Should you be forced to imagine a composer scoring a theatre production, what image springs to mind? A frowning man with bifocals, white and wild hair poring over sheet music and scripts? A studious music aficionado perched halfway up a theatre’s seating arena, with a notebook and a pencil. No idea? Me neither.

Theatre. It sounds so deadly serious. Frank Woodley. He sounds so…not. So it is hardly surprisingly to find that when Frank decided to write himself a stage show he thought outside the box when considering his musical accompaniment. Which is lucky, cause he ended up with Paul Mac — a man who is rarely, if ever, ‘inside the box’ if you get what I mean.

As for any preconceived notions you may have about scoring a theatre production, forget it. The music for this gem was conceived on the back seat of a Silverchair tour bus and ferried to Frank via the you-beaut-world-wide-web.

Frank had created the ‘lonely and timid’ Louie, the star of his show Possessed, who not-very-oddly falls in love with Phoebe, a feisty Irish woman. The odd bit is that Phoebe’s dead (has been for ages) and is actually possessing the hapless Louie, a la The Exorcist. Except she’s not evil. Or horrifying. I think.

So before Paul took off on his Live Your Rock Pianist Dream tour with Newcastle’s most famous exports he went to see Frank. “I hung out with Frank for a bit,” Paul tells me, “and he wanted to do the music for the show like a silent movie score.” So they listened to lots of old silent movie piano scores which Paul discovered had, “their own certain type of vibe — quite discernable flavours or emotions to them — matching the visuals.”

Frank put it to Paul that six different moods should be represented musically: “One of them was ‘jaunty’,” says Paul. “So you imagine Frank’s character jauntily walking along doing something silly, like some slapstick…I just wrote six different moods with heaps of different variations in them and then would send MP3s from around the world, down to Melbourne. They started rehearsing to the music and putting the different moods with the different actions that were happening. It was fucking so much fun!”

Paul Mac lives for fun. By continually challenging himself with new projects and genres he is ensuring that he doesn’t get bored. This is why he’s always laughing. He’s one of those people who are happy when working on something different. So he’s done the rock star thing, he’s done the dance music thing and he’s halfway through scoring a film. What was the appeal of working on a theatre production?

“It’s comedy, so you can go out the window a bit more musically. [You can] do stuff that is not a three and a half minute pop song, which I find just becomes this fucking strait-jacket. When you’re doing records, you’re conscious of, ‘Well, how long?’, ‘Is it a single?’, ‘Does it tick all these boxes?’, but doing the show with Frank meant you can do whatever you want. ‘Do these moods in whatever style you think that is’. It’s just freedom…another way of creating these feelings or headspaces but being able to express them in another form. I think that’s what I’ve been looking for, that’s why I’ve been doing all this different shit.”

Paul Mac loves talking about headspaces. What the fuck is he talking about? “I think a lot about feelings and headspaces,” Paul tries to explain when I quiz him about the creative process. Is he seeing musical ideas in colours, shapes or does it all start with a piano line?

“It’s a fucking vague term, but ‘states of mind’ I try to deal with I s’pose. I can only speak for myself, [but] I think I’m always trying to explore different [states of mind] to express.” Sounds as though the invitation to work with Frank was a perfect vehicle then. What about Paul’s own vehicle? Where’s his solo work gone?

“The stuff with Frank, [as well as the other projects he’s been involved in] will feed into where I go next. I like the idea when people look back at my timeline of what I’ve done, they can look back at the projects before it and definitely see the seed for the next project in that. Certain ideas all link back to the project before it. I like doing that, I think it’s fun. If they [listeners] do follow everything they can see the weird journey.’

Not sure that there are any trainspotters out there tracking Paul Mac’s every career move, but we are certainly looking forward to seeing what comes from his headspace next.

Paul laughs. “Well, go see the Frank show – it’s fucking hilarious.”

Catch Frank Woodley’s Possessed at the following venues over the coming months:

Tues 10 – Sun 29 June – Sydney Opera House, Playhouse

Tues 2 – Sun 28 September – Brisbane Powerhouse