Speaker 1: I was a total theater nerd when I was growing up.
Speaker 1: It was through school plays and then starting drama for
Speaker 1: year eleven and twelve in high school that really brought
Speaker 1: me out of my shell as someone who was a
Speaker 1: very shy child, and being a theater nerd in the
Speaker 1: nineties meant that I was a complete and uttered David
Speaker 1: Williamson fan and I had read or seen every one
Speaker 1: of his plays by the time that I was eighteen. Now,
Speaker 1: if you haven't heard of David Williamson, he is, I
Speaker 1: would say, Australia's most famous playwright. He debuted his first
Speaker 1: play in nineteen seventy. After spending years as a college teacher,
Speaker 1: he kept writing and was soon releasing hit after hit.
Speaker 1: You might have seen or heard of The Removalists, The Club,
Speaker 1: Emerald City, or one of his other fifty plus plays
Speaker 1: that he has written over the course of his career,
Speaker 1: and maybe you've even held your own Don's Party for
Speaker 1: Election Night, named after David's famous play of the same name.
Speaker 1: So I don't know if there's anyone in Australia who
Speaker 1: wouldn't have come into contact with David's work somehow, whether
Speaker 1: it's studying his plays at school, seeing them in a
Speaker 1: theater or maybe watching his screenplays on film or TV.
Speaker 1: So where did David's best ideas come from that allowed
Speaker 1: him to write hit after hit nearly every year during
Speaker 1: his theater career. And how did David deal with a
Speaker 1: lot of negative reviews over the course of his career,
Speaker 1: And why does David believe that writer's block is a
Speaker 1: total myth. My name is doctor Romantha Imba. I'm an
Speaker 1: organizational psychologist and the founder of Behavioral Science Consultancy. Invent
Speaker 1: him and this is how I work a show about
Speaker 1: how to help you do your best work. So you
Speaker 1: would not remember this, But when I was gosh, I
Speaker 1: want to say, like twenty or twenty five years ago,
Speaker 1: when I was in my early twenties, I won an
Speaker 1: award for scriptwriting from the Fellowship of Australian Writers and you,
Speaker 1: I think, were associated with it or you sponsored it.
Speaker 1: And I was such a fan of yours. I saw
Speaker 1: and read so many of your plays growing up as
Speaker 1: a teenager, through my twenties and through my whole life.
Speaker 1: And I wrote you a fan letter at that point
Speaker 1: in time, and you responded and I still have that letter, David.
Speaker 2: I hope I wasn't rude or.
Speaker 1: You were so polite, and it really like it just
Speaker 1: it made my day, it made my month, And I
Speaker 1: was curious because I never imagined in my wildest dreams
Speaker 1: that you would reply, and I would imagine you over
Speaker 1: the course of your career. You must have received so
Speaker 1: many letters from fans. What's your approach to I guess
Speaker 1: responding to everyone that does reach out.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, I feel if they been kind enough
Speaker 2: to want to communicate, it's very boorish not to respect that. Well,
Speaker 2: first of all, they've thought you are important enough and
Speaker 2: important enough in their life to want to communicate with,
Speaker 2: and to not answer would seem awful, from whether anyone
Speaker 2: believes it or not. Whatever the acclaim or lack of acclaim,
Speaker 2: I get out there, I see my sophice fairly ordinary,
Speaker 2: fairly easily hurt, and I can empathize with anyone else
Speaker 2: that's fairly easily hurt. And there's nothing like plucking up
Speaker 2: the courage to approach someone that you admire and then
Speaker 2: not getting a response. So I try, and I try
Speaker 2: and do my best. I think I've answered most of them.
Speaker 1: Wow, that's very impressive, because I can't even begin to
Speaker 1: imagine how.
Speaker 2: Many you received.
Speaker 1: Now, at the height of your career, you were literally
Speaker 1: putting out a play every year, certainly much to my delight,
Speaker 1: And I want to know, how did you keep up
Speaker 1: with that kind of intensity to be putting out a
Speaker 1: new play every single year, Amantha.
