INTERVIEW INTERVIEW THE WRITER AND THE DIRECTOR UNCOVERINGWHERETHESTREETSHADANAME WITHTWOOFTHECREATIVES Celebrating their 20th Birthday this year, Monkey Baa Theatre Company is Australia’s leading professional theatre company for young audiences, based in Lend Lease Darling Quarter Theatre. Monkey Baa adapts Australian literature and creates new work for stage. Riverside is excited to bring Monkey Baa and the award-winning Australian author, Randa Abdel-Fattah’s young adult novel, Where the Streets Had a Name, to life on stage in August. Ahead of this production, we caught up with the author of the book, Randa Abdel-Fattah and the writer/director of the play, Eva Di Cesare to find out more about this powerful story and the page to stage process. RANDA ABDEL-FATTAH What inspired you to start writing? Have you always had a passion for words? Creativity invigorates me. It really gives me a buzz, creating worlds and characters and destinies. I love words too. I love the games you can play with words when you write. I love the thrill of touching a reader’s heart with the power of a story. I love provoking people to question their beliefs and judgments through the connection they make with a character. The whole process makes me feel alive. I also recognise what an incredible privilege it is to be able to write and be published too. Your stories have a beautiful human element which resonates with audiences in different ways depending on their backgrounds and experiences. Why do you think such a vast audience connect with your books? I hope that when I write about issues such as racism or occupation that I am focused on the lives of people, the human condition, the everyday spaces of people’s lives, rather than the macro-politics of a place. The personal is political and that is how I approach my writing and that, I hope, is what readers connect with. Your books tend to touch on political and cultural topics in a way that is engaging and entertaining for young adults. How do you make important and heavy issues accessible, without them becoming dry and boring? I learned very early on with my writing that one of the most effective ways to write about weighty issues is through humour. Humour disarms, it can distract people from the weight of an issue and then gently ease them back in. The characters in Where the Streets Had a Name were heavily influenced by your family. How did your family react when they read the novel? My family have been an amazing support to me. My father in particular was very moved by the book especially as the grandmother was inspired by his mother. I’m also really touched that friends from Palestine who have read the book were extremely moved by it and found it authentic and real. They couldn’t believe I wrote it from Australia. That was the best compliment I could have hoped for! Why do you think it is important for audiences to read Where the Streets Had a Name? I really hope that audiences will read the book to take a different journey with the story. Reading the book is an intimate, one-on-one experience that is unmediated by anybody else. It’s the reader’s imagination with my words and that is exciting and empowering. What has been your involvement in adapting Where the Streets Had a Name for stage? What do you feel are the most important elements to keep when turning a story from page to stage? I’ve worked closely with Eva in terms of speaking to her about my story and my father’s story and also reading the script drafts and offering my advice. Eva has done such an amazing job of adapting the book to the stage. She has zoomed in on the most critical moments and managed to deliver the essence of the book to the stage. What do you consider your greatest achievement in life so far? Being able to juggle motherhood while continuing to write and work is my greatest achievement. I have been too stubborn to give anything up so I’ve kept it all going while being a Mum to four. What is your favourite book and why? Pride and Prejudice is one of my favourite novels. I’ve always loved it for its humour, wit, what it reveals about a certain period in history and its timeless commentary on gender and societal expectations. It’s always been a page-turner for me. 28