Despite writing, directing and acting in The Hottest State in Australia in 2007, Ethan Hawke never made it across the ditch to New Zealand.
Along with fellow American actor and friend Josh Hamilton, he's finally made it to the land of the long white cloud, and the pair are hoping to take advantage of a few days off to go exploring and check out the sights.
"We have quite a busy schedule here. But we have Good Friday off and Easter Monday so we're just going to get a car and see how far we can get.
"One of the things I really regret is that I never made it over here when I filmed in Australia. I wanted to come to New Zealand so badly. Now I'm here I want to do everything," said Hawke, who has two children with former wife and Hollywood actress Uma Thurman.
Both Hawke and Hamilton have worked together before, and Hawke told NZPA they both got involved with The Bridge Project through director Sam Mendes.
The Bridge Project is a series of co-productions from the Brooklyn Academy of Music (BAM), The Old Vic, and Neal Street Productions.
"This is his (Mendes) concept. He's taken a group of British and American actors who he wanted to work with, and he's formed a TransAtlantic company to do productions from the greatest minds of the history of the theatre, Chekhov and Shakespeare.
"He's reaching the Atlantic by taking the plays there and then reaching the world. That's the idea. He wanted to build a really unique company, that was the challenge for him," Hawke said.
Mendes is directing the group of British and American actors in a double-bill of classic works for The Bridge Project's inaugural 2009 season, which pairs a new adaptation of Anton Chekhov's The Cherry Orchard by Tom Stoppard with Shakespeare's The Winter's Tale.
These two new productions have been created for six internationally renowned theatres and feature Hawke, Rebecca Hall, Simon Russell Beale, Hamilton, Sinead Cusack and Richard Easton.
Hamilton joked they all hated each other, then reassuringly said everyone was getting on just great.
"Myself and Ethan have worked together before. Everyone's a gem actually," Hamilton said.
Hawke laughed, and added: "Normally every experience has one person who's incredibly irritating. But the more time I spend with these people the more I realise why Sam chose us all, because everyone is a really good company person.
"He's the most incredibly collaborative, actor-friendly director.
"He's pretty smart too. I think the key to his success is that he brings out the best in the people he's working with.
"He's very good at including everybody. If you feel your ideas are valued, you tend to put your best performance forward to bring out the best in yourself. And everyone is doing that. That's what great leadership is all about."
Beale leads the British/American cast, playing Lopakhin in The Cherry Orchard and Leontes in The Winter's Tale.
He is joined by Cusack as Madame Ranevskaya and Paulina, Easton as Firs and Old Shepherd/Time, Hall as Varya and Hermione, Hamilton as Yasha and Polixenes, and Hawke as Trofimov and Autolycus.
Hawke told NZPA that playing two different characters was great, as each character informed the other, as well as providing a good contrast.
"The thing about Chekhov is that it's all in the sub-text. They don't actually say what they mean, whereas in Shakespeare everyone pretty much says exactly what's on their mind.
"If we were doing two Chekhov characters or two Shakespeare characters together, it would be completely different.
"If you do a long run of a play, the repetition can drive you mad, with the sense of deja vu.
"With this, it's always new, and I'm so looking forward to doing The Cherry Orchard this time in Auckland. I've got a few tiny little ideas that I want to try out too.
"And by the time we're done with The Cherry Orchard, we won't have time to get sick of it because then we're starting The Winter's Tale."
Rehearsals for The Cherry Orchard and The Winter's Tale began in Brooklyn in October last year.
The company performed their double-bill of classic works at the Brooklyn Academy of Music from January to March, then at the Singapore Repertory Theatre, before arriving in New Zealand.
Their performances at Auckland's ASB Theatre, Aotea Centre, will start with The Cherry Orchard, which opens tomorrow (April 4) and runs until Sunday. (April 5).
The Winter's Tale opens on April 8, and runs until April 12.
Their next stops will be in Madrid at Teatro EspaClol and in Germany at Ruhrfestspiele Recklinghausen, before arriving for a season of both plays at The Old Vic in London from May until August.
Performing in different cities across the world means the audience is always different too, said Hamilton.
"We noticed that in Singapore, the audience's reaction to getting married without your father's permission was much more loaded than it was in New York.
"You could feel that idea was much more meaningful to an Asian audience than it was to a contemporary New York audience."
The Bridge Project is produced by Kevin Spacey for The Old Vic, Joseph V. Melillo and Karen Brooks Hopkins for the Brooklyn Academy of Music, and Mendes and Caro Newling for Neal Street Productions.
Both Hawke and Hamilton are known for acting both on the stage and screen, which have their obvious differences.
"Ultimately, it comes down to the material itself. At least in theatres, the performance is a live response, and immediate gratification," Hawke said.
"Being at rock concerts and theatres are one of the last things left which make people congregate together.
"With movies, people watch them alone, people watch 15 minutes of it then they watch the other half later on. They don't ever see the movie, but they think they did.
"With a play, it has to work the audience. It's like that magic thing that happens when you're at a great rock show. You can look back and say I saw Dylan in '98 at New York's Madison Square Garden. Only a certain amount of people in New Zealand will be able to say they saw the Cherry Orchard in Auckland in April 2009.
"And that's got to be worth something," Hawke said with a smile.