Speaker 2: I think it was a question of addiction once I
Speaker 2: had experienced I first experienced the thrill of actors saying
Speaker 2: my words and audiences responding in university reviews. But when
Speaker 2: I got to full length players, that was a whole
Speaker 2: different ballgame. That was a big effort. But when I
Speaker 2: got to the stage where I could create something really good,
Speaker 2: actors and directors would work on it, and then the
Speaker 2: magic ingredient would turn up on the first preview night,
Speaker 2: the audience, and if you've got it right, there was
Speaker 2: a palpable connection between what you'd written, the actors, the audience.
Speaker 2: What you'd written was meaning something to all those live
Speaker 2: people there in the audience, and it was a huge
Speaker 2: buzz and quite addictive. And once I'd experienced that, I
Speaker 2: wanted to experience it again. And it's a classic addiction case.
Speaker 2: I think. I think a lot of executives are like that.
Speaker 2: If they have one of their projects flowers and comes off.
Speaker 2: They wanted to happen again. That's so true.
Speaker 1: So what would that look like putting out a play
Speaker 1: a year? How would your year be structured or broken
Speaker 1: down to essentially hit that deadline.
Speaker 2: Well, it was fairly laid out for me because the
Speaker 2: theater companies that I worked for, the Sydney Theater Company
Speaker 2: in the Welburne Theater Company and the other theater companies
Speaker 2: around had have a system of subscription audiences, and around
Speaker 2: about September or sometimes August, they put out a brochure
Speaker 2: with all the upcoming plays for the next year and
Speaker 2: offer it to their subscribers to buy multiple tickets. They
Speaker 2: pick tickets to all of the players or some of them,
Speaker 2: and so they have to have that brochure ready. So
Speaker 2: by June they're really in the last stages of assembling
Speaker 2: that brochure. So going back a couple of months, they
Speaker 2: need my play to be typically there about April, hopefully
Speaker 2: before that at the latest May, they had to assess it.
Speaker 2: They had to see who they were going to cast,
Speaker 2: because that's a vital ingredient in the brochure that goes out.
Speaker 2: It's not only Williamson's play, but x or Y is
Speaker 2: starring at it, so they had to put all that
Speaker 2: together get it out by August or September, so you
Speaker 2: had to get your stuff done by hopefully. They used
Speaker 2: to want me to have it in by March April.
Speaker 2: May was really pushing it.
Speaker 1: And is that the full play? Because funnily enough, literally
Speaker 1: just received next year's MTC brochure in the mail yesterday,
Speaker 1: which I was excitingly, excitedly reading through. So is it
Speaker 1: the full play that needs to be ready by that
Speaker 1: point in time?
Speaker 2: Well enough, It needs to be finished enough. It's usually
Speaker 2: only a first or second or third draft that they
Speaker 2: go on, but it has to be finished enough to
Speaker 2: attract good actors and a good director to do the play.
Speaker 2: It can't be too shoddy or too appalling. I will
Speaker 2: work on it after it's accepted, after it's in the brochure,
Speaker 2: I will still keep working on many, usually many more drafts,
Speaker 2: usually ten, twelve fifty, sometimes fifteen drafts, and then I
Speaker 2: would get the privilege of a rehearsal, a rehearsed reading
Speaker 2: with my cast, those of who could be assembled about
Speaker 2: eight weeks before rehearsal starts, so sometimes six weeks. Towards
Speaker 2: the end of my career, I got that all the time,
Speaker 2: so you could hear it. It's not until you hear
Speaker 2: good actors bringing the script to life you realize where
Speaker 2: the mistakes are that you've made, Like redundant information. I've
Speaker 2: said that three times. I'm really hammering that point. That
Speaker 2: passage is on the nose. By on the nose, I mean,
Speaker 2: it's too obvious. You don't need to say tell an
Speaker 2: actor that I have an actor saying I am so
Speaker 2: angry if their actions are demonstrating that they're angry. So
Speaker 2: all kinds of things like that come up in the reading.
Speaker 2: Then you go away and rewrite again, and then there's
Speaker 2: even some shaping up during the rehearsal process itself. On
Speaker 2: the first day of the reading, you'll hope it's all right,
Speaker 2: but usually there's a bit of tinkering. But you can't
Speaker 2: do too much in a four or five week rehearsal
Speaker 2: otherwise to throw the actors, so you just hope that
Speaker 2: you've got it right. But by the time rehearsal start, what's.
Speaker 1: That like the first time you hear a play read
Speaker 1: out or performed by actors in that rehearsal room.
