Singer, stage and screen actor Lucy
Durack has starred in the musicals Wicked
and Legally Blonde, and this year is
appearing in the Noel Coward play Private
Lives.
I start most days by trying to have a moment
(without falling back to sleep; I’m not exactly a
natural morning person) where I think over the past
24 hours and what I’m grateful for in the day that has
just happened, before getting on with my day. I love
starting my day that way – it always makes for a
much more lovely day if I do that. Then I nip to the
gym with two of my best girlfriends, who are not only
great friends who I love, but also the only reason I go
to the gym more than once in a row. I’m the sort of
person who sort of needs to trick themselves into
exercise, so the reward of getting to see my buddies
(and the possibility of a quick coffee afterwards if
there is time) is good for lots of reasons!
I am currently rehearsing for the play Private
Lives at the Melbourne Theatre Company, so I’m
there most days from 10-6pm and I am LOVING it! I
am really lucky to be working with a truly fantastic
group of people and I am learning a lot. We speak
with an English accent (called Received
Pronunciation or ‘RP’) in the play. We have a really
fantastic accent coach on board, who together with
our director has decided that our rehearsal room is to
be an ‘RP zone’. So we chat all day in English
accents, even when we are chatting as ourselves, not
as our characters! It is addictive and a lot of fun!
We rehearse various scenes during the day, and
this week we have started wearing a version of our
costumes. As the play is set in 1930, our costumes are
very different to our usual 2014 rehearsal clothing –
so it is useful on a comfort level and on a character