The setting of Auckland writer-actor-artist-director Carl Bland’s new play I Want To Be Happy is usually hidden from public view. A science lab that tests products on live animals, it’s a place Bland describes as “a prison for the innocent” in a show he says is “sometimes very funny and sometimes very sad”.
The “innocent” one is Binka, a guinea pig humanised by the venerable Jennifer Ludlam in her first thespian outing as a rodent – although, Bland hastens to add, “we are trying to avoid putting her in a big guinea pig costume”.
Guinea pigs are social animals usually kept in groups as family pets, but in this cold place, Binka’s most consistent companion is lovelorn lab assistant Paul, played by Joel Tobeck. Both have strong memories and big emotions.
For instance, says Bland, Binka understands that she is in a cage and that she has been alone for “an awfully long time”.
“She remembers her mother and being a child,” he says. “She is on her own, then suddenly they introduce another guinea pig called MyOne [played by Milo Cawthorne] and they have a little family and she realises what love is. Then there’s a trauma for her and they introduce another guinea pig called Whistler, who is a complete bastard.”
Through the magic of stagecraft, we see Binka in her small cage, occasionally prodded by Paul with a tiny stick. Behind him, an enlarged version of the same cage offers close-ups of Binka – and her reactions when Paul approaches with what is to her a giant instrument of torment.
Although the audience can hear both points of view, Binka and Paul don’t understand each other – but Bland signals he might be able to manoeuvre them towards a position of mutual empathy.
“We all want to be happy. This is finding ways you can be,” he says.
“I’ll tell you where the source of the idea is. My wife Peta Rutter [the actor-director, who died in 2010 from a brain tumour] wrote a short story called I Want To Be Happy about the guinea pig called Binka she had when she was a little girl, and I illustrated it.
“It was like a cartoon strip. It was a very different story but I liked the idea of these little creatures that we don’t take much notice of. All animals are like this, in a way, having huge events and huge lives but we don’t see it.
“The show has lots of themes – miscommunication is one, and people not listening. One of the main ones is the sense of when big things happen, terrible things, and how you get past them and move on.
“I don’t know why I have such an affinity with animals but I find they are such a wonderful way of exploring human nature in the plays because you have that distance. If you make an animal seem to have human emotions, as we are doing with this one, they are much more resonant and it hits home harder.”
Bland is co-directing the play with Ben Crowder, his partner in theatre production business Nightsong, the motto of which is “We are risk-takers!”
Crowder, who used to run famously innovative Theatre Stampede, regularly collaborated with Bland and Rutter, whose company was called Nightsong Productions.
Bland and Crowder appeared on stage together nearly 20 years ago as performers in Head, a groundbreaking explosion of imagination that won the 2005 Chapman Tripp Award for Most Original Production. They formally joined forces in 2017.
The idea of having two directors is not a big deal, says Crowder during a break in rehearsals in an old aircraft hangar in which they have built the full Andrew Foster-designed set. The play’s sense of wonder is augmented by John Gibson’s score, lighting by Sean Lynch and costumes by Elizabeth Whiting.
“When we started, Peta was alive so there were three directors, which was interesting,” Crowder says.
“Peta and I were probably much closer than Carl and I were. She was maybe more of an extrovert, whereas Carl is more of an introvert. We are quite chalk and cheese and Peta brought us together. She was the glue, the initiator.”
Nightsong has worked with actors Tobeck and Ludlam before but never at the same time. Ludlam was in Mr Red Light (2018) and Tobeck in A Stab in the Dark, which was live-streamed from last year’s Covid-affected Auckland Arts Festival. “It’s lovely seeing them together. They have respect for each other and are both willing to explore how to tell this rather unusual story. In terms of different scale, they have to listen all the time as actors whose characters often can’t understand each other. There is still a rhythm and a timing so it is quite complex for them.
“Most actors, I reckon, would rather do every scene standing, facing each other. We are asking them to have that level of connection but spatially they are separated in their own realities.
“We did our first run the other day and like all runs, there were things going wrong but I felt very moved.”
While humour underpins I Want To Be Happy, it taps into deep veins of emotion, including freedom from grief, says Bland, who married his second wife in 2014.
“This play has a happy ending, which is nice. Often my plays have got quite dark ends. When someone has died and the shadow that hangs over your life is so long, you have to realise you have to be grateful for the time you have had … and accept it is part of your life. They are part of you but that doesn’t mean you can’t find joy in your life.
“Sometimes when I write something I don’t know why I have written it. But it is often an unconscious reaction to the world around you and I think this play is partly that. I felt it was the right time to say those sorts of things.”
I Want To Be Happy: Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre, Auckland, August 18-September 2; Circa Theatre, Wellington, September 6-30.
