Heartbreaking : Rush just announced divorce over his own……

And then I became aware of the work of Jan Svankmajer. And the brothers Quay wanted me to be in something at one point that I couldn’t do, sadly. So, when I came here with my kids, we went to the Black Theatre of Prague in ’98. You’d go and see Yellow Submarine; they would do The Beatles, and you’d go, “This is insane. This is great.” And then I did a workshop with [mime legends Bolek] Polivka and [Ctibor] Turba. And they were telling me how, during the [communist] regime here, the censors would come in and say, “You can do your show for us but with all the lights on.”

When I was in amateur theater in Brisbane, while I was still at university, there were great [Czech] plays to do, such as the [satirical Karel and Josef] Capek play The Insect Play. I was in that, and I felt that was my first entree into Eastern European writing.

I went onto ChatGPT or whatever it is called and said, “Write a Shakespearean sonnet containing this as the theme.” Now, if I’d been clever, I would have said, “I want a balance of language, I want patterns, I want wordplay. I want rhymes and everything you need to do.” But it just started spewing out stuff. And what it spewed out was what someone in year eight might write as a poetry exercise. It wasn’t terribly impressive.

It just feels like it’s just rapid-fire collating. But we’ll see. You never know. Everyone’s sort of speculated about the mechanical aspect of post-, post-, post-industrial society.

Because you mentioned newspapers, I want to ask you about a tricky subject. There was this period where you faced horrible allegations of “inappropriate behavior.” You sued the newspaper company and won a payout for defamation. You also got the Karlovy Vary award here at the fest two years ago and now you are here as a juror. Do you feel you have put this all in the past and can focus on your career again?

I had faith in the justice system. I had a reason to sue. The court acknowledged the result. But it was a chunk out of my life. Up until then, I had a, I suppose, a very satisfying momentum of a 45-year career where I was regularly working. And that came to a bit of an abrupt halt. But now I can move forward.