Speaker 2: It's very nerve wreaking matter because those actors are very smart.
Speaker 2: They know what works, they know what doesn't. The director
Speaker 2: is usually a very good director and knows what works
Speaker 2: and knows what does doesn't. So it's a testing situation
Speaker 2: for you as a writer to get through that unscathed
Speaker 2: or relatively unscathed. But if you've got something wrong, the
Speaker 2: actors and the director will usually alert you to it,
Speaker 2: usually tactfully, and if you agree, you work on it.
Speaker 2: So it's a collaborative process to a certain extent once
Speaker 2: you've got those actors around the table. But hearing good
Speaker 2: actors work on your words is well I said, it's
Speaker 2: nerve wreck process is nerve wracking, but hearing it when
Speaker 2: it's working as magic you hear as I'm writing, my
Speaker 2: dialogue isn't strictly naturalistic. It's not exactly how people talk.
Speaker 2: There are musical rhythms in the dialogue which actors have
Speaker 2: to grasp on and do grasp on, and when they
Speaker 2: get it, it's like singing. They take off.
Speaker 1: So when you're in that typically four week rehearsal process
Speaker 1: before the previews before opening night, how much is changing
Speaker 1: in a script in that I guess that in the
Speaker 1: final in the final rehearsal process, in.
Speaker 2: The final rehearsal process, just fine tuning, maybe cutting five
Speaker 2: percent of the lines that are redundant. Usually sometimes I
Speaker 2: have had to do a radical rewriter occasionally, and that's
Speaker 2: always upsetting for the class, and they usually bear with you.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't happen all that often. But you don't
Speaker 2: want to do it all that often because it's a
Speaker 2: big up people. But there was one or two players
Speaker 2: where I saw that there was a big floor and
Speaker 2: I had to address it.
Speaker 1: You mentioned like there have been a couple of times
Speaker 1: you've had to do some major rewrites. What's your approach
Speaker 1: to I guess solving a problem, like a major problem
Speaker 1: with a script where something is really not working.
Speaker 2: Well. There's a player I did called Brilliant Lies.
Speaker 1: I love that one.
Speaker 2: Oh. That was in the early nineties, and I had
Speaker 2: the magnificent actor Ray Barrett playing the father of the
Speaker 2: two girls. And in the initial right he was a benign, gentle,
Speaker 2: sort of chap ineffectual. And I heard the read and
Speaker 2: I thought that raise wasted he I mean he could
Speaker 2: do this role standing on his ear. I mean, people
Speaker 2: all like him, but there's nothing to stretch him here.
Speaker 2: He's such a great actor. I've got to do more
Speaker 2: than this with him. So I did a very radical
Speaker 2: rewrite and made him quite a bit darker and quite
Speaker 2: a bit more less pleasant. There was some sexual abuse
Speaker 2: of his daughters, not severe, but severe enough to traumatize them,
Speaker 2: and they had to cope with that, and they had
Speaker 2: to cope with his illness, and they had to cope
Speaker 2: with finding money to save his life and did they
Speaker 2: really want to do it? Give them the history. So
Speaker 2: it became a lot more dark, a lot more dramatic,
Speaker 2: and gave him a lot more range. And that was
Speaker 2: perhaps the most major rewrite. And I did a lot
Speaker 2: of that during the rehearsal. And Ray was terrific because
Speaker 2: to the cast, I had a wonderful cast there and
Speaker 2: they were tolerant because they could see the play was
Speaker 2: going to sing. It was going to be a lot
Speaker 2: more powerful if we did this. And Ray went along
Speaker 2: with it, and part of that was because he knew
Speaker 2: that his part would be far more demanding, but rewarding
Speaker 2: for him and rewarding for the audience.
Speaker 1: And so how do you do that rewrite? Like do
Speaker 1: you start big picture and then hone in on the
Speaker 1: you know, on the scenes and the dialogue. What does
Speaker 1: that look like?
Speaker 2: Well I got the idea. I said, Ah, what I've
Speaker 2: got to do with him is not making the perfect father.
Speaker 2: I've really got to make him. And how do I
Speaker 2: do that? Well, two daughters? Do I stray into this territory?
