GEOFFREY RUSH Press Kit GEOFFREY RUSH 1
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Shine GEOFFREY RUSH Press Kit GEOFFREY RUSH 1 The only career Geoffrey Rush has ever known has been I was fortunate to catch the tail-end of vaudeville and as an actor, except for a few bleak weeks in London in the travelling variety tent shows. I’d go to a panto on a the 1970s when he worked as a ‘temp’ office boy Saturday afternoon with my sister while my mother dragging racks of garments around the rag-trade district. played tennis. I could pretty much tell you the content of those shows from curtain up to curtain down. The He joined the Queensland Theatre Company straight out impact on me was huge,” he says. of university and has worked constantly ever Rush’s family moved from since, establishing a country Toowoomba to reputation as one of Brisbane and he would Australia’s finest and most regularly go to the Theatre original theatre actors. Royal to see pantomimes such as SINBAD. He’d Signature roles include his already begun making performance as Poprishin in shoe-box theatres and cut- Neil Armfield’s production out back drops and now, in of THE DIARY OF A Brisbane, he had an ideal MADMAN (Belvoir Street amateur stage under the Theatre) for which he floor of the family’s received the Sydney Critics’ Queenslander stilt house. Circle Award for Most Outstanding Performance, “I used to get the kids next the Variety Club Award for door and we’d set up Best Actor and the Victorian shows under the Green Room Award for Best house...the Queenslander Actor, Dave in ON OUR formed the perfect SELECTION, Vladimir in proscenium arch. We’d WAITING FOR GODOT, hang up old travel blankets Astrov in UNCLE VANYA , as curtains and do the Allen Fitzgerald in THE show. This was all pre- BLIND GIANT IS television which didn’t DANCING, John in WAITING FOR GODOT by Samuel Beckett start in Queensland until OLEANNA and Horatio in - played Vladimir 1959,” he says. HAMLET. - directed by George Whaley (Jane St Theatre, Sydney 1979, opposite Mel Gibson) Rush went to Everton Park In 1994 Rush received the High School in suburban Sidney Myer Performing Arts Award for his work in Brisbane: “it was very average, slightly rough, and very theatre. The award, one of the richest of its kind in new and there was no feeling that you could become a Australia, is offered each year to an individual who has professional actor but given that, we had a fantastic art shown himself to be a fine, original artist, capable of teacher, a fantastic music teacher and a series of English initiative and daring in his work. teachers who used to put on a play every year.” The theatre bug for Rush began early, when as a child his Rush and school friends also mounted their own grandmother took him to a puppet show at the Empire productions and school concerts, writing their own Theatre in Toowoomba. sketches. “I looked the other day at some of the things I wrote at that time and they’re actually really funny,” he “I must have been about four or five at the time but I still laughs. have very strong memories of what went on. GEOFFREY RUSH 2 Rush went to university because he couldn’t think Directors’ Course (British Theatre Association). But of a better idea, finishing his last exam for an arts England too seemed an alien place and Rush found degree on a Friday afternoon and starting work at himself much more at home in Paris, where he the Queensland Theatre Company (QTC) on the successfully applied to the Jacques Lecoq School of following Monday morning in 1971. University had Mime, Movement and Theatre. He studied in Paris been a radical time. In theatre, the Pram Factory in for two years focussing on the actor-based traditions Melbourne and the Nimrod Theatre at the Stables of gymnastics, mime, pantomime, clowning and in Sydney were capturing Greek chorus. public imagination. Innovative theatre in He spoke no French when Brisbane happened only on he first arrived but his campus, the Springboks language skills ‘rocketed’, toured Australia, Australian he says, in the second year soldiers were in Vietnam when he had a French and John Bjelke-Peterson girlfriend. Back in London banned public marches. and feeling miserable “unloading frocks in the “We were taking our clothes rain outside the Haymarket off and doing rock versions Theatre instead of being of the classics, we did a inside doing something production of HAMLET on fabulous”, Rush got a call ice, and heavy political from an old friend from revues in an era when the Brisbane who was