In her directorial debut, Jo Bradley (Directing, 2024) tackles Mike Bartlett’s Snowflake, a story that examines the interplay between politics and personal relationships. Through this production, Jo explores how the play’s universal themes resonate with Australian audiences while reflecting on the challenges and joys of independent theatre-making, as well as how her NIDA alumni network supported her to bring her vision to life at the Old Fitz Theatre.
What drew you to direct Snowflake by Mike Bartlett, and what about this story resonated with you?
As a director, I’m very literary-minded. Once I find a writer I like, I like to read all their work. I’ve been a fan of Mike Bartlett since I saw Sydney Theatre Company’s 2015 transfer of King Charles III in high school.
In my directing practice, I love work that feels like it’s observing and commenting on the ‘now’ in some way. The play I did for my NIDA grad show last year, SEEN by Xavier Hazard (Writing for Performance, 2024), was very modern, it was all about technology and social media and how we communicate in 2023.
In Snowflake, Bartlett is looking at our polarised political climate, and the fraught state of political discourse. It’s specifically about the fallout from the 2016 Brexit vote, but more generally it’s about the idea that people in the 21st century don’t like to listen to one another, and don’t like to hear opinions we disagree with. I really like this play because it feels timeless, and you could watch it with other contexts in mind (e.g., the referendum on marriage equality, the referendum for the Indigenous Voice to Parliament or the recent Trump election) and it would still have resonance.
This is your first production since graduating from NIDA. How does it feel to step into this role, and how has your NIDA training prepared you for this challenge?
This is a tricky one, because I would say that for the most part, NIDA prepares you to work as a professional theatre director, and assumes you have the resources and the timeline of a professional artist (e.g., with the June Season, and the Festival of Emerging Artists).
This show has been an independent production totally funded by me and my creative partner Kurtis Laing (Directing, 2024), who studied Directing with me last year. There has been a lot of adapting that occurs when you move from a professional way of working, back into an ‘indie-theatre profit share’ way of working. Everyone on my team is also working paid jobs on the side, so Kurtis and I have to be flexible when scheduling rehearsals and meetings and tech weeks. You can’t demand or expect people to be as available as if they were getting paid a wage.
I would say the part of NIDA that best prepped me for this production was the Triple J Music Video project, which was a fantastic opportunity for us as directors to learn how to make less with more. We had very little budget on that show, and had to be really savvy and economical with what we were given. That project taught us to lean on our networks, finding team members through word-of-mouth, and asking favours from friends to get what we needed. There’s been a lot of that on this show: friends helping us to take marketing photos and run errands, which we will in return pay back by helping them on their next show.
This is the second collaboration with fellow alum Kurtis Laing. How has your creative partnership evolved since graduating, and what does Kurtis bring to this production as a co-producer?
Kurtis and I have had a really interesting year creatively because we’ve taken turns helping produce each other’s directing work. The two shows we’ve done have been very different, and Kurtis and I are very different directors, so the projects had two very different vibes. It started in July when he directed Tick, Tick… BOOM! for the Old Fitz’s late night, and I helped produce that project with Kurtis and Tessa Olsson (Acting, 2023). That show was his baby, and I was there to support him however he needed. Now we’ve swapped, and this is my passion project and he is supporting me.
Kurtis and I formed a really strong friendship when we studied together at NIDA, and I think that base of trust and care has meant that we work together well because we can be really candid with each other about what we each need from a director-producer relationship. I think I can get caught up in my ideal version of a project and a process, and Kurtis is really good at being pragmatic, and grounding me when I get caught up in perfectionism.
What has it been like to work with other NIDA alumni and recent graduates?
As Kurtis and I gathered our team, we were excited to find a mix of people we had worked with before, and people we hadn’t. When I feel like I click with someone, I want to work with them again, and NIDA was a great way to meet so many talented artists and find people I clicked with. I knew Lilian Valverde (Acting, 2024) because she was in my NIDA Grad show, SEEN, so when I read Snowflake, she was the first actress I thought of. Claudia Elbourne is an ACA graduate, but we loved working on the NIDA Directing x ACA Project, so I also wanted to work with her again. I had done shows before with both NIDA student, Thomas Howieson (Technical Theatre and Stage Management) and alum Daniel Herten (Technical Theatre and Stage Management, 2021), and they’re both such talented, hard workers, so it felt natural to do it again.
But, Kurtis and I also enlisted a bunch of new people which is exciting. I’m working with NIDA student Oliver Gregg (Props and Effects), and Soham Apte (Design, 2021) for the first time, as well as some non-NIDA people like James Lugton, Luna Ng, Lily Hensby and Josephine Lee. Soham specifically has done a lot of indie work since finishing NIDA, and I’ve really valued having that experience as we try to create a design we are happy with on a finite budget.
The play was written in response to Brexit but feels universally relevant. How are you localising the story for Australian audiences, particularly in the context of the upcoming federal election?
We haven’t changed the text in any way, so on a contextual level, it’s a British play with British accents set in Oxfordshire in 2019. But I think the subtextual context will be really clear to Australian audiences. I think this play will make them think of people in their life who they might disagree with politically (parents, grandparents, co-workers), and make them recall frustrating conversations they might have had with them in the past (about a range of issues— like elections, feminism, racism, homophobia, etc). The show explores how difficult it is to change someone’s opinion when they believe something really firmly, but it also offers a hopeful image that people can change their minds if they are open to listening.
Snowflake by Mike Bartlett and presented by JB Theatre Co and Good Time Theatrics is showing at the Old Fitz Theatre from 6 – 22 December.