Speaker 2: And I thought, yes, yes, let's do it. And so
Speaker 2: I write fast when it's mainly getting the grasp of
Speaker 2: the new structure. All right, I know where I'm going now,
Speaker 2: so I can do it. I can write new scenes
Speaker 2: at fairly high speed and then rewrite them at high
Speaker 2: speed and rewrite them. So we got it in shape
Speaker 2: remarkably quickly given the magnitude of the change. But I'm
Speaker 2: so glad we did it because it turned out a
Speaker 2: much better play for it.
Speaker 1: So, high speed writing, what does that look like? What
Speaker 1: conditions do you need to do this? High speed writing?
Speaker 1: As you refer to it.
Speaker 2: A lot of adrenaline, Amantha, I'm a lot of adrenaline.
Speaker 2: I get excited, I get anxious, keyed up. I've got
Speaker 2: to get this right. My wife Kristen sees the glaze
Speaker 2: look in my eye and knows there's no sense trying
Speaker 2: to communicate for the next day or two until I
Speaker 2: get it right. Yeah, it's a frenzy. When it's that
Speaker 2: sort of a big job, it's a frenzy and it
Speaker 2: just seems to pour out. It just pours out. You
Speaker 2: don't know from where. Some deep recesses than you. A
Speaker 2: lot of what comes out on the page isn't from
Speaker 2: your conscious mind. It comes from somewhere. I don't know where,
Speaker 2: but you just thank god it's there.
Speaker 1: And what's happening around you? Like if you locked yourself away,
Speaker 1: do you have this Like is there a particular environment
Speaker 1: that you do that best friends, you'd work in? What
Speaker 1: does that look like?
Speaker 2: Just my office? And I get grumpy, obsessed and unbearable
Speaker 2: to live with during the process. But luckily Kristen is
Speaker 2: a writer herself, so she knows the force of obsession
Speaker 2: and by and large, except when it's gone to extremes,
Speaker 2: has been tolerant.
Speaker 1: Wow, And what do you do with all the things
Speaker 1: that can distract you, like you know, your phone for example,
Speaker 1: or email? What happens to all those things when you're
Speaker 1: in this kind of flow state.
Speaker 2: I guess you don't notice the rest of the world,
Speaker 2: you leave bills unpaid, you leave vital calls unanswered, which
Speaker 2: I don't like doing. I mean, I'm the sort of
Speaker 2: person who gets anxious if bills are hanging over your head,
Speaker 2: and I feel awful if I haven't replied to someone.
Speaker 2: So it's only in those states where you know you've
Speaker 2: got to get something done, where you're in a heightened
Speaker 2: state that all the rest of the world fades away
Speaker 2: in service and you're in service of the task of
Speaker 2: getting it right, with the aim of producing something that
Speaker 2: really connects and secondly, something good enough so it doesn't
Speaker 2: humiliate you.
Speaker 1: I feel like your plays always have such unique and
Speaker 1: different and interesting premises, so I want to know, like,
Speaker 1: where does that seed of an idea from, Like when
Speaker 1: you're starting something new, it.
Speaker 2: Sort of usually comes from observations of the life around
Speaker 2: things I've heard, things I've seen, things I've read. And
Speaker 2: what triggers me is when it arouses a strong emotional
Speaker 2: response in me. If I feel angry, or if I
Speaker 2: feel it's hilarious, or if I feel really involved in
Speaker 2: that story or what I've seen, if I'm really excited
Speaker 2: by it, then my emotional response tells me that that
Speaker 2: particular theme or situation could also excite an interest and audience.
Speaker 1: How much would you flesh out an idea before you
Speaker 1: metaphorically put pen to paper.
Speaker 2: It varies. I'm not big on doing hugely detailed synopsies.
Speaker 2: Usually I'll find the situation I want to write about.
Speaker 2: I'll find the conflicts that are going to drive my story.
Speaker 2: I'll find the characters and the conflicts between them that
Speaker 2: are going to drive my story. I'll sometimes write a
Speaker 2: rough outline of a couple of pages, sometimes more. I'll
Speaker 2: know where the story is vague vaguely hitting or not
Speaker 2: so vaguely but heading, and where I think it is
Speaker 2: going to end. But then as the writing process takes over,
Speaker 2: things happen. I don't. I hear some writers saying, oh,
Speaker 2: my characters dictate to me and take me off. Another
Speaker 2: doruct well, my characters don't dictate to me. But new
Speaker 2: ideas spontaneously form, what if this, what if that? And
Speaker 2: new possibilities open out as you begin the process of writing.
