The ways of social networking can mean that you get to ‘know’ a lot about someone … or at least what is posted about that someone online … long before you meet them. And that meeting can be face to face or via the old-fashioned telephone call.
So it was that I got to know Paul Osuch before we ‘met’ via a video Skype call a week or so ago. What I knew about Paul was that he was the founder of Jam and Bread Theatre Company, which, for lack of a venue went dark before it had even lit up. You know the old saying about a door closing and a window opening? Well, the Jam and Bread door slam has opened a window into a rather cool idea – the Anywhere Theatre Festival (ATF) planned for Brisbane in May 5-14, 2011.
I also wanted to talk with someone who’s tried and been unsuccessful in acquiring a performance space in Brisbane – what led eventually to Jam and Bread’s early demise. Then there was the ATS and planning for another new festival in town, but I especially wanted to meet Paul to find out more about this online presence – someone who clearly has some big ideas, but whose name wasn’t especially familiar to me in theatre circles. We ended up having a wonderfully rambling conversation for about an hour. At the end of it (and I still haven’t met Paul face to face) I feel I do know him a whole lot better. Those big ideas are taking root, and what he had to say about his experiences in Brisbane made for a fascinating conversation.
Apart from his producing and directing credentials, Paul is a playwright and script-writer. In company with other writer and actor friends including Stephen Vagg and Guy Edmonds, he began creating sketch comedy and then short plays in Brisbane at the Cement Box Theatre. It was at this time (1998-2002) that Vagg wrote what became a trilogy of works (All My Friends Are Leaving Brisbane, Friday Night Drinks and Dirty Caff) with Paul’s own Borderline Defamation Productions. ‘They all had a distinctly local flavour,’ he tells me. ‘For a start, no one had ever written about an infamous night club in Brisbane before this.’ With the introduction to directing, he also came to learn the importance of production and marketing. ‘It was good to see that for the 20-somethings at the time, Brisbane stories were really successful in picking up a particular audience.’ I’m keen to find out more abut how and why that happened. Continue reading “Theatre here there and … anywhere: Paul Osuch (Interview 8)”
