Creative Types with Virginia Trioli: April 23

This week on Creative Types, Virginia Trioli meets Marta Dusseldorp in Tasmania.

On a wild Tasmanian beach Virginia meets Marta Dusseldorp, the celebrated film, TV and stage actress, and she explains why Kingston Beach and Tasmania are so important to her and why they are now her home. But was it a big career risk to step away from the big cities? Marta says place and community are everything, stories connect her to place and she feels can’t live without telling stories through drama.

At her book-filled home among the gums, Marta shows us where her drive and incredible work ethic comes from: a childhood of ballet and acting, including her first TV work at the age of 29 in GP. She was a star of the Sydney Theatre Company and its celebrated Actors Company, but family changed everything – you can’t tuck in your kids when you’re on stage every night.

So, ten years in hugely popular episodic television followed: A Place to Call Home, Crownies, Janet King, Jack Irish. Marta recalls these years as when she “spoke more scripted words than her own”.

Then, as one of our most successful actors, a brave decision – the family moves to Tasmania. Marta shows us the exquisite 1837 Theatre Royal in Hobart, the oldest theatre in Australia and a site of several of the works of her production company, Archipelago, established with her husband Ben Winspear.

The pandemic stokes the furnace of their company, and they create many theatre works for the Hobart community and the idea for their TV show Bay of Fires is born.

9pm Tuesday on ABC.