Playing a couple facing choices about the end of one of their lives is a challenge for Alan Palmer and Julie Edwards. They tell Rebecca Fox about the play’s Hollywood connections.
Making decisions about the end of your life when you are terminally ill is a fraught, emotional and sometimes controversial subject.
It is not one actors Alan Palmer and Julie Edwards are shrinking from as they tackle the script of And No More Shall We Part, by Australian playwright Tom Holloway.
The play about Pam and Don, a long-married couple still very much in love, struggling to face her illness and the heartbreaking decision she makes, was first performed for the Melbourne Arts Festival in 2009 and won the 2010 Australian Writers' Guild Award for Writing for the Stage and the 2010 Louis Esson Prize for Drama as part of the Victorian Premier's Literary Awards.
It has not been performed in New Zealand before and is performed only with the permission and vetting of the writer.
This is where Wellington-based Palmer's Hollywood connections come in. He went to drama school in London with actor Alfred Molina - of Raiders of the Lost Ark, Boogie Nights, Chocolat, Spider-Man 2 and The Da Vinci Code to name just a few - and has kept in touch ever since.
It was while Palmer was visiting Molina about a year ago that And No More Shall We Part came up.
Molina was very keen on the challenge the play provided and was about to perform the play himself in its US premiere at The Williamstown Theatre Festival in Massachusetts.
''He thought it would be a great play for me to do and sent me the script.''
This coincided with a visit from Edwards, who lives in Dunedin, for a series of verbatim plays.
The pair had known each other since English-born and educated Palmer moved to New Zealand and set up a youth theatre programme in Whangarei.
In the intervening years, the pair had worked together only once, on a production of Educating Rita.
''We were talking about doing something else.''
So out came the script Molina had sent.
''It broke us. We just thought 'we have to do this'.''
Palmer and Edwards are the right ages for the script, and they have the right relationship and the trust required to tackle a script of that weight.
It had taken a while to pull a team together and to make the play a reality. They credit Molina's reputation and goodwill for getting them through the tough process to get special permission to do the play.
University of Otago theatre studies Associate Prof Lisa Warrington came on board as director and they were able to secure theatre space at the Fortune to produce the play.
''She is an amazing director and this play needs her skill and experience to direct it.''
Warrington was attracted to the play by its ''beautiful'' writing, which she found similar to that of Harold Pinter and Samuel Beckett in its ''spareness and beauty''.
It is more about what the characters don't say than what they do, she said.
''This is a great challenge for the actors as they have to remember all these short sentences, feel the rhythm of the piece. It's a fantastic challenge for the actors.''
Palmer admitted that in this particular play they would have to ''dig deep to get to the stuff you need''.
The group are well aware of the discussions around end-of-life choices, such as the debate around euthanasia, which is being discussed by the New Zealand Health Select Committee.
For them the play, which is neither for nor against euthanasia, is valuable because it explores the issues and dilemmas facing an ordinary couple when placed in such difficult circumstances.
''It's not what the play is about. It is about the spirit, the human condition,'' Edwards said.
''It's sensitive but not sentimental. It's quite funny, which you don't expect.''
Palmer said the play raised the debate but also showed it was not a cut and dried situation.
''It's not as simple as we might think.''
As the couple enter an environment that could be illegal, they are having to cope on their own.
''They're just making it up as they go along.''
At the end of the day, the play did not ''pull any punches'', Edwards said.
''It is so delicate but honest. It doesn't indulge.''
She hoped the play would help people become more informed about the issues without being led in any particular direction.
Warrington hastened to add the play was not a ''debate'' play but a ''love story''.
''The couple start out in a position of ignorance; they are just your average ordinary couple. They don't know what it all means but have to find out and we go on a journey with them.
''It is the very ordinariness of the couple in such extraordinary circumstances that is the power of the play.''
Edwards decided to take the play on because, like all actors, she was looking for that great challenge.
''I never come across a script like this.''
But she admitted it was not everyone's cup of tea, as she had some people turn down taking part.
''It rang against their beliefs. You are vulnerable but, as a storyteller, you tell any story that needs to be told and this certainly will relate to a lot of people.''
She hoped it would show people in similar circumstances that they were not alone.
Living and working as an actor in Dunedin meant having to look for and sometimes create work for yourself, she said.
''It can be a real challenge if you stay in Dunedin. You have to up the bar and create your own work.''
So, through her own production company, they had put together what was needed to get the play off the ground.
''I don't do plays any more for purely entertainment. I like to do stuff that affects people, explores people.''
To see
And No More Shall We Part by Tom Holloway, October 28-November 6, Fortune Theatre, Dunedin.
