TRENT DALTON'S LOVE STORIES
Love takes on many different forms. Romantic love, love for your family, friends, pets, even your hobbies or work. This concept of what love means to different people inspired award-winning author Trent Dalton to plonk himself on a street corner with an old typewriter in Brisbane and ask strangers passing by, “can you tell me a love story?”
The exercise led to the creation of Dalton’s book, Love Stories, which has been adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry and makes its way to the Darwin stage this month. Tierney White caught up with Dalton to chat about what inspired this special, heart-filling, heart-healing, project.
Thanks for the time, Trent! I’ve heard Love Stories was inspired by a “personal moment of profound love” for you. Can you share that with us?
Oh, for sure. When I was a journo … I'd write these big feature articles, and I'd receive these lovely, typed letters from my best friend Greg’s mum, a woman named Kath Kelly. I’d receive these 1970s Olivetti typewriter letters from Kath, just kind of telling me lovely things … like, “keep going, you're doing all right. Keep doing this journalism thing and even maybe one day you might have something bigger in you. Wow, you know, like a book!”.
This beautiful woman passed away at the age of 89 on Christmas Day 2020 … At Kath's funeral, I looked around in the funeral hall, and there were no seats for anyone who arrived late. It was standing room only at the back, and I thought to myself, that's a secret to life right there – live a life so filled with love and kindness, that late comers can't find a seat at your funeral.
Then we went outside because, as per Kath's death bed instructions, when she was taken to hospital, she left three XXXX cans of beer in the fridge, and she told Greg everyone had to drink those beers at the funeral. And, so, we happily did that!
And we're in the car park, and we were toasting Kath … and I said to Greg, “I don't know whether you know this, mate, but your mum used to send me these letters, on her favourite typewriter, and it meant the world to me … she's part of the reason I wrote that book, Boy Swallows Universe, which kind of changed my life, mate.” And he goes, “oh, well, wait ‘til you see this”.
He gathers the whole crowd together, leans into his car, and pulls out Kath’s sky-blue Olivetti typewriter, hands it to me in front of everybody and says, “mate, one of her last requests was that you end up with her typewriter.”
Oh, my golly, that’s so special.
I started crying, it sent shivers down my spine!
I bet!
Two weeks later I said, "all right, I want to do something special with this thing … if I took it to the busiest corner in Brisbane … I'll interview 150 people, just like the sort of stories Kath used to like me doing."
Anyway, I sat for two months on the corner of this street and the most amazing thing happened, where all these different strangers came up and told me love stories. It was the most beautiful journalistic exercise of my life.
That’s absolutely beautiful. And to think that Kath’s legacy still lives on, through that typewriter, she would be over the moon to think anything like this came of it.
Yeah, and what's beautiful is her son and her daughter both came to the play, and they just got so emotional, it was so beautiful. They just kept looking around, and saw the joy that this brings people, all because of that beautiful gesture. It's absolutely where it starts from, you're exactly right.
And the other thing, too, is that love is different for everyone – it's not just romantic love, there's a whole spectrum of love stories that we're getting to get a glimpse of, right?
Yeah, no, it really is. I always try and tell people, “please don't be fooled by that title”. I don't think it's all that sort of cheesy, romantic kind of love – which, certainly, there's aspects of that – but it’s highlighting the wonders of love, if you've known a little bit of darkness as well. You know what I mean?
And that's, sort of, the power of love for anyone who's been through some stuff. They really cherish the people that are around them because they know the other side of love, too.
Totally. Love can cause heartbreak, but that’s beautiful, in a way. What’s a story that stuck out to you?
One of my favourite stories, in the play and in the book, is a woman who looks at this rotating series of photographs that she keeps of her late husband, who died in a tragic accident where a shop front awning landed on this man. It collapsed, just random, one of those freak-of-nature moments. His final act was to push two kids out of the way, and he took the brunt of that collapse.
She looks at these photographs of her beautiful husband every night and says, “do I keep them up on the fridge or do I take them down? Is it causing me too much pain or is the love I feel when I look at them worth it?” And in the end, every night, she goes, “no, I'll keep them up there”. That's a story of grief, but it becomes a story of a woman who's still in love.
Beautiful. And that's the other thing, isn’t it, grief is a form of love?
Yeah! There's one character in the play, he's an American guy, he told this amazing story, this analogy of love. He said it reminded him of his hometown. He lives in one of those cold American, like Minnesota, type places. He said icicles develop on rooftops, and you go out on your front porch and people get killed because the icicles fall, and they get impaled. It's insane, another freak-of-nature thing that happens.
And he likens love to that, in a sense, that you've got to go out of your house, right? At some point, you know, you've got to leave, you gotta step out onto the porch … and that's like love ... You know that it might one day end in sorrow because you're going to have to maybe lose this person at some point, but we all go through it because we know how beautiful this thing can be … You know how beautiful it can get. And then, even the sorrow and the grief can be beautiful, too, because that's all part of it. You’re so right, grief is part of the love, but it’s so worth it.
What do you hope audiences take away from Love Stories? Oh, beautiful question. I hope they drive home and are reminded of everything they already knew about love. And then, just honestly, wake up the next morning and there's a phone call that they've been needing to make that they've been putting off, or if there's a hug they've been needing … to go and get that sh-t done. You know what I mean? And just remember that beautiful thing that nothing's lost. There's everything to be gained and … I really believe that it does that, this play. We're trying to just remind people of everything they already know.
Trent Dalton's Love Stories
WHEN THU 2 OCT, 10.30AM | FRI 3 OCT, 7.30PM | SAT 4 OCT, 2PM & 7.30PM
AT AANT CENTRE
COST $45-$85
INFO yourcentre.com.au
