Best-selling author Trent Dalton is bringing the stage version of his book, Love Stories, to Wollongong for its NSW premiere.
The play will be at the Illawarra Performing Arts Centre (IPAC) for a two-week season, from February 27 to March 8.
Trent – also author of the smash-hit book and Netflix series, Boy Swallows Universe – was inspired to write Love Stories the book after an old friend and journalism colleague, Kathleen Kelly, died in 2020 on Christmas Day. She was 89. Kathleen bequeathed her Olivetti typewriter to Trent and he decided to write stories of love on that treasured sky-blue contraption.
So to kick off the project, in 2021 he set up a table and two chairs and his Olivetti at the corner of Adelaide and Albert streets in Brisbane and put up a sign: “Sentimental Writer Collecting Love Stories”. He asked passers-by “Can you please tell me a love story?” and for two months he listened to people’s stories about love, heartache, heartbreak and loss.
Love Stories, all 43 chapters of it, is the result.
But you needn’t have read the book to enjoy the stage show. Love Stories the play – adapted for the stage by acclaimed playwright Tim McGarry, with additional writing and story by Trent and his wife, Fiona Franzmann, and directed by Sam Strong – is not Love Stories the book.
“The book can never be the play, the play can never be the book, but they both kind of speak to each other in different ways,” Tim says.
“And an audience, they’ll have read Love Stories, and the creative team's task is to give them almost another angle of the prism to see the stories from. Without losing the spirit of the original.
“Every adaptation is different. In a way, Boy Swallows Universe, I won't say it was easier, but it had a very strong journey and a very clear journey. With Love Stories, it’s a whole series of vignettes and stories, so we took a lot longer in terms of how we were going to develop it as a play.
“But I think for both of them, I think my main task is always to look at the sentiment that Trent has written in those books and [ask] how do I transfer that to the stage? And I think that's the task of the adapter.
“That's why it takes a monumental two and a half years. And it's not just me. It's a big team of people.”
That the writing team this time included Trent and Fiona was a great boost to the creative process, Tim says.
“Because there were three of us writing, there was a lot of bounce.
“Oftentimes as a writer, there's a lot of solitude, like you are by yourself a lot. And I had to go for lots of walks and wonder how I'm going to do it.
“In this situation, there was three of us, so I could get on the phone or text Trent and Fi and go, ‘Look, I'm not sure about this, have you got any ideas about that?’
“And then they'd be sending me stuff, so there was a constant kind of feeding of work.
“As the draft got further and further in, we were all working on it together. And it just became kind of very fluid. So it became a great creative kind of process. It wasn't just me in a room.”
To tie all of the book's vignettes together onstage, the husband and wife who feature in the book – and who are referred to in the play as Husband and Wife – became the play’s through-line.
The husband and wife characters are based on Trent and Fiona, but Trent says Fiona was “adamant” that the characters be called Husband and Wife.
“We needed an arc – and there it is in the book, in a skeletal kind of a form – and this extraordinary arc of the relationship, which is very universal, connected everything,” Tim says.
“And that's how that came about. And then every story had a kind of hook to it.”
Trent says whether it’s a book, play, TV series or movie, his motivation remains the same.
“The one thing that's carried me through has always been just a real enthusiasm to hear just any story, because I'm trying to work out mine.
“And that's all I've done. That's what happens in this play: I sat down and asked all these people for love stories. And then the great truth emerged mostly after the fact.
“You do something and ‘Oh, that's why I did it. I was trying to sort some things in my own marriage’. So then you go, ‘That's really worthwhile.'
“Suddenly the book takes on this real truth and this kind of power, and it's only revealed to you by getting to the end and going, 'Oh, that's why I did it.'
“But you've got to work your arse off to get to that point.”
Tim says the prospect of adapting this book into a play immediately appealed to him.
“The thing that connected me to the story straight away was that incredible sense of empathy I had for the characters and for the people, and for the way Trent had approached it and getting them to speak about their experiences – ordinary Australians talking about extraordinary things that happened to them.
“It made me realise as I read it that – and I've always thought this, but it really brought it to the fore – is that everybody has a story. Every single person has an incredible story somewhere in their soul, in their body – and that's what Trent captured in the book.”
The initial process of trying to get people on the street to open up and tell their love stories for the book was “interesting”, Trent says.
“What would happen is you’d get four knock-backs and then you'd get two wanting to talk. And if you've got two people standing at your desk, then it gets interesting.
“And people are curious. I’m there for two months on and off, but two or three or four days a week. And then people say ‘I saw him yesterday and he’s still here.'
“I remember some people coming up and just going, ‘You just look like such a loser. I'm just coming up because I feel sorry for you’.
“And then there'd be people – it’s in the book and in the play too – like the guy who came past, it was the funniest thing. I go, ‘Do you have a love story?’ Like, really innocent. And he goes, ‘Love story? How about I bury your head in concrete?’
“Like the worst thing you can do is ask someone to tell a love story. And many people thought I was selling solar heating or it was some sort of con; 'Are you trying to get my credit card details?’ or it was somehow religious, it had to have an angle. And I was just like, ‘No, it's just genuine interest’.”
But then numerous powerhouse love stories started “trickling out” of those who stopped to chat with Trent.
“That's the truth of life … if you love someone, you've got to risk losing them, and that's terrifying.
“That's what I love, that's in this thing. It’s that for every giddy, ridiculous, amazing love story, there's someone who's been ruined by love. And I just think that's so true.
“That's what I love about this play. And they're some of the stories that hit the hardest because you go from, 'Isn't that sweet?' and then the next thing, it's like a punch in the guts.”
Trent thinks Love Stories would work well as a television series.
“Initially, in the book version of it, I struggled to see how it’d work [as a TV series]. But the play version, because it's got that central [theme], there's an absolute change that the couple goes through, and as horrific and embarrassing as it is for me to see when I'm sitting down and watching it – because it's so raw and so real – televisually it'd be really cool to see.
“Slowly seeing the changes that the writer guy [Husband in Love Stories] goes through over the course of a season would be really interesting.”
Tim is currently working on some new plays and Trent is doing edits on his latest novel.
“It’s an absolute suburban marriage story buried inside a murder story. It's everything. It's about journalism and it's about a guy who gets the scoop of a lifetime and misses an even bigger scoop right in front of his eyes.”
“If I can surprise myself along the way, surprise the reader, it’s fantastic.”
Love Stories will be at IPAC from February 27 to March 8. Book tickets at merrigong.com.au
