At a rehearsal of the production that’s destined to be one of the hits at this year’s Brisbane Festival, there is a lot of love in the room. Which is as it should be.

After all, this is a rehearsal for Trent Dalton’s Love Stories, a collaboration between QPAC and Brisbane Festival.

It will have its world premiere season in QPAC’s Playhouse, from September 9 to 29.

Adapted for the stage by Tim McGarry, with additional writing and story by Trent Dalton and his wife Fiona Franzmann, the production is directed by Sam Strong.

If that team sounds familiar, it should, as this is the team that brought us the stage adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe at Brisbane Festival in 2021.

So, yes, they are getting the band back together again.

In a rehearsal space at Woolloongabba, the now Melbourne-based Strong, a theatrical maestro and former artistic director of Queensland Theatre, is directing traffic on stage with a smile on his face.

Nearby sits one of the stars, Michala Banas, with Franzmann. The two became close friends during Boy Swallows Universe, in which Banas played Frankie, largely based on Dalton’s mum.

Now Banas is playing Wife, based on Franzmann, and the bond between the pair seems close. They look like besties watching the actors revolve around the stage. The role of Husband is played by Jason Klarwein.

Banas is offstage for this scene. While some of the actors play multiple roles, Banas and Klarwein stick to theirs, Husband and Wife, a couple based on Dalton and Franzmann, but not slavishly so.

“She’s playing a version of me which we are calling Wife,” Franzmann explains when we catch up in a break in rehearsals. “We’re trying to tap into universal issues.”

The play, based on Dalton’s best-selling book Love Stories, is, to a degree, a baring of the soul for Franzmann and Dalton who have mined their relationship for material. Dalton is used to this. He wears his heart on his sleeve and in his words.

To write Love Stories Dalton collected other people’s stories. The author of Boy Swallows Universe spent two months on a Brisbane street corner with his Olivetti typewriter asking people from all walks of life the simple question: “Can you tell me a love story?”

The result was an exploration of love, in all its guises, which fast became a tonic for a pandemic. It went on to win Book of the Year at the 2022 Indie Book Awards.

With the success of the stage adaptation of Boy Swallows Universe still fresh, Dalton and the creative team started talking about bringing Love Stories to the stage.

They spoke to Brisbane Festival artistic director Louise Bezzina, who embraced the project.

“When they came to see me, I could see the phenomenal potential of this show and immediately wanted to see it brought to life,” Bezzina said.

But how to tie all the disparate stories together?

“Trent’s’ memory is that it was my idea to have this couple’s narrative to do that,” Franzmann explained.

“But I would never willingly put myself into the narrative. The idea was to base it on our relationship but, I said, do we have to do that? I said yes, if I could have some creative input.”

They discussed the idea with McGarry and Strong, then Dalton and Franzmann set to work at their kitchen table.

It made sense for them to write together. Both are experienced journalists, after all.

“We just wrote reams of stuff,” Franzmann said. “Then we honed it down. People often say to me, ‘I couldn’t work with my partner’. But Trent and I started out working together at Brisbane News and we work well together.

“We spark off each other and it’s fun … fun to write dialogue together, husband-and-wife dialogue … what you could say but maybe haven’t said. And then you can put that in a play.”

This makes it all the more tantalising for Trent Dalton fans who will get even more of an insight into his life although, as with Boy Swallows Universe, it will be hard to discern fact from fiction.

Watching the rehearsal is like a masterclass, considering the theatrical talent in the room.

Strong is the consummate professional. He worked closely with Dalton, Franzmann and McGarry adapting the work for the stage.

Choreographer and movement director is Nerida Matthaei, associate director is Ngoc Phan, set and costume designer is Renee Mulder while Ben Hughes is doing lighting design, Craig Wilkinson is video designer and Stephen Francis is composer and sound designer.

This is basically your A-Team in theatrical terms (largely the one that worked on Boy Swallows Universe) with Banas and Klarwein leading the cast.

Rashidi Edwards plays the narrator Jean-Benoit, a Belgian busker who befriends the writer and will set the scene from his corner of the world on Adelaide and Albert streets in Brisbane’s CBD.

The ensemble cast includes Kimie Tsukakoshi, Jeanette Cronin, Mathew Cooper, Bryan Probets, Harry Tseng and dancers Jacob Watton and Hsin-Ju Ely. Director Strong says movement is central to the piece.

“Any work this creative team makes is ferociously detailed and tightly choreographed,” Strong explained. “There are some movement sequences, with the ensemble telling the story together, that pushes it towards contemporary dance at times.”

Strong is relishing being back in Brisbane and back in the rehearsal room after a couple of years away from the theatre working in government at Creative Victoria.

His last theatrical gig was actually directing Boy Swallows Universe, so the segue to this play is satisfying for him.

Finding a “uniquely theatrical” way of telling the story was a challenge but he thinks they have achieved this. Being faithful to the words of the people in the book has been important. Some of those people have been into the rehearsal room and met the actors who will play them.

Strong is full of admiration for Dalton and Franzmann being “so open and courageous”.

Banas admits she feels a certain sense of responsibility playing a character based on someone who is now a good friend.