Sydney Theatre Company

I think.

At the Sydney Theatre Company, uh, growing up.

So you know, and Dad would need someone, uh, on a nightly basis if he was recording the next day to go through lines, and that's sort of what I did.

So I-

We'd met in Sydney some years ago through a meeting.

And Colin was working at the Sydney Theatre Company for many years prior to coming back to Dublin and working at the Gate.

And he introduced me to Olwen, who had a show.

called River Run which was running at the Sydney Theatre Company we clicked instantly and got on very well and then she had this play that she had seen many years before and would like wanted to do and it was called The President by Thomas Bernhardt we read the play over three years we read it about four or five times every time we read it we were excited by it and thrilled by it and kind of blown away by it actually.

And we kept thinking, how are we going to do this? So that was the question we kept asking ourselves.

Working with Olwen and working with Colm and working in a co-production with Sydney Theatre Company and Gate was an absolute joy.

It's a really difficult piece, so we worked incredibly hard.

I really have enormous admiration for Alwyn.

He's also the recipient of seven Green Room Awards and six Heltman Awards.

He's currently in Sydney directing The Unfriend for the Sydney Theatre Company, the debut play from popular television writer Stephen Moffat, and I'm delighted that he snuck out of rehearsals to be in conversation with me now.

Simon Phillips, thank you so much for taking the time.

Thank you, Simon.

You can't really do it by yourself.

You know, I was talking about we had RBG here, the Ruth Bader Ginsburg Sydney Theatre Company production.

Massive success.

It's a one-woman show.

And I think really set me up to understand the people side of things that...

Next role from

there? So then I was hired at Sydney Theatre Company as the company manager there.

Very famous company.

Now, Andrew, of course, the man whose name you would know very, very well.

the co-artistic director of the Sydney Theatre Company.

He's been a writer for many, many years, but a writer in theatre and as a producer in theatre as well.

And, of course, married to Cate Blanchett, the Academy Award-winning actress.

And we've seen that in Australia as well, haven't we? Had the pianist, uh, Jason Gilliam, who lost a court case against the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra for canceling his concert because of, uh, comments he said, uh, on stage in 2024 about Gaza, being critical of Israel.

Uh, we saw also the Sydney Theatre Company, remember, forced to make an apology after three of its actors came on stage after, for the curtain call wearing, uh, Palestinian scarves.

And so we do have this problem where it is an incredibly divisive and sensitive issue, and I think for artists to go on stage and pretend that it's not, that they're just being really compassionate and kind by doing that, is far too simplistic, and I think we need to be far more sophisticated in the way that we, uh, that artists behave and also understanding that people react very differently to such a divisive topic.

Both P!nk and Robert Kraft, the owner of Gillette Stadium, accuse Macklemore of actually being an antisemite, saying that his anti-Zionist kind of rhetoric is just kind of code for actually being a racist, actually wanting to incite hatred against Jews.

P!nk says that's an, you know, antisemitic trope, dressing up as a kind of in Jewface, and that's why she thinks he's an antisemite.

There's an interesting question, though, Cam, about, you know, what is okay to expect when you go to a gig.

If you showed up to Jason Gilliam's piano concert or you went to the Sydney Theatre Company, or you go to an Ed Sheeran concert, yes, you could argue that, you know, this is a space where I shouldn't be lectured to and it shouldn't be about politics.

The other way to think about it, though, i- I suppose, is that art is supposed to provoke us, that artists, you know, part of what they do is challenge our ideas and, and make us think maybe a little bit differently.