Speaker 2: So in the sense it is organic, you never quite
Speaker 2: know where it's going to go. But I was very
Speaker 2: struck by the American playwright David Marmott, who said, look
Speaker 2: if I don't surprise myself when I'm writing. I'm not
Speaker 2: going to surprise the audience. Now, the danger of that
Speaker 2: organic method is that you can go off the rails.
Speaker 2: You can sort of you can get excited about new possibilities,
Speaker 2: new branches of your story and get carried away with
Speaker 2: it and suddenly find you've got a very chaotic structure
Speaker 2: that's out of control. So the next ten, twelve, fifteen
Speaker 2: drafts are getting that structure back in order.
Speaker 1: And with these ideas that are kind of emerging as
Speaker 1: you're writing, how do you judge whether they're worth pursuing
Speaker 1: or not?
Speaker 2: I think with Ernest Hemingway says the greatest asset of
Speaker 2: any good writer is what he called a shit detector.
Speaker 2: You've gone. You've got to be ruthless enough with yourself
Speaker 2: to know when that idea really isn't a good idea,
Speaker 2: when it's tried, when it's been done to death, when
Speaker 2: it's improbable, when the character would just not do what
Speaker 2: you've got them doing. You've got to be aware of
Speaker 2: your organic process going off the rails.
Speaker 1: We will be back shortly with David Hearing about how
Speaker 1: he remembers ideas that come to him at inopportune at times,
Speaker 1: and also his methods for overcoming writer's block. Now, if
Speaker 1: you're looking for more tips to improve the way that
Speaker 1: you work, I write a short fortnightly newsletter that contains
Speaker 1: three cool things that I've discovered that helped me work better,
Speaker 1: ranging from interesting research findings through to gadgets that I'm loving.
Speaker 1: You can sign up for that at Howiwork dot co,
Speaker 1: How I Work dot c. What's it like when you're
Speaker 1: in the middle of writing a script, like are those
Speaker 1: characters living with you twenty four to seven? Or is
Speaker 1: it quite contained? When you're at your computer writing No.
Speaker 2: I find it hard to let go, as Kristin can
Speaker 2: tell you, and as I say, it's lucky she's a
Speaker 2: writer because she's a bit tolerant. When a story is
Speaker 2: forming and being executed. It's hard for me to drag
Speaker 2: my mind off it, even when I'm not at the
Speaker 2: word processor. So Kristin will occasionally turn them in say
Speaker 2: what did I just say? I've been saved by the
Speaker 2: essential of a magic facility somewhere at the back of
Speaker 2: my brain that records even if I'm not conscious of it.
Speaker 2: You can usually parrot back the lines and get away
Speaker 2: with it, But I've just said from the kitchen that
Speaker 2: doesn't mean it goes in. No, that's true, but no,
Speaker 2: I find it hard to switch off. Often I'll go
Speaker 2: to bed and agonized because and have a fairly sleepless
Speaker 2: night because that I can't seem to find it way
Speaker 2: out of the story impass and it doesn't seem to
Speaker 2: be going anywhere. Then you wake up in the morning,
Speaker 2: have a shower, or have a walk on the beach
Speaker 2: or something like that, and it'll come to you. So
Speaker 2: it's a fairly up and down emotional process.
Speaker 1: What methods do you have for capturing all those thoughts
Speaker 1: and ideas and dialogue that come to your head in
Speaker 1: opportune times?
Speaker 2: Often I have been really irritating myself for not having
Speaker 2: a patterned pencil or something there to call them, But
Speaker 2: I raally remember to take them round, So I try
Speaker 2: and retain them in my head till the next opportunity
Speaker 2: I've got to jot the idea down.
Speaker 1: How do you do that, like through repetition or have
Speaker 1: you got any tricks or have you just got a
Speaker 1: superhuman memory?
Speaker 2: Often through repetition or remembering the initials that thought and
Speaker 2: sort of memory tricks, But often I forget them. I'm
Speaker 2: really really annoyed. I should I should be sensible enough
Speaker 2: to carry a pattern pencil around me, but I never
Speaker 2: get round of it.
