THE SEAGULL
It’s not the most majestic of birds. And yet to date it has inspired at least two theatrical odes: Anton Chekhov’s 1895 naturalist masterpiece of love and laughter, and now Alice Williams’ surreal-yet-real new work that almost featured Steven Seagal, instead of a seagull with a yen to perform on stage. The Sydney College of the Arts graduate and writer gives us the birds-eye-view.
Please tell us a little about your Seagull, and what relation she bears to Chekhov’s Seagull? In this performance I play a seagull that belongs to the family Larus Pacificus – a red footed gull found in the regions of the Pacific Ocean. This is different to Chekhov’s seagull, which may have been a member of the slightly larger, all white family of Siberian gulls, Larus Varagae.
Despite this geographical difference, the seagull I play in this work is the ghost of the seagull Chekhov’s play was named after. In Chekhov’s original the seagull gets shot. So my seagull is already dead when it begins its narration. It has the freedom to talk about its life in and beyond Chekhov’s work.
Seagulls don’t recognise their reflections. In the show, my seagull is talking to its own reflection. It tells it the story of its life in the theatre. The seagull talks about its difficulties developing a character, negotiating industrial relations and how it got into the theatre in the first place.
In this way the seagull can bring a new life to Chekhov’s theme, the relationship between life and art. The Seagull explores this relationship through the nature of a gull.
Why are you exploring human limitations through the journey of one bird? As an online scientist character tells us in the play, the seagull is a natural actor. Seagulls will tap their feet on the ground to imitate rainfall, tricking earthworms into coming to the surface of the ground.
The seagull gives us a way of thinking about acting as an art outside of our human understanding, as a natural process of interaction and transformation. In Chekhov’s play the seagull is shot and stuffed by two writers. Thinking of the seagull as an actor gives us a way out of this idea that art is a violation of nature, rather it is a natural process in which, as humans, we too are involved.
Did you get any inspiration from any other performing birds? Well, when you say birds…my seagull is also inspired by the character Nina in Chekhov’s play – who is a performing bird (as in, an actress). In Chekhov’s play she has a breakdown and confuses the symbol of the seagull with her identity. She becomes an actress in her own right, re-inventing herself through her craft. My version of the seagull is a contribution to the Nina story. It is an absurd parable about craft as a process through which we renew our nature.
There is a tribute to Swan Lake in the work too. I have an absurd soft spot for ballet. And often think of Woody Allen’s hilarious alternative version of Swan Lake in which a woman is divided into half human half swan, but is, unfortunately, divided vertically!
What freedom can be found through creativity? Would that freedom be better than flying? When you put it like that, I’d take flying. I guess that’s why I’ve chosen to dress up like a bird!
How did this project come about? I began working on this project at Sydney Collage of the Arts over a year ago. It has gone through a series of developments. At one stage it was basically about Steven Seagal! I think it’s always a challenge to make work that comes from a sense of what you think is important, and still has its own life for the audience…
Unlike Chekhov’s typical ensemble cast, this is a one-woman show. Do any other characters get a look in? Yes! My bird has multiple personalities that it has to deal with in its search for a character. So there is a fair bit of variety in there. It has been rewarding to develop the single theme of the seagull as a solo. Very challenging, but rewarding. I feel like having this as a focus for my thinking has helped the work develop. My next project however is written for a group of performers, which will be another kind of challenge again.
And finally, what’s it like wearing those big red bird feet? Clammy! (Not that this is a play about shellfish!)
Jun 11-20, Old Fitzroy Theatre, cnr Dowling & Cathedral Sts, Woolloomooloo, $16-28 (beer, laksa, show), 8019 0282, rocksurfers.org
