Nicki Bloom is a poet,
playwright and novelist, and recipient of Express Media’s playwriting
mentorship. She is co-artistic director of theatre company nowyesnow.
Her first play,
Tender, was premiered in
Belvoir’s 2007 B Sharp season and will come to the Stables Theatre in a
Griffin production, opening 21 November 2008. She is one of Griffin’s 2007/2008
Resident Playwrights.
My first theatre experience was…
playing the character of ‘The Queen of Hearts’ Croquet Ball’ at the age of six in my primary school’s production of
Alice in Wonderland. I was hit on the bum with a giant cardboard flamingo and had to forward-roll across the stage.
If I was a character in a play I'd be...
something of an amalgamation of all of them I’d expect.
I love theatre because…
it is itself.
I hate theatre when…
it resembles television. What’s the point?
My best moment working in the theatre was…
pulling the production of
Tender together
at downstairs Belvoir last year. We all worked long and hard and didn’t
get paid but the communal effort and spirit was exhilarating.
The worst thing to happen to me in the theatre was…
fainting on stage at the age of eleven. My acting career stopped there really.
I write plays because…
I have ideas that insist on becoming plays.
The most important thing I’ve ever done was…
to strike out on my own at the age of sixteen. It was the making of me.
The best line that never made it into one of my plays is…
lost now. It can’t have been that good if it didn’t make it.
My latest play was inspired by…
the idea of language breaking down.
If I was to start all over again as a playwright, I wouldn’t…
change much.
The role of theatre in 21st century Australia is…
the same as it always has been.
When I hand over a script to a director I’m…
thinking about the nice bottle of wine I’m going to open that night to celebrate.
My last big laugh was about…
my dog, a very funny creature.
My last big whinge was about…
the crippling power of jealousy.
The best production I've ever seen was…
Christoph Marthaler’s
Seemanslieder at the Sydney Festival in 2007. Sublime. His
Maeterlinck at Hau Eins in Berlin this year was outstanding too.
My greatest theatre hero is... Prospero.
Greatest heroine is… Caryl Churchill.
My next big project is…
a six hour epic called
The Sun and the Other Stars about everything in the universe. Very loosely based on
The Divine Comedy.
And very personal: My favourite German word is …
‘Körper’ (which means ‘body’) because
it
sounds alien, yet comforting at the same time. ‘Skorbut’ is a great
word too. Very pirate. It means ‘scurvy’. I love how satisfying the
‘schm-’ words are to say—Schmerz, Schmuck, Schmetterling... And for
sheer German complicated-straightforwardness,
‘sozialversicherungspflichtig’ meaning ‘liable to pay social security’
wins hands down.
Tender
Nicki Bloom
Nicki Bloom’s astonishing first play is a haunting examination of love, loss and grief.
Sarah can’t remember what happened in the gardens. Her memory is
fractured, her husband Michael seems barely present and her
parents-in-law, Yvonne and Patrick, are losing patience. What is it
that she has lost and can she get it back?
As we jump between events before and after that fateful night in the
gardens it becomes clear that the scars that Sarah carries run deep.
‘Tender
offers a moving exploration of the nature of intense love: in the living and in the memory, and in the everyday.’ Mark Hopkins, Sydney Morning Herald
Click here to order your copy.
Currency Press | 978-0-86819-836-1 | PB