For more than 20 years, Australian director Baz Luhrmann's name has been linked with spectacular film and theatre productions such as The Great Gatsby, Strictly Ballroom and Moulin Rouge! But everyone has to start somewhere.
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A lecture on Friday by film historian and author Jeanette Delamoir will shed light on a near-forgotten community theatre production Luhrmann directed in Rockhampton when he was 23. It was one of his first directorial assignments after graduating from the National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1985.
Crocodile Creek was a community musical staged in August 1986 to open Rockhampton's Pilbeam Theatre. The script was by Rockhampton writer Barbara Birchall and the score was by composer Felix Meagher.
It is a love story between an Irish girl, Molly, and a Chinese boy, Mickey, set in nearby Crocodile Creek in 1867 during anti-Chinese riots on the goldfields. Both Fiona Benjamin and Craig Illott, who played the young lovers, went on to professional performing careers. And Luhrmann and Meagher would work together again.
Delamoir - who grew up in Rockhampton but was living in the US when the musical was staged - said, "Originally Barbara wrote it with a happy ending, but with Baz Luhrmann's sense of theatre and drama they did rewrites and gave it a tragic Romeo and Juliet ending."
Both Meagher and Luhrmann were outsiders but both made an effort to get to know the community in which they were working.
"Felix tells a funny story of riding around on a pushbike to get a sense of what the place was about. In a town of 55,000 people he discovered there were 54 pubs."
And although there was only one cast member who was Chinese (the only one who auditioned), Luhrmann talked to members of the Chinese community to increase his knowledge and to ensure no offence would be caused: he didn't want to open up old wounds.
"From the stories I hear he was successful in doing that," Delamoir said.
There were 120 local people involved with the show, including 40 cast members, 23 musicians and 50 volunteers making sets and costumes under Luhrmann's leadership.
"They would work all night and then go to their day jobs. They were 100 per cent with him. He was really across everything - music, staging, design - as he is."
Delamoir grew up in Rockhampton but when the musical was playing she was living in the US. Her interest was piqued and she researched its history and interviewed many of the participants.
Luhrmann was not able to come to her lecture but was in touch by email and remembered Crocodile Creek, she said, as "one of the spiritually fulfilling experiences he's ever had - pretty strong words".
The music hasn't been heard in public since the show's original four-day run, but Meagher will play some of it on Friday night.
Crocodile Creek: A Lost Baz Luhrmann Production will take place on Friday, August 15 at 5.30pm in the National Film and Sound Archive Theatrette. Admission free. Bookings: 6248 2000.
