Canberra’s newest stage venue, the Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, Fyshwick, opened on Wednesday night with a sold-out performance of a forgotten Australian classic, Oriel Gray’s The Torrents (1955), performed by actor-director Lexi Sekuless’s newly formed theatre company, the Dairy Road Players.

The Mill is unlike any other theatre space, its owner, Ms Sekuless says. The L-shaped studio theatre, seating 67 people, is “incredibly intimate”. There is no proscenium arch, no curtain, and no blackout until the end of the show. It is ‘half in the round’: the audience surrounds the stage on two sides, so close to the actors we could touch them; we make eye contact with the performers.

That gives the performers more licence to play, to experiment, but also requires more confidence and fearlessness, Ms Sekuless says.

“All the volume is turned up,” Ms Sekuless says. “There’s a lot of side adlibbing, thoughts, or interjections coming out naturally, pouring out of the actors. You wouldn’t be able to do that in a proscenium arch version of this play, but you almost have to do it in this setting, because you feel how private it is. Some people on one side of the audience get this tiny little private moment with two actors. The space demands it – you’re so close. You don’t ignore that closeness; you bring everybody in; they catch more.”

Other independent or fully professional venues focus on brand new works – the development of the writing; the Mill focuses on the development of the storytellers – the actors and backstage creatives, Ms Sekuless explains.

Hitherto, Ms Sekuless believes, there has been little chance for Canberra actors to develop their craft; they must leave town to establish themselves. But her Players will grow their talent over the several plays she has planned – Shakespeare, modern Broadway hits, and a locally written play will follow next year – while The Torrents’ stage-manager will co-produce the next play with Ms Sekuless.

There are massive variations of experience in the cast, Ms Sekuless says. The company of 10 – all women or non-binary actors – includes a former Playboy bunny model, a WAAPA graduate, an impro performer, and a musical theatre performer.

“What you have is the ability to focus on each of these individual performers, and what it is they’ve done in Canberra before,” Ms Sekuless says. “I don’t think other venues focus on individual artists onstage in quite the same way.”

The Torrents is a delightful start to Ms Sekuless’s venture. Part-His Girl Friday, part-Shaw, it is a “progressive screwball comedy” set in the newspaper office of a Victorian mining town during the Gold Rush. On the microlevel, Ms Sekuless argues, it is about the role of women in the workplace; on the macrolevel, it is about a community that needs to consider its economic and environmental future. 

“What’s amazing is that it’s a play written in the twentieth century about the nineteenth century, and yet it is remarkably relevant for the twenty-first century,” Ms Sekuless says.

Ms Sekuless plays J. G. Milford, a newly engaged journalist who – to general consternation – turns out to be a woman, Jenny; the rest of the staff don’t think ladies have any place in journalism. (Much has changed since the 19^th century, for the better – Canberra Daily’s editor and three-quarters of the journalists are women.) Meanwhile, there is conflict between those who fear the town’s gold is running out, and want to invest in agriculture instead, and those who don’t want things to change.

While Ms Sekuless is the driving force behind the production, The Torrents is very much an ensemble play. Jenny Milford is almost a still point around whom the other characters revolve – a catalyst, in Ms Sekuless’s words.

“The journey that we watch is in all the other characters,” she said.

The main character, in her view, is Ben Torrent (Kat Smalley), the son of the newspaper editor, an idealistic young man who learns to step out of his father’s shadow and stand up for himself.

“If this show is still relevant … our interest is in all the Ben Torrents still in the world,” Ms Sekuless said.

Oriel Gray’s family attended the opening night; Ms Sekuless was “chuffed” that they loved it, even preferring the portrayal of Ben to Black Swan and Sydney Theatre Company’s 2019 production.

Ms Sekuless said she always wanted the first play to be a work by a female playwright; in her opinion, Gray is one of Australia’s best yet least-known playwrights. The Playwrights’ Advisory Board voted The Torrents best play of 1955, with Ray Lawler’s Summer of the Seventeenth Doll, but unlike the latter, it has seldom been performed.

That, Ms Sekuless suspects, is because of Gray’s politics. She was “a card-carrying Communist in the fifties in Australia under the Menzies régime”. The Torrents premiered at the New Theatre, which ASIO believed was a front for the Communist Party. (It was the first theatre in Australia to produce Arthur Miller’s The Crucible, an allegory for McCarthy’s anti-Communist witch-hunts in the US.)

That, Ms Sekuless says, created a stigma. But she does not think the play needs to be shelved or categorised as a ‘Communist’ piece.

“The weaving of politics and theatre speaks to me hugely. It felt like the right fit.”

Another reason The Torrents is seldom done, according to Ms Sekuless, is that it is a period piece, with a big cast. That means spending more money on sets and costumes. But she wanted a work with a big cast, not two or three actors on stage.

“I wanted to hit it out of the park,” she said; “to get as many Canberran bodies on stage [as I could].”

The Torrents, though, only has two female characters in it; with the permission of Gray’s estate, Ms Sekuless went for genderblind casting.

“Given the messages Gray wants to portray, and given the way that her career went, I don’t think Oriel would have been totally happy, and I don’t think I would have been OK if I had cast and given more creative opportunities to a bunch of lads!

“What’s amazing, given the way we’re progressing socially, is that it’s possible to reach out to, and to cast in the non-binary space as well.”

The theatre was built by the Molonglo Group, a developer interested in “the cultural offering, the cultural maturity” of Canberra, Ms Sekuless said, and technically fit out by Elite Event Technology.

Lexi Sekuless Productions presents Oriel Gray’s The Torrents at the Mill Theatre at Dairy Road, Fyshwick, until 3 December. Tickets available from Humanitix.