'Cloudstreet!' Director Gale Edwards is a detective on the hunt for true Australian voice.
An internationally-acclaimed theatre director, Gale has a passion for bringing original creations to the stage. “Directing a new work or bringing a new work to life is actually quite a specific skill. Certainly it’s much more thrilling to me. I love the detective work of it; looking into the structure of the piece. I love the Rubik's Cube element of lining all the right elements up.”
She previously experienced tremendous success bringing the life of the flamboyant showman, Peter Allen, to the stage in ‘The Boy From Oz'. Her latest challenge is conveying Tim Winton’s sprawling and epic ‘Cloudstreet!’ narrative for the State Opera of South Australia’s newest production. Gale believes that through the power of music, the intricate plot and complex themes can be conveyed succinctly.
“When you have music, music conveys a lot of things. When you have someone singing an aria, you have someone singing stream of consciousness thought. When you stage a sung piece for a company that is two and a half minutes long, it can actually travel through three months if you want it to. So music is the time shifter you actually need. So this opera will be three hours long; it won’t exceed that length and I don’t think anyone will feel that we have missed the important aspects of the novel.”
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Gale sees the new work as being an important vessel through which audiences can explore and examine our national identity. “As a director and someone who works within the Australian culture, I’m very interested in the development of the Australian voice. I don’t mean the Australian opera voice; I mean who we are as Australians. Whether it’s a play, whether it’s a musical or whether it’s an opera; who are we and how do we sound?
“I think it’s thrilling that the Australian vernacular, working class colloquial language meets the hitherto sophisticated, highfalutin genre of opera. That frisson seems to me to be very exciting. I was so thrilled by opera coming down from its ivory tower and meeting a real Australian flavour.”
In addition to introducing non-traditional language into the operatic world, the music of ‘Cloudstreet!’ will also buck the trends established by modern opera. “I think a lot of people hear about new opera works and they shudder because they think it will be unmelodic. Post-Phillip Glass most people think opera is going to be discordant, monotonal, strange; all those things we connect with modern opera work, especially with the avant-garde. This piece is totally melodic; it soars, it has sweeping orchestral heights, it has delicate arias.”
With melodious harmonies and accessible language, the new work is a perfect opportunity to address challenging themes that touch at the heart of who we are as a nation. “In many ways the book is a metaphor for Australia itself. This is a strange country; we live perched on the coast of this country and behind us is this huge desert. [There is a] strange connection to the land; the oldest people in history owned and still own this land spiritually; and all of that comes into the book and all of it comes into the opera.”
This is an important work that would not have seen the light of day were it not for the risk taken by State Opera supremo Timothy Sexton in commissioning the new work. For proud South Australian Gale Edwards, being born in Adelaide should not be seen as a hindrance to taking on the world.
“I am basically the local girl from Port Adelaide. I went to Flinders University and I’ve directed on Broadway, West End, Royal Shakespeare Company, China and in every state theatre company in the country. I am an example of the sort of potential that Adelaide has.”
'Cloudstreet!' performs Her Majesty's Theatre 12-21 May.