Speaker 1: Well, look, I guess what what you're doing is working
Speaker 1: pretty well for you, David. Now you mentioned you know
Speaker 1: this process where you're stuck on something and you're trying
Speaker 1: to get unstuck. What are some of your go to
Speaker 1: methods for forgetting on stack, other than having a good
Speaker 1: night's sleep, hopefully or maybe a restless night sleep.
Speaker 2: It sounds like sometimes it's a matter of just going
Speaker 2: back to the word processor and writing anything, just writing
Speaker 2: bad stuff, and that bad stuff makes you so disgusted
Speaker 2: you think up something more, and then you think up
Speaker 2: something more. And sometimes it's a process of just hammering
Speaker 2: away at the word processor until something reasonable emerges. But
Speaker 2: sometimes it can just come out of the blue, like
Speaker 2: as I say, I was having great trouble with the
Speaker 2: ending of one of my players, and suddenly the subconscious
Speaker 2: must have been working away on it, and the solution
Speaker 2: popped into my head. I think I was under the shower.
Speaker 2: So sometimes you just slog away and hope that the
Speaker 2: bad ideas get better as you write them. And other
Speaker 2: times as if by magic the solution will appear.
Speaker 1: Do you believe in writer's block?
Speaker 2: No. I think writer's block is just a form of
Speaker 2: perfectionism that the writer can't stand to put anything on
Speaker 2: their screen that's less than perfect, so they'd rather not
Speaker 2: do anything at all. It's something I couldn't afford to
Speaker 2: have with a large family to support. I have no
Speaker 2: sympathy for writers that say I've got writer's block. Well,
Speaker 2: I say, get to the word process and write something it.
Speaker 2: It doesn't matter how bad it is. Just write something,
Speaker 2: and how bad it is will shock you into thinking
Speaker 2: up something better. And then you think up something better.
Speaker 2: Just keep working, don't sit there agonizing and saying I
Speaker 2: haven't got an idea fair enough.
Speaker 1: At what point in your writing process would you let
Speaker 1: someone else read your work for feedback? Oh?
Speaker 2: After the first draft invaluable Kristen, my wife is the
Speaker 2: first one ever to read a draft, and her judgment
Speaker 2: is pretty good. She's got quite subtle about criticism over
Speaker 2: the years. Doesn't tell me come down the stead that
Speaker 2: it's quite tense. I give her the draft, quite excited.
Speaker 2: She goes up to her office and reads, and I
Speaker 2: wait for an hour and a half or so, and
Speaker 2: then she comes out with a look on her face,
Speaker 2: and I can tell from the look on her face
Speaker 2: whether it's good news or bad news. When it's really
Speaker 2: good news, she's got tears in her eyes, believe it
Speaker 2: or not because she thinks it's so good. When she's
Speaker 2: got a very worried look on her face, I know
Speaker 2: there's a lot more rewriting to go now.
Speaker 1: I feel like as an MTC or Melbourne Theater Company subscriber,
Speaker 1: there's always a lot of excitement when there's a David
Speaker 1: Williamson play on the agenda for the year. And how
Speaker 1: do you deal with the pressure of writing, Like you're
Speaker 1: the I'm writing the next David Williamson play.
Speaker 2: Well, I'm not any longer. I've had fifty years in
Speaker 2: the business and and I've just written my memoir, which
Speaker 2: has caused me. I really enjoyed doing it, but it's
Speaker 2: been a long slog and it's just been published and
Speaker 2: it's it's a lot of words, but worth doing. But
Speaker 2: I don't want to see word Processor again for a while.
Speaker 1: So I guess, like back in, back in like the
Speaker 1: peak of where you were writing a play a year,
Speaker 1: do you remember what that pressure was like and how
Speaker 1: you dealt with it.
Speaker 2: It was. It was pressure, there was no doubt about
Speaker 2: it. It was pressure. I'd say, right, I've really got to
Speaker 2: get a great idea for this year. Now let's sit down,
Speaker 2: let's scan the environment. I want something powerful, I want
Speaker 2: something funny, I want something whatever. I want something that's
Speaker 2: going to affect the audiences. So the tension then was
Speaker 2: finding the subject, and there was a lot of false
Speaker 2: starts there before I actually got to decide on the subject.
Speaker 2: But the writing process usually was exciting, tense, but exciting.
