Modelling Yourself On Patti Smith

Following a remount of The Glass Menagerie in Melbourne, and the one-man show Lake Disappointment, co-written with Lachlan Philpott, Luke Mullins returns to the Belvoir stage in Lally Katz' new play, Back At The Dojo. "It's really important to me in terms of my artistic practice to continue to do all those sorts of things," says Mullins, "to sometimes just be an actor in a play, to sometimes be the initiator of a project, sometimes devising it or writing it as well, and they all enrich and inform the other. At the heart of all that a single guiding principle that applies to all those different practices and all those different contexts - it's about collaboration and being involved in the heart of a project not just in your little bit of it, which is really important to me. To be really understanding and included in the entire vision and the instigating reason behind the production really helps me as a performer, whether I'm just an actor or devising it or kind of making it."

"I've long, long, long been a huge admirer of Patti Smith. I absolutely just adore her and think she's a genius."

Stuck Pigs Squealing, the theatre company formed in 2001 by Mullins, Katz and more, co-produce Back At The Dojo. The play focuses on Danny, based on Katz' father, who does karate in 1960s New Jersey, and on his grandson in the present day, played by Mullins, who models himself on Patti Smith. "I love the Patti character that Lally's written for me. I think it's a brilliant character going through a really interesting and complex reevaluation of their identity. An interest of mine is identity in general, and what makes us who we are, and the difference between the outside of ourselves and the inside of ourselves, and when those things line up and don't line up, and the gap in reality that occurs.

"I've long, long, long been a huge admirer of Patti Smith. I absolutely just adore her and think she's a genius, so the fact that the character's basing themselves or inspiring themselves on that person as their idol really appealed to me, and it's very real and very funny. Very funny and very human at the same time, it's this thing that Lally does where things are simultaneously kind of heartbreaking and funny... Her work simultaneously can encapsulate that in one moment, which very much appeals to me."

And, having worked with Katz before, and having met her parents, Mullins says it's not awkward at all to be playing their fictional grandson. "All of Lally's work is very personal, and to some degree, autobiographical, no matter how distorted, and I've worked on a number of those productions with her, and I've played characters called Lally Katz in plays before with her, so I guess there's a whole oeuvre or body of work there that makes sense to me in terms of that. And what she makes is not bio-documentary stuff - she takes stories and essences of people and weaves them into a whole other thing. The centre relationship in the play is between a grandfather and a grandchild... and then the back story of what happened to that man in his life is played out around them. Knowing Lally and having worked with her it's sort of a perfectly normal thing for her to do - to cannibalise her own mythology really."