Moving Views

“I originally came from a small country town, and when I first moved to Sydney I was blown away by the fact that I'd be on a train with more people than is in my country town,” says Augusta Supple, the director of A View From Moving Windows, a new True West production that harnesses the talents of nine playwrights and a cast of 14 actors on stage at Parramatta's Riverside Theatre. Clearly, turning the mundane into the marvellous is merely a matter of perspective, and Supple's done it before, too. “I did a project that was called Stories From The 428,” Supple recalls, “which was basically catching the 428 bus from Circular Quay to outside Sidetrack Theatre. The impetus of that show was about sustainable transport, but also to bring people to that theatre because it was dark for a bit of time there, and I wanted people to get to know it again.

“I'm actually more of a train traveller than I am a bus traveller,” Supple elaborates as the pieces of A View… fall into place. “I've only been getting to know the West properly in the last year or so. The Riverside Theatre I think is one of the best venues for theatre in Sydney and I really wanted to do some work there. The staff are great, the resources are great, it's a beautiful theatre, it's got a great community atmosphere, and people go there, so I wanted to make a work that was relevant for that community, that celebrated that community, but also encouraged people to think about commuter culture in a different way. It's like taking the experience of being the natural audience for someone on the train, and putting it on stage.”

There's a huge cast, 18 actors – not to mention the nine playwrights involved. The youngest playwright is 22, the eldest in their 50's; three of the writers have won AWGIES this year. Then there's AFI Award-winner Nick Parsons alongside university student-cum-poet Emrys Quin. “What's great about it as well there is a hundred million people on this project. That's great because for me it is about that diversity, and that range of voices and that range of people and that critical mass I guess,” says Supple. “It's a celebration of Australian theatre in that way.”

Each of the works contributed to the project were inspired by two train trips from Central to Parramatta, undertaken as a group with a mission to produce any piece of writing; a song or monologue, a scene or poem – the final production even boasts a Bollywood number. “But whatever you write,” Supple repeats the instructions, “I will stage. So whatever you write, make sure you like it.

“My main interest is that Parramatta is the sort of geographical centre of Sydney, there's this mentality that says it's all the way out there and it's far away, but it's actually not, it's right in the centre.”

The writers did it, the actors did it, Supple's been doing it. Catch a train to Riverside Theatre, you may very well get your own show on the way to or from the production.