The actor is teaming up with old friend Thomas Ostermeier for a bold new take on Chekhov. The pair discuss censorship, risk-taking, the far right, and ask: are celeb-led plays ruining the West End?
was cast in The Seagull, she was in Sydney and in her 20s, a young stage actor playing the part of another young stage actor who was desperate for fame and dizzyingly in love. It was 1997, at Belvoir St theatre, and Blanchett was very much in love herself, having recently got together with the writer-director Andrew Upton, who she would marry later that year. Though the part of Nina
Its two central female characters stand at diametric opposites, in love and in the world of the stage. There is an evident synergy between life and art, from Nina to Arkadina, given the trajectory of Blanchett’s career since 1997.
Is it easier to prepare for the part of an actor though, as an actor herself? “I guess so but there’s the cliche of what an actor is. I’m not an actor who makes decisions about what I’m going to do before I get on the floor … The temptation is that you can hide behind the mask of what an actress is meant to be and not confront yourself with who you are as an actor.”
Blanchett is thoughtful about the broader picture: “As long as theatre does not become homogenous. It’s about how that person is used and whether their celebrity is harnessed to the cart of the production in a positive way, because sometimes that can really work. But it’s the follow-spot theatre that you’re talking about, where the lead actress or actor is slightly more brightly lit than others … You used the word ‘cynical’. I think you can smell that.
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