Richard Watts speaks with young director Paul Terrell about surrealism in the theatre.

Although only a recent graduate from the Victorian College of the Arts’ Theatre directing program, Paul Terrell has already cut his teeth on some fairly weighty theatrical productions, including Eugene Ionesco’s absurdist classic Rhinoceros, and King Turd the Great, a free-wheeling adaptation of Alfred Jarry’s Ubu Roi, which was staged in an underground car park.

His latest work, presented by the company he co-founded in 2007, PipeDream (“a company of young people interested in creating other worlds, not your standard living room dramas”) is the surreal fantasy Garden of Delights by Spanish playwright Fernando Arrabal.

Born in Spanish Morocco in 1932, shortly before the Civil War tore Spain apart, Arrabal is a novelist and poet as well as a playwright. In 1962, together with film director Alejandro Jodorowsky (El Topo) and artist and illustrator Roland Topor, he co-founded the Panic Movement, dedicated to chaotic performance art and surrealist imagery.

His surreal masterpiece Garden of Delights, which explores the imagination of an actress who has turned her back on reality, has not been seen in Melbourne for 30 years.

“I suppose that’s one of the reasons [to mount this production], that the play was last staged in Australia 30 years ago,” Terrell says.

“I want a new generation to explore this play, and to re-imagine it. I feel like surrealism is making a come-back in Australia and it’s always good to re-look at some of the lost works of surrealism; the ones that a lot of people haven’t explored or heard of … to look at them through current theatre practises.”

Terrell sees surrealism everywhere in contemporary Melbourne theatre.

“My thoughts go straight to Lally Katz’s work, and Jenny Kemp; but even a lot of stuff that happens at The Malthouse I find to be quite surrealist. There’s a real push in Melbourne at the moment to look at surrealism.”

Absurdist and surrealist theatre have a strong hold on Terrell’s imagination, and have done for many years.

“I first heard about absurdism in high school, and I suppose it’s that questioning of the everyday existence that we live in, and that big existential question about it and about reality [that attracts me]; and the stories, because they’re so outlandish and fantastical and theatrical. It’s not just taking a slice of life and putting it on stage.”

PipeDream’s production of Garden of Delights is being staged as part of TheatreWorks’ ‘Selected Works’ season, a program designed to assist and support Melbourne’s independent theatre sector.

“It’s really incredibly valuable. Just to get that extra notice is one thing; and that sort of step up that we receive from being part of this program is another, because we’ve been working as a company for three years and so in the third year to get this kind of lift, it’s fantastic.”

Garden of Delights at TheatreWorks, 14 Acland Street, St Kilda from Friday, May 1 to Saturday, May 16. Bookings on 9534 3388 or www.theatreworks.org.au