“The scenes about incontinence and impotence are the funniest scenes in the play. The impotence scenes have them rolling in the aisles.”
“I am impotent!” declares the man on the stage wearing a dressing gown. He is in the bedroom, addressing his wife. “Bring it out in the open; don’t whisper it! I am not the man I was; but I am the
man I am going to be. …And from what I gather, I nearly was the man that wasn’t going to be!”
The audience laughs at this but roars at the next line, delivered with grim optimism: “Life without sex might be difficult; but sex without life is impossible!”
It’s a scene from the play, For Better, For Worse, and the man speaking is distinguished veteran actor and playwright, Alan Hopgood.
You know Alan Hopgood. You recognise his face immediately. Among his movie credits, he’s also the guy who played Dr Matthew Reed in the 1960/70s serial, Bellbird. He created and played ‘Wally’ Wallace in the 70s-80s serial, Prisoner; and in the mid-80s he was Jack Lassiter in Neighbours.
But what shot Hopgood to early fame and enduring success was his first commercial play for the Melbourne Theatre Company in 1963, And the Big Men Fly. It put AFL football on our cultural map, spawned a 70s TV series of the same name and remains a classic text, alongside works by Oscar Wilde and Shakespeare, on the high school drama syllabus in most states.
He also wrote the risqué 1973 comedy feature film, Alvin Purple. It broke all previous box office records for an Australian film and brought stardom for lead actor, Graeme Blundell.
A life changer
Hopgood is 80 now and while he doesn’t have any regular gigs
on long running soapies, he’s busy with a different sort of mission.
“I was an active playwright and actor when I was hit with the cancer,” he explains, referring to the prostate cancer first picked up during a routine blood test when Hopgood was not yet 60.
“It was a life changing experience – not just physically but for my career,” he says.
The play, For Better, for Worse, was the first step in that career change. It is a play about a man coming to terms with his identity, his masculinity and his mortality, in the face of prostate cancer. Hopgood wrote it three years after his own diagnosis and treatment.
Prompted by his surgeon, he had already written a book about his experiences with the cancer, his treatment and its aftermath. Surviving Prostate Cancer – One Man’s Journey, published by Random
House, was no best seller, he admits, but it led to Hopgood speaking at scores of men’s health nights and cancer information events, as well as medical conferences, giving the patient’s experience and perspective.
In this very different role, the idea for a play began to germinate and, being a ‘delicate subject’, he says, it seemed important to be able to laugh. “So the play had to be a comedy.”
“Since it was my own experience I was writing about,” says Hopgood, “I felt I had permission to write it as a comedy and permission to make jokes about these things.”
“And that’s what makes it work. The scenes about incontinence and impotence are the funniest scenes in the play. The impotence scenes have them rolling in the aisles.”
Meeting a need
But For Better, for Worse is more than just an entertaining play. For Hopgood, the play was a way to get some of the topics out in the open; but his intention was to follow the performances with a discussion forum.
It became clear, he says, that there was a hunger not just for knowledge, but for a comfortable space and place for men and their partners and family members to talk openly, share their experiences and fears and get informed answers to their questions.
Typically the experts might include a local GP or urologist and another expert from a support group. Hopgood himself joins in and often the other actors too.
Hopgood believes the play speaks to people in a way that doctors and traditional sources of information alone can’t achieve. The accompanying forum with health professionals provides the practical information, local support contacts and the opportunity to build relationships with other men and their families facing the same questions and concerns.
The Cancer Council of Victoria stepped up as the initial sponsor of For Better, For Worse but it has gone on to be hosted by a wide range of consumer and health advocacy groups as well as local and state governments right around Australia.
The success of For Better, for Worse, didn’t go unnoticed and soon there were requests for plays on other topics. In 1997, Hopgood established a repertory theatre company in response. It is called HealthPlay.
Eighteen years on, HealthPlay’s repertoire has grown to include 11 plays, all based on the real life experiences of real people. While they are deliberately single-act plays, Wicked Widows and The Empty Chair – a play about dementia – have been given a second act so they can be staged as full-length productions.
The Carer, a one-man play about a widower, George Parker, finding his feet after losing his wife to Alzheimer’s disease was made famous by the late Charles ‘Bud’ Tingwell, who toured with it widely across Australia. Since 2008, Hopgood himself has played the poignant role.
Other productions deal with diabetes [A Pill, A Pump and a Needle and Six Degrees of Diabetes], depression [My Dog has Stripes], palliative care and death [Four Funerals in One Day], late-life sexuality [Never too Old] and more recently, health service quality and patient-centred care [Hear Me]. Just this year HealthPlay has premiered a provocative new play about aged care [Do You Know Me?] that aims to improve communication between staff and residents by illustrating that every person has a story to tell.
There have been 400 HealthPlay performances over the last 18 years, in every state and territory. Hopgood says they have toured with The Flying Doctors, had support from sponsors including Diabetes Australia, Cancer Councils and Beyond Blue and have performed their plays in school halls, mess halls, community centres and even hospital waiting rooms.
Hopgood still does some film and television and other theatre work (they reprised his old Neighbours character, Jack Lassiter, for one episode in 2013) but it is HealthPlay and “knowing that so many people have benefited from my work,” that gives Hopgood his greatest sense of pride.
“The best tribute I’ve had was when I was doing a tour in South Australia. The van we were travelling in broke down and we had to hire a local school bus. And the driver of the bus said to me later, you saved my life. He said he had seen a performance of the cancer play and had gone off to his doctor the next day and that discovery and treatment meant he was still alive, still there that day.”
This article has been adapted from an article by Keryn Curtis for the magazine of The Arts Health Institute, Spoonful in 2014.
If you are interested in hosting a HealthPlay performance, hosting requirements and booking information is available on the HealthPlay website. You can also read about each play and watch video excerpts from performances.
