A Sydney-based writer, injecting Sydney's theatre scene with its own home-made work, a much deprived nutrient in our theatre-scene, unfortunately. He's a graduate of the University of NSW, Sydney, Victorian College of Arts and NIDA and spent several years being involved with the Forest Youth Theatre Company. Holding a mirror up against society and showing it back to audiences, Lachlan Philpott creates works that reflect the world he and we, Australians, live in. His latest play, Silent Disco, is currently onstage at Griffin Theatre until 4 June. In the meantime, however, he pulls up a chair with Zoe Ferguson and chats about his passions, fears, and repressed childhood memories that still haunt him today. Well, maybe not the last one...

You've got a long list of educational accomplishments and credentials connected to theatre and its practices, but what first attracted you to theatre, and when?
My parents were involved in theatre, they started a youth theatre company in Frenchs Forest; the Glen St Theatre, when I was 11 so I got involved. They started running the theatre because there was very little else going on in that area, but they were also always the people who started things up. My father was part of a cricket club, coached rugby and then ran the theatre for 20 years, so I've always had a passion for theatre, I sort of grew up on it.

Which came first; acting or writing?
Acting, but then I moved on to directing. I had a bad experience in acting -

What was the bad experience? You have to tell me now...
When I was 18, I played Seymour in Little Shop of Horrors and had to give a huge hunk of meat to the man-eating plant, but I accidentally threw it into audience and knocked the person out [laughs] I then thought to myself, ‘maybe I'm not precise enough to be an actor’ and besides, I wasn't very good at it either.

What do you love most about theatre?
That sense of being live, that anything can happen. Theatre is a unique art form, there's something magical about things that are live. It's thrilling watching actors in real time, in that real space, there's alot of exciting possibilities of what can happen, and I love how you can entertain people in that way. Part of the magic of theatre is the wonderment that we feel in childhood; that total surprise of a new sensation, that something can capture our imagination and make us look at the world in a different way.

Have you ever walked out of a play? What makes you walk out?
Yes I have, quite a few times, actually. I walk out or leave at intermission if the play doesn’t feel important; that they’ve got nothing to say to me. When people don't necessarily think about the context they’re putting work on in, to a particular time and audience, that's when it doesn't connect with me. If they're not thinking about the wider context, they're doing theatre for the wrong reasons. We shouldn’t feel that we’re prisoners in theatre though, you're free to leave if you're not enjoying it.

Let's talk about Silent Disco. Were Tamara and Jayson modelled on anyone you knew or a specific experience that sparked a creative flame in you?
Yes, sort of. Tamara and Jayson were inspired by an amalgamation of a number of different people I taught in a school in Sydney's Inner West in 2006 and 2007.

Did you connect with Camilla Ah Kin's teacher character when you were writing the play? Are her words and hopes your own?
The teacher in Silent Disco portrays a collective experience of teachers’ actions and their experience in a high school like that. She raises a lot of questions in the play though, that I went through, like anyone else in that environment, like what happened to those kids who disappeared, who you couldn’t help, or the system couldn’t help etc. Sometimes you see some kids who seem like the whole of society has failed them, it's really sad when that happens.
 

Mirroring what you see in society onto stage is honest and sometimes very sobering for the audience; do you think there is enough of it on Australian stages?
Definitely not. We’e not producing enough shows in Sydney and Australia, and not enough about our own culture that we’re living in. There's not a lot of  programming connecting to the places we live in, but more about what will sell tickets. I think it's really important to tell a story onstage about the place that they come from, adding to a sense of interpreting the city that they live in. That can be really interesting.
 

If anything, what would you change about Silent Disco?
Oh, good question. Um, I think I would have more performers, even though it's a nice device in having actors doubling up in roles, it would give it a different texture to see it with more actors.

What are your own ‘silent discos’? What do you do, or where do you go to get away from it all?
I go swimming, I enjoy doing laps at Sydney Uni pool.