Simon Stone does things differently. As a young director he was described as the enfant terrible of Australian theatre. He’s 38 years old now so no longer an “enfant”, while his reputation has spread far beyond Australia and beyond theatre, too, into film and opera. But a few days before interviewing him, I overhear two members of his latest ensemble discussing how disconcerting it is to work with him. They’ve not experienced anything like it, they say. They’re never quite sure when rehearsals will begin, because he spends every morning writing that day’s scenes.
Can this really be any more than an excuse for being a chronic oversleeper, I ask, when we meet after his sixth day of rehearsals for his version of Phaedra at the National Theatre. He laughs and says that this very morning he was up early writing with his five-month-old daughter on his knee. “And she kept just sort of typing, with me having to correct the typos that she was making.” The point, he adds, is not to put actors on the spot, but to enable them to collaborate in the creation of the text from day to day through their improvisations in the rehearsal room.
