‘I couldn’t have done this in my 20s’: Some of us dread ageing. For these stage actors, it makes them freer than ever

Ageing is sometimes framed a series of losses – but three acting veterans navigating stunts and long monologues reveal a more complex and moving approachGet our weekend culture and lifestyle emailRobert Meldrum stalks the stage of the Explosives Factory in St Kilda in a long coat and hat, bewildered and buffeted by a lifetime of memories, grappling with grief and attrition in a dimming and desolate landscape. He’s not suffering from any loss of faculties; he’s simply an actor inhabiting the world of Samuel Beckett.Meldrum and his director and longtime collaborator, Richard Murphet (both in their mid-70s), are preparing to open Still, a compendium of six monologues cobbled from the Irish writer’s later works. While it speaks to universal themes of resilience and despair, it also captures the experience of any ageing actor who puts their body through the nightly rigours of stage work. As Beckett says in his 1953 novel The Unnamable, “ … you must go on. I can’t go on. I’ll go on.” Continue reading...

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