It was almost three years ago that Sven Swenson’s controversial football drama took to the stage. He’s now bringing ‘The Truth About Kookaburras’ back to Brisbane “reshaped and ripped” as the season opener for La Boite Indie 2012.
“It’s essentially a contemporary murder mystery which is set in a football dressing shed, where a bunch of AFL players (the Gold Coast Kookaburras) are holding a bucks night for one of the players. Early on it’s revealed that someone has died in this situation, however, the victim and the killer are not revealed until far later in the piece,” Christos Mourtzakis says, who plays Showbag, one of the AFL players.
In preparation for a return season of the show, Swenson sought advice from triple Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Edward Albee, writer of ‘Who’s Afraid Of Virginia Woolf’ and ‘The Goat’. “He’s added more characters to flesh out the football team. He has really, really tightened up some of the writing. Not by cutting pieces, but just by getting his point across more clearly in certain aspects of the show,” Mourtzakis says.
If you didn’t manage to catch it back in 2009, when you see it this time around, you can expect to be confronted initially. But then taken on a journey that goes from light-hearted, jovial and funny to some of the darker aspects of the male psyche and humanity in general.
Perhaps one of the most confronting parts of the show is the nudity. The show opens with most of the actors stark naked. While most people would be nervous about letting it all hang out in front of a live audience, Mourtzakis says he’s grown comfortable with it. “The nudity at first was a confronting aspect of the show; however, it took no time at all to become completely comfortable with it. And it’s a fundamentally necessary part of the show for the entire emotional journey of it, for the audience and the actors,” he says.
Mourtzakis started acting from an early age and was involved in school productions throughout primary and high school. It wasn’t until the later years of high school that he decided it was something he wanted to pursue as a career, and is taking his first steps into the professional acting scene. “It’s quite an amazing opportunity and experience for me as a young, emerging actor. I was given the opportunity out of somebody dropping out of the show. I was offered an audition, got the part, and it’s been a life- changing experience that’s for sure,” he says.
Swenson has been dubbed ‘The Bard of Brisbane’ and Mourtzakis says working with him has been “absolutely incredible. To date I have not worked with a more brilliant or respected director and writer. His writing is incredible, I have not yet read one of his scripts that hasn’t touched me or moved me on a very deep level, and I’ve read a few now. His directing is excellent — it’s detailed and accurate, and he really knows how to get an emotional response from an actor. It’s been an amazing opportunity to get to work with Sven Swenson,” he says.
After satisfying Brisbane’s demand for a return season, Swenson hopes to take the show to Sydney. “There are tentative rumblings of perhaps another show later in the year to be performed at Metro Arts,” Mourtzakis says.
‘The Truth About Kookaburras’ runs from June 6 to 23 at La Boite, Roundhouse Theatre.
