Amidst a zeitgeist of touch starvation in 2021, Australian author and journalist Trent Dalton set up his sky-blue 1960s Olivetti typewriter on a prominent street corner in Brisbane’s CBD. Over two months, he spoke to people from all walks of life, initiating conversation with one simple question: Can you please tell me a love story? The result was a collection of vignettes published later that year, aptly titled Love Stories.
The idea for a stage adaptation, commissioned by the Brisbane Festival, came about “with an amazing sense of synchronicity” between director Sam Strong, adapter Tim McGarry, Dalton and his wife Fiona Franzmann, after their collaboration on the 2021 theatrical adaptation of Dalton’s bestselling semi-autobiographical novel Boy Swallows Universe. Strong says it was a case of “getting the band back together” from the core creative team, along with the addition of Franzmann as a co-writer of new material; the love story of Dalton and Franzmann.
Premiering in September last year, Love Stories was a “smash-hit”, selling out its entire season. “No one could get in to see it. It speaks to the amazing audience appetite for this story,” Strong says. Having directed approximately 30 shows for Australian theatre, the response “was unlike anything [he] had experienced in a theatre before,” being more akin to that of a rock concert.
Audience connection
Strong attributes this “blockbuster appeal” to two “refreshing” qualities in Dalton’s body of work: 1. “He gives people a license to feel” and 2. “he has this amazing capacity to access the universal through the specific.” Elaborating on the first, Strong says, “[He has] a universe in which it’s OK to be poetic, it’s OK to feel intensely and it’s okay to express that feeling.” On the second point, the collection of love stories are “eclectic and diverse”, depicting various forms of love, spanning romantic love, parental love, loss of love and love for a friend or a pet, allowing audiences to “recognise themselves and their experiences.”
To channel the spirit of Dalton’s original project, the creative team wanted to incorporate its “democratic” aspect to “maximise” audience self-recognition, by granting them “the literal chance to see themselves and their story on stage.” When the production arrives in Adelaide, theatregoers will be invited to submit their own love stories by finishing the sentence ‘Love is…’, the answers to which will form parts of the show on the night they attend, to be customisable to the city and reflect Adelaideans back at themselves.
Love is healing
In keeping with the diversity of the love stories told to Dalton, Strong’s directorial approach of “deliberate eclecticism” relied on multiple forms to bring each of them to life, including a flash mob dance sequence, dramatic monologues and song. “We really tried to match the style of the story in the best way that we could,” he says. “As a result, it’s an experience that is unashamedly joyous, that is unashamedly sentimental and is refreshingly hopeful and optimistic. It deals with loss, with grief, with heartbreak. But the ultimate experience sends you out into the night, more optimistic about love, and even more than that, enabling you to love better. It’s about loving better.”
While creating the production, Strong was going through a divorce. What resonated with him during that challenging period, was a line from the book that says, ‘Love is mending the broken things.’ “I think it just speaks to the capacity of not just love to heal, but I think the production of love stories to heal and restore.” He adds that, “The creation of this work has been a love story in itself, bringing together that pre-existing team, adding new members to that team, that has been its own kind of beautiful romance. And the best part about that is it’s a romance that keeps on going.”
Trent Dalton’s Love Stories, Dunstan Playhouse, until 16 March