After 14 works of fiction, writer Frank Moorhouse is used to people identifying with his characters.
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But he had never seen one of his creations come to life in quite the way it did on Saturday, when he attended the first rehearsal of a stage adaptation of his critically acclaimed novel Cold Light.
The 2011 novel, the third in an epic trilogy tracing the eventful life of Edith, a young woman in the world of diplomacy and the League of Nations from the 1920s onwards, is being adapted for the stage by playwright Alana Valentine.
Valentine has been commissioned by the Street Theatre, which optioned Moorhouse's novel as part of its Made in Canberra program, with the support of the Centenary of Canberra.
Cold Light is set mainly in 1950s Canberra, and is the result of years of meticulous research in the National Archives, resulting in a hefty, 700-page tome filled with local intrigue.
Valentine said taking on such a large and complex work was daunting, but she began the way she always does - by homing in on the main character's central dilemma.
''You start with what your version of Edith's journey is, and that's why they always talk about an adaptation being a particular take on what the dilemma is,'' she said.
''In a novel, you can have a dilemma, and you can wander off for a while, and we can hear about other people's dilemmas and all that, whereas in a play, it's like a backbone, it just has to keep going. I often describe it as sort of like one of those things that blow the balls into the air; you've got to keep the ball in the air, always.''
On Tuesday night, the Street Theatre will be hosting a first-draft showing before an audience - a concept that Moorhouse finds personally terrifying, having spent about 20 years all up in writing his celebrated Edith trilogy.
''Having a reading of the first draft in public, I thought, how could you do that?'' he said.
''I would never show my work until it was as good as I could ever get it - five years of work and then I might show it.''
Valentine has mainly worked on original screenplays, and said she was attracted to real-life stories.
This meant that often she was faced with presenting material to an audience filled with people who appear as characters in the play.
''I haven't done a lot of adaptations, because I've done a lot of work of my own that's research-based and documentary-based, and I love pieces that are about real people,'' she said.
''The thing about Cold Light is that there's so many real people in there.''
These people, however, are mostly historical, which means Moorhouse himself is the closest she has to a real-life connection to the characters.
''[Frank] said to me there wasn't anything that he missed, but I'm wondering if a lot of [Tuesday] night's going to be Cold Light aficionados saying, 'Oh, but you missed that bit about so-and-so'. But I can't listen to that, I've got to stick to what I think the play is about.''
Moorhouse, for one, is in awe of what Valentine has taken on and how she has approached his work, not least because of the legions of readers who have identified with Edith over the years.
''I've written 14 books of fiction, and been writing a long time, but I've never had the reaction that I've had with the trilogy,'' he said.
''It's been building, and Cold Light brought it all together, and a lot of new readers discovered the trilogy through Cold Light then going backwards. The emotional connection of the work through the readership is quite different to anything I've experienced before, and it's very powerful.''
■ The first-draft showing of Cold Light is on at the Street Theatre, Tuesday, July 9, at 7.30pm. Tickets $10. Bookings on 6247 1223.