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Perth-based writer, director and actor Andrew O’Connell founded Company O in 2012.

The company’s name, he says, has multiple meanings – the O representing unity and infinity, as well as referencing the slang expression for the female orgasm. “We’d like to think that ‘the big O’ represents that (often elusive!) ‘orgasm’ that occurs in the theatre when everything ‘comes together’”, he says.

Ahead of the company’s upcoming season of Yasmina Reza’s Tony Award winning play Art, Nina Levy talked to O’Connell about his artistic choices and the unusual path that led him to theatre.

Nina Levy: Your career path has been relatively unusual; you initially trained and worked as a physio! How did you move from physio to writing? And what drew you to writing for theatre specifically?

Andrew O’Connell: It all started when I went to Europe (Italy to be precise) to pursue my career in physiotherapy and, well, I got sidetracked – not into theatre, initially, but into language teaching and, more broadly speaking, into Italian culture.

I guess culture – history and art and literature – drew me towards writing, which is the art form I’ve always deferred to in order to express myself. I experimented with a lot of different (writing) genres while I was in Italy and, after a while, I noticed that dialogue came more naturally to me than anything else – dialogue and the short story.

It was after a visit to Shakespeare’s Globe in London, in 2004, where I saw Mark Rylance on stage as Prospero in The Tempest, that I thought “I’ve got to do that!” I wondered, “What would be my story that would make people laugh and cry and take them away to other worlds?”

The very next day I started writing my first play – a play about timid lovers that was never produced, (nor do I want it to be produced!) in a kind of Shakespearian style as I still had that language in my head!

NL: Tell me about your theatre training…

AOC: I did a short course at NIDA, which combined theatre training with a production of a new Australian play – A Day in December by Linden Wilkinson, which was about the Glenbrook rail disaster of 1999.

We did acting training but the training was in the form of rehearsals for the eventual production. Someone I met during that course told me a theatre in Sydney was auditioning for Hamlet, so I auditioned and got the role of Horatio.

Since then, it’s mainly been on-the-job training as I’ve been in a number of plays and, in the last 10 years or so, produced my own plays being involved either as a writer or an actor. I don’t like to act in plays I’ve written – I like to watch my own plays to see if they work.

NL: You have an MA in Applied Linguistics – how does this shape or influence your work?

AOC: A knowledge of linguistics is definitely an advantage even though I’m probably not conscious of the linguistic analysis I apply to texts and to my own writing. I think a knowledge of language can make your writing more rigorous, and it can help you to flout convention when you need to, to achieve creative ends.

NL: Company O was formed in 2012 – what made you decide to establish your own independent theatre company?

AOC: There was a young woman from a Maltese background who would regularly help out in the biobox at a theatre in Sydney I was involved with. At an afterparty for one of the productions, she expressed her desire to act but complained about never being able to get a role because she believed that all the “blonde, blue-eyed girls” got all the roles. So I said, “You know what role you’d be perfect for? Oscar Wilde’s Salome! We should suggest it to the theatre”.

Well, the theatre I was involved with tended to program the more well-known classic plays so I said “Why don’t we just do it ourselves?” I set about adapting the script and Company O was born!

NL: You’ve produced nine plays since Company O was founded, including three of your own plays – what drives your programming choices?

AOC: One of things I try to do, first and foremost, is alternate between acting and writing. If I write and direct a play, I’ll want to act in the next one we do.

Other than that, one of the main drivers of the projects we take on is the level of intensity the story offers and how much it will challenge audiences.

We’re not into preaching to the converted. We’re not into giving audiences a “pleasant evening at the theatre”. We want audiences to thoroughly enjoy the evening because they’ve been challenged and been made to feel a range of emotions despite themselves.

To use a cliche, we want the audience to have a “visceral experience” but that experience needs to be one of emotional discomfort – a feeling that comes from the reminder that as humans we’re not in control.

NL: Your next production is Art, the Tony-award winning play by Yasmina Reza, which premiered in the mid-90s. Why did you choose this play to present in 2022? What makes it relevant today?

AOC: I think any classic is relevant today whether its relevance to our times has been considered or not. That said, Art highlights the complexities of male friendships not complicated by issues of sexuality even though latent homosexuality will no doubt be on audience’s minds.

This play reminds us that somewhere between male homosexuality and toxic masculinity, there exists male friendships based on love and the desire for dominance!

Art plays Holmes à Court Gallery @ No 10, 29 September – 2 October 2022.

Cast of ‘Art’: Andrew O’Connell, Nigel Goodwin, Jason Robert Lester. Photo: David Cox Media