The Brilliant Seed
The Seed, Belvoir St Upstairs, February 21-March 30; 9699 3444 or www.belvoir.com.au
When Kate Mulvany's laptop was stolen years ago, with it went all her work on a novel about her family. In most instances this would have been a blessing: the average person who says "I have a book in me" should be encouraged to make no effort whatsoever to bring it out.
Mulvany is not your average person however. For one thing, she is one of the most talented actor-writers around, and for another, her family story is riveting and important. The lost 100 pages somehow made that more obvious to her, in a painful way.
"I learned two things," she says now. "Always make a back-up copy and, that I hardly dared go back to the story for a long time, so I knew I had to do it,"
Eventually, Mulvany turned the scraps of notes she had left into a work-in-progress that won the 2004 Philip Parsons Young Playwrights' Award. She used the $10,000 prize to buy some time to fashion that script into The Seed. It became one of the successes of B Sharp's 2007 season, winning the Sydney Theatre Award for Best Independent Production.
By then Company B artistic director Neil Armfield had already decided The Seed could go further and invited Mulvany and her play upstairs into the 2008 mainstage season. So what's the difference?
Mulvany chuckles. "A budget for a start," she says. "A budget is always good. A wage is always good."
There were other factors too: a play that works comfortably in an 80-seat room is unlikely to transfer to a 350-seat auditorium without some rethinking. It was a new challenge for Mulvany and a luxury that few playwrights experience.
"It was a luxury," she says. "Working with Neil; and of course, there are a lot more people involved and they were looking at it with fresh eyes."
As was the writer: she came to it afresh and started out with the same spirit that enabled her to write the play in the first place. It tells of a Vietnam veteran who returns to Australia unaware of what he is bringing with him. Exposed to Agent Orange while on active service, he suffers recurring and multiple illnesses and side effects. Then there is the nightmare of his infant daughter's chemical legacy of cancer. The play's three generations of Maloneys also have another toxic nheritance: in a reuniting visit to the grandfather in England what surfaces is the myths and true lies of his lifelong support of the IRA. It's a powerful mix - which may well have changed somewhat from the first production.
Being able to change the bits I always knew were sticky is something I didn't ever expect to be able to do," says Mulvany. "As a writer I've thought - oh, the actors will fix that. Now I have to have some sympathy for the actors!"
Reworking the play has made her "a little bit adult" with the work, she says. "It's like putting it through rehab. I couldn't have envisaged the value of that. It's the danger of doing a play so closely related to yourself. Now I've been able to stand back and say - am I having a whinge? Am I being cruel?"
The Geraldon-born, Curtin University-educated Mulvany is a sought-after actress who has appeared on the stages of all the major companies. At the same time, her reputation as a writer is rapidly rising.
"But I still go home with the same fears," she says. "Right now they're writer fears. It's so much more frightening having your words out there - because they're straight from your heart, your brain."
Appearing in her own play is a curious experience too, Mulvany has found. "I think - how did my character make that choice? What is this about? What was the damn writer thinking of giving me lines like this?!"
And while The Seed has been in the re-working, re-rehearsal process at Belvoir St, yet another play, The Danger Age, is being rehearsed at La Boite in Brisbane.
"It's been a funny experience," says Mulvany. "I'm here but my head's up there. Luckily the director has rung me every day so I feel some sort of connection to it, I sort of know what's going on. It's weird not being there. I hope it'll come south. It's funny and beautiful - well, that's my intention."
Meanwhile, Mulvany is writing two more plays in her spare time ("they're cooking away and they're quite yummy, I think") while grappling once again with the role of Rose Maloney.
"She's actually the most made up character in the play," says Mulvany. "And the more I fictionalised her, the more personal she became. That was weird, but I didn't write the role for myself. Four other actresses were approached and couldn't do it for reasons including pregnancy. I was actually fifth choice!"
