Behind the scenes — meet Emerging Director Fellow, Clara Solly-Slade
We’re introducing you to the special team of people responsible for making theatre at State Theatre Company South Australia. Here, we learn more from our Emerging Director Fellow, Clara Solly-Slade.
Who is Clara Solly-Slade?
Clara is an average cook, a chronic over-thinker, a sister, a terrible speller, an enthusiastic dancer and someone who will definitely pull out the dress-up box if you come over to her house for a casual glass of wine.
What is your earliest memory of wanting to pursue a career in the arts?
I remember in Year 6 I got the role as the sheriff in a school play. My first line was “you’re darn tootin’ Annie Oakley”. With that calibre of dialogue, it was only natural that I started to get pretty obsessed with the theatre. I was also very lucky that my Mum has always been a theatre-goer. My sister and I used to get State Theatre Company South Australia subscription tickets for our Christmas presents.
What was your first experience on stage?
See above for my glorious debut. But notable roles from that point included an Evil Stepmother in the classic Fairy Tales with a Twist and serving girl to Jasmine in Aladdin with Hills Youth Theatre. I was also Orphan number five in our High School production of Oliver. The now-beloved SA actor James Smith was, of course, Oliver; he was the superstar of our high school.
What made you shift from acting to directing?
A lot of things fed into that shift. I am definitely open to being on the other side of the table again when the time comes. I love that as a director you have more autonomy over the projects you want to pursue. You get to find a show or project really asking the questions about the world that are fascinating to you. It is harder to get cast in a show that also happens to align with where you’re at on your own intellectual and creative path. It is also such a joy to get to harness all the creative energy and ideas of the rest of the team and try to weave them all together. Collaboration is really the true joy of making theatre. I think you get to experience this joy in a different way as the director.
You’re the inaugural recipient of the Emerging Director Fellowship, supported by The James and Diana Ramsay Foundation and the Helpmann Academy, and split your time between here and State Opera. How did you get here and what does your role entail?
I applied for the role at the end of 2018. It was a written application which then moved into an interview round.
When I am in the rehearsal room as Assistant Director, I might be running lines with actors in breakout rooms, taking notes for the director during runs, joining in with warm-ups, filming or recording blocking. My role varies significantly project to project depending on the director and the creative team. Opera has a much shorter rehearsal period than State Theatre Company South Australia so often those rehearsal rooms tend to be all hands-on deck and I will be working with the chorus while the Director is with the Principles. Then I have also helped with State Theatre Company South Australia’s Youth Summer School Program as well as Directing the Flinders University Young Playwright’s Awards last year.
What was your impression of State Theatre Company South Australia before you started here, and what have you realised about the Company now you are part of it?
I grew up going to State Theatre Company South Australia shows and have always had the largest amount of respect for the company and all the artists they work with.
Before working with the company I didn’t really understand how big the behind-the-scenes aspects of the organisation are. State makes all their own sets, props and costumes for their shows. I hadn’t really given much thought to the space and creative team involved in undertaking these amazing builds show after show.
State Theatre Company South Australia has a really amazing company culture around inclusion, bullying and creating safe rehearsal rooms, it is something they take really seriously and they support all the artists who come in the door, not just creatively but also emotionally. They are a pretty amazing group of humans, so that has been lovely to discover.
You’ve now had multiple assistant director roles here, working alongside Geordie Brookman, Kate Champion and Imara Savage. What is one key thing you learnt from each of these directors?
Wow! This is a hard question as I learnt so much from all of them! Here is a quick sentence about something I have learnt from each of them:
Geordie: Create a space that feels gentle, supported and safe and your creatives will be free to explore and excel.
Kate: Use movement play to spend time developing the physical language, intimacy and the emotional undercurrents of the piece before you even start to use the words.
Imara: Trust your gut, back yourself, have integrity and don’t be afraid to keep searching for a moment if it doesn’t feel right even if it feels scary to do so.
What are you working on now?
I have just finished doing a development with the playwright Sophia Simmons (her show Limit was in last year’s Stateside season) on a new work called Speculative Friction which is about relationships, technology and looking into Artificial Intelligence.
This week I am about to work as one of the directors on State Theatre Company South Australia and ActNow’s Decameron 2.0 project. I’m so thrilled to not only be back in a rehearsal room, but to work on such an exciting project with so many artists I have never collaborated with. It will be an absolute joy.
What is a live theatre experience that has stayed with you?
I saw a show There’s Blood at the Wedding which was directed by Theodora Skipitares whilst I was working with La Mama Experimental Theatre in New York. She is an amazing puppet builder and director. The show was centred around a giant pop-up book, each page of the book, when opened, contained a story about a case of police violence in America. It was a really profound piece of theatre and a powerful choice of form to explore real cases in a way that felt respectful rather than trying to naturalistically depict them. It is worth doing a google search on her to see some of the amazing puppets she makes.
Why is live theatre so special?
I think my first answer would have to be community. The community of artists it takes to create a show as well as the community that is created amongst the audience when we watch a show.
Then there are those absolute magic moments of sharing a charged collective silence or gasp together. The moments when things go wrong and something even more magical happens. The moments when we feel a little bit more understood and a little bit less lonely. The moments where we take away an idea or a character and we get to just sit with them over the following weeks and keep thinking and learning and developing.
If you have never gone to the theatre alone I encourage you to go, then once the show is over don’t turn your phone back on, don’t talk to anyone, just sit in that world a bit longer and see what thoughts, ideas and feelings come.
Contribute to the future of State Theatre Company South Australia’s artists, theatre-makers and creative minds by making an End of Financial Year donation here: https://my.statetheatrecompany.com.au/donate/i/eofy
