Let’s hear it for the boys

Brisbane’s La Boite Theatre Company this week kicks off its indie season with Pentimento Productions’ The Truth About Kookaburras.

The controversial – and somewhat epic – football drama, written and directed by Sven Swenson, met with much success at Metro Arts in 2009 and returns after 18 months of rehearsal and redevelopment, which has a story as compelling as the play itself.

Swenson’s work on the script with American theatre icon Edward Albee (Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?) turned out to be a prophetic occurrence.

Not long after having a dream about discussing the script with the prolific playwright, Swenson got an offer to workshop it with him when he came to town.

The dream to work with Albee — so to speak — became a reality that led to a fundamental change in Swenson’s approach to writing.

“We got along very well and I said to him on the last day that I was a different writer by lunchtime on the first day,” Swenson told the Star Observer.

“He was a wonderful mentor to have because it’s a brave piece and it breaks so many rules.”

On the show’s substantial runtime, cast and explicit nudity, Swenson also found an avid supporter in Albee.

“Never permit it to be done without nudity. Don’t allow yourself to be talked into cleaving it into two acts. Don’t ever shorten it, in fact it’s not quite long enough and I think you end it too quickly. Don’t become convinced to amalgamate roles and reduce the cast,” Albee is said to have advised.

He did, however, struggle with some of the Australian colloquialisms when reading the work, which led to one of the more hilarious conversations between the two writers during the two-week workshopping period.

“He said ‘There were entire pages where I had no idea what they were talking about, and tell me, what is soggy Sao?’” Swenson relayed in his best Albee impression.

“I thought to myself, my god, how has my life brought me to the moment where I’m explaining soggy Sao to Edward Albee?”

When asked about a potential irony in working with Albee — a gay man often credited with writing one of the most honest critiques of heterosexual relationships — on a piece primarily concerned with the heterosexual male psyche by another gay writer, Swenson saw the parallels.

“It’d probably annoy Edward [to make that observation] but I see both sides of it,” he said.

“I think there’s a fly-on-the-wall perspective that can be helpful.

“I was fascinated by the culture of football and the brand of masculinity that is celebrated in it and what it culturally means to be iconically masculine.”

Swenson said he’d seen a turn around since his childhood on perceptions of masculinity and, specifically, what it meant to be gay.

“When I was a young gay man, as far as my peers were concerned, being gay was the worst thing you could have been. It was worse than being a murderer,” he said.

“In my lifetime I’ve seen that shift so much, but what I’ve also seen is a shift in society’s view of the masculine male.

“Whereas it was something to be prized in my childhood, it’s become almost unfashionable. I wanted to look at that phenomenon and the lack of male identity that I see.”

As to the work’s extensive display of the male form, Swenson said that the decision to feature the ensemble in the buff went beyond just the authenticity of the male locker room.

“Part of it’s political. Going to the theatre in my early adulthood, almost any time I saw someone disrobe in a play, it was a woman,” he said.

“It’s also an artistic choice. I think theatre should be a visual art form and if your subject matter is masculinity in the 21st century then the most exciting, compelling, confronting image of that must surely be a score of naked men.”

The Truth About Kookaburras is at La Boite’s Roundhouse Theatre, June 6 – 23.

INFO: www.laboite.com.au