From the Herald Sun, Extra 8 section, 20 October 2008.
Catherine McClements is living life in the rush hour, writes Sally Bennett.
Life is sweet when you're Melbourne actor Catherine McClements.
Striking beauty and sucsessful career aside, this mother of two knows how to take what comes and look on the bright side. McClements is a woman without a plan, preferring to tread a haphazard career path driven by intriguing roles, rather than the pursuit of fame and fortune. It's a laid-back attitude that's helped life pan out nicely.
At age 43, an age where strong female roles once started to run dry, McClements is in the middle of a career boom. She's just wrapped up the first season of TV cop show, Rush, is part-way through new Showtime family drama Tangle, and is about to star in Appetite, a stage production in this year's Melbourne International Arts Festival. "I was doing Rush and Tangle and Appetite all at the same time, so it was really full-on. You suddenly get offered these roles that you cannot turn down and you just make it work," McClements says.
"I started working when Quincy, my second child, was about two weeks old, so he just came along for the ride. You have nannies and I think I was making negative money at that stage, because you're working in theatre, but you just do it and they (children) benefit from it in a way."
McClements, a NIDA graduate, previously best known for her roles in Water Rats and The Secret Life of Us, is a stage actor at heart with a long list of theatre credits to her name. Hence her attraction to Appetite. The story of a sucsessful woman on the eve of her 39th birthday, this is the latest production from contempory dance company KAGE, headed by Kate Denborough, in collaboration with playwright Ross Mueller and female vocalist New Buffalo. Appetite's defining feature is that it blurs the line between dance and theatre. It's a dance production with a script, professional actors and dancers who also act.
"I think the piece is really gorgeous. There are so many creative elements," McClements says. "It has its own language which is bigger than the sum of its parts. That's what I love about it; every element adds something. The dancers have a lot to say. There's a lot of really difficult and deep dialogue so they haven't been spared at all. Fortunately, I don't dance."
Denborough, the creative mind behind Appetite, says it is the firs time she has collaborated with a playwright and rates it as her most ambitious work yet. She says though Eurpoean companies have a long history of combining theatre and dance, Australia is only starting to embrace the trend. "I'd like to think that performance makers in this country will continue to challenge and extend the boundries of what contemporary performance can be," Denborough says. "I think audiences will love Appetite. It is incredibly accessible and funny and outrageous."
For McClements, working with creative people to produce interesting work is what the performing arts is all about. "I have managed to cross paths with every creative person in Australia and as an actor that's what you need. You can't do it by yourself," she says. "There is no pinnable, in terms or theatre or television or films. One is no better than the other and each has its own incredible dynamic."