The Upton factor
A creative renaissance is in the wind, and like Lewis
Carroll before him, Andrew Upton is seeing sunny times through the
looking glass, writes Russell Skelton.
Andrew Upton is a sunny optimist. With the Howard era consigned
to history he believes there will be a freeing up of ideas and a
healthy engagement of contentious issues.
“The culture wars reduced issues to black and white. People were
lionised or demonised. Ambiguity became the enemy,” he says.
“What I hope we will get now is a re-engagement of ideas that
were off the agenda. The most important thing for the arts is not
money, (that is the second most important thing), but the community
in which they take place.”
At 42, Upton appears relaxed and confident about his place in
the world. He was apologetic about turning up late for the
interview, a victim of Sydney’s gridlocked CBD. Dressed stylishly
for an official function he had just attended, he had all the
appearance of what Paul Keating might describe as the “boy next
door”.
Upton, the accomplished playwright, and Cate Blanchett, his much
acclaimed actor wife, stand at the heart of what many in the arts
industry hope will be a creative renaissance under the Rudd
Government. As artistic co-directors and CEOs of the Sydney Theatre
Company, they are powerfully placed to shape and nurture a fresh
arts agenda.
The couple have never viewed the worlds of politics and the arts
as unconnected spheres. On taking up the directorship in
controversial circumstances - amid resentful mutterings that they
had no managerial experience and the position should have been
advertised - they wasted no time in connecting the dots between
theatre and politics. The theatre complex, located at the Wharf in
the Rocks, should be environmentally relevant with a minuscule
global warming footprint, they said.
The forthright declaration was made at a time when the Howard
government was still in the grip of the coal lobby and climate
change denial. Upton and Blanchett later signed a petition calling
on former environment minister Malcolm Turnbull to dump Gunns’
Tasmanian pulp mill or be dumped. The couple are reported to be
spending more than $1 million on making their 1926 Hunters Hill
mansion self-sustaining.
Upton does not believe the culture wars are over or that the
election of the Rudd Government will result in a wave of dreary
politically correct theatre. He says there is an inevitable healthy
tension between the creative arts and the publicly elected.
“Artists will always produce works that make politicians feel
uncomfortable and inevitably there will be the response: ‘For God’s
sake, why don’t you shut up’.”
I interviewed Upton at the Wharf soon after the opening of
Blackbird, a play directed by Blanchett. It was a
sparkling day and the playwright was in an expansive mood, clearly
enjoying the critical success of his wife’s directing, the
impending management challenge and birth of their third child in
April. The conversation ranged way beyond the agreed subject of the
interview: Upton’s libretto for Alice Through the Looking
Glass.
Blanchett’s directing of Blackbird preoccupied the
critics who read the production as a sign of perhaps the risky,
even confronting, artistic direction the Upton-Blanchett management
would bring. Written by David Harrower, the play explores the
sexual and emotional relationship between a 12-year-old girl and
her 40-year-old male neighbour. The script covers the taboo terrain
negotiated so brilliantly by Vladimir Nabokov in Lolita,
although without the insight, subtlety and originality. It was
Blanchett’s second outing as a director.
Upton was open to all questions, engaging and enthusiastic about
his current work and plans for the STC. He sees the Wharf as a
creative centre where the best of Australian theatre - playwriting,
acting, directing and set design - can be shown for national and
international audiences. He aspires to create a milieu that will
attract talent from overseas. “I know Phil Hoffman (the Oscar-
winning actor directed Upton’s play Riflemind) is going to
want to come back, he just loved the way Australian actors approach
their work.
“Sydney really needs to pull its socks up, it’s been too reliant
on excellent wine and spectacular sunsets. We are a society, not an
economy. The arts gives a city international appeal, we want people
to come to Sydney because of what it offers apart from a glorious
harbour. That philosophy has worked for Melbourne, which is in
great shape; the rich arts culture makes it a real
destination.”
As for suggestions that he and Blanchett have no management
experience, Upton says that this was fully taken into account by
the board.
The company had been set up in such a way by former artistic
director and CEO Robyn Nevin that internal structures made
management less of an issue.