directing rest of Brisbane tended to be a pantomime in Scotland. a bit sleepy. Alan Edwards, Jack had fallen off the the newly-appointed beanstalk at a dress director of the QTC, saw a rehearsal, fallen down a lot of those productions and well and broken both asked me to join the ankles. company. His appointment had really polarised the “He said that if I got myself town because as an outsider to Scotland I could have a Englishman it seemed, in the job...not as Jack, but in the cultural climate of the time, chorus replacing the chorus a very Anglophile backward THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST by Oscar Wilde leader who was now Jack,” step,” Rush says. - played Jack Worthing Rush says. - directed by Simon Phillips Melbourne Theatre Company “So my joining the QTC was (1988, Sydney and National Tour 1990-1991, Sydney 1992) The QTC, which had seen as selling out to the contributed towards the enemy. We did things like LOCK UP YOUR final year fees at Lecoq, then asked Rush to come DAUGHTERS, Shakespeare and YOU’RE A GOOD home to play the Fool opposite Warren Mitchell in MAN CHARLIE BROWN. I played Snoopy which KING LEAR. The play toured to Sydney where was one of my first good roles. But I knew that I Rush was offered a job teaching at NIDA. He was wanted to be a professional actor and the QTC was also quickly offered more theatre work. the only professional acting happening in town.” “George Whaley rang me and said he’d like me to Rush didn’t consider going to NIDA in Sydney. play Dave in ON OUR SELECTION and Vladimir in Sydney, he says, seemed like another country. WAITING FOR GODOT, with this young actor When he did make the move away from Brisbane it called Mel Gibson, at the Jane Street Theatre,” was to London where, in 1975, he completed the he says. GEOFFREY RUSH GEOFFREY RUSH 3 “I saw Dave as very much a part of the classic Being funny was easy, I knew what it was like to Australian clown tradition and Vladimir as one of the have the comic roar of approval from a crowd, but I great European metaphysical clowns. It was the perfect knew that if I wanted to be a really good actor I had double bill!” to explore both sides. Over the past few years I’ve done less and less laughs, although I’ve tried to Other members of the ensemble included Kerry Walker, sneak a few into MERCURY .” Barry Otto, Robert Menzies and Noni Hazelhurst. MERCURY is the new ABC TV drama series in which Around this time Rush also Rush plays the lead role of created his own show a daily metropolitan CLOWNEROONIES, newspaper editor. For the meshing voices from his past couple of years he’s childhood memories with been expanding his work the contemporary clowning in film and television, skills he learned at Lecoq. reprising his role of Dave in the film version of ON Rush did some ABC OUR SELECTION and Television work and had featuring in CHILDREN small roles in Gillian OF THE REVOLUTION Armstrong’s STARSTRUCK with Judy Davis and and in HOODWINK with Sam Neill. John Hargreaves before moving to Adelaide as a He first read SHINE in principal member of Jim 1992 at a time when he was Sharman’s groundbreaking determined to take some Lighthouse Ensemble. He time off to spend with his also spent two years as new daughter. “I thought Director of the Magpie this film had to be done Theatre for Young People. with me playing this part. It was the first time I’d For the past decade he has read a screenplay where I SHEPHERD ON THE ROCKS by Patrick White worked regularly in said, ‘I can do this, this has - played Archbishop Bigge Brisbane, Adelaide, Sydney - directed by Neil Armfield got my fingerprints all over and in Melbourne, where he (State Theatre Co of S.A. 1987) it’.” now lives with his actor wife and their two children, appearing in many of this “I got home that weekend after reading the country’s most acclaimed theatrical productions. screenplay and by some strange coincidence, David Awards and nominations have been numerous. Helfgott was advertised in the paper to be playing locally. I went to watch him and it was quite He toured THE DIARY OF A MADMAN with the amazing to see him play. I knew then that I had to Belvoir Street Theatre to Moscow and St Petersburg stay with this project until it was made - it was too with a triumphant return season at the Adelaide good to let go.” Festival in 1992. “MADMAN was a bit of a turning point for me because of its tragic vision of the world. Until then, I hadn’t had SHINE will be released nationally too many goes at looking at that side of life.