Nick Enright's Black Rock

THE PLAYWRIGHT - NICK ENRIGHT

Nick Enright was born in Newcastle in 1950, and grew up in Maitland, N.S.W, where he had what he describes as a "very comfortable middle class" upbringing 1. He was educated at St Ignatious' College, Riverview, and then at the University of Sydney. After graduating from University, he spent a year at the Nimrod Theatre as general assistant.

His teaching experiences include teaching acting to dance students at the New York University School of the Arts between 1976 and 1977, and at the Nimrod Acting School and at the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1978. Between 1983 and 1984 he held the position of Head of Acting at NIDA.

Between 1975 and 1977, he trained as an actor at the New York University of the Arts on an Australia Council grant. It was during this time that Enright took a one seminar playwriting course conducted by Israel Horovitz. "My conscious aim was to learn something about writing to help me as a director and as an actor, but unconsciously...I wanted to try my wings as a writer. 1

In 1978, Enright joined the South Australian Theatre Company taking on the position of associate director. He held this position from 1979 to 1981. During which time, in addition to acting and directing, he wrote a number of Theatre In Education plays, "dealing with the great depression, working class history and the social roles of women." 1

Apart from writing self devised work for the South Australian Theatre Company, Enright also wrote for the mainstage during this time. His early writing was largely translations and adaptations, such as Electra for the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1978, and an Australian version of Oh, What A Lovely War, Mate! in 1979. Over the years, he has translated and adapted Sophocles, Euripides, Carlo Goldoni, Carlo Gozzi, Pierre Beaumarchais and Moliere." This early writing he admits was for him, however, "a comfortable notion of practising writing since nothing hung on the notion of being a playwright." 1 It was not until much later on, when he started writing more original material that he "came to terms with the notion of being a writer." 1

Nick Enright has something of a passion for music. He plays piano and can read music. "I'm very interested in the notion of pure music, of music itself as an art form...in the way in which music is created." 5 Enright is stimulated by the similarity between a musical score and a playscript, arguing that both involve rhythmic expression. "The related thing is that I think of writing for performance as being a form of music, because it is utterance - rhythmic utterance to some degree - in a way that prose fiction isn't and a lot of poetry is. It's conceived for utterance, and so in a loose kind of way there's a score underlying it, and I hear everything musically." 1

Not surprisingly, Enright has written a number of stage musicals. His first musical for the mainstage, Venetian Twins, was written in 1979 in collaboration with composer Terence Clarke. His second collaboration with Clarke, Variations, was written in 1982 and won the N.S.W Premier's award. He collaborated, again, in 1983 with Clarke to write Summer Rain. In 1985, he wrote Strange Harvest in collaboration with Alan John, and in 1992, The Betrothed which was commissioned by the National Foundation for the Australian Musical. More recently, he collaborated with Max Lambert on Miracle City, which appeared in a workshop production at the Wharf Theatre in January this year. Enright's current production is a musical collaboration with David King, The Voyage Of Mary Bryant.

In recent years, the emphasis of his theatrical writing has been less focused upon musical theatre. Nick Enright's plays include:

On The Wallaby. State Theatre Company of South Australia, 1980
First Class Women. New Theatre, Sydney, 1982
Daylight Saving. Ensemble, Sydney, 1989
St James Infirmary. NIDA, 1990; revised version Q Theatre, Sydney, 1992.
[AWGIE nomination 1993]
Mongrels. Ensemble , Sydney, 1991.[Nominated for NSW State Literary award and
AWGIE, 1993, and Sydney Critic's Circle Award
1992]
A Property Of The Clan. Freewheels, Newcastle, 1992. [Gold AWGIE, 1993]
Good Works. Q Theatre, 1994. [Nominated for 1995 Green Room Award for Best New
Australian Play]
The Quartet From Rigoletto. Q Theatre/Ensemble Theatre Company co-production, 1995
Blackrock. Sydney Theatre Company, 1995
Playgrounds (The Way I Was and Where Are We Now?). Sydney Theatre Company, 1996


Enright has written numerous scripts for radio :
The Maitland and Morpeth String Quartet. ABC Radio,1979
A Ship Without A Sail. ABC Radio, 1985
The Snow Queen. ABC Radio, 1985
Don Juan. ABC Radio, 1987
Watching Over Israel . ABC Radio 1990; BBC Radio, 1991. [Winner AWGIE for best
radio play,1990]

