When theatre director Lee Lewis was in her 20s, she found another woman's earring on her bathroom floor. She asked her then-boyfriend about it, and he told her it was probably the cleaner's.
It wasn't. The earring belonged to a woman her boyfriend was secretly in a relationship with. Lewis didn't find out until six months after they broke up.
"I thought it was all my fault that we'd broken up. But no, he's been living a whole other life, with a whole other person, and it made sense of so much stuff," she says.
"It took me a long time to forgive my younger self. I thought of myself as really stupid. And then I was like, no, people are really good at deceiving you, and you just have to choose to trust people still."
Her ex-boyfriend's deception — and her complicated feelings about it — have fed into Lewis's latest production, Gaslight, which opens at Queensland Theatre this week before touring the country.
"Having lived it, I wanted to put all of that knowledge into something, to kind of detail it," Lewis says.
What's in a word?
It can sometimes feel like we've hit saturation point for the term"gaslighting".
Merriam-Webster's word of the year for 2022, it's defined as "psychological manipulation … that causes the victim to question the validity of their own thoughts, perception of reality, or memories".
From recent reports of medical gaslighting — where doctors dismiss people's symptoms or pain (endometriosis is an all too common example) — to modern dating culture, gaslighting has become pervasive.
The term stems from the play Gaslight, a 1938 thriller by English writer Patrick Hamilton, which was later turned into an Oscar-winning movie starring Ingrid Bergman.
The play's protagonist Bella is convinced by her husband Jack that her increasing paranoia and anxiety, evidenced by her sense that the gaslight in their home is dimming of its own accord, are signs that she is going mad. But a friendly detective leads her to understand she's not crazy after all.
The version of the show opening in Brisbane this week is adapted by Canadian writers Johnna Wright and Patty Jamieson, and stars Geraldine Hakewill (Julius Caesar, Ms Fisher's Modern Murder Mysteries) and Toby Schmitz (The Seagull,Boy Swallows Universe).
The new adaptation excises the detective character and gives Bella a sense of agency, which is part of what drew Hakewill to the role.
"I grew up on fairytales and stories that really centred female protagonists as still requiring some kind of assistance to achieving their liberation, usually from a man," she says.
"It's really important to have these stories where women are forced or encouraged to find their freedom, even within a really restrictive situation.
"I remember someone telling me years ago, 'No-one's coming to save you,' and being so disappointed in that. Because so often you're like, 'Oh, f***, but why not? It would be so good if someone came and saved me from this situation, or from myself.'"
It feels cathartic to play Bella, she says: "I like having to save myself every night. I think it's gonna teach me some good life lessons."
The most challenging role
Gaslight marks Hakewill's return to the theatre for the first time in more than two years. She was last on stage in Julius Caesar at Sydney Theatre Company in November 2021.
Since then, she's had a baby with her partner, fellow actor Mark Leonard Winter, and co-produced his feature film directorial debut, The Rooster (starring Hugo Weaving).
With Gaslight, she's about to embark on almost nine months of touring, juggling her career with the demands of motherhood.
"Theatre felt like the right thing [for my first job back]," she says. "You get your days once you're performing, and that's quite good in terms of having a kid. And he gets to run around backstage in all these theatres around the country, which is really special."
Hakewill credits Winter, who is travelling with her for much of the run,and the team behind Gaslight for supporting her return to the stage.
"Everyone's just been very aware from the get-go that I need to have space in my life to be able to parent. And that that comes first," she says.
"Across the board, it feels like there is a bit of a change towards trying to make [the theatre] more family-friendly."
Cleansing rituals
Gaslight deals with difficult content, including themes of psychological manipulation and coercive control. But Hakewill is confident she'll be able to manage it.
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"I'm not of the belief that I have to injure myself emotionally, physically or otherwise for my work. I don't think that's sustainable or healthy," she says.
"I haven't really felt too broken up by it yet. I think if I was younger, I'd be like, 'Oh my God, does that mean I'm not doing a good job?' And now I just go, 'Oh no, that's what acting is. That means you are doing your job.'"
Hakewill puts her ability to do that down to her training at Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts in Perth. While studying there, she performed in a student production of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. Her director encouraged the cast to find a talisman to wear during shows and take off at the end of the day. They burned their talismans at the end of the season.
For Gaslight, Hakewill plans to switch out her character's wedding ring for her own after each show, to help her leave the play in the theatre.
"It's a good marker of, 'OK, you're leaving work now and you're going home to be you,'" she says.
Even though it's an old play, the difficult subject matter — and the thoughtfulness and care with which it's handled —makes Gaslight feel so vital in 2024.
Lewis says it's important to keep telling stories that shine a light on the issues Australia is facing.
While the federal government has introduced new initiatives — worth $589.3 million — as part of a national plan to end violence against women and children, the statistics around domestic violence remain grim: On average, one woman a week is murdered by her current or former partner.
"When people stop killing women, I'll stop telling these stories," Lewis says.
"Because part of the job is, how do you keep the problem front and centre in a society that's got a lot of problems? How do you keep that in our consciousness?"
Gaslight runs until March 3 at Playhouse, Queensland Performing Arts Centre, before touring to Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Newcastle and Sydney.
