Playwright Profile: Nicki Bloom

It’s week three of our playwright profile series and this week we talk to Nicki Bloom who brings us The Sun And The Other Stars. Nicki chats with us about the process of creating her fascinating play which leaps across time and space as well as her experiences working in the U.S. and Australia.

Passenger: Nicki Bloom

Nicki, your play involves a great deal of travelling through time and space – from underwater in 1970 through to Berlin in 2006, to a training day in 2028 – can you tell us a bit about your reasons behind this movement and what it means for the story?

The Sun And The Other Stars is a play in three parts, with a cast of fourteen characters. In conceiving the play I knew I wanted each character to appear once only in each part, and each time at a liminal moment. I began with the characters themselves, and in choosing the moments I wanted to examine, it quickly became apparent that I’d need an ambit of a century or so, and no geographic bounds in order to encapsulate these fourteen unruly lives. The play leaps around between the years 1967 and 2041, some characters age while others become more youthful; sometimes we see the fallout from an event before we see the event itself, and at other times consequences and repercussions are discovered much later. It means that we, as an audience are traversing a wider landscape, and experiencing a rhythm lesser found in the theatre.

In your play, you look at the seeming arbitrariness of our personal connections, what do you think this play says of our postmodern, globalised society?

I’ll leave that one for other people to answer. I’m not certain the play is commenting explicitly on a postmodern, globalised society. What our society is, the play takes for granted, something evidenced by its movement and structure.

Your plays have been performed across Australia and in the USA, what were the differences, if any, between working in these two countries?

In Australia and the USA I have worked with directors I have trusted, and who have in turn trusted me. In that sense the experiences have not been worlds apart. Everyone’s striving towards the same goal.

Adelaide is a great cultural producer, what is it like working in a city that is outside of the traditional cultural hubs of Sydney and Melbourne?

These days (back to that postmodern, globalised society you spoke of) where you live has less of an impact on where you work. Sure, there’s still plenty of state-based parochialism, but I’ve worked as much in Sydney as I have in Adelaide, and have as broad networks in cities around the world as I do in Adelaide. I think that’s the same for most playwrights these days.

And finally, what does the word ‘departures’ mean to you?

Goodbye farm. Goodbye dog. Hello city.