It takes passion and no small amount of lunacy, the playwright said.
Passion enough for the work to know when to compromise on your creative vision, and when to stand firm. And lunacy when standing firm means sending an actor onto the stage, stark naked and raving, with a revving chainsaw in his hands.
"Passion and lunacy," Carl Caulfield said. "I've got both in spades. But I've also been lucky."
It was the morning before the lights were due to come up for the first time on Mr Caulfield's 13th play to be staged at the Civic Playhouse, and he was reminiscing about one of his most infamous productions to appear on the same stage in 2005.
Seems Like Old Times had been panned by the Newcastle Herald's esteemed theatre critic, Ken Longworth, in an excoriating review. But the passing mention toward the end of a show-stealing "chainsaw-wielding scene" had prompted another celebrated Herald scribbler, Jeff Corbett, to investigate first-hand in pursuit of his next column.
The actor, Lawrence Aitchison, had run amok on the stage and brought the audience to a stand-still in the first production to be staged at the Playhouse since its refurbishment that year.
"I'd never had such a visceral response from an audience," Felicity Biggins, who directs her husband's plays, said this week as their 13th production by the theatre company born of their creative partnership marks its 30th year.
"People were screaming and laughing and getting up in their seats. It was magical."
"The local critic hated it."
"With a vengeance!" Mr Caulfield chimed in with a wry smile. "So vengeful that everybody turned up!"
The couple founded Stray Dogs Theatre Company as the vehicle for Mr Caulfield's plays, of which he stages one every two years or so. In three decades, the label has amassed a cult local following of dedicated theatregoers who return loyally for Caulfield's writing, unique in its deep immersion in the Novocastrian culture.
Caulfield is, to the near-exclusion of all others, a Novocastrian voice and the Playhouse has become the stage for his and his band of strays.
"When we formed Stray Dogs, our motto was that we were lean, mean, hungry and looking for somewhere to leave our mark," Ms Biggins said.
The troupe's sparse, no-frills productions, staging amateur actors in stories often reflecting the Newcastle culture have been supported in recent years by the City of Newcastle's Upstage at the Playhouse program, which emerged as an answer to an ailing local and regional theatre scene struggling to front the money needed to stage original works.
Since it was established in 2024, the program has supported up to four Hunter productions annually at the Playhouse, with expressions of interest open until August for more to drive fresh and original regional stories.
For Mr Caulfield, and Stray Dogs, the initiative has provided a small sense of stability in a sector where stability is increasingly rare. It has allowed him, and creatives like him, to pursue new works, take risks, and keep the creative fires burning.
"Live theatre is about being in the moment," Mr Caulfield said as he reflected on the changing landscape for regional arts over the past three decades.
"It is very much about the present tense - the now. It is like Upstage in that it is not happening anywhere else. It's happening now, and here."
Caulfield's most recent script, The Whisper - an original dark comedy touching on themes of grief, family drama and tragedy - follows earlier shows Karma Kafe staged in 2024, Creativity and Lysistrata in 2022, and Medea in 2021.
Caulfield's perhaps best-known show, Being Sellers, debuted in 1998 in Newcastle and went on to stages at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, London and New York, before returning to the Playhouse around 2021.
As they sat scattered about the sparse set on Thursday - Mr Caulfield and Ms Biggins at the on-stage kitchenette bench designed by internationally recognised sculptor Roger McFarlane, and joined by actors Mat McFarlane and Tracey Gordon - Ms Biggins rattles off the eclectic pack of creatives that have realised each of the Stray Dogs' productions dating back to the heyday of the Hunter Valley Theatre Company.
"Newcastle has so many interesting people in it," Ms Biggins said. "And I think they gravitate here because they can find safe spaces in which to create on a fairly low budget."
"I don't know where else it could happen," Mr Caulfield said.
"You discover in this town that there is a cultural ferocity to the place."
Then: "It's a mixture of passion and lunacy. But also i've been lucky with what i've done i've been very lucky in this town to find people. I've been blessed."