Speaker 2: That's when you get into a sort of a transcendent
Speaker 2: state and you really got to get that first draft down, which,
Speaker 2: as I said, is evolving organically and developing as you're
Speaker 2: doing it, which adds to the excitement. So that was
Speaker 2: the not the fun part, but the really in the
Speaker 2: time flow part where you just didn't notice time was passing.
Speaker 1: And I want to know, like on the first preview night,
Speaker 1: when you're actually there and there's a packed house watching
Speaker 1: your words being spoken for the first time in this
Speaker 1: big theater in environment, what sorts of things are you
Speaker 1: looking for when you're looking at the audience to kind
Speaker 1: of see what do I need to change?
Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, I'm looking for involvement. I'm hoping the audience
Speaker 2: is absorbed in the story. I hope it's relating to
Speaker 2: their lives, because the thing I used to love was
Speaker 2: writing plays that impinged on the sorts of lives or
Speaker 2: reflected the sorts of lives that those people were having.
Speaker 2: Now I've often been criticized because my plays are about
Speaker 2: the Anglo Celtic middle class, and there are only one
Speaker 2: segment of our society. But it's a segment I know,
Speaker 2: and there's a lot of us, and we should and
Speaker 2: we should be allowed to have our own stories. And
Speaker 2: the proliferation of writing from other groups in society has
Speaker 2: been very welcome. But that's what I know, and that's
Speaker 2: what I do. And when I heard that, audience, usually
Speaker 2: fairly middle class and Anglic Celtic reacting to it and saying, wow, this,
Speaker 2: I know someone like that. I really know someone like that,
Speaker 2: and I've seen that happen. You can see them when
Speaker 2: you can sense them saying that. That's when it's deeply satisfying.
Speaker 1: And would you talk to audience members during interval or
Speaker 1: at the end.
Speaker 2: No, I'd be terrified. I'd leave kristin. She'd do a
Speaker 2: survey from the women's lou and she'd hear the buzz
Speaker 2: in there and come back. I'm terribly self conscious. On
Speaker 2: when I'm in an audience. I'm often accused of laughing
Speaker 2: at my own work. They look at me like, oh,
Speaker 2: he's laughing at his own work. Well, I'm usually laughing
Speaker 2: at the creativity that clever actors have brought to my lines,
Speaker 2: rather than celebrating my lines. But it's hard to tell
Speaker 2: them that. No, I'm terribly self conscious. There was a
Speaker 2: time when I couldn't go to opening nights. I'd have
Speaker 2: to send Kristen off and get a report back. It's
Speaker 2: very tense, very tense now.
Speaker 1: I imagine when reviews start coming out, that is an
Speaker 1: interesting time. I'd love to know. How do you deal
Speaker 1: with bad reviews, negative reviews?
Speaker 2: Well, earlier in my career I didn't deal very well
Speaker 2: at all. The first law of criticism I learned, much
Speaker 2: to my chagrin, was that the strength of the audience
Speaker 2: reaction bears no relation to the critics evaluation of the play.
Speaker 2: In fact, sometimes it works in reverse. I remember one
Speaker 2: critic writing, I sat with a black cloud above me
Speaker 2: as people fell about around me, laughing, as if this
Speaker 2: is a terrible crime that I'd written something that people
Speaker 2: were enjoying. But a lot of theater critics think that
Speaker 2: theater is an arena of suffering that you've got to
Speaker 2: be if you're Anglo Celtic middle class, you've got to
Speaker 2: be whipped and told your horrible species that are doing
Speaker 2: terrible things to the planet and other people, and you've
Speaker 2: got to be told how bad you are. You're not
Speaker 2: allowed to laugh and enjoy the theater. It's a place
Speaker 2: of torture, according to some critics. But no, so I didn't.
Speaker 2: I particularly reacted badly when I knew I'd written a
Speaker 2: hit and got no recognition for it whatsoever. In fact,
Speaker 2: got slammed for it, being told I was commercial. And
Speaker 2: I knew that my players were players of substance. Sure,
Speaker 2: they are entertaining. Unless you make a play entertaining on
Speaker 2: the surface, you won't get an audience, there's no sense
Speaker 2: doing it. But at other levels they were making fairly
Speaker 2: often fairly acute observations about the patterns of our social
Speaker 2: behavior that were often quite intricate. And I knew my
Speaker 2: work wasn't meretricious. It was actually something of substance, and
Speaker 2: so to be because people are enjoying it. To be
Speaker 2: told it was worthless was a hard pill to swallow.
