The Memory of Water Behind the Scenes
Roger Hodgman – Director: The Memory of Water
I’ve loved working at Black Swan in the past for Closer (1999), Art (2001) and Copenhagen (2002). A large part of the attraction is working with new actors and designers and for a great company. I’ve known and respected Kate Cherry for quite a while and was delighted when she asked me to be part of her first season. Even better, she suggested a play I’d wanted to direct for several years!
The Memory of Water has been on my list of plays to direct for a while due to the rigorous balance between comedy and seriousness, the beautifully accurate portrayal of a family at a key moment of its life, the great characters and the subversive humour. Its’ a very clever play while at the same time it is also truthful and heartfelt.
The pleasures and possibilities when working in the theatre are extraordinary. Take for example working with Tennessee Williams when I was Artistic Director at the Vancouver Playhouse. It was a joy working with one of the theatre’s true geniuses. We were working on an adaptation of Chekhov’ Seagull, which I had commissioned (with the Vancouver Playhouse) and he sent me the key scenes on hotel notepaper from around the world. Rehearsals were approaching and he hadn’t finished the other scenes, so he came up to Vancouver and I spent every morning with him for a few weeks as he worked on the rest. Watching his processes, hearing him trying out the lines until he was happy with the cadence and discussing the nuances of the text was a wonderful experience. He was a warm and generous collaborator, a keen watcher at rehearsals, an inveterate fiddler with his own text and a hilarious dinner companion.
Another outstanding moment in my career was directing five Sondheim musicals – two of them twice. I directed Wonderful Town and She Loves Me with large budgets for the prestigious Shaw Festival recently. Then there was the twenty-four hour period where I saw three of my productions in three cities – Sweeney Todd at the Brisbane Expo (for one night in front of several thousand Sondheim fans), a dress rehearsal of Michael Gow’s Europe (on tour in Sydney) and the last half of a performance of As You Like it in Melbourne!
