Marta Dusseldorp to launch new national theatre company in Hobart

Actor Marta Dusseldorp has revealed how she plans to launch a new national theatre company in Hobart.

Favel Parrett (right) with Marta Dusseldorp. Picture: EDDIE SAFARIK

Actor Marta Dusseldorp plans to launch a new national theatre company in Hobart with a play inspired by her friend Favel Parrett’s first novel, Past the Shallows, which is set in southern Tasmania.

The stage and screen star shared her theatrical vision ahead of yesterday’s launch of Favel’s third novel, There Was Still Love, at Salamanca Arts Centre.

“We dreamt up this event together,” Dusseldorp said of the $15 per head fundraiser for Archipelago Productions, the theatre company she has formed with actor husband Ben Winspear. “I believe theatre made here can be as good as anywhere in the world.”

Having optioned the book, Archipelago Productions and the Sydney Theatre Company have commissioned Sydney playwright Julian Larnach to prepare a version for the stage.

Melbourne-based Parrett, who grew up in Hobart, and Dusseldorp, who moved here last year, share an affinity as well as admiration for each other’s work.

“Once you know Favel, you can’t let her go,” said Dusseldorp. “You need her in your life, she has such a pure spirit. And I love how intimate she is with her writing. As a reader you feel very privileged to be allowed in so close. She works in a roving ECU, which is what we call an extreme close-up.”

Parrett was thrilled when the beautifully spoken leading lady agreed to turn the evening into a bit of a performance rather than a stock Q&A session.

“Marta is such a good reader and it’s such a treat to have an actor read your work,” she said.

Previously Dusseldorp and Winspear recorded the audio version of Parrett’s novel, When the Night Comes, which flicks between a Hobart childhood in the 1980s and an expedition on Danish Antarctic supply ship Nella Dan.

Parrett describes her new novel as a love letter to her late Czech grandparents, who migrated to Melbourne in the 1970s.

“It is fiction, but there is so much truth in there,” Parrett said.

“It has poured out of my heart.”