Hannie Rayson's play Extinction is touring with a star and a director who are both better known for their work in other media. Director Nadia Tass gained international acclaim for her award-winning debut feature film Malcolm in 1986 and has gone on to an extensive film and television career both in Australia and overseas. And Colin Lane was for many years one-half of the comedy duo Lano and Woodley.
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But it would be unfair to pigeonhole either. Tass's career began in theatre and she still works in it extensively and Lane has done plenty of other work, from TV hosting to cabarets to acting in plays and musicals.
And both are excited about working on writer Rayson's new play, a co-production by Geelong Performing Arts Centre and Red Stitch Actors Theatre that draws a parallel between impending human mortality and the plight of the endangered tiger quoll.
Lane plays Harry Jewell, a Sydney mining executive who's been having a tough time.
"He's told by his wife his marriage is over - she's been having sexual relations with his friend," Lane says.
Shattered, he drives down to the place where he grew up in the Otways in Victoria, seeking solace, but it's a wild and rainy night and he hits a tiger quoll with his car. He takes the badly injured creature to an animal shelter where he meets Piper Ross (Ngaire Dawn Fair), a zoologist and passionate environmentalist and veterinarian Andy Dixon (Brett Cousins). Despite their efforts, the tiger quoll dies but Piper and Harry start to bond over their efforts to save it. Harry even talks of donating a large sum of money to preserving the tiger quolls' home.
But, of course, there are complications.
"He wants to mine in the Otways but he wants to do it away from the forest where the quolls are," Lane says. It's a place he has fond childhood memories of and which he associates with family and a happy time in his life.
"He's a city boy who grew up in the country."
Andy, who is Piper's partner, is cynical about Harry's motives and doesn't like the idea of taking what he sees as tainted money from a dirty industry. Also weighing in is Andy's sister, environmentalist Heather-Dixon Brown (Natasha Herbert), whose CAPE Institute seeks funding to save animals from extinction according to certain criteria.
"There's quite a lot about her struggle to gain the funding and base her studies on facts and figures rather than the emotion about what's on that list," Lane says.
"There's an algorithm that says it's not worth spending the money when the species has a population of less than 5000. It's all about the economics of the money spent: you're going to get a better result with a population of 500 than ...when the population is 21."
Although the play deals with some weighty ethical dilemmas and philosophical questions about life and death, love and money, sex and power, Lane says it does so in an accessible way.
"It's an entertaining play about serious issues - but you have to listen carefully."
And, he says, "I think it will send the audience away thinking they should think about it a bit more."
He says he signed up for it because he remembered something Dame Judi Dench said about her approach to accepting a part in a production based largely on who's involved in it. He says this one ticked all the boxes, from the playwright - whose credits include Hotel Sorrento and Two Brothers - to the director to the other actors to the producers.
Although he hadn't worked with Tass before, he says their first meeting went very well.
"She didn't play games, she was straightforward and honest even though she's worked in Hollywood over the years. There's no pretence. She laughed at all my jokes ... she liked my sense of humour, which was very endearing."
And the feeling seems is mutual: Tass - who began working as an actor and a "precocious little director" in her birth country, Greece, before coming to Australia - says of Lane, "I think he's wonderful."
He certainly sounds easier than one star she won't name she worked with in Hollywood on a film whom she says was determined to do his own thing that went against the essence of the character.
"I went to the producers ... and they said 'Who would you like to replace him?' I had to go back to the star ...and say, 'I know you have the ability to do this - if you choose not to ... but I'm confident we can work together.'"
And after that, all went well.
She's full of praise for the other Extinction actors, Rayson and for Red Stitch - "they stood by it through thick and thin and made it happen" - and is happy to be returning to Canberra with a play. She's no stranger to the nation's capital. She was here recently for a forum and has had other productions tour here including an adaptation of C.S. Lewis's The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe by her husband and frequent collaborator David Parker.
Tass says whether she's directing a play or a film it's all about telling a story and that Extinction is an important story for contemporary Australia. She responded to the diversity of viewpoints it presented, getting the audience to think while arriving at some sense of resolution.
"This is a pure vision," she says.
Extinction is on at the Playhouse, Canberra Theatre Centre from July 20 to 23. canberratheatrecentre.com.au or 62752700.
