www.stateart.com.au
English pitches
By Brendan Cowell
Two of our best young theatre and film practitioners spent
November pitching their ideas to the big players in the UK. Fresh off the
plane, Brendan Cowell recounts some of their experiences.
Anthony Hayes and I met in 1999 at a fundraiser for a play. Tony was 21 and already a startling actor respected in the industry for such AFI Award-nominated performances as Stevie in the Australian film The Boys. He wanted to make a film.
I was, at the time, a 22 year old actor recently graduated from university who was moving around the film and theatre industries with reasonably sound success. I wanted to write a play
That very night Tony and I decided to form the company Roguestar Productions; with the premise of making these two wants immediate realities. And we did. Within a year we staged the fringe theatre hit MEN, my first play, at the Old Fitzroy Theatre, Woolloomooloo, to a sell out season. Tony and I both performed in the piece. MEN went on to Belvoir Street for a one night only return, and is now finding a production in Melbourne and in the West End of London
In that same year Roguestar made Anthony's film New Skin. A 56-minute short feature about a young couple with a needle stick love, written by, directed by, and starring Anthony. The film was financed with the assistance of the NSW Film and Television Office, and the kind support and investment of Mushroom Pictures. New Skin screened at The Chauvel Cinema Paddington, the Valhalla in Glebe, St Kilda Film Festival 2001, and Sydney Film Festival 2002 in which it won the Dendy Award for Best Short Feature. New Skin also played catalyst to Tony's recent success as IF Awards Rising Talent Best New Director 2002.
In this same year I became co-winner of the prestigious Patrick White Playwright's Award with my fourth play Bed and, soon after, my most recent play Rabbit won the 2002 Griffin Award. Rabbit will premiere in April as the opening play of the 2003 Griffin season at the Stables Theatre.
To date, Roguestar Productions has produced and performed three of my plays, Men, Happy New, and ATM - which was named the sleeper hit of The 2002 Sydney Festival - as well as enjoying success with Tony's debut film New Skin.
With all these things happening, and our acting careers coincidentally progressing in isolation, Tony and I discovered that our profiles had lifted somewhat through the basic practice of getting out there and presenting our work.
It was here we heard of the Gloria Dawn/Gloria Payten Foundation Award – an annual award presented to writers, directors, or actors in the form of a travel grant. Applicants are required to express why they need to travel to a certain place, what they need to do there, and how that will be used upon returning to Australia (the premise being that all information, study, experience, will eventually find itself being re-injected into the Australian industry).
The foundation's revenue is taken out of a sum of money left behind by the Glorias, both dead now. One was an acting agent, the other an actress and cabaret singer. Attracted by the thought of enjoying these late dames' philanthropy, we applied. Anthony and I both felt we had enough on paper to stand a chance and decided that we would apply as a duo.
We decided we wanted to go to London, as the theatre scene there is by reputation thriving and our favourite film makers - Mike Leigh, Ken Loach, Sydney Pollack etc - live and work out of there. London is also, for actors, a great stepping-stone without wandering off into the fake plastic playground of Los Angeles.
We collected all sorts of letters of support from all the well-known and respected Australian directors, producers, actors, production companies and theatres that we had ever worked for and compiled an almost Bible-like application including all our scripts and reviews and images from past productions and films. We also set about contacting a plethora of UK and European production houses, theatres, artists, agencies and companies seeking their permission/intent to meet and discuss projects/techniques with us, and handed it in to the foundation.
We were successful, and the sound pot of funding found us not twelve months later in London, with a full schedule of meetings, theatre dates, film lectures, pitching meetings, and go-sees.
Tony and I pitched our television show pilot to several television production houses, pitched our feature film Ten Empty (soon to be made by Mushroom Pictures) to several film companies in air of
co-production, saw film and theatre of all shapes and sizes, and conferred or began relationships with fringe and mainstream theatres. We discussed film making techniques and spent a day with Mike Leigh. Tony and I are very inspired by the work of Mike Leigh and so, in our film work together, we have aimed for a similiar truthfulness in storytelling and approach.
Mike was by no means an easy man to get to, and even upon meeting him it took a while for him to realise that we weren't just guys off the street but the genuine article, from which moment he asked us to come down to the London Film School and watch a screening of his new film All or Nothing, and afterwards take part in a discussion/forum on the film. The day was amazing, and by the end of it we had insight into the way Mike manages to retrieve funding for his films without a script, idea, or cast in place, how he works towards a script in his six month long actor workshops, how he finds and maintains these truths on set and throughout production,and a little of who he is as a man.
As we followed Mike up the staircase to his second floor office on Greek Street, Soho, we passed a door in which a man walked out shuffling his shirt back into his jeans. The sign on the door said 'French Massage'. Mike spun around as the man descended out of view and referring to the sign quietly jested, "That - is the definition of a euphemism".
Tony and I then travelled briefly around Western Europe, seeing theatre and art in Paris, avant garde performance art in Amsterdam, researching the life of Franz Kafka in Prague, and also merely looking at the world.
Now that we have returned, Tony and I are straight to work on a few of our projects, a few solo projects, and negotiation of projects at the good end of the pipeline. The POV film project, for instance, in which eight award-winning directors make the same short screenplay (Tony is one of the directors, I wrote the screenplay) opens on 28 November at Cinema Paris Fox Studios and continues its season across Hoyts Australia. Our feature film Ten Empty will go through its final draft and we will begin meetings with financers, and I go into rehearsals for the STC play The Shape Of Things.
So, in premise, the award we received from the late yet still generous Glorias will have instant karma and purpose. We have learnt much about the way it all works in London and Europe, started some fantastic global relationships with young and exciting companies, and also quite large players. We return to Australia feeling refreshed, inspired, and invigorated, as well as feeling like our approach to work has altered. We feel, in seeing and interacting with what we just have, stronger and broader as artists and as a team.
The art overseas is incredible, dynamic and of course puissant. But Australia has a brilliant and unique industry and, in many ways, is actually leading the way. London is searching for the new wave, still suffering from the financial lull incurred by tragedies in America. And without their help, which corresponds to around 80% of UK film funding, they are left wanton and without project. In Australia, there seems to be a film industry that will never stop moving regardless of budget and shoulders to lean on. Many see that as hindrance above help to the industry, but I disagree. Our stories are crisp and fresh and honest, and the pride we take in our execution is world class.
In spite of budgets, we make gritty parables on life in and around Australia. Theatrewise, London's West End has some absolute gold and some absolute dust. The high end shows will go forever and do their thing, the fringe theatre is hit and miss as most fringe scenes are. The same emotions are being expressed all over it, though, of torment in the individual, of frustration with world leaders, and of truth through self-destruction. London fringe is wondering whether or not there is still a class battle alive in Britain, whereas the works of new companies in the smaller theatres in Sydney, and the consistent level of good theatre from good artists in and around the mainstream, for my mind, keeps us in our own class of inimitable storytellers. For the work is coloured from theatre to theatre, and there seems to be more risk, more art in place. Australian storytelling is a good world to escape and return to.
I thank the late Gloria Dawn and the late Gloria Payten for the opportunity to see, meet, and feel all that was thrown to me in the past two months. May they rest in peace in the knowledge two young artists have been lifted, challenged, and inspired.