MATT ZEREMES ON 'THE BULL'

23.05.13

The Bull star Matt Zeremes tells us exactly how he feels working on this epic, romantic love story.

When theatre is great it’s the best. When it sucks – death by overexposure to dog poo would be preferred. The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars has been a real joy.  The process has been really challenging – 80 pages of complex dialogue and only two actors. This was one of the things that initially attracted me to the project. As well as working with Lee. I think she is a wizard.

What Lee has been able to bring to this piece is nothing short of extraordinary. I imagined two actors standing still for 80 minutes reading in a semi seductive, Mills and Boon voice with very little else happening on stage. But Lee has created a rich, visceral world in which Gods, shitty resorts, love, art classes full of old ladies, museums and lurking monsters can and do exist! I’d never done a two hander and hadn’t really worked with such beautifully dense and layered text either. I thought it was time to step it up!

I feel a great sense of responsibility working on The Bull, as it is just Silvia and I. It’s up to us to make the show work every night. No excuses. Maybe a few years ago I would have shied away from this but now these are the kind of opportunities that get my ‘creative weiner’ throbbing. All of the team involved have contributed beautifully and given Silvia and I the foundations to weave our magic every night. It’s a true joy  – in 80 minutes I get to fall in love, have sex like I’m Superman… or Demolition Man depending on the night, tell some jokes, rap some Beastie Boys and bring a smoking septuagenarian to climax…to name a few.

The real joy for me is watching the smiles from the audience as Marion and Mark move towards their first kiss. Their beaming faces, clearly remembering their own special moments from their own lives… it is seriously feel-good. And making people feel good is like a drug – a really, really good one! This is one of the reasons I love what I do. Of course we don’t always get to do this… we live in a world where we are bombarded with bad stuff. Often, outings to the theatre simply remind of us of all the negativity in the world and we can walk away feeling lower than when we walked in. The Bull, the Moon and the Coronet of Stars bucks this trend. I have about three spare seconds in a day, juggling work, kids, marriage, picking up after Napoleon, my poodle who poos all over my pavers in the backyard. The daily grind of life stresses me out. It gets on top me at times. But it’s great to get to go to work, tell this story and head home feeling lighter and more optimistic about the world then when I walked though the door.