Imploding Fictions' Blog

Playwright and blogger Darren Lerigo recently conducted an interview with Paul Osuch, head of Anywhere Theatre Festival in Brisbane. Since Darren’s blog is now changing the interview will be taken off his site, and Darren has asked us if we can host the interview on Imploding Fictions’ blog instead. We are more than happy to comply!

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First of all Paul, tell me what you do?

I find things that make no sense to me and then set about changing them. I find walls and tear them down. I point out the ridiculousness of life and question it. That’s pretty much stuck with in everything I have done from directing, writing plays, writing sitcoms, sketch comedy, producing and marketing my work and others. This wall tearing approach has worked in all aspects of my life except in my life as a tenant of properties. For some reason I never get my bond returned.

What have you been doing?

Directed a lot of new writing. Written quite a lot. Sketch comedy, comedies, Pirandelloesque fantasties, I’ve even written an episode of “Joey” an “Two and a half men”. The latter two never made it to production. I don’t mind admitting that. Don’t think my heart was in it even though I understood their formats like the back of my hand. I have too much of an inner drive to break the format. It’s a real talent to be able to exploit a format without breaking it. I always laid the mechanics of the format out too clearly for all to see and then broke them. Which isn’t exactly what Chuck Lorre wants in a script.  I’ve also moved. A lot. U.K., Europe, U.S. Australia and at the moment I find myself in Brisbane Australia, a town where I felt I had the best chance to achieve my goals in the arts because there is so much room for improvement. I’m not saying that to get offside people who work in the arts here in Brisbane – don’t get me wrong. What I am saying is that this is a city with the capacity for more theatre, with an audience that wants more and yet there isn’t. To start a project like the Anywhere Theatre Festival here and make it works is nicely ambitious…

What influenced you to be where you are?

There have been pivotal moments. Most recently it was the lack of spaces to rent or buy that I could legally use as a venue theatre. That influenced me incredibly to make this festival work. The thing with influences is that there are the ones you acknowledge in interviews and there are the ones that you realise while looking back at your work thinking, “Ah, I’d forgotten about that.” But at a lower level it was there in such a way that it was a larger driver than all the known influences. Shunt, theatre de complicite, Company B Belvoir, Peter Brook’s Empty Space. Any artist that is grabbing at something slightly thicker than air and then trying to channel it. The people that do work that just is. I also like a good fart gag.

What is your expertise?

Being a thicko. I say that in a typical slightly antintellectual Australian way for fear of being seen to think too much about it all. But being thick is probably the one common element to every success I have had. I’ve sat there and thought, “this doesn’t make sense to me. Why don’t we…?” Even if the end of that particular journey doesn’t work out, at least you’ve explored it and discovered something else along the way.

Tell me about Jam and Bread -

My wife and I wanted to create a space that people could call home. A place for people to create, to be inspired, to dream. Finding a space has been a big issue.

Why the name Jam and Bread?

The name evokes so many different images for different people. All of them we liked.

Tell me about Anywhere Fest -

The Anywhere Festival is a festival of theatre that can be anywhere: backyard, elevator, car, second life, whatever. Anywhere except in a traditional theatre venue

Why is this festival necessary?

We as artists have spent so long trying to fit into the spaces that others make available for us that we sometimes forget the original reason for our work and for our existence. Why do we have to make our creations work inside a theatre space? To be in an environment that allows people to focus on the creation? Because we need to be in a place that people know they can go to see a particular thing? Technology has moved on so that if you have a phone you can buy, receive your tickets and find your way there while doing anything else. This wasn’t possible (or easy) a few years ago. Now it is. We’ve got the tools to liberate theatre from the theatres and this festival allows audiences and producers to get involved knowing that there are a lot of of other people who also know it works. Takes the fear away.

What are your hopes for Anywhere Festival?

Goal for the festival is that this way of doing theatre becomes so commonplace that people don’t need it to be placed within the framework of a festival to do it or go see it. To create a critical mass for this way of doing things. Create a new section in the culture section of the paper. I’d argue it will grow more without that.

How does it feel to start a project like this?

Even at this early stage it is lovely piece of jelly with the sun behind it. I look at it and I can sometimes see so clearly what it will be with the sunlight reflecting and refracting through the jelly and then I move and suddenly I need to figure out what I’m looking at, and then it make sense again.

What do you want to happen next? (And how can people help/be involved?)

I want the first festival to happen and get that snowball to start rolling down the hill. I want people to feel passionate about it and want to spread the word and get involved. Right now, I’m about to start putting the word out there for people who want to be involved in getting this festival to work organisationally and creatively. People that liked to be pushed, that can push me and as a result make something extraordinary. People who can contribute from around the corner and people who can contribute from the other side of the world. Ideas people. If people feel passionate about this project and want to get invovled I will find a way that they can do that.

What is your day like getting this Festival ready to go?

This is the very beginning and so there is lovely process of creating and writing what the festival is about. Giving it a form that others will understand or at least be so perplexed by they will want to be involved just so they can find an answer in the same way an incomplete phrase from a song can run around in your mind until you discover the missing word. The song becomes clear and you understand and then you forget again just so you can rediscover it.

What dreams do you have for twenty years time? Will you continue with the same line of work?

I hope that I look back and see that I have changed the way things are done as a result of my projects. That my kids have been influenced by that and grow up looking for other ways.

What would you like to say about the theatre? What is your relationship to theatre?

Who are you? Facebook? Oh, actually, I do have it on my profile so I’ll stop being mock rude. What can I say about it without appearing trite or repeating what others have said in a less memorable fashion?

What advice can you give people?

Creating and pushing boundaries means you are always verging on being an anosognosic. I think all you can do is be aware of it and pause to reflect. Oh, and don’t spend all your spare time tweeting. I like acting as a dramaturg, for want of a better term, a director, a bouncing board, a motivator. I love talking ideas with people I barely know and helping them turn it into something more. Drop me a line via the myriad of comms methods below if you are looking for someone like that.

How do you juggle family life, creative life and find time to start big new projects?

I want the elements of my life to inform each other. This is why I can’t do the normal day job thing and either last very long or end up saboutaging it at some point as I push the boundaries. I want my kids to be a part of my creative life and many of my new projects are inspired by something they say. Great thing about kids – they haven’t built up all the filters we have and they love asking “silly” and “obvious” questions.

What one improvement would you like to see in the theatre industry?

It changes from moment to moment depending on what I am working on. We can all sit here talking about what improvements need to be made to the theatre industry and that’s great to discuss what could be, but while we’re doing that somebody else is doing things to make it the way they want it. The best thing we (I) can do is to get out there and do the things I feel are necessary to make the theatre what I want and see how many people pick it up. Yes, there needs to be robust debate, dialogue and a vigorous methodology but sometimes we have to embrace Nike’s catchphrase.

When writing a play, how do you consider your audience? What position do they take in your thoughts in relation to the play?

I don’t. If it takes a year to get my head around a character in a play, getting all their motives and thoughts and actions to make sense how can I even imagine that I can understand an audience of 100 different people and write something that is somehow going to appeal to them in some way. Not possible. SO I don’t consider anything other than what works for me. Makes me sound like a self centred wally but I’d do my head in if I started thinking otherwise.

What is theatre to you?

A dramatic moment happening in space and time. Could be orchestrated and it may not. It that’s grey area in between that is increasingly interesting me.

Thanks very much Paul!

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Find out more about Anywhere Festival

Follow Paul on Twitter

- interview by Darren Lerigo