Emotional battlefields

Jacque Drew, minus her scar makeup, and Jeff Szusterman rehearse a scene from Time Stands Still....
Jacque Drew, minus her scar makeup, and Jeff Szusterman rehearse a scene from Time Stands Still. Photo by Christine O'Connor
Playing a couple broken by their jobs as war correspondents is something real-life husband and wife Jacque Drew and Jeff Szusterman could not wait to do. Rebecca Fox discovers a couple not afraid to work together even when the going gets tough.

Jacque Drew is ''topped up'' on images of dead children and blown up bodies.

Getting into the mindset of an injured war photographer who is consumed by her work has had its drawbacks for Ms Drew.

She plays Sarah Goodwin in the Fortune's Theatre's Time Stands Still, a play by Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Donald Margulies, about Sarah and her war correspondent husband James Dodd - played by Ms Drew's real-life husband Jeff Szusterman - as they grapple with real life and the physical and mental injuries their careers have inflicted on them.

''I'm a really emotionally available person and I'm playing someone who is not,'' Ms Drew said.

''One of things I've had to do is digest way too many images of dead children and people blown up.''

As the characters identified themselves by their work covering some of the world's worst atrocities, research for the play had included watching documentaries and talking to a retired war correspondent about her experiences.

''What I see on television coming out of Syria makes me bawl my eyes out and shake on the couch and now as I sit watching that I think what would Sarah do? She'd be composing pictures.

''I'm finding Jacque's ability to digest that is very different from Sarah.''

The play looks at how the characters cope - or don't cope - being back at home.

Sarah has her leg in a brace, an arm in a sling and shrapnel wounds to the face after being hit by a landmine in the field, so is limited in what she can do, which for a driven career woman is difficult.

James is recovering from a breakdown that sent him home before Sarah but is now suddenly at her beck and call and he is trying to hold on to her.

Despite these challenges, doing the play was something Ms Drew and Mr Szusterman had always wanted to do.

They were big fans of Margulies' work, especially the way he wrote about relationships.

He often wrote plays for the ''perfect white liberal audience'' that always went to the theatre, reflecting those people ''really well'' but also challenging them, Ms Drew said.

''He's so true about the messy stuff, the hard stuff, the conflicting stuff, the complicated stuff. He is really good at putting that in front of you. That is the cunning of him.''

That approach did not give the couple any qualms about working together.

''We're quite good at it because our shorthand is quite good, we have the intimacy already - if he had to pick me up and kiss me that is not a problem; if we are going to fight we can do it without hurting or offending each other.

''It's interesting for us as a couple to explore this stuff. It's like a little therapy session.''

They have a 5-year-old daughter - conceived in Dunedin when they worked on My First Time six years ago - so when they go home at night domesticity rules.

For Ms Drew, there was another challenge.

It is her first theatre role for some time, as she has been concentrating on being a ''mom'' with some teaching and dialect coaching on the side.

''I'm not actor fit. It's like getting on a bike, I hope.

''It is precarious for me personally - there is a lot riding on it.''

Added to that was the discovery her brain composition had changed since becoming a mother, she said.

''I just multitask now; focusing on one thing is just impossible.''

As her role as Sarah required her to sit on the couch with her leg in a brace for long periods, she was struggling as her character Sarah did with being immobile.

The pair met in the United States at an acting class at Shakespeare and Company.

Ms Drew, an American, trained as a journalist and copy writer but acting won out, while Mr Szusterman is an actor from Wellington.

The pair did a long distance relationship for two years before marrying and settling in Portland, Oregon about 2000.

He quickly gained work as the 11th hour replacement for an actor in a show called Not about Heroes and won an award for it but soon fell out of love with acting and took a break.

The couple moved to New Zealand in 2004 because George Bush got elected as president again.

''Really, really we did,'' Ms Drew said.

They settled in Auckland and Mr Szusterman began acting again before taking up directing theatre and television including Shortland Street and reality shows.

He was completely happy to take his directing hat off to do Time Stands Still.

''First and foremost for me it is always about the writing and Donald Margulies is a really good writer, if not a great writer.''

Time Stands Still was a great example as it all takes place in the couple's apartment in Brooklyn.

''Yet there is the backdrop of this fantastic work these people do, the sensation and the excitement. The insane life they lead as artists and journalists but at the core we are always looking at relationships,'' Ms Drew said.

As if grappling with an injured Sarah and James, who is recovering from a mental breakdown, was not enough, Margulies added in another couple - long-time friend and colleague Richard Ehrlich (former Dunedin actor and producer Peter Hayden) and his new and much younger girlfriend Mandy Bloom (Torum Heng Detention, Path of Exile and Go Girls).

Director Lara Macgregor said there were many themes running concurrently through the play.

''This is a very optimistic and loving couple. There is immediate conflict.

''Mandy's in her 20s and holds a mirror up to Sarah. She can't quite get her head around how you stand in front of a dying person and take their photograph and challenges Sarah in this area.''

Time Stands Still is Ms Macgregor's last play as artistic director of the Fortune and one she personally wanted to direct as it reflected a lot of what was going on in society.

''It's a fantastically written piece. Donald is not produced a lot in New Zealand, which is a little odd because his plays are just great.''

Margulies is a New Yorker who lectures in playwriting at Columbia University and is a prolific playwright.

''He's a very smart man.''

On a recent trip to New York, Ms Macgregor attended one of his plays and met the man himself.

''I was very luck to meet him. I launched myself on him as you do. I had a fan moment got him to sign a copy of his latest play and let him know we were doing this.''

 

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