Keeping women's issues real

From left, Nisha Maden, Tania Anderson, Michelle Hine, Yvette Parsons, Jodie Hillock and Liesha Ward Knox. Photo / Supplied

The pervasive nature of contemporary pop culture means discussion of modern women's lives can easily invoke visions of the over-dressed Sex and the City quartet shopping their way through triumphs and tragedies.

A more realistic examination of women's lot - and by extension the human condition - is likely to come not from the movie Sex and the City 2 but from the stage at the Auckland Performing Arts Centre in Western Springs.

Spanish playwright Federico Garcia Lorca's The House of Bernarda Alba opens next Friday with an all-female cast and a chorus of 20 giving voice to the effects of power, passion, sexual oppression and men's actions upon women.

But to compare the SATC movie with the play is like comparing apples with pomegranates, particularly as the latter was written as a critique of Spain's fascist regime and the playwright disappeared, believed executed, after finishing his work in 1936.

But plays, like all writing, are built from words which are rarely interpreted exactly the same way from one generation to the next. What started life as a political tract can be recast to concentrate more fully on women's repression, our society's complicity in this and the various responses to it.

It is, says director Margaret Mary Hollins, a production which asks more broadly what happens to the human spirit when it is crushed and instincts like sexuality are denied.

The project began several years ago when Phundmi Productions' Liesha Ward Knox and Nisha Madhen spoke with Hollins about bringing the script to the stage. Hollins remembers the proposed cast assembling at Tapac for a reading which held invited guests spellbound.

"It was a good way to start a project, to see if something was possible," she says. "The feedback was quite overwhelming with people genuinely passionate about the idea of producing this play."

But life got in the way. There were funding issues, Madhen went to work on Shortland Street and Ward Knox faced a family crisis when her father Chris Knox had a stroke. But the enthusiasm didn't wane. Funding is now secured and the key people are available.

Michele Hine plays hatchet-faced Bernarda Alba, who becomes head of her household when her husband is murdered. Determined to uphold the family name and secure its future, she controls her five headstrong daughters like a despotic ruler, keeping them under what amounts to house arrest. The girls, played by Sarah Gallagher, Rashmi Pilapitiya, Ward Knox, Jodie Hillock and Nisha Madhen, respond in a variety of ways. Some fight Bernarda and her right-hand woman, Poncia (Sylvia Rands) while others simply wither.

Accomplished actor and voice coach Rands was a late but welcome addition to the cast while the girls' grandmother, Maria Josefa, is played by Yvette Parsons.

The character adds to the tension by constantly trying to flee the house and badgering Bernarda about how she is hardening her daughters' hearts.

"I always get to play the grandmas," says Parsons, "but I have a fascination with older people and I love old ladies so I am very happy with this role."

All the while, the girls can hear the sounds from the surrounding village: music, laughter and everyday banter.

While Hollins works with the core cast, actor and aspiring director Laurel Devenie oversees the 20-strong chorus, mainly of young women from Western Springs College.

The chorus role has grown as individual talents are discovered. One girl plays the viola; another the flute. Both will perform on stage, putting music to moments that would otherwise be described.

With a publicity blurb that includes the phrases "boiling tension" and "impending tragedy", Hollins, Devenie and the cast have ensured the story doesn't descend into melodrama.

Rands, with more than 30 years' experience in New Zealand and Australia, says performing in a smaller theatre surrounded by the audience helps keep the drama more intimate. "The need to keep it real is the most important thing."

PERFORMANCE

What: The House of Bernarda Alba

Where and when: Tapac, Western Springs, June 11-20