This was genuinely one of the most enjoyable interviews I've conducted in a long time. Tommy's garnering a significant reputation as one of the most exciting new playwrights around at the moment, and I had the extreme pleasure of chatting to him for a piece I did for Corker Magazine about his new production, Saturn's Return.
Is 40 the new 30? Is 30 the new 20? Is… well, you get the picture. As more women are delaying the continuation of the species, and kids are mooching off their parents way into their late twenties and early thirties, are we becoming a society of freewheeling, guiltless party animals, content to stave off inevitable adult maturity for as long as we can, vainly holding onto some skerrick of youthful abandonment? Or is it a generational shift; a rethinking of the traditional lifespan categories? Should adolescence necessarily finish when we turn 20? Do we have to be married by the time we’ve hit the big 3 – 0, burdened by a massive mortgage with a crippling interest rate, children, a full time job, having to relinquish our teenage fantasies?
Cradling an early morning coffee, playwright Tommy Murphy is asking those same questions, and channeling his inquisitiveness into a new theatre production. He’s entered the final stages of writing his new play,
Saturn’s Return, which will premiere as part of the Sydney Theatre Company’s Wharf 2LOUD program in August.
Saturn’s Return revolves around a couple staring point-blank at the looming shadows of adult responsibility – babies, houses, marriage – and turning 30. It’s a production that flitters in and out of reality, as the play’s two central characters draw out the ghosts of people from their past and travel to different locales and periods of time, trying to decide whether maturity is more fulfilling than adolescent freedom.
“This story is about this couple who set off on a bit of an adventure, or try to open the door to adventure,” begins Murphy from across one of the outdoor tables of King Cross’ Café Hernandez. “They feel that it might be the last time they can do that, [which includes] all sorts of things, particularly sexual adventures in their relationship, but also dragging up people from their past and trying to predict the future as well and in a way that spirals out of control.”
The impetus for their fantastical investigation is motivated by the woman’s fertility anxiety, and the questions she’s asking herself, about whether she should have a baby now, and whether she should have it with her partner. And if you’re wondering why she doesn’t have a name, that’s because she doesn’t have one… yet. “It’s just this thing,” Murphy sighs. “I always sort of stress over it, but it feels like you don’t really know them until you find a name that really sticks, so she changes her name almost daily at the moment.”
The play itself has also been in a constant stage of flux, Murphy admits. He’s been writing the play for close to 18 months, which might seem like an extravagantly long time, but he insists it’s been necessary. “I think it needs to take that long and this one’s been a strange play because I’ve really worked hard to try to make the idea of the play reveal itself to me, and write to find an idea, which felt right for this idea, or these characters in fact,” says Murphy.
“I even wrote like 100 pages of scenes and dialogue just to find the characters at the start, even before I began. It’s been that kind of play, which is sometimes a scary play for a writer because you feel that you’re asking the play to be a little bit more in control than you are in a way, and so that’s hopefully true.”
With Murphy closing in on finishing the final pages of
Saturn’s Return, he says a lot of the writing now is finding out what the play isn’t about. “I’ve been experimenting and opening up doors that sometimes need to be closed again,” he explains, such as writing a draft of the play where the characters were turning 40, rather than 30. “I realised no, there is something very particular about facing 30 and something very particular about it right now, and so it was that end of a prolonged adolescence and responsibility knocking that I wanted to write about. And hopefully also to write in a voice that I have quite a bit of authority on, being, you know, my age,” he adds with a laugh.
Which is exactly where the idea for the play came from. At the tail end of his twenties, Murphy’s sister informed him he was about to enter his Saturn return phase, which means that Saturn would be in the same position in the universe as it was when he was born. In astrology, this phase is usually denoted by a time of contemplation, of accepting responsibility or choosing to offset it for a while longer. So not only would the title Saturn’s Return make no sense if the characters were any older, but, as Murphy says, there’s something momentous about turning 30.
“I was interested in what particularly happens before 30 and also what responsibility my generation might be being asked to examine and embrace,” he says. Particularly in the 21st century, the notion of prolonged adolescence is at the heart of Generation X and Y. It’s not an idea that would have been discussed in the 1980s. “Yeah, you’re right,” agrees Murphy. “I think there is a prolonged adolescence now, which I think in many ways is a very good thing.”
On the surface, a prolonged adolescence may appear to be no more than a bunch of lazy, irresponsible twenty-somethings looking to shirk off adulthood for as long as they can while they continue to do weekly lines of coke, drink to excess, indulge their sexual freedom and then stumble back to their parents’ house when the sun is rising. But, I offer to Murphy, with the average life expectancy increasing, perhaps it’s reasonable to think that so too would the loosely defined phases of our lives, like adolescence. If we’re going to be working ‘til we drop to pay off the debts that weigh us down, why not enjoy life while we’re still young and active?
“It’s a positive idea,” says Murphy. “It’s not saying, ‘Generation wake up and take on responsibility’, even though that idea is there in this play. I think it’s more about enjoying the fact that we have a prolonged adolescence and there is something progressive about that.”
The driving force behind the play’s discussion of prolonged adolescence is the female half of the couple. And like a musician to his instruments, Murphy holds a deep affection for the characters he’s created, and admits writing this particular character has been extremely fun. “That’s kind of why I invented her,” he explains. “She seems to be full of possibilities and she’s courageous in terms of testing things of her life, and testing the possibilities and boundaries of her own life. I think people are drawn to this character because she’s a very reckless person and when she sees she’s going through this big transformation and upheaval in her life, she does a really wide ranging investigation of that change.”
The reckless side of the character is introduced early on in the piece when she proposes that she and her partner partake in a threesome. “She says let’s sort of test those things and asks ‘Why don’t we have more threesomes’ and just ‘Why don’t we’ grows and grows,” Murphy says. Sex in theatre can be a difficult subject to broach, something which he’s definitely aware of. “I can’t avoid it at the moment,” admits Murphy, whose previous work was the extremely popular Holding The Man, based on the memoirs of the Australian writer and actor Timothy Conigrave and his fifteen-year homosexual relationship with his partner John Caleo.
“I saw [
Saturn’s Return] going down that route. I was writing that dialogue and she says something about a threesome and I was like ‘Fuck, again, here we go’, and trying to justify it: sex is the body politic or whatever. But no, it’s just… I dunno, just a horny playwright,” he says with a laugh.
“And fuck yeah I love sex,” he continues with gusto, “and I think people should talk about it more. And I think we shouldn’t be shy of it, we should get together in a room and turn off the lights and giggle about it. That’s one thing theatre can do, and that’s very good for us.”
Perhaps we’re not delaying responsibility then, but just holding onto the joie de vivre of youth for as long as we can. Peter Pan was lucky - he never had to think about growing up. The rest of us, though, aren’t blessed with eternal youth, so what’s wrong with having a little fun while we’re still young?
