BY STEPHANIE ESLAKE
So you think you’ve experienced sibling rivalry in your family?
It’s unlikely you’ve lived through anything like this. From Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Sam Shephard comes True West, a modern and psychological theatre production drawing on the desert heat of Los Angeles to tell the gripping story of two rival brothers.
Here in Australia, the show is presented at the Brisbane Powerhouse this month by the team behind Matilda Award-nominated Sex With Strangers. True West features Brisbane Lord Mayor’s Young and Emerging Artist winner Thomas Larkin, alongside Julian Curtis under the direction of Marcel Dorney.
Hi Thomas, great to hear you’re returning to work with the Sex with Strangers team in its latest show. Tell us how you got involved in True West.
We are really excited to reunite the team. Late last year, the Brisbane Powerhouse approached both Troy Armstrong (my fellow co-producer from Sex With Strangers) and me to gauge our interest in putting on another production in 2016 with a similar energy to Sex With Strangers. After a number of conversations, we pitched Sam Shepard’s True West. They jumped at the concept and we quickly secured the rights to lock it in.
I have been a fan of Shepard’s work for a very long time and have seen excerpts of this particular play performed, but never had the chance to sink my teeth into it as an actor myself. It has been a long time since Brisbane has had a story like this on stage, or staged any of Shepard’s work. Also, Julian Curtis (my co-star) and I had worked together in a short film playing best mates who come to blows and we really enjoyed the rapport and chemistry we had on screen. This show was the perfect vehicle for us to reunite in role as brothers.
The final nail in the coffin was the fact that we were both in Los Angeles at the same time and were able to head to the Mojave Desert not only for the photo shoot (which specifically occurred in the iconic Joshua Tree National Park area) but also to get a real sense of the landscape where the action of the play takes place.
How does it feel to walk in the shoes of David Wenham and Philip Seymour Hoffman, who have played your role of Lee in past productions?
Exciting, threatening, challenging…all of these superlatives and more! But mostly, the calibre of actors who have previously fulfilled this role tells me that it is a role of potential career significance, one which is almost a ‘rite of passage’ moving into another phase of my professional life.
The show draws on the American desert as a backdrop – how will it encourage us to feel as Australian audiences? Will there be an Australian spin, or will we be transported?
We are setting the action in the Mojave Desert as it is written, but the feeling of isolation, of actually being ‘deserted’ is a very universal one. While the heat, the succulents, the cacti and the coyote howls are all very intrinsic to the Southern Californian desert, the influence of the environment on our human state and the relationship between man and the land is a very familiar Australian battle, and one with which I feel audiences will easily resonate. Beyond this, it is about families, the most common of any theme to every human on earth. There are so many conversations in this play about the experience of the dismantling of the family unit or what it means to be a man, or even an adult, that I feel confident that every audience member will connect to the show in one way or another.
A main theme in the show is sibling rivalry. Do you have any siblings? Have you ever been in life situations where you’ve drawn on the same feelings?
I have two younger brothers, so playing the older brother is a natural fit for me, even though Julian (who plays my brother Austin) is actually older. My brothers and I grew up pretty close to one another, and we were always climbing trees, kicking the footy and resolving any issues physically through a bit of ‘rough and tumble’, which is ultimately what Lee and Austin end up doing. They certainly start with a war of words, but it leads to being a battle of brawn over brains.
As I mentioned earlier, Julian and I recently played best mates in a short film with me being the more dominant, bullying one and him having previously been my ‘disciple’, so we started to get a really good sense of each other and how to push one another’s buttons during that shoot. As this rehearsal process unfolds, we will be spending lots of time together and really working to ensure we develop an authentic connection which channels not just a traditional sibling bond, but the right one for this play – when the brothers have been estranged for some time, lead vastly different lives and come laden with their own grudges and scores to settle.
You’re an emerging artist who won the Brisbane Lord Mayor award (congratulations!). What’s the theatre landscape like for emerging actors in Australia? Have you found it supportive, cut-throat, something else entirely?
Thank you, yes, it was an exciting honour to be a recipient of this fellowship for 2016. This fellowship is for international travel to explore and develop your artistry or a professional project further and it will see me headed to New York and back to LA at the end of the year and into early 2017.
I have been to LA three times in the last 12 months, with two of those times being for almost three months, and while this has taught me much about the entertainment industry in the States, it has also revealed more about the landscape back in Australia. I think the most important things for artists here are to stay hungry, develop the skills you need to create your own work rather than waiting for it to come to you, keep up with the changing nature of the world and inevitably entertainment and the arts, and always have a project planned beyond the one you are currently engaged in to keep that drive going for when setbacks emerge.
The Brisbane landscape is growing, but still quite small in that many artists know one another. It can be incredibly supportive, but competition is unavoidable in a small industry like this. Developing strong networks and finding your team or people who are like-minded, creatively in sync with you and/or challenge you, is crucial and helps to breed environments where opportunities emerge and possibilities can become realities. Being sincere, keeping your word and having integrity are crucial in small hubs where you wish to grow a career.
Any other advice for emerging actors?
A piece of advice I was recently offered by Steve Braun, an acting coach in LA, was that in order to really make it in the industry you need to have a foot firmly planted in your career and the acting world, but you also need to have something strong to which you are connected outside of this world – be it your partner, family, some community or charity work or a hobby. He emphasised the importance of each ‘world’ to make the other worthwhile and to achieve success and fulfilment. And in my experience, it is when both of these aspects are on track or being given attention that I have achieved the most success and the best outcomes.
See True West at the Brisbane Powerhouse from August 17-28. Tickets online.
Image supplied.
