When John Doyle’s play Vere (Faith) was announced as part of
Sydney Theatre Company’s 2013 season, I leapt at the chance to become
acquainted with director Sarah
Goodes’ work. I had heard positive reviews from her previous productions at
STC – Anthony Neilson’s Edward Gant's Amazing
Feats of Loneliness in 2011,
and Hilary
Bell’s The Splinter in 2012 – so although
I had been unable to see both those productions, I knew of her work’s
reputation as being generous-spirited, inquisitive, and compassionate pieces of
theatre.
Since 2013, I’ve had the pleasure to see
four of her productions, with a fifth – Orlando
– about to open. Following the end of Battle
of Waterloo’s run, I sat down with Goodes for a discussion about her
work as an independent theatre-maker and as a Resident Director at STC, the
importance of new work, the role of a director, and the seriousness of playing.
A new play is
always an exciting occasion, a debut play even more so. Kylie Coolwell’s Battle
of Waterloo is a contemporary study of life in the James Cook tower in Waterloo’s housing
commission estate. Begun in 2012 as part of Playwriting Australia’s Redfern
Playwriting Salon, Coolwell’s play depicts the life of a family over the course
of a week, in all its bloodsweatandtears, and shows just how important – how beautiful
– the sense of community is in one of these residential towers.
Produced by Sydney Theatre Company in their Wharf
1 theatre, the space is filled with Renée
Mulder’s ingenious set. Reminiscent of Bob
Crowley’s set for the recent revival of David Hare’s Skylight, it manages to convey an intimate interior and towering
exterior all at once, and seems to be a physical evocation of a line from C.S.
Lewis – “there is an extraordinary charm in other people’s domesticities. Every
lighted house, seen from the road, is magical: every pram or lawn-mower in
someone else’s garden: all smells or stirs of cookery from the windows of alien
kitchens.” While we see Cassie and her family in their little flat, marked out on
a series of low platforms with walls and doors – complete with balcony – around
them, we see the little strip of grass down below, the neighbours on their
balconies smoking or breathing in the night air, little pockets of light in the
dark theatre, and it is beautiful.
