From The Age, Tuesday 28^th of April, 1992 by Mike Daly

JENNY Kemp is hardly the embodiment of an other‑worldy persona. This intriguing writer/director fit‑looking, diet‑conscious and fortysomething ‑ talks with relish about her morning bike‑rides along the beachfront from St Kilda to the Melbourne Theatre Company's South Melbourne rehearsal studios.

And she cheerfully discusses her interpretation of the flowering of love and passion in Marivaux's 'The Game of Love and Chance, a classic French comedy of early 18th Century manners which opens tonight at the Russell Street Theatre.

Yet Jenny Kemp, who wrote and directed 'Call of the Wild' for the 1989 Melbourne Festival, can pull you up with a mental jolt. "I have a sense of displacement or spiritual alienation within these limes," she says. "Perhaps the balance between the inner and outer world is not right ‑ as though they are cut adrift and must exist separately from each other."

Ms Kemp believes modern society has a corrosive, anti‑metaphysical trait that eats away at creative instincts. "A very dangerous split has occurred," she says. "People don't remember their dreams and they tin not have the time to look inwards and ask questions about self."

To redress the balance, she has reacted by focusing on her own relationship with that inner world: "Humans have no amazingly rich resource within the subconscious and that archetypal world from which mythology and dream have emerged.

"There is the conscious, conditioned mind and the 'other', which I feel can inform the conscious, conditioned mind tremendously and even offer guidance. But our culture doesn't encourage it. Unlike the traditional Aboriginal culture, for example, where the world of dream is incredibly connected to their everyday Life. The more I can live with that world closely connected to my daily life the better feet."

Jenny Kemp also acknowledges belong strongly influenced by the abstract art of her late father, Roger Kemp. "I was continually looking at an abstract world being organised into a frame, full of tension and of 'chinks ' through to another world or another expression of energy," she says. "In fact, for several years I gave up theatre and did a tot of drawing. But it felt too solitary."

Do writer and director meet somewhere: or are they two separate Jenny Kemps?

"I was an established director long before I got seriously involved in writing, and I worked a lot on actor processes," says Ms Kemp. "So I have a feeling the two meet a lot, except that every time 1 do something I learn and grow.

"Certainly by going into my own work and finding out what I think and feel given me a stronger perspective. From the point of view of technique, perhaps the creativity of writing has released me a bit an a director,

"But writing comes from a different place ‑ It's a cane of sitting down and not knowing what's going to come out. Once all the writing's done, I shift gear completely to direct It."

And directing other people's work requires another shift of gear. 'The Game of Love and Chance' follows the confused relationships of a young man and woman and their personal servants after they secretly swap roles. Marivaux's comedy, which pairs Tammy McCarthy with Peter O'Brien, and Allson Whyte with Ernie Gray, sets both class and gender at odds, with what Jenny Kemp describes as "emotional subtlety and an incredible courage for that time".

She is fascinated by the way the play depicts the female voice struggling within a rigid patriarchal society, and "to realise that in the late 20th Century women are still in that position ‑ in a patriarchal society struggling to have some autonomy.

"Marivaux was the first to write seriously for women. The female parts are both very strong, although within that societal and gender conditioning it would he virtually impossible to fall in love with the wrong person. There are quite a tot of interesting levels: the play within a play; the comedy; and the romantic drama.

"The play is about bridled and unbridled passion. One listens for how the passions struggle through the formal language and this creates a very interesting tension in the play."

Jenny Kemp has written a new play, 'Blood Dreaming', and is awaiting a project grant to develop it for the stage. "It examines the processes of memory and dream, and demonstrates the problem‑solving capacities within the psyche," she says.

It examines the way a young woman deals with a traumatic event, a rape, and her unfolding response over a period of time. "It is a positive play." she says. "I'm interested in her psyche and what is it doing with the trauma, coming to terms with it. How are the dream and psychic life inside one able to repair and heal damage."