DIARY OF AN ASSISTANT DIRECTOR
This week I commence my first role as part of the Sandra Bates Directors Award 2017. I’ll be assistant directing Susanna Dowling on BUYER AND CELLAR, a delightful contemporary comedy by Jonathan Tolins. Without giving too much away, BUYER AND CELLAR is the fictional story of a young man working as a shopkeeper in Barbra Streisand’s basement mall - the basement mall is non-fictional!! So, in preparation for day 1 of rehearsals, I’ve been expanding my knowledge and appreciation of Barbra Streisand. It didn’t take long for me to fall in love with her and understand why she is one of the biggest stars in the world. One viewing of FUNNY GIRL and I’m hooked on Babs. She’s an extraordinary singer (we knew that already, right?) As an actor, she’s “warm, spontaneous, hilarious” (Tolins said it perfectly). As a celebrity, she’s a strong, resilient and charismatic woman. But even more fascinating is what Jonathan Tolin’s play is revealing to me – Barbra Streisand is a very complex, vulnerable and considerably quirky character too!
It seems apt to me that I was getting to know Barbra – the famous gay icon- on the same weekend that I rallied for marriage equality with so many of my friends. In the play, Barbra says to Alex (our play’s narrator), who is gay, “God, there are so many of you. I know it’s supposed to be 10 percent of the population, but not in my life. Feels more like 70.” (just a taste of Tolins’ very funny dialogue). Marching on Saturday from Town Hall to Circular Quay, it tickled my fancy to think that I was walking in a group of hundreds of thousands who all love Barbra too. A cliché yes, but as Alex says in the play “I appreciated this stuff as part of my gay birthright, my heritage” Barbra herself has been a long-time advocate for gay rights. Here’s a love letter she wrote at the beginning of this year for Pride month in the U.S:
“The first time I ever sang for a paying audience was at a gay club, The Lion, in Greenwich Village. I was 18 years old and had never been in a nightclub before. The gay community supported me from the start, and I will always be grateful.”
Decades later, I remember sitting in a theater and watching Larry Kramer’s play, THE NORMAL HEART, with tears running down my cheeks. It was 1985 and Ronald Reagan was president and it was heartbreaking to know people were dying while he refused to even say the word AIDS. I wanted more people to see this powerful story about everyone’s right to love, so I tried for 25 years to get it made as a movie. No one would touch it, but thank God times have changed.
“Marriage equality is the law and that deserves a toast... to all of us, because we’re all unique and beautiful in our own way and entitled to love and be loved by whomever we choose”
Tomorrow we start rehearsals. But tonight, I can’t get Barbra singing ‘People’ from FUNNY GIRL out of my head.
