on cue 2011 Winter Edition
03
WA’s favourite author Tim Winton debuts his first play, Rising Water
World premiering at the State Theatre Centre of WA in June, Black Swan is excited to
present Rising Water, Tim Winton’s first work written for the stage.
Kate Cherry
directs this
production with an
outstanding cast
including WA’s
own Stuart Halusz,
Geoff Kelso and
Claire Lovering
alongside 2010
Helpmann Award
winner Alison Whyte (Satisfaction,
Tangle) and the legendary John
Howard (Packed to the Rafters, All
Saints). Kai Arbuckle and Callum
Fletcher will also join the cast as
the young character ‘Boy’.
On Cue asked Tim a few questions
about his new work, what drives
his writing and how Rising Water
came to be:
OC: How would you characterise
the differences between telling a
story as a play and a novel?
TW: Well, they’re both storytelling,
so they’re not that different. There
is something unique about the
stage, though, and the peculiar
atmosphere a theatre has. Once
the lights go down people do
let their guard down with it;
they allow and even expect a
certain kind of magic that they
don’t always tolerate as readily
on the page in fiction. I think
the audience lets go of a certain
prosaic reality more readily and
this is a great thing for a writer.
What difficulties (or delights)
did you encounter telling this
story through dialogue and
stage action rather than prose
narrative?
For one thing, you’re set free from
describing everything. Of course
you’re describing things for the
director and the cast, but the
real meat of the work is speech
and movement and silence. I’ve
always loved writing dialogue,
so I particularly enjoyed working
largely with folks talking. I guess it
was nice to be liberated from the
pressure of beautifully wrought
prose. But you have to find ways
of exposing your characters’
interiors; you can’t simply fall back
on verbalizing. Thankfully you
have real bodies in real time in
which to do unreal stuff.
Many of your works, specifically
Rising Water, revolve around the
coastal landscape of WA. Is this
a personal reflection of your love
of WA and what it has to offer?
It shouldn’t be much of a surprise,
given that most Australians live
by the coast - and certainly most
Western Australians. It’s simply
where we are.
Do you write for pleasure or write
only for work? If you do both
are you able to keep the lines
between clear or will your leisure
writing sometimes make the
jump into a publishable work?
Generally, I could safely say that
I’m doing it for the money. But
that’s 30 years of writing novels
and publishing in dozens of
different countries. But writing for
the theatre? In this country? I must
be doing it for love.
What made you decide, or how
come you envisaged Rising
Water as a stage play rather than
a novel?
I’m not sure, really. I was fooling
with this setting and these
characters. I’d been thinking
about Jackie who is the central
character of a story called ‘Boner
McPharlin’s Moll’ from a book
called The Turning. At the end
of that story you get the sense
that her life is constrained,
damaged, and she’s living on a
boat in Fremantle trying to escape
her grisly past and her sins of
omission and commission as she
sees them. I began with her and
suddenly she had neighbours, Col
and Baxter, and I just followed my
nose. It came out in dialogue and
I began to enjoy myself and saw it
was becoming a play and thought,
oh well….
Are you excited that Rising Water
will be performed in Albany,
where you spent some of your
early childhood?
Jackie is from a town very much
like Albany. She’s been trying to
escape it all her life and here I am
sending her back! I was a teenager
in Albany and it’s been a place
close to my heart ever since. I
think it’s great that Albany has
such an impressive performing
arts centre; there was nothing like
that there when I was a kid, and
it’s terrific to think young people
can see performances there that
would not have been possible
before.
What do you like most about the
characters you have created in
Rising Water?
I like the verbal serve and volley,
to be honest – the kind of
outrageous things they can say
to each other. But I’m interested
in their self-protection, their
vulnerability. They’re just people
(imaginary, I know, but this is the
sort of character I have to spend
the work day with). They’re all
aspects of me, even Dee.
The themes in Rising Water
include escape versus staying,
escaping to the sea, etc. All of
the characters are living on boats
as a sort of escape from the rest
of society, but they never actually
leave. Can you tell us more about
this motif?
These characters are all hiding.
The boats, the marina – they’re
all camouflage. They’re living
on boats away from their
suburban, landlubber pasts. Their
homes might be vessels built
for questing, but by and large
these folks are resolutely going
nowhere. In some senses people
live on boats to either make a
break with the past or to draw
a line between themselves and
the rest of the terrestrial toilers
ashore. That latter sense of
difference is often self-deluding;
people export their suburban
anxieties and vanities to the water.
Fences make good neighbours, it’s
true, but ropes are not quite the
fences some people either like or
need. In boats people are pressed
together. Living alongside your
neighbours in a marina is a little
more intimate experience than
some folks realize.
Also, in this piece, there is the
uncomfortable realization that
while they’ve fled to the sea, the
sea itself might be coming for
them, either metaphorically in the
sense of their ocean of memory
catching up with them, or literally
in the sense that the seas may be
rising anyway and their hard-won
coastal real estate is likely to be
inundated. We’re all fighting for
ocean views in properties that will
soon be uninsurable.
In a sense the play is, in part,
about being stuck. Seeking refuge
is understandable, but you can get
so fixed in your bolthole that you
can’t move on. Change is scary.
To deal with it you need courage,
and for many of us in middle age,
courage is scarce, even when
money isn’t. Some of us have
used all our courage in order to
get ‘secured’ as if there is literally
a safe mooring that will see you
through for all time. There isn’t.
The setting for Rising Water, a
marina in Fremantle, is literally
close to home for you. Can you
tell us about what Freo and Freo
Harbour mean to you?
I like boats. I’ve spent a lot of time
around fishing people and boating
people. Since I was a kid I’ve liked
hanging about jetties, watching
things. I’m certainly not writing
about anyone I know in this piece,
but I have watched a lot of people
hunkering down out of sight in
marinas and creeks and harbours
all along this coast - people licking
their wounds, escaping the tax
man, the Feds, Immigration, the
Family Court, criminal associates,
the ghosts of sharp practice that
still linger in this state. A marina is
like a small town. I’ve been writing
about small communities and the
peculiar pressure within them
for 30 years and this isn’t very
different.
West Australians like to claim you
as something of a ‘state treasure’.
How does that sit with you?
If I thought about that long
enough it’d sit ON me not WITH
me. That’s just noise.
You are well known as a
spokesperson on environmental
causes. How do you deal with the
public pressure that this involves?
Oh, the best I can. I don’t like
being in public much and this stuff
is often really public. I guess I feel
I have a responsibility as a citizen
– not really as a writer – to do my
bit. That stuff is not about me as
a writer, just me as another citizen
doing what I can for my country.
I have kids and I want them to
have something to leave their kids,
that’s all.
Having had Cloudstreet adapted
from a novel into a play, which is
on the Drama and English upper
school set text list, did you feel
any self-imposed pressure whilst
writing your new play, Rising
Water?
No, I only feel the normal pressure
– that is, to do good work in good
faith. I don’t want to bore anybody
and I certainly don’t want to bore
myself. All that other stuff is for
other folks to argue about and
deal with – I can’t afford to think
about it. Also, I don’t want to allow
myself to assume that anyone will
be interested because this play
has my name on it. I’m new to this;
I’m figuring the gig out as I go.
Rising Water is playing from
25 June to 17 July at the Heath
Ledger Theatre in the State
Theatre Centre of WA. Tickets can
be purchased through Black Swan
on (08) 6212 9300 or through
BOCS Ticketing on (08) 9484 1133
or online.