To celebrate the opening of Café Scheherazade - a new play based on Australian author Arnold Zable's book of the same name - Arnold Zable guest blogs for us reflecting on Café Scheherazade and its transition from novel to play.

This year marks the tenth anniversary of the publication of Café Scheherazade. And I’ve been invited to write a blog, marking this date and the forthcoming production of a play based upon the novel. The play has been written by Therese Radic, and directed by the talented Bagryana Popov. Like the novel, the play has been a long time in the making. My journey towards the novel began on a winter’s night in 1993 when I entered the café to talk to the owners, Avram and Masha Zeleznikow. I intended to write an article celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of the café. By the time I left I knew I had a book let alone a feature. Here was a café, named after an ancient storyteller, who told stories to save her life, and inside there were people who possessed stories that covered the length and breadth of the twentieth century, and would take more than 1001 nights in the telling.

I wrote the article. It was published in the epicure section. The novel pursued me in between various other projects, and finally saw the light of day in February 2001. In a sense however, the journey began much earlier, in my childhood. I knew the Zeleznikows. They were part of the community that I grew up in. Even then I knew something of their extraordinary tales of survival.

I have been asked many times what do I hope to see in the play. I have kept at arm’s length from the script basically, except for occasional consultation, and suggestion. But my hope is that it will reflect the spirit of the place. Especially that moment, usually on a Sunday morning, when the caffeine hit, and the ageing survivors would circulate from table to table, with their greetings, their complaints, their stories. They would spill out onto the pavement, and continue their arguments and conversations, leaning against the lampposts, or just standing there, mid footpath, oblivious of their surroundings. They were a Parliament of the Pavement. They had a solution for every problem, advice for every politician, and an opinion on any issue.

I have high hopes that this spirit will come through. A year ago, I attended a public reading of the play, performed by a group of actors, after a week of work-shopping under the direction of Bagryana Popov. From the moment the Klezmer music, led by Ernie Gruner struck up, the audience was back in the café. Back in Acland Street. Back on the roads of Siberia, the forests of Lithuania, the crowded streets of war-torn Shanghai, the back alleys of Kazakhstan, the streets of Warsaw, among many other locations. The café finally bit the dust in 2008, exactly 50 years since it was founded. It is no longer in Acland Street, but it will be back for three weeks in March, on the stage of forty-five downstairs, in Flinders Lane. Somehow fitting, since that was the garment district, the heart of the rag trade….but that’s another story.

Arnold Zable is the author of Café Scheherazade. The play runs from Tuesday 8 March to Sunday 3 April at fortyfivedownstairs, Flinders Lane, Melbourne. For more details and tickets click here.

A special Readings ticket offer is available for performances 9 – 24 March 2011: $40 full / $35 concession. Book by 23 February online or by telephone (03) 9662 9966 and quote ‘Readings’ to receive this special ticket offer. Limit of 6 tickets per transaction.