A talk by Penny Ashton.
The Street Theatre 3pm May 24.
NZ performer Penny
Ashton sandwiched this little talk about her working life as a performer and a
deviser of shows into a brief Canberra season of her Jane Austen one woman show
Promise and Promiscuity. A knowledgeable audience jammed onto the show’s set to
listen to the whys and wherefores of a performer’s life in these modern times.
The talk ranged
fascinatingly from the kid leaping around in youthful shows in Aotearoa to the
older actor forging a path, that, it turns out, contains quite a few literary
tributes and manglings. Austen’s clearly a favourite, however.
And it turns out that
Ashton has a personal link. She’s the 5th great grand niece of one Thomas
Langlois Lefroy who may or may not have been a serious bidder for Jane Austen’s
hand and who may or may not have been a model for Mr Darcy. She absolutely and rightly delights in having found such
an appropriate connection.
And so did the talk’s
audience.
She connected her
touring travels to a discussion of Austen’s personal life and restrictions on
gender. She made links between the punishing lives of convict women in Tasmania
and the restrictions placed on Austen because of gender. The perils of child bearing.
You might want to stay unmarried. Poverty, patterns of inheritance that
favoured men and the lack of access to education are part of Austen’s story.
She touched on the
precarious existence of arts workers and praised the excellent support The
Street Theatre was giving a passing performer like her. They pay her. The tech
support is terrific. She travels with her costumes but has to borrow some
pieces of period furniture - a table, a chair, a carpet, a screen, and maybe a
big potted plant - in each location Promise and Promiscuity
plays. That can mean a lot of scrounging. At The Street the items were found
for her.
She expressed amazement
at the state of things on London Circuit and has now got a picture of the
ongoing and everlasting diggings on her slide sequence.
And she likes a gobo.
For those of you not the children of an old Christchurch born theatre lighting
bloke, that’s a metal pattern put into a stage lantern to create an effect like
light coming through leaves or a window that never has to be built. You can do
the Forest of Arden or the whole nunnery in Sound of Music without building a
thing.
But Ashton was there to
talk about Jane Austen and the lovely imaginative funny use she makes of her
work and she described the development of all of this to an audience who had
seen the show the night before or were just about to.
Promise and Promiscuity
is not her only foray into Austenesque shows as tantalising clips showed. Nor,
happily, is it likely to be the last. All of this affectionate parody is an
ongoing tribute, greatly appreciated by audiences who know that countryside,
the films, the many series and at the core of it all, the novels themselves.
Alanna Maclean
