us out after the hall had been renovated. We’ve just started our 4 year funding with the Federal Government and Create Australia which is game changer. Though we lost our contact with audiences, we didn’t have a home base to rehearse, we lost our connection with Lismore itself which was hard. We were really at sea there for a while. We were slumming it in Byron Bay (laughs) and feeling a like a fish out of water over there and longing to come home to the heartland of NORPA. I think the eclectic nature of Lismore, the inspiration of the people, the rough edges, we can be free and ourselves. I think theatre needs to be in the region. It needs to be here. I love making work happen elsewhere like Eltham and in the Hinterland. I live there now. We moved from Lismore to Coorabell to give the kids some more space and no neighbours. We moved a Queenslander onto 2 acres and it’s a beautiful home and I’m a big gardener.
That body of work has given NORPA its National profile or maintained it. The previous team put NORPA on the map and I think it’s my job to give it a next chapter that maybe animates it even more so.
We are now working on Wildskin which we did in 2018 and it went across well but flawed in a most great way. It was taking risks and playing with form and we were making it quickly. This time we are taking more time to generate a narrative to understand what this woman is going through. I learnt a lot as a male Director working on a female story and I’ve been more sensitive to that as a lead up and I’ve also made more space for the Associate Director Heather Fairbairn and Charlotte as the Designer. Obviously they were big influences in the first one, I wasn’t blind to all this but I think I just went into it with even more care and understanding of my role in this. Being an all female cast and the whole You 2 movement, all the things we are learning about and men in jobs of power and influence, all these things I’m cognisance of and very deeply conscious of. I could move away from this but It feels maybe braver and more interesting to lean into that discomfort and learn from it and be changed by it. That’s what theatre allows us to do as a group. We can tackle hard things and come through and learn a bit more about ourselves in the world.
I’m so proud of this cast we are rehearsing with for Wildskin. The reason to do it again was in the first iteration we wanted to have virtuoso in movement so we brought in people from Melbourne, Brisbane and imported skills and due to the pandemic with 2 years of cancellations then the flood cancelled another 3rd season. The exhaustion of leading the company through that and the tension, let alone the heartbreak of letting projects go, it was really important that this project was a galvanising force of our team, Our staff in the office and our creatives. This is an all local cast and I knew I wanted to cast a local cast of a particular age bracket, of lived experience, of women who would bring something to the story and we would all learn something more through them and through Eva. After the flood we want Lismore to embrace it. We want the region to embrace it.
It’s going back to creating site specific place work, like the ones we’ve done. We are here rehearsing for Wildskin in the Lismore showground pavillion. We have this massive long road down the guts of the space which is about 60 metres. It’s a journey story. We have a massive set that comes out and dances onto the space on wheels so it all happens around Eva.
To finish off, My Cousin Frank and I’m really proud of the other works that we’ve made and I’m really proud of our First Nations focus, our Artist development work we’ve been able to do. It’s challenging but I think something to share is how conscious we are of how creative the region is and how NORPA is one company, one professional company in this whole region. It’s a lot of pressure and so much expectation. I wish there was a fringe festival or other smaller companies funded to employ other Artists, other performers, other groups. There’s so many trained professionals living in the region. I say, make a draft, show it to us or other groups. My hope is that funding occurs so that other groups can emerge or companies can form to give opportunities to Artists. It’s a big area. Our name is NORPA, it’s not Lismore theatre company. It’s Northern Rivers Performing Arts and that’s a big weighty name that we try to live up to the best we can. It’s the dance. How can I make great work that turns heads nationally that is locally relevant? That’s the challenge! It’s also introducing theatre that’s not high brow, it’s fun, there’s song and there’s dance and there’s surprise and adventure. That’s the theatre I love.”
Get your tickets to Wildskin. I can’t wait.