John Leary and Lucy Durack in Private Lives (2014)

MTC Ambassadors | Interview with Lucy Durack

While taking part in MTC’s Ambassador Program, Lachlan Clarke spoke to performer Lucy Durack (Private Lives, 2014) about her career, working at MTC, and ninjas.

What is the best part of working at MTC?

I loved getting to work with the director Sam Strong as well as the amazing cast of Leon Ford, Nadine Garner, John Leary and Julie Forsyth. These are all people I look up to immensely, so to get to play with them was tremendous fun!

The process that Sam chose for us was also really fun and a lot more in depth than we often get to go in the rehearsal process of a musical, which I absolutely loved! For example, we broke every scene down and talked at length about what was happening in each beat, which was really useful and we did little projects as homework on the time period and the playwright etc and presented them to each other in the rehearsal room, we played some fantastic acting games to help juice some of the scenes and we spent the all day, every day of our rehearsal period speaking in our received pronunciation accents, led by an amazing accent and dialect coach called Leith McPherson. It all reminded me of why I wanted to become an actor in the first place.

What is your favourite play you’ve been a part of?

My favourite play is Private Lives and my favourite musical is a tie between Wicked and Legally Blonde.

If you could pick any play to be a part of what would it be?

While I think it would be very challenging, I would love to play LV in The Rise and Fall of Little Voice.

What did you want to be when you were a teenager?

An actress. I also had a couple of ‘fall back’ ideas of being a physiotherapist or a lawyer which, aside from one semester of a law degree, I never followed through with.

What is your advice to people who are looking to pursue a career in the theatre industry?

To say yes to as many opportunities as you can at the start to get as much experience as possible and to invest in yourself in doing as many classes as you can and to never stop learning. I still do acting and singing classes whenever I can.

A bonus question: who would win in a fight between a robot, a ninja and a pirate? Why?

Hmmmm good question. I feel like the pirate would probably lose out first, keeping a parrot on your shoulder while cute, might be a hindrance in mortal battle, so I feel he would need to bow out to save his favourite feathered friend, so rather than lose, he might just decide against it, effectively winning in a different way. Then the robot and ninja would battle it out and I like to think that the ninja would win as the human mind and instinct, when really focussed, is able to trump even the most impressive robot. Perhaps the pirate would come back and help by distracting the robot with his parrot and help the ninja win in the end, showing the best side of humanity and the ninja and pirate would become friends and live together (with the parrot) like The Odd Couple and someone would make a funny sitcom about them. Yep, I’m pretty sure that is what would happen.

Lachlan Clarke
Lachlan is thrilled to be part of the MTC Ambassador program this year and has thoroughly enjoyed getting to see all the different sides of the theatre industry. Lachlan’s hobbies include cloud spotting, stamp collecting and using a telescope to stare into space, pondering the existence of humanity. Lachlan also dabbles in a bit of acting, writing and stand-up/sketch comedy from time to time … actually he spends more time doing those things than what he listed as his hobbies.

Published on 25 November 2015

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