Everyone Loves Lally Katz

Lally Katz is one of those people to whom things just happen.

Like the time she was walking through Sydney late at night, contemplating a new play about Judaism, and she was approached by someone she thought was a rabbi. He told her he had something to tell her. “I thought: ‘Of course you need to tell me the secret of God for this play; of course we have to talk.’” Deeper and deeper into a very dark Centennial Park they went. “Finally we got into this really dark bit, and he said: ‘Here.’ I suddenly thought: ‘Oh, this is bad news, he’s not telling me the word of God.’ So I said: ‘I have to go’ and as I was running through the park, I thought: ‘Shit, I thought he was going to give me the play.’ And then I went: ‘He did!’”

The encounter was the spark behind the playwright’s highly acclaimed work A Golem Story, which won rave reviews when it opened at Melbourne’s Malthouse Theatre in June. It was one of three major original works, including Neighbourhood Watch at Sydney’s Belvoir Theatre and Return to Earth at Melbourne Theatre Company, which Katz debuted on the national stage this year. She couldn’t be busier, or happier. “There’s nothing I’d rather be doing,” she says. “It’s been as magical a feeling as I thought it would be.”

“Theatre [is about] stories and pictures

but it’s also about poetry,

about how the words hang in the air

and create the world.”

Katz has been writing plays since she was a teenager, studying at the University of Melbourne and the Victorian School of Creative Arts, before a spell at the Royal Court Theatre. Early works such as Goodbye Vaudeville Charlie Mudd, The Black Swan of Trespass and the Apocalypse Bear Trilogy won both critical praise and plaudits, while this year has seen her trio of plays hit the stage.

She loves everything about theatre. “Theatre [is about] stories and pictures but it’s also about poetry, about how the words hang in the air and create the world. The words are alive in theatre,” she says. “[Also] I love that theatre’s not going to be totally naturalistic. Even if [it’s] a kitchen sink drama, you’re still in a theatre watching people pretend, so there’s always the element of dream.”

The star of A Golem Story, actress Yael Stone describes Katz’s writing as the double helix of the epic and the domestic. Katz delights in the description. “I think that’s the way I see the world. It’s like domestic things are actually quite epic and then epic things are quite domestic in a way.”

Every work has a dash of magical realism. “If I try and write a really normal play, it’s always clunky. It doesn’t quite ring true because it’s not quite how I see things.” For her, reality has always seemed slightly surreal. “I guess my reality has always been a bit liquid-y.” Not so long ago, Australian theatre was criticised for being dominated by older men. Young, dynamic and sassy as all get-out, Katz is ploughing through the politics. But she demurs when asked about being the great young hope of Australian theatre. “It’s all I’ve wanted since I was 16, my life has been a tunnel of theatre … [But] in all honesty, it’s not something that I’m conscious of that much,” she says. “If I do think about it, of course I want to see more young people doing theatre, of course I want to see more women’s plays getting on.”

After a year of success, she’s looking forward to a quieter 2012 filled with writing. “Right now I’m quite high on life and it’s fun, I love being around people, but when I’m this high on life, I don’t really have any need to write, because what’s there to write about because everything’s really great? Whereas in my years of development, I’m not so high on life,” she says with a laugh. “[I’m] just hanging out with ghosts, so the only thing I can do is write.”

After creating Neighbourhood Watch for actress Robyn Nevin, she’d like to write something for Geoffrey Rush and his wife Jane Menelaus. “Writing for specific actors is like cheating because you’ve got half the life there already.” However, if this year is anything to go by, there’s no doubt that a Lally Katz play is absolutely the real deal.