For a small theatre, securing the right to stage Blackbird, David Harrower's much talked-about play, is a coup - even more so when the company hails from Hong Kong, not exactly at the centre of the theatrical world.
Blackbird, a confrontation between a middle-aged man and a 29-year-old woman who was 12 when they had sex, created a storm when it was staged at the Edinburgh International Festival two years ago. Peter Stein, who once said 'I don't read new plays,' made an exception to direct the premiere in Edinburgh.
Sean Curran, co-artistic director of Theatre du Pif, says that convincing Harrower to allow the play to be performed in Hong Kong wasn't easy. 'I fought tooth and nail,' he says. 'Hollywood knocked on Harrower's door, wanting to make his play into a film, and he turned them down. We had to prove to Harrower that we had the calibre to stage it.'
Luck played a role. Curran met Harrower when the Edinburgh-born playwright read his first play, Knives in Hens, in the Scottish capital more than a decade ago, 'before he became a big star', Curran says. 'It also helped that he's Scottish like me and we're both from Edinburgh.'
Blackbird won the 2007 Laurence Olivier Award for best new play, and Curran got the idea of bringing it to Hong Kong about 12 months after seeing it in Edinburgh in 2005. 'Blackbird is a great play,' he says. 'It was one of the most powerful, beautiful pieces of theatre I ever saw. I was so much into the play, forgetting to notice anything else like the lighting and props. It pulled me in - and that rarely happens in theatre.'
The work was commissioned by the festival and attracted some major theatrical talent. It has been staged in London's West End (also by Stein), in Berlin's Schaubuehne am Platz (Stein's old base, although the German-language version was directed by Australian Benedict Andrews), and in New York (with Hollywood actor Jeff Daniels as the lead).
