Carl Caulfield creates his own karma over a good cup of coffee

Hello Carl Caulfield. He's that somebody.

One of Newcastle's best known playwrights and a teacher of the dramatic arts, he's also a prolific coffee drinker - at home but also in the cafe scene.

Sprocket. Rolador. The Press Book House. Goldbergs. And points in between. They were not so much a second home as a head office, where the creative juices flow while people watching. Musing, as he calls it. Ideas percolating. Writing, thinking, pondering, imagining. Sometimes taking the obvious observation and expanding it by fiction.

As a Cooks Hill resident, he doesn't really wander far from home.

It was early January when we sat in Goldbergs on Darby Street, in the main dining room, in the middle of the room, near the wall.

"I've often sat here, and just looked at that [Caulfield nods to the streetscape outside the cafe]," he says. "It is not unlike a theatre. That is not unlike a proscenium arch [he says of the building frame]."

Once he's called my attention to it, the vision is clear. From the inside, the world outside is the stage. But from the outside, the cafe itself is the stage, and all the customers are actors in a play about life.

Caulfield's latest play, Karma Kafe, was conceived from Caulfield's observations. The play will debut at the Civic Playhouse in October, one of four plays written by local playwrights that feature in the City of Newcastle's Upstage at the Playhouse program in 2024.

"Most of the characters are fictional, but I've been inspired by things I've observed in the cafes," he says.

But as one might expect from Caulfield, he takes his characters beyond their ordinary lives.

"The other idea in my mind - I've been thinking for a long time, in an abstract way, about having a crack at writing a musical, because I'm one of those playwrights that doesn't like to keep writing the same kind of play," he says.

"And that would be a good way to create a drama where you have characters coming in and out of the cafe. But also you find out about them through the dreams they have, and you find out more about them through songs."

Writing a musical is new territory for Caulfield, but theatre-goers can expect the same biting humour, charm and wit they've come to know from his works. He anticipates about 13 songs all up, with lyrics by him and composition by Gareth Hudson.

As secure as the world you live in seems, that's just not the reality, even in the everyday, Caulfield says.

"It's like you always think, 'I'm in my habit, my routine and this will always be the case', but it's not. It's not going to be the case," he says. "Everything is quite fragile really. We tend to think this is going to be around forever, but that may not be the case."

A synopsis of Karma Kafe on the Civic Theatre website describes it as thus: "Karma Kafé is Newcastle's oldest café and remains fiercely independent. The owner, Rewa Golder, is a Maori woman and practising Buddhist who, with her hard-working staff (including an opera singing chef) provides a sanctuary for the city's movers and shakers, its dreamers and schemers and its eccentrics who include Bongo Joe, a homeless man who plays his bongo outside the café every morning in exchange for food (provided in the hope he'll stop)."

Looking at the bigger picture, Caulfield says, "This play is very much about community... the cafe in this play is about sanctuary. It's a sanctuary for eccentrics as well. They are tolerant people."

And therein lies the sting in the tale. In the play, a developer plans to demolish the popular café to build a flashy multiplex as part of his vision for a 'New Newy'.

Caulfield wrestled with the ending, offering up two options at an early reading of the work a few years ago. The room was unanimous about the ending it did not like. So eventually, Caulfield produced a new draft.

It's a Newcastle story, but as Caulfield notes, the situation arises everywhere.

Alongside Karma Kafe, another original production on the program is Blueberry Play, written by Ang Collins, a one-woman show that explores the highs and the lows of being a teenage girl in a small town, packed with heart, humour and nostalgia.

The Magic Hour, a dark comedy written by Vanessa Bates, is described as Little Red Riding Hood meets Trainspotting, featuring an episodic take on Grimm's fairy tales, where Jack's beanstalk grows in his parent's backyard and Rapunzel's tower is on top of a housing commission high-rise.

Romeo and Juliet reimagined by Charlotte De Wit and Pip Thoroughgood is an adaptation of the classic, seeking to bridge the gap between centuries, weaving the beauty of Shakespearean prose with the power of movement, dance and physical theatre.

Civic Theatre manager Leonie Wallace said the program will bring local shows to local audiences and highlight the creativity in our region.

"The fact all four of these productions have been written by Newcastle playwrights just shows the depth of talent we have in our city," Wallace says. "The Civic Theatre is aiming to build the capacity and exposure of our artists and to build Newcastle's reputation as a cultural capital.

"It's wonderful to see original and re-imagined productions form part of the UpStage at the Playhouse program."