Award winning play offers window into another world
Contributed by Andrew Wallace and Shelley Love
WHEN we remember wars, military issues naturally dominate. But what about the home front?
Maleny Players’ latest production ‘Snapshots from Home’ is an authentic and moving recreation of civilian life in Queensland during the Second World War. This award-winning play will have six performances at the Maleny Playhouse from April 25.
In 1995, Brisbane playwright Margery Forde was commissioned to dramatise the memories of people interviewed by an oral historian. They recalled their youth during wartime half a century before. It was a time of scary news on the radio, air raid drills at school, family members suddenly in uniform and gone. Yet it was also a time of novelties like the arrival of American soldiers, of rousing songs around the family piano, going to dances and flirting.
Sifting through hundreds of pages of interview transcripts, Margery assembled a collage of verbal ‘snapshots’ using the actual words of the interviewees.
The memories—funny, sad, curious, poignant—are linked and the varying moods enhanced by broadcast voices, images, and live music. Along with tunes still familiar, there are popular songs now long forgotten.
Director Patricia Lovell has faced some unusual challenges in staging this example of ‘verbatim theatre’. The actors have to handle multiple roles. Margery Forde, who now lives in Maleny, has welcomed the revival of her play. After all the creative endeavour that has gone into it, audiences can expect a treat.
Maleny Playhouse. April 25, 26, 27 and May 3, 4, 10, 11. Tickets via Trybooking or Maleny Tourist Information Centre.