Enright's film and television writing has similarly received awards. His screen writings include :
The Maitland and Morpeth String Quartet, (an animated film), 1989.
Breaking Through, 1990. [Human Rights Media Award, 1991]
Come In Spinner (with Lisa Benyon), ABC 1990.
[Logie Award for Best Mini Series1991. AFI nomination, Best Screenplay]
Lorenzo's Oil (with George Miller), Universal Pictures 1990
[Writer's Guild of America and Oscar nominations for Best Screenplay, 1993]

One of the things Enright enjoys most about playwrighting is the "sort of mimesis: the entering into experiences of people that [he] can't experience first hand." He has been praised for his ability to handle a range of social register, creating such varied and truthful voices for his characters. "I don't consciously set out to do it when working. I set out a life history for each of the people - not enormously complex, but generally a couple of paragraphs to anchor them...Once I've worked that out, they start to take on a sort of shape, and they actually dictate the way they speak." Interestingly he confesses that it is writing about his own social milieu that is most difficult for him, going further to say that he has never written a play that is exactly concerned with the social milieu that he inhabits. 1

Enright finds that it is easier to cast his female roles than his male roles. This, he assumes may well have to do with the fact that his female characters are "more self aware" and "more active" and that his male characters "tend to be self-absorbed and rather weak, even where they're violent." 1

Even though some of his writings are regional in the sense that they are set in the Newcastle region, Enright eschews the tag, regional writer, and the notion that his writing is derivative of the Newcastle region. "I don't think of myself as being regional, because really my upbringing was not that. I was actually pulled out of that quite early and went to a very privileged private school....if I was formed by anything it was that sort of country town ethos." Enright argues that what is important is that his plays are "anchored in a very particular place, and a place which as far as possible is interactive".

As a writer, he sees his plays as his voice. Consequently, he is not overly interested in discussing the body of his work in terms of any overriding thematic concerns. "If there are themes and concerns that the works have in common, someone else is going to have to deduce them." 1 Admitting that there can be inferred an alternation in the texture of his work, he goes on to point out that he does not consciously move from light to dark scripts as part of any design. Rather than thinking of planning a body of work, Enright's focus is on the "excitement or the interest or the challenge of an idea." 1 Nevertheless, he does acknowledge a concern for "family...and particularly the fate of the young", which are themes that recur in a number of his plays.

In On The Wallaby, set during the depression, and First Class Women, Enright "shows a particular sympathy for the resilience and friendship of isolated and vulnerable women." 2 Daylight Saving, a comedy of manners which, "shows the romantic and familial entanglements of a group of articulate jet-setting Sydneysiders", has received numerous productions in Australia. 2 St James Infirmary, a play set during the period of the Vietnam War at a Jesuit college, deals with the themes of "conscience, political conformity and the artist's social role." 1 Similarly, Mongrels, asks questions of artistic and moral survival. It focuses on the rivalry of two of Australia's leading Irish Catholic writers, Peter Kenna and Jim McNeil. Mongrels "displays the personal and sexual costs borne by inhabitants of the theatrical world and those close to them." 2


THE DEVELOPMENT OF BLACKROCK

Black Rock is a dramatic expansion of the world focused upon in Nick Enright's theatre-in-education play, A Property Of The Clan. As in A Property Of The Clan, this more extensive play expands its exploration of the local murder of a teenage girl and the effect that it has upon a local community. In particular, it extends the realm of the play to incorporate, moreso, the world of the adult characters who, in the original play, were more peripheral.

