Tracy Mann Interview
Now appearing in Last One Standing at the Old Fitz, Tracy Mann is in Sydney again after five years away, working in Melbourne and living on the Mornington Peninsula.
"I've kept my house there," says Mann sitting at a pavement cafe in the un-Mornington location of Darlinghurst. "But I've come back to Sydney to work as an actress. In the end it's what I do and I want to see if this is what I'm meant to be doing. I want to make a living - with dignity - call me old fashioned, but that's what I want."
Mann's outlook on life is at once dynamic and serene and coloured by Buddhism - not trendy lifestyle Buddhism of the fridge magnet kind, but the real thing. She laughs at the description but volunteers that a three month retreat in Nepal was "challenging." Then goes on to explain: "Challenging is being on your own and silent for three months as a practice. It's very telling what the mind does. Some days it was pure pleasure, some days it was torture. I'd find myself hunkering ... no, hankering - well, actually I did a lot of hunkering and hankering. But in the end it's a process that led me to some clarity."
In a different way, Last One Standing is also a challenge. It is set in the here and now in Australia and brings together several generations of one family in a house on the coast.
"The title means several things," says Mann. "It could mean the house, it could mean home. It's set at Malabar and it's falling down; the dilemma is what to do - fix it? Pull it down? Sell it? And you could also see it as a metaphor for Australia, the ageing population and their children. I play Ruth, she's a babyboomer, then there's a couple of kids who belong to those alphabet generations - X, Y - you know."
Although Mann describes the characters as "parents with strong ideals and children who sell them down the river" she doesn't think it's that much different from generation to generation.
[page]"I'm fast approaching the half century and I think the aim is to be more open than our parents - open to change, to differences. Really, when you listen to the way people talk, the children never live up to the ideals of the previous generation. Ned's character - my husband is older - as far as he's concerned his son is Peter Costello. I think I'm probably Juni Morosi!"
On a deeper level the play also explores emotional and practical issues that nobody cares to look at: what do you do with your parents when they get old? What should each generation expect of the other?
"There are questions that preoccupy people and are unanswerable in this society," says Mann. "I mean - what is happiness? There's very little sense of what the question means and even what 'happiness' might be. In a materialistic society you see the light suddenly go on when somebody work out 'you mean this brand new expensive car won't make me happy?' and it comes as a great shock."
So, says Mann, the reason she's doing the play and thinks people should come and see it is that it's an Australian story which is topical, compassionate and funny.
"The more I do it the more it resonates," she says. "And working with Ned is wonderful - to see someone's heart and experience work that's honest and funny. And of course, it's a chance to support great theatre in a great theatre. That's reason enough, don't you think?"
Last One Standing at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, Woolloomooloo to May 5; ph: (02) 9294 4296 or www.oldfitzroy.com.au.
