The spirit of Almod

In the theatre programme notes for the new play based on Pedro Almodóvar’s film, All About My Mother, the playwright Samuel Adamson observes that the play’s protagonist, Manuela, is drawn towards the world of theatre by an unexpected event. Back in 1999, although I didn’t know it at the time, my own life was about to imitate Almodóvar’s art. Perhaps calling a simple trip to the cinema ‘an unexpected event’ might itself seem a touch theatrical, but little did I expect that catching a flick on a Friday night in Sydney would spark the beginning of a journey that (not unlike Manuela’s) would draw me to the world of theatre, in the guise of a West End theatre producer.

It was in the summer of 1999 that I found myself sitting in a chic art-house cinema, watching a Spanish film that had just won almost every accolade for cinema invented, completely unaware of the impact the film I was absorbing was about to have on an impressionable, aspiring soon-to-be producer.