Both plays are broadly based upon a real event that occurred in 1989 in the Newcastle region when a young teenager, Leigh Leigh, was raped and murdered at a North Stockton beach party. In late 1991, Nick Enright was approached by Brian Joyce, director of Newcastle's Freewheels theatre-in-education company, to write a play for a teenage audience. Brian Joyce suggested the subject of Leigh Leigh's death, believing that there was a play in an exploration of the murdered girl's peer group. Nick Enright was initially reticent to the suggestion but agreed to research the idea, spending time interviewing people in the Stockton area. Enright's conclusion was that Brian Joyce was right and "that there was a play in the conflicting responses of a community to such a crime". 1

The resultant play, A Property Of The Clan, is an insightful, poignant and incisive treatment of the public and personal pain and anguish associated with a crime of such magnitude. It was first performed by Freewheels in July, 1992. The play has as its primary concern, the idea of bringing an audience closer to an emotional realisation of the actuality of a young girl's death in an attempt to arouse a sense of loss and a sense of proximity to the tragedy. The play attempts to close the degrees of separation that isolate a crime from the broader community, the victim from those who must move on with their lives, and the heart of the drama on stage from a detached audience. "Until we think, it is me, stand up and say that what happened to her happened to all of us, then nothings going to change."

A Property Of The Clan is an entertaining and intelligent play for young people which clearly has a broad appeal beyond the context of theatre-in-education. Black Rock gives greater breadth to the original story, thus achieving this. As in A Property Of The Clan, the play, Black Rock, is about the murder of a teenage girl in the coastal town of Black Rock and the impact that this has upon the characters in the play. Blackrock maintains the psychological and emotional realisation of Tracey's death so central to the first play, but extends this to assess the impact of her death upon the broader community, providing a more detailed view of the reality of the world from which this tragedy emerged. In essence, Black Rock widens the previous play's concerns to emerge as a more adult play.


BLACK ROCK'S CONTENT & THEMATIC CONCERNS

Black Rock is a tightly constructed play that captures the complexity of teenage life and the brutal impact of a murder upon a small community. "He did the worst thing. He made someone die. What do you think was the last thing she saw? What did she see in his face?" P.61 Like Property Of The Clan, the play still explores the themes of hate, violence, and prejudice, but also gives greater emphasis to more peripheral thematic concerns such as personal accountability, loss, emotional repression and mateship.

Central to the play is an exploration of the connection between male violence and the repression of emotion. Violence, latent or overt, pervades Blackrock. Violence seems to be an accepted part of the male domain. In the opening scene, Jared puts Cherie in her place with the backhander, "Cause any other guy'd smack you in the mouth." P.1 Facetious as Jared's remark may well be, it is still a reflection of a male attitude that perceives violence as an acceptable mode of response. Shortly after, we learn that a friend, Jason, has "topped himself". The propensity for males to resort to violence as a means of solution, whether it be carried out against others, or in the case of the boy who committed suicide, against oneself, is present throughout the play. Ricko's final act is one of violence against himself.

In a number of scenes, violence emerges as the most accessible form of expression. It is at the party that the ultimate act of violence is committed. Immediately preceding the murder of Tracey, violence is all pervasive. The mood of the party is accurately reflected in the stage directions : Davo drags Cherie from the dancing area ; Scott chases Shana. They collide with Ricko... ; He gives Jared a push ; A fight erupts ; He kicks beer cans into the wall... ; She pushes him away and runs off ; He tries to grab her. Something sharp hits him ; He lunges for it. They tussle on the ground.; Davo hits the light. It shatters.
Similarly, violence emerges in other scenes. When Jared refuses to cover for Ricko, a physical fight erupts. When Rachel tells Jared that she is glad that Ricko is dead, Jared's immediate response is a violent one.

The violence and aggression that Jared's father, Len, teaches his boxers parallels much of the violence portrayed amongst the males throughout the play. "In the ring you've got two allies [fists], one friend [brain], and no mates. It's just you and him and the sweet smell of blood." P.49 Len, taunts George for holding back in the ring, telling him that his opponent, Donny, "could spread [his] legs and prong [him] and [he'd] ask him if he wants seconds." P.48 He refers to him as a "bonehead" and a "shit for brains". The idea here seems to be that this is how young males are conditioned : A temperament and propensity for violence engendered amongst males is passed on from generation to generation.

Language plays a pivotal role in engendering and facilitating violence. Words are used within the play as weapons and as a means of justifying acts of violence. Though we don't see the killing, Enright reveals through the language of the male characters a latent violence that is something of a precursor to this central act of violence. The prejudice that deems people to be deserving of what happens to them because of arbitrary labels is explored also. Tracey deserved to die because she was a "slut" and a "bloody moll".

