A Canberra adaptation of Randolph Stow's Australian classic 'Tourmaline'

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A Canberra adaptation of Randolph Stow's Australian classic 'Tourmaline'

By Emma Gibson

Emma Gibson is a playwright and poet who writes about place. Now based in Canberra, her work has been staged internationally and her recent work Bloodletting won the 2015 Bread and Roses Theatre Award and was produced in London.

Here she talks about her adaptation of Randolph Stow’s Tourmaline which will make its world premiere at The Street Theatre in Canberra July.

Playwright Emma Gibson, seen here in the dunes of the Sahara desert, writes about place.

Playwright Emma Gibson, seen here in the dunes of the Sahara desert, writes about place.

My story, his story

Prior to reading the Tourmaline, I hadn’t heard of Randolph Stow and began reading up on him. Stow was a prodigious writer, considered one of Australia’s literary greats, alongside Patrick White and Christina Stead. He left Australia in the 1960s and to some extent, I think he faded from the literary consciousness. I found him a fascinating, enigmatic figure as I began to read more about his life and more of his work.

The context in which I first read Tourmaline is part of what inspired me to adapt it. I was returning to Australia after living in England, and Stow had left Australia for England, so there was a parallel there. I spent a month in Spain during the summer heat and each day would carry a three-litre bottle of water to where I was working, which made me think about how precious water is as a resource that can easily be taken for granted. I was idly researching water divining when I found Tourmaline.

I started reading it in a hot, dark room in the late afternoon and was entranced by Stow’s evocative and poetic prose. Recently I looked through my notebooks from that time and found a note to myself: Adapt Tourmaline??

Right from the first reading I thought the story was compelling and had dramatic potential. It wasn’t long before I read the novel again, with a view to adapting it for the stage.

Ultimately, an adaptor’s job is to faithfully interpret and represent a work in a different medium. It requires respect for the original work and creativity in bringing to light the story in ways that might be different than in the original text. Sometimes changes are necessary, for example to condense the story, heighten drama or reduce the number of characters. Having a story, a world and characters to work with provides the illusion that a lot of work has already been done, but the role of adapting goes beyond simply translating to another form. For a living author, an adaptation would usually require their approval, which could involve meetings and further script changes. In this case, the estate of Randolph Stow reviewed and authorised the script.

Randolph Stow's Tourmaline will be adapted for a performance at The Street.

Randolph Stow's Tourmaline will be adapted for a performance at The Street.

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Throughout the process I asked myself if I was being true to the novel and Stow’s intent in my treatment of the material. I analysed key events in the novel, and looked at what changed, where the conflict was, and how the actions of characters moved the story forward. Adaptations cannot include everything, so I had to make choices about what to include and what to leave out. The biggest decision I had to make was whether to use the novel’s narrator in my adaptation. In the novel, we meet a whole town, but that’s quite challenging on stage, so I focused in quite tightly on the central characters and considered the dramatic function of each character. There are some distinct character voices too, so it was important to retain those, using edited dialogue from the novel, as well as writing new dialogue.

The novel is rich with symbolism and imagery, with a lot of themes to draw on. What I found most powerful was the tension between man and landscape. The natural environment provides sustenance but in Tourmaline, it is also seen as a threat. A tide of red sand continues to encroach on the town and the desert yields little for the residents of Tourmaline, the fictional town the story is set in – no gold, no water, no food – so they rely on a truck delivering supplies. The perceived barrenness of the land is echoed in the lack of fertility – no child has been born in Tourmaline for a long time and younger people cannot remember ever seeing rain. But can salvation be found in this desert landscape?

I’m interested in how we are shaped by and shape the environment we live in. In Australia, we can’t consider this without acknowledging the impact of colonialism. First Nations people were displaced from their country and European ideals were transplanted. Early settler narratives often considered the Australian interior as empty, barren, or in need of taming. Alongside this, the value of the land has often been seen only in economic terms – where resources can be extracted, such as gold and water. A pertinent question then is: what is my relationship with the land?

Apocalyptic Tales Out Loud brings Tourmaline and The War of the Worlds to The Street. July 7 and 8, 2018. Bookings at thestreet.org.au

Join artistic director Caroline Stacey in conversation with Emma Gibson at The Street at 3pm on Sunday July 8. Free event.

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