The Happiness, The Heartache - How it all Began

As the first production from Forward Roll Productions, I think it's worth documenting how it began.

So here's the story from the beautiful creator, Lulu McClatchy

" The Happiness, The Heartache was born out of a love of daytime soap operas pure and simple. I loved the over the top storylines and dramatic acting style. The fact that no story was too crazy and no costume gaudy enough. 

The Happiness, The Heartache was first performed on stage in 1996 by my sister' s  graduating class from The National Theatre Drama School,  that original production included current cast members Michelle McClatchy and Lawrence Mooney.

See if you can spot them.

We also asked Arna Pletes to join the cast, as she was so much like the character Sally Spectra.

I wrote the show as a homage to soaps, taking my favorite characters from "Days of Our Lives", "The Young and The Restless" and "The Bold and The Beautiful" as inspiration and began to create the larger than life iconic soap achetypes we have in the show today.

At first I wrote down all my favorite storyline ideas and then began to stretch them, weaving them together so each character had several stories going on at once. As it was a soap, we started the story in the middle, it had no real beginning and no ending so on stage we did the first 2 episodes in 2 acts, the show sold out in the first 2 days. We had people lining up each night wanting seats.

After the show people were asking what happened next and wanted to know how it ended. They
were hooked so I always knew I had to do something else with it. 

Fast-forward to 2010, Arna came to me and  suggested it was time. I agreed it had to be done, so I did a re-write and decided that it needed to be a TV series, the comedy comes through naturally because it’s set in the late 1980’s, it doesn’t need to be performed as a comedy for it to get laughs, the laughs are in the storylines and characterisations.
 
If you are a soap addict like me, you will probably recognise who I have modeled the characters on, if not you will definitely recognise the formula of the soap, explaining the storylines in one sentence of dialogue (just in case you missed an episode), the characters staring off into the distance or talking to themselves.

We decided to make the pilot and then try and sell it. This way the networks and production companies can see exactly what my vision of the show is without  having to explain it.  Casting it the second time around was a dream for me. I have worked with most of the actors before and know how great they are. There are also a couple of them whose work  I admired so I offered them the roles. And they have all been pretty excited about it. It's an opportunity to do something that is larger than life, to play a character completely removed from yourself.  
It's something you don’t get to play too often. With such a fun cast and crew we will be struggling to get the thing filmed without laughing, we will have to get the laughs out in rehearsals I think.

I can’t wait to share the finished product with everyone."

The Happiness, The Heartache is a joyful look back at the time when outrageous day time soap operas were king, it's a celebration - we hope you enjoy the party!