Language is also a means by which many of the male characters within the play distance themselves from their emotions. In the reunion scene with Ricko, we learn that one of their friends has died. The discussion of the boy's death is circumspect. The only attempt to deal with the truth is encapsulated in an expression that is emotionally evasive. Scott tells Ricko that a mate, Jason, "topped himself". P.3 His chosen expression distances the boys from any emotional realisation of the awful reality of their friend's demise. The emotional response of the boys to his death does not range beyond an eruption of anger which is quickly circumvented by a change of subject.

Examples of where male characters repress their emotions abound in Black Rock. Shortly after Tracey's murder, Rachel confronts Jared, asking him to talk to her about that night and, more importantly, to share his feelings. His response is one of anger and emotional retreat. At the end of the first scene, Jared says to Ricko that he missed him. Ricko's response is to jokingly question Jared's sexuality by asking him if he's a "queer dog." Again, language is used as a means of avoiding any actual emotional acknowledgment. This is seen again, more aggressively, when Scott accuses Cherie and Rachel of being a couple of "lezzos" because Cherie tells them that Tracey was "a beautiful girl". P.31

Ricko has learned to deal with emotional issues by erasing the cause. For him, the need to repress the memories of that night and gain an emotional detachment is paramount to his survival. He shows Scott and Davo his technique: "Listen, both of youse. Press here. Wipe everything you know about that night. It's that easy. You can make yourself do anything if you've got the guts. Press. Nothing ever happened on this beach. It's just a rock and a stretch of sand." P.34

"I grew up among people who simply never expressed their feelings and that repression fascinates me. If you look at my work, its full of people sitting on powerful feelings." 4
In Black Rock, Enright's general interest in emotional repression is extended beyond the adolescent characters. There is a parallel between Jared's inability to reveal to his mother the guilt and shame that he feels for not interceding in Tracey's rape and subsequent death, and Diane's inability to share her pain and fear concerning her mastectomy with her son. Jared asks her why she never told him. She replies, " I tried once. And then I gave up. No, that's not it. I kept it all in. Probably scared of falling apart in front of you." P.66

Not unlike Ricko, Jared too represses his memories of the night of Tracey's death. The question of why men behave as they do is certainly posed by this play. The emotional introversion of the central character is bound up in questions that smart Jared's sense of who he is. Why didn't he intercede when Tracey was being raped? Afterwards, why didn't he help her, take her home? When his mother asks, "Why?", Jared replies, "If I knew, I mightn't feel like such a piece of shit." P.68

The play is not without sympathy for male adolescents. Despite the actions of many of the male characters, there is a real concern for the future of boys growing up where peer pressure retards their opportunity to develop the emotional sensitivity and awareness that would allow them to better understand themselves. Tobby, in defending his rape of Tracey, exclaims that "it just happened". His reluctance, and perhaps inability, to understand or realise the reasons for his action exemplifies to well the problem. Glenys tells Diane that she has done a good job so far with Jared. "The boy's nearly there", she says. Dianne asks "where?" Glenys answers, "Wherever it is they go." P.42 Wherever it is that they go, for these two women, that place is something of a mystery.

The theme of mateship also figures strongly in the play's concerns. Mateship is shown as a supportive network amongst the boys. Jared sees Ricko as his mate. "He let me hang with the guys, taught me heaps of stuff, took me up the coast, saw me catch my first barrel. He's a bro." P.11 More central to the concerns of the play, however, is the revelation of mateship as a means of coercion and compliance. The degree of peer pressure existent amongst the adolescent males in Black Rock is exemplified in Cherie's line when she speaks at the grave of Tracey and tells how none of the guys put in for the tree because they were, "Afraid their mates would pay out on them". P.39 Ricko invokes mateship whenever it is expedient. "You wouldn't have to. You're a bro. I'd be there for you." P.44 "Tell them what we said. You were with Ricko. You were with your mate." P.55 When Jared tells his mother that he didn't stop the three boys from raping Tracey because they were his mates, Diane replies, "Those three were no friends of yours". Jared reiterates with emphasis, "No. But mates..." P.68

Related to the theme of mateship is the play's investigation of gender relationship. Enright is interested in the negative attitudes that many males have towards females. What Enright perceives as a male fear of women is explored through the language and action of the play. "The fear of women is so paramount in this society. I think the most terrifying thing that I ever read, and I think it's probably true, is something Gore Vidal said, which is, ' If only women knew how much men hate them.' " 3

