Cate Blanchett, Richard Roxburgh, welcome.
Thank you
Why Chekhov, why Uncle Vanya, do you remember the moment where you said to yourself, "Yes, let's do this project."
Well Andrew Upton and I, who run the Sydney Theatre Company uh the company has had a long history of reinterpreting the classics as well as doing new Australian work, and when you come to the company you think, you know, there's some great plays that you'd like to do. And when you think about doing Chekhov you have to have uh actors. It's all actor-based. And so, it really arose out of a conversation with Richard trying to um lure him back on stage, 'cause he's one of the finest uh stage actors in the country. That's true. I'm not your agent, but it's true. And um and Vanya came up amongst a whole lot of other...
Yeah, yeah. There were a few ideas that we were tossing around. But Vanya was was the one that kind of really piqued our interest.
Yeah, Chekhov's kind of, I mean Chekhov is really tricky to do, and and I don't think Australia's had a particularly happy relationship with it over time.
So what's the problem, what's the difficulty?
RR: A lot of the time we've inherited a kind of anglo tradition of doing it, which is, in which, the pauses are terribly laden and it starts to feel like Noel Coward without the jokes. To my mind, Chekhov's really funny. I mean, (he's he's) he's full of humanity but he's also very funny. So, uhm, so it was important that we find a world where that was gonna happen.
Interviewer: Well do you as actors say... I can, perhaps I can bring something new to this?
CB: I think it begins with the adaptation, in the end. And Andrew Upton adapted it and he's a, y'know, he's a fine adaptor of... um, and, as it were, sort of talking about before we started recording, the difference between translation of a foreign work and an adaptation. An adaptation is done for a group of people with a director and to try and bring fresh life but to get as close to the original as possible. And Thomas Asher, who's one of the greatest interpretors of Chekhov, and we're very fortunate that's he's directed the production, he gave a direction to Andrew at the beginning to say that it... that Chekhov was brutal. Funny but brutal. People say "You're fat, You're old, You're ugly" and we often inherit these very florid English interpretations of... y'know, his work. And he wanted it to be like a pebble thrown into a... pond. And he said it creates ripples but the adaptation shouldn't be the ripples. It's... you've got to write the stone being dropped in the pond and the actors interpret the ripples. So it's a very plain, spare, brutal adaptation.
Interviewer: And that means for you as an actor?
RR: It means that you're . . . there's no there's no kind of . . . distance in a way between between the audience and what you're giving them. And so I guess the humanity of the thing is exposed. Um and and it doesn't feel like you're . . . it doesn't feel that you're watching something um of an antiquity or something of a museum piece. It's quite . . . it's an immediate production and I think it is brutal. I mean, what's important is that the fun and vivacity of Chekhov which is really strong and really evident he's rational. These people are fun. They're full of life. But what it means is that the highs are very high and then when it falls away in Acts III and IV, there's a long way to go.
Interviewer: You know you can't help but say, "This is not like the big sort of epic story that we're used to in much of our entertainment world. It's a country estate. They're sitting around moaning a lot of the time right?
CB: But it's very easy to make Chekhov very small. Um and it's epic. It's an epic -
Interviewer: You feel it's epic.
CB: Well it's . . .There are epic moments in people's very small domestic . . .um . . lives. And I think that's the balance. Is opening up the time spent with those people. And having Thomas Asher direct it, he really encourages it to go into those silences, into what he calls the stupid pauses in life where you're . . . you're always wanting to feel moments, and he's willing to empty all of those moments out. So you get these moments where people . . . he loved the moments when as actors we're thinking, "My God, this pause is going on for so long." And we all start feeling incredibly awkward.
RR: Awkward. Yeah. And he loved that. And would kind of bask with that. And say, "See when we were there, we all felt the worst that you've ever felt . . . that was great."
Interviewer: I mean he'd make it, he wanted it to be even longer?
RR: Yeah. He said, you know, play with that stuff. What's been really interesting about Tamás and unlike a lot of directors, most directors–in fact all directors I think that I've worked with–what is at odds with him is that he loves getting rid of your favorite moments. And he will do this assiduously, will come in and say, "that bit where you do this thing that you love so much, and I can tell you love it. Don't do that." And so, you know, it's interesting because we did this production a year ago and now we've had a chance to re-rehearse it. And he didn't see quite a bit of the first production, he had to go back to Hungary. So he was watching us, and he enjoyed it, but he said, "All, you've developed all these things and you love them. Now's the time to get rid of all those things that you love." And reinvest it and reinvent it. Which is very brave.
CB: I know, he's a bugger. As you suggest, it's, Chekhov is tricky. He's a, as we say in Australia, he's a bugger to perform. But it's, I dunno, can I say that on American television?
Interviewer: I think you can say it.
CB: It means, it's something slightly different in our culture. But it's very, very exposing. And I found it very, the process of rehearsing it, it was a bit like doing a clowning workshop. Not that we were trying to be, get up there and be funny, but in the way that you've got to get up there with, and risk being, and doing nothing. And so in the rehearsal of it, it's been a really interesting process because we, he's, he's asking us to pare back and be in a way more mysterious and not cling onto those things that you, your bag of tricks, I guess, you have as actors.
CB: But yet, he's cast us all because of an intrinsic quality that he feels that we have.
