“Imagine you’re a Pez dispenser.”
A circle of doctors, teachers, undertakers and Perth citizens who’ve never trod the boards before are being led in warm-up exercises at the downstairs rehearsal room of Western Australia’s State Theatre Centre in bustling Northbridge.
They’re one week out from their acting debut in the locally-produced centrepiece of this year’s Perth Festival: Black Swan State Theatre Company’s staging of the Pulitzer prize-winning classic Our Town. A bunch of novices having a crack at prestige theatre. No biggie.
In rehearsals, attended by Guardian Australia, the community cast of dozens make like Pez dispensers – standing tall and letting their heads roll back and forth – while battling stomach butterflies.
One of them is Tajinderpal “TJ” Singh. A doctor of 20 years, he has one performance credit to his name: playing a rat in the Pied Piper, in Year 3. In Our Town, he’ll play Dr Gibbs and tonight he’s running lines with Shari Sebbens – one of only three professional actors in the cast, who starred in the Sapphires.
“[Acting’s] harder than the work I do, mate,” he says during a break. “Medicine’s easier. I think I’ll stick to that.”
Thornton Wilder’s Our Town was first staged in 1938, with no props or set dressing. It tells the story of quaint, fictional American community Grover’s Corners between 1901 and 1913. During those years seemingly not much of consequence happens – only for the characters to discover, too late, that much has passed them by indeed. A ghost in the third act asks the fourth-wall-breaking Stage Manager: “Do any human beings ever realise life while they live it?” The Stage Manager replies: “The saints and poets, maybe.”
Now, in Perth, the doctors, teachers and undertakers do too.
“Making these two realities sit side by side – having the people in the here and now tell a story about ‘then’ – meant that we could also make a comment on who we might be as a community, and the rich diversity of a city like Perth,” says director Clare Watson.
Watson hasn’t changed a word of Wilder’s script, yet the casting of non-professional actors as their olden-time equivalents, and especially three First Nations actors as the leads (Sebbens, Ian Michael, Abbie-Lee Lewis), alters the context hugely.
“To have a Noongar man [Michael] play the part of the Stage Manager seems both relevant to who we are but also makes us hear some of that text differently,” Watson says.
“We even hear him say words like ‘treaty’, and suddenly those words have a different meaning to … an American high school production of this play.”
There are about 40 people involved in each production, including a choir, but the cast changes each night – there are more than 90 locals involved all up. For some of the acting amateurs, this is a lifelong dream come true; for others, it’s an opportunity to overcome a long-held fear. And for a few, it’s just a laugh.
The exercises continue: “Now we’re going to blow out like a horse.” The rehearsal space fills with enthusiastic whinnies.
Singh says he was inspired to audition for the sake of wider Sikh representation. “If there’s a Sikh on TV, my kids go berserk: ‘Dad, dad, there’s a Sikh on the NAB commercial!’”
Their excitement about Our Town, however, is notably muted: “All they say is, ‘Dad, don’t embarrass us, our friends are coming.”
Nick Lawrence, a fly-in/fly-out worker formerly of not-for-profit Transfolk WA, plays Sam Craig – and the significance of tackling a cisgender role is not lost on him.
“It’s important just for visibility; for people to see there are trans people in everyday jobs doing everyday things,” he says. “Our Town specifically just shows that I’m an everyday person from an everyday sort of job, doing FIFO work like the next bloke, and yet, I’m not quite like the next bloke at all.”
“I think all of us secretly believe we’re great actors, but whether that’s true or not, we’ll see,” says Jonathan Paxman, a choir conductor and lecturer in mechatronic engineering. He is taking on the role of Our Town’s black sheep, Simon Stimson.
Susie Finch of Purslowe and Chipper Funerals, who plays an undertaker, has more stage experience than most, having studied theatre in high school. (“I actually kissed Heath Ledger in a play,” she says.) She also fronts a cover band by night.
Finch believes the theatricality of burial rites in her day job translates well to the theatre – but with her 10 lines of dialogue, there’s one significant difference. “You don’t talk this much as a funeral director.”
Though rehearsal is indoors, the play will be staged in the Black Swan courtyard. There will still be no props and no set dressing. Watson is taking inspiration from podcasts – which ask listeners to imagine an unseen town – and will equip the audience with headphones to hear the dialogue more intimately.
There’s a practical reason for the headphones too: “Northbridge during festival time is going off.”
With opening night creeping closer, there’s a lot still to get done. “Look, I’m not gonna say I wouldn’t want another week,” Watson says. “But also, I cannot wait.”
• Our Town plays Perth festival from 8 February to 23 February