Black Rock depicts a world where the two sexes rarely meet but in conflict. Conversation between the sexes is mostly limited to off-hand comments, questions and demands. When Tiffany asks Jared what it is that she is doing wrong, Jared replies, "... could be you talk too much." P.20 The idea that Jared's world is not inclusive of woman is established at the beginning of the play when Ricko arrives. Jared's immediate disregard for Cherie is expressed in the derogatory way in which he tells her to leave. "Piss off, Cherie. Go on, move!" P.1 In particular, the play explores the hostile attitude of many of the male characters towards women. Jared's derisive comments to Cherie about female surfers sets the tone for the rest of the play. "Girl's can't do it. Wrong centre of gravity". Jared goes on to dismiss Wendy Botha with the comment that she is "built like a guy". P.1 Ricko's contempt for woman is no better shown than in his treatment of Tiffany. "You'll do what you always do, bitch. 'Cause you are what you are. What you'll always be. So shut up and put out." P.55 For Ricko, woman are not companionship but rather a means to an end, whether that end be sex or some beer that needs to be bought.

Women are viewed as objects by many of the male characters. Their worth is based on their appearance and or readiness to provide sexual favour. "She's hot, mate. They all are. Go for it. Go, son..." P.22 Later on, Ricko refers to the girls who "were up for it". P.44 The hypocrisy, of course, is that if the girls express themselves sexually they become branded. This is no better demonstrated then in scene ten when Scott speaks about Shana. "She's been through Ricko already. Now it's Gary. Now she's a fucken band-moll." P.27

Sadly, both Tiffany and Shana's sense of self worth is tied up in their need to be accepted and liked by boys. Tiffany tells Jared that she is afraid to let Ricko see her crying because it "shits him". She is also afraid that she is too old at twenty one to be appealing to Ricko. Her vulnerability is not helped when Scott Abbott refers to her as an "old slag". Shana's attire and the ploy of the bell around her neck is aimed at alluring men. There is a parallel between Shana's use of her body to gain attention to herself and the use of the female form as a marketing ploy in Stewart's "Body Count" commercial which equates the female body with the product of sale. Enright is passing comment on the way that society uses the female form as a means to an end. Though it is not emphasised, the play asserts a nexus between Stewart's exploitive advertising campaign and the attitudes of many of the adolescents in the play.

The vulnerability of women is further represented in the adult world by Dianne and her sister, Glenys. Both women are single mothers, and are currently without partners. Both are taking on the responsibility of family. The inference here is that the fathers did not possess this same sense of responsibility. Jared's father had left and, like Ricko, Jared at the end of the play is poised to leave his family.

Jared's intention to leave ties in with the theme of loss which is an important thematic thread manifest on a number of levels within the play. Central to the play is the loss of life. It is Cherie who expresses the emotional heart of the play when she says, " I want to yell out, this is not a body, this is Tracey you're talking about. Someone who was here last week, going to netball, working at the pizza Hut, getting the ferry, hanging out. You were alive. Now you're dead." P.30 Earlier in the play, Diane reflects on Mrs Warner's loss. "Her poor mother. I see her every day on the ferry. Poor Lesley. Poor Tracey, fifteen, to go at fifteen." P.29 Diane, herself, has to deal with the physical and emotional loss of a mastectomy, and by the end of the play she too reveals that she has lost a son. "I lost you that night. That's losing a part of myself. I know what that's like now." P.67

Accountability for the crime of Tracey's death is broadened beyond the actions of one angry and violent man. It is a point of tension and conflict for each of the play's characters. For Jared, it is, more than anything, an internal conflict in which he must face up to his own accountability. He tells Len, his father, that Ricko "didn't mean to do what he did. It just happened." Later in scene 21, however, Jared says to Ricko, "You told me with Tracey, it just happened. This didn't just happen with Tiff. You made it happen." P.55 In an argument with Cherie, Glenys defends herself, telling her that Tracey's death is not her fault." Cherie retorts, "Nothing's anybody's fault. She raped herself. She killed herself." To some extent, the character of Cherie plays the role of conscience for us all. She is the one who asks the question, who is responsible? Glenys is one of the characters who holds Tracey somewhat accountable for what happened to her. "You douse yourself in kero, then start playing with matches, you can't blame anyone else when you set yourself on fire." P.40 Jared tells Rachel that Ricko is dead "because some moll didn't know the limits." P.61