Interviewer: Is there an example of something, of something from your bag of tricks that he said, you know what, that thing you love?
CB: There's a moment where Vanya walk in on Astrov and Yelena in an embrace. And we'd all filled that moment. And he, he–
RR: I'd really filled that moment (laughter). I had really given it some.
CB: It's actually Andrew's favorite moment.
RR: Was it?
CB: The way you're able to hover on that sort of terrible precipice.
RR: Yeah, it's not there anymore. (laughter)
CB: It's gone! Well you're behind me so I can't see it. But he - he wanted us to be very mysterious in that moment and to not explain for the audience how the characters were feeling. And he said thats when the audience wants to leap up on stage because they interpret and - and explain the moment, really, and understand the moment through their own prism of experience rather than what they're being- its not described by the actors.
RR: Yeah - so in a way its kind of- its almost like, you know when you read a book you paint the characters yourself, you picture everything yourself, so I guess in my history of watching Chekhov and the interpretation of it in Australia for instance, or even in the UK, a lot of the time when the pauses arrive, those famous Chekhovian pauses that theres so much talk about, they're invested with a solemnity or something thats apropos of something thats just happened. And so they tend to be very grave or they're about a person thinking deeply about what's just occurred. Whereas for Tomas it's like, no, you just gotta stumble into the middle of something and everybody forgot what to talk about. So you're just there.
Interviewer: Which is more like real life.
RR: It's more like life. And it's also, I think then, as the audience you're called upon to interpret yourself. To paint your own thing about what that moment's about. And so you know I love that about it.
Interviewer: I saw you last year in Street Car Named Desire when you were here in Washington. And I'm thinking about that. I'm thinking about Uncle Vanya. And about what you're doing with the company with the classics. How do you..? What's the trick for reinterpreting or representing classics to a comtemporary audience to make them still have life?
CB: I think in the end there has to be an element of Zeitgeist in programming but it can't be too fashionable um and I mean it's wonderful to have Andrew at the helm of the company because he's such a wonderful reinterpreter of it. And I think that we've been very fortunate say with Streetcar and then with Vanya is having two very distinct voices, directorial voices at the helm of both of those productions, Liv Ullman interpreting very I mean obviously much loved Streetcar and now Tomas Asher doing Uncle Vanya. And I think it's through the connection between a foreign work a foreign director and a wonderful Australian cast. And I think Australian actors are very I mean if you can say anything about us really I think we're very open as performers and um I think we lept into that opportunity. And so it hasn't just been a dialogue with the classic work. The work has been reinterpreted through sort of an external eye.
Interviewer: again Streetcar. I've seen that. I mean everybody's seen that so many times. I've seen the movie, I've seen productions of it and then there you are...I mean Uncle Vanya, I mean any of these. There you have to say somehow it's new.
CB: Well you have to leave your preconceptions at the door. There's a lot of baggage that comes with certain roles. In particular and Blanche is no exception, less so I think for me with the Elena. Because it's not as iconic, but I'm sure that that's existed? with Vanya that frankly I think part of the incredible pathos in Vanya is that...in the productions I've seen is the actors have always been too old, to play the role. And there's a poignancy in the fact that Richard and Hugo Weaving the man who plays Astrov are men in their prime and they're...
RR: And they're already forgotten about. Already kind of at the end of their life in a since.
CB: And so you feel the loss. You feel the passing, simply by your age or lack there of.
CB: Thank you, darling. Lack thereof, yeah.
Interviewer: You both have very active film careers. Is there a difference in ... acting between the film and what you're doing now in Uncle Vanya? The filling the screen in the films and the actual life (he says "life", but he should really say "live") person we see in front of us on stage. Is there a difference for you in approach?
CB: It's all really the same thing. It's, I suppose you use different muscles in slightly different ways in... across the media. For me, coming back and doing theatre is ... I mean, theatre's my great love. It's where I started, and it's where I'll finish. And I love it so much and I have such a profound sense of homecoming every time I come back to it. And an ease with it, which I love. What you find working in film is that you can spend a day doing some really menial, terribly dull activity. He scratches his head, and yawns, and gets out of bed. He walks to the shower. He, you know, closes the door. That's three quarters of a day in film land. And of course, you know, I mean that's slightly reductive. All put together it can be fantastic, but, in terms of acting itself, there's nothing for me that is as wonderful and as, frankly, as nourishing as doing film...as doing theatre. Theatre gives back to you, because you get to do the big thing every night. The big thing, and all of it. And that's very good for your skills as well.
Interviewer: I've seen where you've referred to yourself as a theatre geek.
CB: I'm just a geek, generally. Look, we both went to the same drama school and obviously that's what we trained to do and we're a country of 21 million people but still the film industry is potent as it is. It's a cottage industry and so, I certainly didn't have any expectation that I would ever even make a film. Nor really any ambition, and so maybe that's...
Interviewer: Really, not even ambition?
CB: No, no, I mean I ... one of the first things I did when I got out of drama school was I was working opposite Geoffrey Rush in a production of Oleanna which is a play that hit an audience at the ... talk about zeitgeist. I mean, at the perfect timing. And it was one of the most powerful, foyer?? (can't hear word clearly) experiences that I've ever had with an audience.
