This is, in Joanna Murray Smith’s own words, “a crackerjack year”.
Back in Melbourne after the opening of her 2011 play The Gift at Los Angeles’s Geffen Playhouse, the playwright will have a play staged in almost every state this year. “Writers are never happy,” she says with a laugh. “Instead of going: ‘Isn’t it wonderful’ I’m thinking: ‘I’m never going to do anything ever again for the rest of my life.’”
Somehow that is unlikely to happen. One of our most successful playwrights ever, her work has been performed nationally and all around the world. And she shows no sign of slowing down.
First up is Fury, commissioned by Sydney Theatre Company. Murray Smith says they wanted a play with its roots in her autobiography. “Although it is nothing like the story of my life, there are scenes within [Fury] that speak to my history.” As the daughter of communist parents, and the much younger sister of two Vietnam protesters, Murray-Smith often felt in the shadow of her politicised family. It’s this that she draws on for Fury. “The play in a way is about how the children of radicals define themselves against their radical parents.”
“I’m thinking: ‘I’m never going to do
anything ever again
for the rest of my life.’”
In contrast, her commission for the Melbourne Theatre Company, True Minds, is “an out and out comedy”. It tells of Daisy, a young woman desperate to please her possible mother-in-law, despite the obstacles.
Over in South Australia, audiences at the State Theatre will see her adaptation of Hedda Gabler. Initially she was unsure about putting her spin on such a classic, but there was something seductive about the play because it deals with love, mortality, competition, female identity, sexism and finding your place in the world.
She doesn’t take on adaptations lightly because she feels strongly about honouring the original writer’s ambitions. However, an adaptation can elucidate it for a contemporary audience that may feel distanced by all-too-faithful productions. “Cultural attitudes about sexuality and gender and class are always present in the writing of any play and if you subtly ‘adjust’ the script you can avoid the risk of an audience distancing themselves from the moral terrain of the play. Do you want to present the writer’s original words or do you want to preserve the original impact?”
Over in Perth, Black Swan Theatre will produce her play Day One, A Hotel, Evening, while her work Bombshells has just finished at Sydney’s Ensemble Theatre. And Murray Smith will soon be working on two commissions for American theatres.
With such tremendous success, surely it gets easier? “Most people who endure a life in the arts have this need to create, and no amount of misery and difficulty and humiliation and poverty and psychological frailty is enough to stymie that will. So in the end, you’re stuck. I do feel often it’s unbearable to keep doing it, I feel that all the time – but it’s more unbearable to stop.”
Fury opens at Sydney Theatre Company on April 15; True Minds at Melbourne Theatre Company on April 25; Hedda Gabler at State Theatre South Australia on April 26; Day One, A Hotel, Evening at the Black Swan Theatre on June 15.
Published in Vogue Australia May 2013
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