Inherent in these statements is the idea that Tracey is responsible, in part, for the actions of the boys who beset themselves upon her. In ascribing blame toward the victim, such a view must be diminishing the blame attributable to the perpetrator and, therefore, accepting their criminal behaviour as something normal, something understandable in the circumstances. In scene 16, Glenys tells Dianne that Cherie has "got to learn the way the world works." This acceptance and resignation, on the part of a number of the characters, that things are as they are, is questioned by Enright and certainly not free of accountability.

The characters are shaped very much by their response to the death of Tracy Warner. The differing resonances of the characters is a source of contrast and conflict within the play. Jared's first words are accusatory and dismissive. He does not want to hear about it. His reluctance to deal with it is, for him, an emotional necessity. He simply wants to go back to bed. He wishes to distance himself from the event. For Dianne, it is the opposite. She finds a need to talk about it. She sees it from the perspective of a mother. Glynis does too, and displays it through her concern for her daughter. Cherie feels guilt and expresses it at Tracey's graveside. Stewart is "not interested in guilt or shame or political correctness". He simply wants to get Toby out of Jail. Rachel's response is to do something positive. She undertakes to collect money to purchase a tree to plant in memory of Tracey, as she expresses it, "To remind us that she was alive."


NICK ENRIGHT ON BLACK ROCK

[From an Interview with Robert McCuaig on Monday, 14/10/96]

Part of the satisfaction for Nick Enright in writing Blackrock was the opportunity to provide the story with a more sound dramatic structure. Enright contends that A Property Of The Clan is not well constructed in the sense that Ricko's confession does not directly affect anyone on stage and that it only affects Jared by implication, "because his state in the final couple of scenes is determined by the discovery that Ricko committed the murder". For Enright, Ricko's confession is structurally "too discreet" and "dramatically, not very well placed" in the story.

In Black Rock, he has attempted to make the drama more direct. "I wanted to make the drama more Jared's". In Black Rock, Ricko's confession becomes a motivating agent in determining Jared's behaviour. Structurally, this was important because, as Enright explains, "the difficult thing about writing a play about a witness is to make the character active because it is essentially about a character who fails to act." In Black Rock, Jared acts in response to witnessing Ricko's treatment of Tiffany, thus realising "that what happened to Tracey, didn't just happen but was part of [Ricko's] habitual and pathological view of the world."

Despite some conjecture in the media that both A Property Of The Clan and Black Rock were in some way extensively researched docu dramas, Enright was never interested in writing a play about the Leigh Leigh murder. "I realised that the real interesting thing was not the facts of that case, but rather an imaginative reconstruction of what the lives of the kids were like in that world." Instead, Black Rock claims the "mythic elements" of the Leigh Leigh story : "the location, the event, the sense of celebration and of letting off steam, and the murder weapon", rather than attempting to chronicle the actual crime. Furthermore, Enright does not consider the play to be a naturalistic one, contending that it is "much more stylised and ritual than any audience would ever pick up."

Again, eschewing a close connection between his play and the Leigh Leigh murder, Enright asserts that the characters in Black Rock emerge more from the narrative process than from any research he may have conducted prior to writing. "I think the public often assume that you base a character upon people; that you study a character and put them upon the stage... and that in this particular play, because it is quite deliberately placed in a world that a young audience finds accessible... people feel that the character must be taken from a photograph." He is quick to point out that although he used some of the characteristics of some of the people that he interviewed, no character is based, or even partly based, on anyone real that he met. "What you do is map out a narrative and to some degree let the narrative determine what the characters do, and then of course they take on a life of their own, and they start to influence the narrative. So it's a dual process."

The nature of Black Rock, according to Enright, is to make the audience identify with Jared's inaction and, therefore, with his implicit violence. He contends, however, that he does not write from the perspective of an overriding theory about violence in the theatre. He acknowledges the historical difficulties of attempting to stage violence upon the stage, particularly in a play staged as Black Rock was, in such close proximity to the audience. However, the greatest tension in Black Rock, according to Enright, occurs when Ricko is seemingly about to bash Jared with the trophy and kill him. "It was the old Michaelangelo finger of god : the greatest tension is the point that doesn't connect....The audience suspends disbelief and enter the moment. They are Jared at that moment, and at every single performance they would gasp."

