Peter Carstairs is a busy man. Lawyer, filmmaker and now theatre director Carstairs is leaving a busy day in the rehearsal room when I manage to catch him for a few minutes on the phone. He says his day has been pretty hectic and he sounds tired but enthused about the theatre-making process.
“It’s more tiring than I expected it would be.” he admits, “When you’re shooting a film it’s pretty exhausting but that’s a year full-time. I kind of thought with theatre the month in the rehearsal room would be a walk in the park but it’s actually quite exhausting.”
Carstairs is directing his theartrical debut The Lonesome West by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh. As with most of McDonagh’s work it is a black, black comedy. The story revolves around two brothers who’ve been fighting forever in a tiny town in Ireland. Peter approached Belvoir with the idea and was granted a slot in the B-Sharp season at Downstairs Belvoir.
He tells me he went into the rehearsal room with a very clear image of what he wanted from his first production.
“I think a lot of what a director does is try to communicate a vision to others and then work fiercely to protect it,” Carstairs says, “The creative crew are regular theatre creators…I’ve gone to them with my simple vision, in very simple terms and they’ve been very good in coming up with their own ideas within that framework.”
Carstairs has been blessed with a phenomenal cast for his theatrical debut including Toby Schmitz and Sybilla Budd. The cast, he says, have been very helpful for his transition to theatre and exploring the script.
“With film you’ve got maybe a week or two of rehearsals before the shoot but it’s largely about refining characters and a bit of blocking, it’s very general rehearsal you don’t get to drill too deeply. Here we’ve drilled really, really deeply and it’s made me want to do it more when shooting a film.
“The actors are very, very protective of the text, and I think that’s a little different to how I approach it in film.” With film, he says, the focus is on how to best create the images and the script is a blue-print for this, “You’re making a film not a script.”
Having first trained as a lawyer, Carstairs spent a year at UTS studying Media Arts Production before being accepted to AFTRS (Australian Film, Television and Radio School).
“I really liked UTS. That was where I first got to edit some scenes,” he says “they had six or seven Avid suites and we’d get in there and edit short films and all that kind of stuff, it was terrific.”
Throughout his creative career his training as a lawyer has given him a solid base. “What you spend most of your time doing as a lawyer is problem solving… I think the training was very good to ground myself in being able to isolate the most important issues and be able to solve them,” he says. “Lawyer’s by their innate nature are analytical people and obviously what directors do a lot of the time is try to analyse and interpret words.”
With a reputation as a beautiful filmmaker it will be exciting to see how this analysis transfers to the stage.
Carstairs bids me a very warm farewell and despite having finished rehearsals for the day I get the sense that his mind is back on the job.
The Lonesome West is playing at Downstairs Belvoir St from August 22-September 13. For tickets and info call the Box Office on 9699 3444
