“LIFE with Max is a zany, Dadaistic experience every day,” Margarita Georgiadis says of her husband of 10 years, the actor and artist Max Cullen.

Georgiadis is the well-known “narrative” painter and co-owner, with Cullen, of the Picturehouse Gallery in Gunning.

You all know Cullen – maybe from the “oils ain’t oils” Castrol ad, or his popular portrayal of Henry Lawson or as Travis Hudson in “X-Men” or playing Owl Eyes in the new Baz Luhrmann film of “Gatsby”.

Georgiadis is used to waiting in the wings. Her life is more restrained than Cullen’s, but it’s getting more exciting by the month. Recently they expanded the scope of the former Coronation cinema they live in, but now they’re engaged in a rare theatrical collaboration.

Normally, she tells “CityNews”, Cullen refuses to let her have anything to do with his shows, saying nothing much at the end of a long day in rehearsal. Until now they’ve kept their lives and work apart.

“I ask if I can read a script and he always says: ‘NO’… he wants me to be completely and utterly surprised,” she says.

But, to her astonishment, he recently asked her to be director, set designer and stage manager for his revamped version of a play he’s written about Australian comic writer Lennie Lower.

Georgiadis may be a lot younger than Cullen – “Max’s acting career started about when I was born,” she says wryly – but she knows her limitations.

The Street Theatre’s Caroline Stacey ended up directing, while Georgiadis stuck to creating a cartoon-like multimedia backdrop to the show, a mixture of digital reproductions and animation.

But what’s Cullen’s fascination with Lennie Lower?

For those not in the know, Lower was a notorious satirical journo working from the ‘20s to the ‘40s, sacked no fewer than 19 times by media mogul Sir Frank Packer and once for describing Noel Coward as “a queen”.

Georgiadis says that Lower’s character and his physical appearance bear an uncanny resemblance to Cullen’s, “fitting him to a tee”.

At last, she had the perfect excuse to sit in on his rehearsals. Conjuring up the journalistic world of Lower made set and costume designs “utterly pivotal” and she wanted to capture the zany Dadaist, “out-of-reality” humour that was so typical of him. She’ll be using black-and-white cartoonism in the set, as well as some animation created by manipulating found images.

“It’s been an amazing learning process,” she says, “there is no way I could have got all that out of Max, Caroline asks such pertinent questions.”

The script’s been a bit of an adventure, too, like pretty well everything Cullen touches. His revamp of a play he embarked on back in 2003 was still coming until about two weeks ago, so Georgiadis and Stacey had to bide their time – “to fit in with Max’s ideas.”

“How To Be (Or Not To Be) Lower”, by Max Cullen, at The Street Theatre, May 25-June 1, bookings to 6247 1223.