Month: September 2009

It’s late morning, and I’m interviewing Kathryn Fray via Skype. The artistic director of the Brisbane-based independent theatre company 23rd Productions looks and sounds … well … almost too perky for someone who is in the middle of producing a brand new play.  She’s clearly busy; for a start her Facebook status has been showing ‘Living in the land of Pinter’ for a while now. The Pinter in question is, of course, the one and only, late and great Harold Pinter, British playwright and Nobel Prize winner. The play in question My Night With Harold is a new work, a team-written “massive challenge and wild experiment” she says, “which we were unsure we could pull off.  It was a great idea, but there was nothing really for a producer to hang anything on.”  That initial idea has already gone through a creative development process, and is now in the middle of rehearsals for its first full production.  Whether or not Kathryn and 23rd Productions pull it off will be known at the end of this week when My Night With Harold opens as part of the Under the Radar independent theatre festival within the wider orbit of the Brisbane Festival.  On opening night 19 September 23rd Productions will be very much front and centre on the city’s theatre radar. Continue reading ““Shut up, listen, and just do the work!” Kathryn Fray and 23rd Productions (Interview 1)”