This week, Last Waltz Productions opens Chekhov’s Three Sisters at the Old Fitz Theatre, the second production since making their debut in 2025. The Scoop sat down with two of the company’s co-founders, Madeline Li and Clara Voda ahead of the season.
Madeline, who also in the cast, and Clara, who is directing, share how the company came to be and reflect on the timeless beauty of Chekhov. Read the full interview below.
I understand that you met at NIDA while you, Madeline, were studying Acting under Clara, who heads the Chekhov Project. What was the moment or realisation that made you think, ‘we should start a company together’?
Clara: We started to speak about it when we worked together for the first time on Three Sisters, when Maddie was in 2nd year and she was playing Irina. We started to speak about how wonderful would be to have a company, but that was just a dream.
Madeline: And then the following year after I graduated, I had done a show with the Old Fitz. Clara and I were having coffee, and I mentioned that I had this relationship with Lucy and Emma from the Old Fitz. I thought maybe we could have a coffee with them and start putting things into motion. And it just sort of went from there.
Clara: But to be honest, Maddie was the leader of this thing. I came with ideas, but Maddie was the warrior for this company.
What drew you back to Three Sisters in particular as your second production for Last Waltz?
Clara: I absolutely love Chekhov. Three Sisters is one of my favourite plays ever, and in this kind of theatre, the focus is on the actors and the story, and that is my favourite thing to do.
Madeline: We do occasionally see a Chekhov staged in Australia, but very rarely do we get to see it in the hands of someone that understands the theatre practices that they would have originally been staged in. Clara’s had a really big career in theatre and film across Europe and has worked with some of the best Russian directors of the last 50 years to last century I would say.
So it just seems like a shame to not try and apply that to a Chekhov. Especially since our last show, Dear Elena was much more niche, it was a bit of a hidden gem and much more contemporary. We thought it would be an exciting next step to go back to one of the classics and keep pushing from there.
Clara, when working on both classical and modern material, do you find your approach shifts, or is there a consistent philosophy behind your directing?
Clara: To be honest there is no big difference. My approach is very Stanislavskian. It is very based on the Eastern European school that is coming from discovering, first of all, the inner life of the actor. So the person is more important than anything. To sink into yourself and be fearless, to understand that everything is coming from your sensibility, experience, power, and vulnerability. Agnès Varda said, if you open people up, you’ll discover landscapes. I think this is my philosophy.
I’ve been all my life an actor, and I love actors, I love working with them. To be part of this kind of process, you have to be brave, you have to go deep. As Chekhov said, there is nothing new in art except talent.
Madeline: I think that was maybe the first hurdle that a lot of us in the cast had to jump over. Because oftentimes in Australia, when you’re cast in a period piece, you feel like you have to be very restricted in your movements and the way you’re expressing yourself through the character.
Because of the cultural context of this piece, it behaves very differently than an English period text. We’re not trying to pretend that we’re Russians. But it really does stem from understanding your character and the world that they exist in. You’re building from the character’s circumstances. And from that, a sense of period will immediately emerge, as opposed to approaching it as a period piece. We get to free ourselves from archetypes of the genre.
Clara: That’s why I think Chekhov is so important, because it’s universal and it’s timeless. We all have fear and hope. We are all looking for happiness.
Clara, what is something that you wish more directors understood about actors and their process?
Clara: I think directors have to love actors, and I think theatre is for actors. If you are not putting actors in the middle of the entire thing, then the show will be dry. That’s why, for example, in many Russian schools, they are actors first, working with actors in a class. And after that, only in the last years, they decide together with their teachers if they can be directors or not.
And I think that’s a very healthy approach. Because you can have a vision, you can understand the text, but if you don’t know how to work with actors, and if you don’t know how to tell the story together, then the show can be good, but it doesn’t have a heart or a soul.
I’m curious to know the story behind the company name, Last Waltz Productions.
Madeline: One of my favourite films is the Martin Scorsese documentary about the American band called The Band, and it was about their final concert together, The Last Waltz. If you watch it, it’s such an amazing display of artistic collaboration and outreach.
And it just was that universality of human emotion and how art can bring us together in that way. Their vigour as a group, and what they meant to so many people at the time they were active just spoke to me a lot. And so I proposed it as a group name, and it’s a nice, romantic name. We’ve actually managed to get a waltz in each show as sort of Easter Egg.
As a company moving forward, what kinds of stories or works are you most excited to explore in the future?
Madeline: In terms of theatre, we do have a very strong interest in Eastern European or European texts more broadly. We’re looking at doing a Scandinavian text next year. Just because you don’t necessarily get to see them in Australia very often. We also have a strong interest in going into original work. But that will probably come as we eventually delve into a bit of filmmaking.
For our first show, we had some responses where people thought that we were going for shock value. But that was not the case. We were going for a story that we thought was honest. We wanted to present it plainly and simply and not rely on any bells and whistles to hide the core of the story. And I think that’s a principle we follow in all of our work.
Clara: Yeah, and just to add on that, because of my being Romanian and coming from that world, we are not afraid of emotions, and we’re not afraid to be vulnerable. It’s not about shocking. It is about being human.
Madeline: Aside from our shows, we also hold workshops at the Fitz and film screenings as well. So if any theatre makers are interested to come along to those, keep an eye out on our socials.
Three Sisters is presented by Last Waltz Productions runs 17 April – 9 May at the Old Fitz Theatre, 129 Dowling Street Woolloomooloo NSW 2011.
Tickets: https://www.oldfitztheatre.com.au/three-sisters
Website: https://www.lastwaltzproductions.com/three-sisters
Socials: https://www.instagram.com/lastwaltzprod/
Images supplied.
