Rising star Max Rinehart returns to the stage with Love To Love To Love You, the very same play that got him noticed and gave him his screen debut as a young Dominic Cooper in Catherine Hardwicke’s upcoming new film Miss You Already.
What’s the story behind Love To Love To Love You?
Love to Love to Love You is the brain child of Florence Keith-Roach who wrote, directs and acts in it. She brought together a collection of actors to bring her play to life in June of last year. We were only meant to have done a short run but someone asked us to bring it to Edinburgh Festival and now we’re doing it at the Vault Festival in Waterloo too. This play keeps coming back into our lives and we joke we’re still probably going to be doing this into our old age! We all relish performing in the world Florence has created. It’s funny, dramatic, there’s dancing and a great soundtrack, everything you want in a play so I don’t know if I’d mind!
All the characters seem so mercenary in it. Is sex really just a transaction these days?
There aren’t many plays that effectively deal with sex, especially in a way our generation experience it. For the first time we are exposed to Internet pornography and apps like Tinder. The line between sex and intimacy has never been more blurred. I feel like Love to Love to Love You deals with the fall out from this.
When Schnitzler wrote the plays La Ronde and Eyes Wide Shut almost one hundred years ago he seemed to think of sex as a transaction.
I think if you look throughout history there has always been that element to sex. The classic example being the Ancient Greeks and how they viewed it, having a slave boy to use as they wish, those kinds of things you read about and I would hope we are more civilised now. But then you read about the disgusting Dolphin Square scandal and that theory completely breaks down. I think women are beginning to have more say when it comes to sex and you can’t say that’s happened before. But if gender roles are being broken down I don’t know what’s replacing them. I’ve used Tinder, had one night stands but are they satisfying in the long run? Definitely not. I think having access to sex in terms of attitudes towards it’s probably the most open it’s ever been, for both men and women. Whether we’re happier because of it I’m not so sure and this is exactly what the play confronts.
Your training was unusual.
I knew about this acting studio that was beginning, set up by a group of ex Drama Centre teachers. The other drama schools were never an option. I couldn’t afford them. Plus I wanted to try something different. All their ex students were actors I find fascinating to watch so the decision was easy. We didn’t have a building to work in for the first six months since we were the first group of the course so we had to make do with this abandoned school which didn’t have any heating, mice scurrying along the edges of the room. Not ideal conditions for a Movement class in December but it just meant we just had to focus more.
How did you go from this play to acting in the new Catherine Hardwicke film Miss You Already?
An agent saw me in the first run of the show and signed me. Miss You Already was the first audition he gave me. i suppose there are some similarities. I have sex in both of them. Typecast already! But that’s where it stops. Miss You Already is a very tender, funny film celebrating friendship and I play a younger version of Dominic Cooper’s character who is married to Toni Collette. We show their relationship in the first stages and as i mentioned we hit it off instantly.
Catherine Hardwicke is famous for her handling of young masculine talent. Did she live up to the hype?
She was incredible. Especially having someone like her on my first film. She made it very easy for me to do my job. Such a great creative energy and so caring towards her actors. You leave the set at the end of the day and you’re buzzing. I just wished to spend more time with her.
How do you see the selfie addiction phenomenon affecting the way we interact sexually these days?
A friend of mine’s fourteen year old daughter showed me her Instagram the other day. I was a little taken a back at how every single moment that you naturally go through at that age is documented. Parties, drinking, boyfriends all were on this public account. So it’s probably something that affects teenagers growing up now. I only use Facebook. None of the other things. I find it too stressful. Worrying about Likes and all that. No thanks. The danger is that it can go too far and you show too much and then its documented forever. But on the other hand I would have loved to have seen all the stuff I used to get up to. I can’t remember most of it!
Is it the death of intimacy or the beginning of a new form?
Probably more than anything that is what you tackle most when you’re in your twenties. I think to achieve a certain level of intimacy you have to know yourself first. To be able to give yourself over. It’s the chicken or the egg thing. Because right now I’m still trying to find out who I am. And that’s hard for anyone in their twenties. Especially when we have so many distractions. Maybe when I’m older I’ll be able to tell you. Hopefully it won’t be too late!
Interview & photography by Andrea Vecchiato
Grooming by Gloria Penaranda
Love to Love to Love You shows at the VAULT FESTIVAL February 25th – 1March