“The bad side of politicking comes about from bad management.
When we are all on a par and contributing together there is less
need for intrigue, lobbying (because) the pockets of creativity are
involved.”
Apart from shaping the STC, Upton’s creative side has been
preoccupied writing Carroll’s libretto for the Victorian Opera. His
fascination with words and the way the mind recasts memory drew him
to Lewis Carroll and the children’s story Alice Through the
Looking Glass.
“When Carroll wrote Through the Looking Glass he
described (in letters to friends) how the weather that week was
sunny, but the weather patterns and records from that time, and the
Victorians kept accurate records, suggest it was overcast and
raining.
“I found that fascinating, how memory converts something grey
into a perfect day. It was wonderfully sunny in Carroll’s mind when
it was actually raining.”
Carroll’s ambiguity holds a special challenge. Alice on her
journey (which is also a series of moves on a chess board) is
constantly faced with puzzles about time, space and numbers. The
White Queen talks to Alice about having jam “tomorrow and . . .
yesterday - but never jam today”. Then there is the constant
dilemma for Alice of “living backwards” and “remembering things
before they happen”.
Upton, widely respected for his adaptations of such works as
Don Juan, Hedda Gabler and Cyrano de Bergerac,
found there were many levels to interpret the surreal world of
Carroll, the master storyteller who specialised in word play.
“Carroll’s word games are very English and, in a sense, undermining
of authority. If you compare Through the Looking Glass
with Alice in Wonderland there is a sense of decay of the
adult world and of authority. Alice is on a journey to become Queen
but there is also a darkness.”
For Upton it has been an extraordinary exercise, composing
blocks of words and sending them off to Alan John - best known for
his opera The Eighth Wonder - who then composes the music.
At each stage the opera is sung, workshopped, refined and
rewritten. Director Michael Kantor is also involved in the process.
Upton believes his words, whether for opera or theatre, are
inhabited by a rhythm, which he believes assists the composer.
So why does Lewis Carroll need to be sung if it is the subtle
word play and ambiguity that most characterises the tale for
children built around chess moves and barely disguised worldly
themes? “For me it became about singing because the story is
happening in a dream state, an enhanced state. Assuming the story
is happening to the characters rather than implied, the world
becomes heightened (by the music).
“It also fascinates me what the meaning of words are in the
context of an opera.”
As a writer Upton says his own work comes slowly: “It takes me
about three years to write something from scratch, for some people
it takes a year.”
He has resigned himself to the fact that during his
co-directorship he will write what he can. “I comfort myself,” he
says laughing, “in the knowledge that most writers like Shakespeare
and Pinter were heavily involved in the theatre.”
Upton, like the White Queen in Alice, knows or hopes he
knows what the future looks like for him.
He has been occupied for years with Oedipus, the King in Greek
mythology who unwittingly killed his father and married his mother.
The story appeals because it is about one deeply complex character.
“I am not saying I will do this but there are elements of that
story that appeal to me.”
Upton believes in the Australian theatrical identity, which he
sees in all sorts of forms including TV programs such as The
Chaser and The Norman Gunston Show.
It’s a tradition that reaches back to La Mama, the Pram Factory
and the Nimrod Theatre. “It often comes through a conjunction of
writers, actors and the production of a whole event. It’s raw and
astute.”
As for the future direction of the STC, he says that change
(after Robyn Nevin’s nine years at the helm) is inevitable and was
after all the fundamental reason why he and Blanchett were
hired.
“Changing things should not be seen as criticism of the way
things were done; it should be seen as evolution.
“Australia produces world-class interesting work; it is part of
why Cate and I came back. What we want to do is establish a flow so
that work goes out (to the world) and Australia is seen as an
incredible pool of talent and ideas.”
That, on reflection, seems a modest ambition given that over the
years the STC has launched and nurtured the careers of such actors
as Mel Gibson, Judy Davis, Hugo Weaving and two Oscar winners
Geoffrey Rush and one Ms Cate Blanchett.
Through the Looking Glass will be performed at
the Malthouse in May.
www.malthousetheatre.com.au
