Michael Cox speaks with the star, writer and producer of The Six Sided Man, a theatrical interpretation of Luke Rhinehart's cult novel The Dice Man.
Michael: Now, this isn’t a new play, is it? You originally did it in 1985.
Gavin: When I wrote it, I was 24. Now I’m 48, so I am now literally the right age to play the character I originally wrote. And at the time, I thought I was acting brilliantly, but I’m sure everyone said ‘Oh how sweet, there’s a young man playing an aged psychiatrist’. The beauty of being a playwright, or someone who makes new work (rather than being a mere actor) is that you can come back to your own work. I never thought I’d come back to this, but it’s fantastic. And I’m playing the other part. But you get to bring your 25 years of maturity to the part, which is pretty unusual. Usually, you write the play and there it is. You rarely get the chance to go back.
Michael: So, what made you swap roles?
Gavin: Two reasons. One, when I had the thought that I wanted to redo it, which wasn’t to do the Festival, I wanted to work with Nick [Nicholas Collett, his co-star], and when I was casting it I thought he had to play the shrink. Second, I used to play that part, so I thought that I had to change it around, to give me a chance to play a part I hadn’t before.
Michael: Where did the inspiration come to do a stage version of The Dice Man originally?
Gavin: I have absolutely no idea how I came across the book. Probably for a plane journey. And the back of the book says that it will change your life, and it actually grabbed me. You say to yourself ‘I’ll do odds and evens; if it’s an even number I’ll stay in and if it’s an odd number I’ll go out.’ It’s so seductive, and the whole idea of someone getting seduced by it to the point that [the dice] rules them and the abdication of responsibility; the freedom to do whatever you like because the dice told you.
Michael: Did Luke try to influence you or the play?
Gavin: Not at all. The play is inspired by the book; it isn’t ‘the book’. I took the idea of it and I’ve woven something completely different around it. I didn’t get the copyright or seek permission, I just did it.
So when I wanted to redo it, I’d gotten older and wiser and decided to check. I met Luke and asked his permission. He thought it looked great and sounded great and, when we showed it to him in Britain, he thought it was fantastic. He then took care of getting all of the permission, writing to the publisher and telling him that I had his permission, and he vented all of that, which was helpful. And what he liked about it was that we didn’t do the book! He actually liked that we took the central theme and made it something that works for a two-hander in one setting. And a lot of the comedy. I was really happy that he liked it.
Michael: Society has changed, in some ways drastically, since you first staged the show. How does that change reflect the way audiences perceive it nowadays?
Gavin: We have more people coming up to us after the show wanting to talk about the idea, so I think [the concept] impacts people in a deeper way, and I think that people get more grabbed by the idea now. The other thing is that a lot of the people coming are not young people. They’re people who are open to...they see what we’re saying. I think there’s something about the darkness of it. Maybe it’s a darker play for darker times. It’s a recession, and people are a bit unhappy, a bit less safe than they were. Jobs aren’t as well paid or as easy to come by, and I think that this whole thing suggests that maybe everything is a little more shaky deep down than we thought, and I think it resonates on some kind of intuitive level.
Michael: And how about yourself? How does the material resonate now in comparison with before?
Gavin: I think I’m more cynical than I used to be, in as much that it seems to me that crime does pay and that life doesn’t reward the good and punish the bad. So, as a more aware person in that way, that’s how I’ve changed. I don’t mean that I now go out and rob banks, but I don’t blame people now as I might have pointed the finger before. I think that we now know that authority is not all good and doesn’t always want to look after its citizens. So, I think there’s room for more six-sided men.
Michael: Have you even been tempted to play with dice?
Gavin: Oh God yes. It’s that kind of book—you want to do it. In the original production, there were three people, two actors and a tech, and the dice decided who played each role. As an actor, it was horrible and we thought that it didn’t make a difference and thought that the audience probably thought it was fixed any way. Then there’s the radio interview we did in Australia, where the dice not only dictated who answered a question but whether or not the answer was the truth or a lie. At first the interviewer thought it was funny but she soon lost it.
Michael: My last question is more of an open-ended one. In all these years of doing this play, is there a question you haven’t been asked or a point you’d like to freely make?
Gavin: Well, a question that keeps coming up, even though I don’t understand the reason, is: why do you make theatre? The answer is I can’t do anything else. Because I do. Because I have to. Because I have ideas, and they have to be out there. I’ve tried to stop. I think everyone who hits 40 goes ‘am I doing the right thing?’ and ‘should I be doing something else?’ And every time I ask that question, I come up with the answer: well, it doesn’t matter if you think you should be doing something else, this is what you do, buddy.
The Six Sided Man performs at The Zoo on August 7, 9, 12, 14, 16, 19, 21, 23, 25, 27 and 29 at 12.30.
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