August 6. Day 217. New directions

Joanna Murray-Smith

Joanna Murray-Smith is looking remarkably calm considering what she's got on this month. The screen writer's new Australian flick Palm Beach opened on cinema screens across the country the same day as she made her directorial debut at the Queensland Performing Arts with Queensland Theatre's L'Appartement. It's probably just as well she survives on very little sleep. "Because I'm an insomniac, I sort of have about four hours of unconsciousness and otherwise I'm thinking and immersed in the play."
Although L'Appartement is Murray-Smith's 23rd play, this is the first time she has donned the director's hat at the "slightly audacious" invitation of Queensland Theatre's Artistic Director Sam Strong.
"I've been kind of motivated since my mother died a few years ago to sort of seize the moment," she confesses.

Andrew and Liz Buchanan

And seize it she did. L'Appartement is smart, slick and captivating from start to finish.
It's set in a swanky, perfect Paris AirBnB , an aspirational house just like the beach-front mansion in Palm Beach.  With just a touch of irritation, Murray Smith observes she is often pilliaried for writing privileged, urban educated people while others such as Edward Albee is celebrated.
But while the houses and the people may appear picture perfect, Murray-Smith is interested in scratching to see what is under the surface - the fracturing relationships of people staying within. She found inspiration in a recent Paris holiday with her daughter.

Pacharo Mzembe and Melanie Zanetti Andrew and Liz Buchanan and 

"I began to think about the interaction between aesthetics and comfort and people who live their life according to the structure of beauty and those who are more inclined to the mess of human life."
In L'Appartement, this is explored in the interplay between the Australian parents of three-year-old twins (played by real life couple Andrew and Liz Buchanan) and their French hosts (played by Pacharo Mzembe and Melanie Zanetti).

"I began to think about that interaction between aesthetics and comfort and people who live their lives according to the rigour and the structure of beauty and those who are more inclined to the mess of human life," Murray-Smith said. "That really set up this dichotomy between the Australian couple and the French couple."
Fractured relationships is a theme Murray-Smith comes back to again and again.  "I have a long-term interest, all my plays really, are about long-term relationships," she says. "My husband always says, 'why do you always write plays that are about such miserable marriages?'"
The marriages might be miserable but the work is anything but. The observations are insightful and the action turns between hilariously funny to sad or shocking in a second. You'd never know this is a directorial debut. In all likelihood, it will also likely be Murray-Smith's last. Having crossed it off her bucket list, she's not sure she wants to go back."The physical and psychological stamina of directing is not to be underestimated. It is huge," she says.
But she's not sorry she took the job on and thinks she learned a whole lot from it.
"I've grown so much in my creative understanding just by being in close proximity to all the other artists and by seeing how the universe comes together as a collaboration."
L'Appartement continues at the Cremorne Theatre until August 31.