Speaker 2: But then again, the human psyche is somehow structured to
Speaker 2: concentrate ferociously on all the negative and set aside the positive.
Speaker 2: And there are a lot of positive things being said
Speaker 2: about me. But the human ego, being as it is,
Speaker 2: you tend to think, well, of course that's right, Yes,
Speaker 2: of course I'm brilliant. Yeah, but what's this bastard calling me? Yeah,
Speaker 2: so you obsess about the bad stuff and forget the
Speaker 2: good stuff. And it reminded me of Dostoevsky, that one
Speaker 2: of the greatest novelists ever, who had his life blighted
Speaker 2: by one persistent, awful critic in the Ukraine that kept
Speaker 2: giving him a rough time and it eventually ruined his life.
Speaker 2: So I was a bit like that, but I got better.
Speaker 2: But at the start, when I became prominent, it was
Speaker 2: a psychic shock because until that stage I was a
Speaker 2: lecturer in a tertiary institution. As students like me, their
Speaker 2: staff like me, my friends seemed to like me. I
Speaker 2: was affable, nobody hated me, And then suddenly you become
Speaker 2: prominent and you realize the arts is the most ferociously
Speaker 2: competitive field on the face of the earth. Everyone wants
Speaker 2: to be a writer or an artist or something like that.
Speaker 2: So if you succeed, the ones that haven't succeeded have
Speaker 2: really got it in for you.
Speaker 1: And now, of course you've got your memoir Home Truths out, David.
Speaker 1: So I'd love to know for listeners that are keen
Speaker 1: to consume that and just the stuff that you've put
Speaker 1: out into the world, what's the best way for people
Speaker 1: to get their hands on a copy and connect with you.
Speaker 2: Oh well, as I say, in all good bookstores, it's
Speaker 2: a HarperCollins publication available online through places like Booktopia or Amazon.
Speaker 2: And I was as honest as I could be. I've
Speaker 2: spent a life dissecting the flaws and imperfections, hopefully with
Speaker 2: some degree of benevolence of other people. So I thought, well,
Speaker 2: if I'm going to I can't stand memoirs at a
Speaker 2: puff pieces for their authors who make themselves the hero
Speaker 2: of their own life. So I've tried to be honest.
Speaker 2: I think it's also very amusing in past because a
Speaker 2: lot of funny things that have happened to me in
Speaker 2: my life. But I've also been honest about my imperfections,
Speaker 2: which have been embarrassingly bad at times in terms of
Speaker 2: my personal life. Amazing.
Speaker 1: Now, David, if you if I would have told my
Speaker 1: twenty one year old self that I would get to
Speaker 1: spend an hour or so talking to you, my mind
Speaker 1: would have been blown back, you know, twenty twenty five
Speaker 1: years ago. And I just want to say it's been
Speaker 1: an absolute treat chatting with you and hearing about your
Speaker 1: process for creating some of my favorite plays that I've
Speaker 1: ever seen. So thank you, so much.
Speaker 2: Thank you, Mantha. It has been an absolute pleasure to
Speaker 2: talk to you, and what lovely questions.
Speaker 1: Hello there, I hope you enjoyed my chat with David Oh.
Speaker 1: It was just such a joy to talk to him,
Speaker 1: one of my lifelong heroes. Now, if you are not
Speaker 1: a subscriber or follower of how I work, you might
Speaker 1: want to hit the subscribe or follow. But now, because
Speaker 1: next week I've got Chris Oliver Taylor, who is the
Speaker 1: head of Freemantle Australia, one of our biggest production houses,
Speaker 1: and we'll be talking about what it takes to picture
Speaker 1: a successful TV idea and how he knows when he's
Speaker 1: onto a winner. How I Work is produced by Inventing
Speaker 1: with production support for Dead Set Studios. The producer for
Speaker 1: this episode was Jenna Koda, and thank you to Martin
Speaker 1: Nimber who does the audio mix for every show and
Speaker 1: makes everything sound better than it would have otherwise. See
Speaker 1: you next time.