"We’re Trying To Make It Feel Not Like This Grand Greek Narrative"

Katherine Tonkin and Anne-Louise Sarks have been friends and colleagues for years. Since appearing together for the Hayloft Project’s 3XSisters their paths have continued to cross, Sarks making the shift to directing along the way. Eager to work together again, Tonkin was initially to appear in Sarks’ production of A Christmas Carol last year before the arrival of her first child interrupted the plan. But it is with Sarks that she takes on her first role as a mother, as Elektra in Jada Alberts’ and Sarks’ Elektra/Orestes.

“I think this project feels right for us to be doing together though, and doing now,” Tonkin says of working with Sarks. “And it’s a really wonderful role to be playing. When you go through those first stages of parenting, the whole world cracks open for you like you never thought it could, so you definitely feel like there’s more to draw on in a human sense, and just understanding familial connections, which is so important for this production. The depths of what I thought I could feel have been cracked open as well so I’ve felt like it’s great to be doing the two things at once. And because the subject matter is so intense having a baby to feed in my lunch break has been so grounding; you can’t take that stuff home with you when you have to tend to a small child.”

It will not be the first time a modernised Greek myth has appeared courtesy of Belvoir in recent years – in 2013 Kit Brookman reimagined Electra and Orestes coming together to mourn the loss of their father, Agamemnon, in the Downstairs production Small And Tired, and Simon Stone presented his chilling version of Thyestes as part of their 2012 season.

This new version from Alberts and Sarks puts the microscope on a small moment in the tragic history of the House Of Atreus and sets it all in a contemporary Australian home and vernacular. “The story of this family really spans decades so trying to work out how we can encapsulate all of that stuff that has happened but putting it into a really focused period of time was the challenge. It plays out in real time, Orestes comes home and the next hour in the household, this happens. The more we rehearse it the more it feels like we’re sitting in a deeply disturbed and dysfunctional family, we’re trying to make it feel not like this grand Greek narrative, but like it’s something real. You’re watching people in a very dysfunctional setting doing what they perceive to be the only thing they can do.”

The production has been billed as two plays in a single night, the story of Elektra and of Orestes, and Tonkin says this form is crucial in highlighting the impact and effect of perception. “We play the action twice and you see it from two sides of the wall. All of these events can be seen through so many different lenses, and what one person sees can change their view for the rest of their lives, and we’re hoping to give the audience that experience as well.”