Stories I Want To Tell You In Person

As one of Australia’s most acclaimed young playwrights, Katz made her acting debut in Stories after writing the show for Belvoir when it rejected her previous show. In collaboration with director Erin White (It’s A Date), Katz has bought her show to the screen, and it is sure to charm audiences just as she did when it was onstage.

“It’s still quite true to the stage show a lot,” says Katz. “I play myself, which is more challenging than you think it would be, and it’s a story set over about a year of me trying to work out how to have both love and writing in my life and the sort of things I try to do to get there. For example, I find out that I’m cursed from these psychics and I’m trying to make things work with this guy I’ve met and I feel like if I pay off these curses then it will work. It’s basically a quest to have it all.”

When it came to writing the original show, Katz was inspired by her experiences with New York mentalists. “I was really obsessed with these psychics in a personal way and asked myself, ‘Are they my saviours?’ As soon as I was in there first talking to them, the atmosphere changed and I was suddenly in the story. And I find that sometimes in life you’re like, ‘Oh my god, I’m in the story of my life right now.’”

After talking to her agent about her desire to perform in something, Katz made a realisation: “Whenever I take characters from life, I become them for a while and I talk as them to get to know their voice.”

Following discussions with Belvoir, Katz’s show became a reality, and was programmed before she had even written it. The joy came through the opportunity to communicate directly with an audience. On screen, of course, that exchange is a different proposition.

“I think the film offers a question that a lot of people have in life – how do you balance work and love, and how and why do we stop ourselves from getting the things we dream about?” says Katz. “While it is my story, when I did the stage show, a lot of people found it quite similar to their own life quests, where you try to have everything. I guess we all know what it’s like trying to make a relationship work and we all know what it’s like to be striving for something in your career. So even though it’s about these psychics and is a surreal film in some ways, it’s also about really common themes. Love is always a common theme – everyone carries around the torture of love.”