What makes a Scenario tick?

Rebeca Fagundez | May 29th , 2011

Image courtesy of icinema.

“Don’t do this to me father. Help me!” –Chilling words spoken in Scenario.

I won’t lie. Meeting Stephen Sewell, one of Australia’s most famous playwrights in a café on the corner of
Elizabeth Street, Sydney, was a bit nerve-racking. I didn’t know what to expect.

Stephen is the writer behind the story which is being shown by Australia’s and the world’s first 360
degree, interactive, 3D cinema. The project titled, ‘Scenario’ allows the audience for the first time ever to
determine how the story will end.

‘Scenario’ will feature in this years Sydney Film Festival held in June. It sees the integration of art and
technology resulting in the conception of a new form of theatre and cinema. In light of recent
technological advancements in robotics and artificial intelligence, Scenario uses cutting edge technology
that enables the audience to completely immerse themselves in the world of dreams. The audience
becomes entirely engulfed in an artificial, futuristic world where the audience has the ability to interact
with computerised artificial intelligence to put together the scattered pieces of a gigantic computerised
baby.
Highly opinionated, yet friendly, 58 year old Stephen never set out to be a screen writer. Starting a
science degree at the University of Sydney, Stephen intended on becoming a research physicist, but
problems emerged with his degree. Stephen was only given one option from a career counselor: he could
only become a science teacher. “There is no f**king way I’m teaching”. I’ll go to plan B and become a
famous writer,” Stephen says with a laugh.

And from then on he began to write. His first play was produced when he was just 22
years old in 1975. Since then he has flourished in his career as a playwright,
screenwriter and also as an author. It is clear that Stephen has a way with his
words. He describes himself as a ‘disciplined’ writer and with all his credentials he
has to be. Every day, at approximately quarter to eight to eleven o’clock, he will sit
at his desk and write, or in some cases not write at all. “I forced myself never to get
up because it’s so easy to not write. ‘Oh I gotta do this, I’m so busy’, ‘and I’ll do this
later’. You know so many things that I know if I did, that I’ll never do it so I would sit
there and I’ll cry.” Despite this Stephen affirms me that he could start writing now
even whilst still talking to me.

Writing also for Hollywood films, his latest screenplay is set to star young Hollywood actor, Ian
Somerhalder. Most of his experience and income comes from his career as a screenwriter. But regardless
of this, Stephen prefers to be known as a theatre writer and favours the different experience of theatre.
“What’s great about theatre is that it’s not dominated by a set of conventions,” Stephen exclaims. “Film is
completely rule driven. On page 29 of a 100 page script there will be a major change, on page 50 there
will be another one, and it’s completely convention driven and if you break those rules, they won’t let you
through.” He likens this to the late 19th century expressionist movement in France whereby many
paintings by the expressionists were censored. In theatre there is much more freedom.

Despite coming across many adversities in his career as a playwright and a screenwriter, Stephen has
persisted in his chosen career and is excited to take part in something that resonates with his Australian
culture. He strongly believes that the technology behind Scenario will give Australia its technological
recognition it deserves. “…this is really high tech stuff. And high tech melded with a high cultural value.
You know like it’s not just a new car, not just a new machine. It’s a new machine opening up new cultural
visages.”

Working with the director of ‘Scenario’ and friend, Denis del Favero, the
unsettling story behind Scenario has been based to an extent on the
infamous Austrian Fritzl case where an incestuous father had imprisoned his
daughter in a basement for numerous years. “There is a continuing theme
you know throughout our culture, throughout our civilization and through
contemporary society that has to do with the violence of men against
women and children,” explains Sewell. But this chilling decision has not
come without controversy. “Fathers raping daughters and murdering
children, you know…that’s fantastic,” Sewell exclaims. This theme has a
powerful force in creating “deep resonance in a dream and a psychological
kind of literature and fairytales.” The idea of resurrection was also featured
in the story. The dismembered baby being put together is an example of
this. “The idea, I mean it appears grotesque and it undoubtedly is
grotesque, but the idea of collecting something and bringing it together in
order to revive it, in order to resurrect it. It’s actually a deep, deep myth in
our culture that we are trying to enact.” It is clear that Stephen’s work will
morally and psychologically challenge the audience.

‘Scenario’ evokes an atmosphere of dreams entering reality. It gives the audience an opportunity to
escape into dream world. As Sewell affirms, it gives you the “freedom to enter your dreams and it’s a
dream machine, it’s a machine of dreams.” “It’s an instillation and there’s 3D, and there’s artificial
intelligence and there’s avatars and all that really amounts is that it’s a completely new experience.” This
new technology allows the audience to be somewhat placed inside a film and determine in what
circumstance the film will end in. “How you engage the audience is that you create imaginary space, for
the audience to, for the audience’s unconscious, for the audience’s imagination to occupy.”

Stephen doesn’t know whether he will continue writing forever. He expresses a deep anger to those
theatre companies who reject his plays. “I’m so f**king angry, uh you know that I’m going ‘f**k this’.
There is plenty of things I can do with my life than hanging around here thinking of these f**king idiots
and giving them blah blah blah blah blah blah.” But he confesses that if he doesn’t write for three days
that he starts to feel like he is going crazy.

From one career prospect to another, Stephen never imagined that one day he would be working with this
technology as a writer. “As a creative artist it’s incredibly exciting but, exciting not so much in what I’ve
achieved, what we achieve, what we artists achieve, but excited to be part of such an amazing
technological process.”