The need to include such a scene provided a significant challenge in the development of Black Rock. According to Enright, there is a structural need to provide a violent encounter to help Jared choose whether he is going to side with Ricko or go against him. He points out that this fundamentally violent act couldn't be the murder and so an alternative needed to be found. "I thought that it would probably have to involve a woman. A tripartite scene. And it would involve Jared doing the unthinkable which is to attack his mentor. That needed to be there and that was pivotal."

On a personal level, Enright has concerns about violence, particularly that perpetuated by young males. "This is a huge generalisation, but it is much harder for men to evaluate their own behaviour, and make some assessment of their own behaviour than it is for women." He claims that this is because men are not encouraged to be reflective. Enright does not see violence as something innate but rather as "an unreasoned use of physical power that stems from an inability to negotiate, listen and be open." Because the play is what he terms a "public play" as opposed to being a "private play", he acknowledges that within Black Rock there is a degree of typification and an element of criticism of the wider community.

Enright's interest in the emotional development of adolescent men is not sentimental but rather, as he puts it, one generated by a "tribal concern" : the realisation that the young people in the play are going to one day be parents. "It's a quite large concern that they are the parents of tomorrow, and that if they don't learn how to acknowledge the complexity of their feelings and to analyse and work through them, they will never be able to negotiate with another human being. Never be able to undergo the kind of giving and taking and sorting out that makes marriages work and parenting work."

Enright argues that there is a fear of women in Australian society and that this too is related to the inability of males to deal with emotion. "I suppose in drama I always look for the obverse idea. The play appears to be about powerful men, and women who are in their command. But in fact, the psychological truth is that most Australian men are afraid of women. They assign to women; mothers, sisters, and ultimately lovers and wives the job of being the caretakers of their feelings. And that generates fear. It generates a certain amount of respect too. But the man who says, 'My wife is so marvellous, she's so sensitive' is actually distancing her in exactly the same way as the man who says, 'That fucking cow.' "

Enright was pleased with the latest production of Black Rock. "I thought it was tonally darker than the first and I liked this. I think it was to do with David [Bertholdt] having more time to think about it. The actors who came back to it found it stronger and darker and they found it easier to live within the world of the play. It's a play that actors get terribly attached to. And even though it did put them through the mill, most were very keen to do it again."

For Enright, the most difficult aspect of the writing process is getting started. "Every time you start, you cannot believe you have ever written anything before; that you ever got to page two....I spend endless amounts of time planning, and making outlines and writing cards for scenes. Moreso with movies than plays. I outline everything. I recognise it as partly a sort of delaying tactic. While I'm making outlines, I can delude myself that I'm doing something; that I'm writing. This approach does, however, make you think about the story in a very concrete way, the movement of the piece, the space in which it happens, and the way it might be staged. After a while, usually a week, you are in the middle of the world and it becomes real for you and the characters become real and then it's effortless from then on."

Enright deliberately overwrites in the draft process, and so it is not surprising that his first draft for Black Rock was 110 pages, a sizeable difference compared with the 68 pages of the published script. "I tend to write big, rough, sprawling first drafts. The first draft of Black Rock was almost twice as long. I wrote sub-plots that got excised and nearly every scene was too long."

Nick Enright is currently working on a new version of Summer Rain, a musical he wrote thirteen years ago with Terence Clarke, for an upcoming production for the Queensland Theatre Company. He is also working on a re-write of the ending of the play, Mongrels, which will be staged at the Sydney Theatre Company next year. In addition to these "vision" projects, he is also working on the book for a musical based the life of Peter Allen called, The Boy From Oz as well as a stage adaptation of Tim Winton's novel, Cloudstreet for the Belvoir theatre.



Bibliography

1. Australian Drama Studies, April 1994, Number 24
'A form of music" : an interview with Nick Enright by Veronica Kelly

2. Companion To Theatre In Australia. General Editor, Philip Parsons

3. Interview With Nick Enright. Interview conducted on 14/10/9196 by Robert McCuaig

4. Weekend Australian. "A Playwrights Saving" by Deborah Jones.