Kings Cross dream realises real Walkers and Talkers

Press, 7 October 1987, Page 21

Kings Cross dream realises real Walkers and Talkers

From

JUDY O’CONNOR

in Sydney

The former star of a New Zealand top rating television series,, “Country GP,” Lamey Tupu — who played the rather prudish Dr Miller — is now waiting on tables at a Kings Cross restaurant in Sydney. The chaste Nurse Duffield, played by Wellingtonian May Lloyd, is with him, working in a mundane job in the textile industry.

That’s by day. At night, the two actors, who were household names in New Zealand before they left the popular TV series two years ago to try their luck in Australia, throw away their daytime roles and launch themselves into demanding parts in the theatre. The expatriate New Zealanders, who fell in love while filming “Country GP” and married secretly in a friend’s garden in Wellington after the show ended, have had a couple of stormy years in Australia. They rose to Impressive heights at times; at others, they plummeted to the depths of despair as their fortunes and bank balances hit zero.

"It was a very sobering experience to realise that just because we had high public profiles in New Zealand, it didn’t mean we could jump the queque here,” says Lamey Tupu. When they arrived in Australia, the couple did a few auditions, then sat around waiting for the phone to ring. It didn’t

They got a few minor parts in a popular Australian TV series called "A Country Practice,” set round a veterinary practice, but most of their time was spent "resting” and worrying about next week’s rent.

Then one day, while they were moving house to another part of

Kings Cross, they accidentally bumped into two other New Zealanders and found, as fate would have it, that they were all living within a few minutes of each other. The other two, Mary Regan from Whakatane and Gary Stalker from Auckland, had also played in “Country GP,” although the four had not known each other well.

Over a cup of coffee, the four expatriates dreamed up the idea of turning the tables and forming their own theatre. company, Walkers and Talkers, so that they could call the shots and put on their own productions. Tupu says the name came to him from an old joke in the theatre: “Just say the lines, darling, and don’t bump into the furniture.”

"Because walking and talking is what acting’s all about, we decided it was a good name and it’s certainly caught on,” said Tupu.

After Walkers and Talkers was up and running, so to speak, the company set about putting on its first production. The group chose a play by Stephen Poliakoff called “Shout across the River” and began the radical process of auditioning their own director. They interviewed four before finding the one that suited them.

“We gave each one a copy of the play to read,” says May.

“Then we questioned them about their interpretation, the way they felt the characters should react to the different situations they found themselves in, their costumes, accents, the lot. Then we compared them to our points to view. It was quite a big change from us, as actors, having to accept everything the director says.”

Funding for the production came from their savings and, to everyone’s surprise, not the least of which was their own, they staged the whole production for an unbelievably low $4OOO using an inexpensive, but popular, inner city studio as their venue. The show was widely applauded by critics, audiences and other theatre professionals, who were keen to join them. Midseason, they were invited to produce a second play at Sydney’s prestigious Wharf Theatre, situated at “Pier One” on Sydney’s harbour foreshore, in the heart of downtown tourist country.

This time, finance was a lot harder as costs for this sort of up-market venue start to look astronomical. Gary Stalker emerged as a man with a hidden talent for financing, as well as acting, and set himself the job of raising the $20,000 needed to stage the play they had selected, “A Mouthful of Birds,” by Caryl Churchill and David Lan. “Several thousand dollars came from a doctor and cinema manager,” says Gary, "and a few actor friends also threw in the odd $20.”

“A Mouthful of Birds” was

evolved by Caryl Churchill and David Lan at London’s Joint Stock Theatre Company after months of workshopping an idea taken from Euripides’ “The Bacchae.”

It tells the story of seven different characters as they slip out of normality, stripped of rules and routines, and into various uncontrollable passions or obsessions.

Tupu, for example, among other parts, plays a highly successful businessman working in the meat export field who falls in love with one of his exports... a Pig.

May plays a variety of roles, including a secretary just out of a mental institution, a prison officer and a spirit who inhabits another woman.

“From the time we thought of the idea until it went on stage six months later, we were unbelievably busy,” says May. “As well as rehearsing, and doing our daytime jobs, we had to visit pig farms, prisons, psychiatrists and trance mediums to get the characters right.” Tupu found falling for a pig challenging: “I don’t thinly the character I play becomes totally physical with his pig, but in the course of doing the research, I met someone who did.”

Do they have plans to return to New Zealand?

“I suppose we’d like to work in both countries, but in New Zealand, once you’ve done a few films and something like “Country GP,” you have such a high profile that you’re almost unemployable,” says May. “So you can try to earn a living in the theatre or train to be a computer operator. Or come to Australia.”

Would she advise successful

actors in New Zealand to spread their wings and try to make it over here? “If you’re prepared to come over here as nobody, work to the point of exhaustion for months

and months trying to make a go of it, and support yourself at the same time, yes. But its damn hard. “However, I do find it incred- 7 ibly satisfying to think that what

was just a pipe dream over a cup of coffee at Kings Cross, resulted in us putting on two productions in this tough city in just 18 months.” What about future plans?

"Well, when this production is over, it’s back to the restaurant and the rag trade until we get the energy and Inspiration for our next move,” says May, "That’s the way it is here.”

Auditions

for director