First one-woman play for actress

Press, 7 August 1985, Page 18

First one-woman play for actress

By

KAY FORRESTER

A veteran of more than 20 years on stage, radio, television and in film, Judie Douglass still gets nervous about a performance. “It gets harder the more you do,” the actress says. “I expect it’s because you have more to lose. People know you and expect something from you and you are under pressure to deliver.” More so in her latest performance at the Court Two Theatre as the one woman in a one-woman show. She plays Annie Wobbler, Anna, and Annabella Wharton in Arnold Wesker’s play “Annie Wobbler,” which opens this evening. It is the first one-woman show that the actress has

done. “I have avoided them .before,” she says. What changed her mind? “Necessity. After the big cast plays the Court has been doing and the increase in actors’ salaries, it was decided to do a small cast play. This play was available and so was I.” In the play the actress actually plays five characters as the final character displays two aspects of herself before revealing her true self. Judie Douglass says a one person show is “daunting because there is only you up there on stage. And at the Court we don’t have understudies so if you get sick the show is off. That is a responsibility too.” Judie Douglass’s interest in theatre was kindled by Dame Ngaio Marsh when

the actress was a student at the University of Canterbury. “She was an inspiration and able to enthuse anybody about the theatre.” That enthusiasm was pursued at the Birmingham Theatre School during six months spent in England where her husband was working. The New Zealand theatre scene to which she returned in the 1960 s did not offer much in the way of professional theatre. The actress took a job in radio, announcing, and worked in radio drama. She also did a stint as a television reporter on the Town and Around programme. Radio drama in the South Island finished about the same time as the Court

Theatre began. Judie Douglass was one of the first actresses to work for the Court and has maintained that link since. She now works on contract for the theatre and last year did “Arms and the Man,” “Threepenny Opera” and “Cherry Orchard.” This year she has acted in “King Lear,” “Tramway Road,” now in “Annie Wobbler,” and will be in “Tom and Viv,” the main theatre production planned for next month. She enjoys the immediacy and spontaneity of the theatre, although she finds film a fascinating medium. “I enjoy all the fields. I think radio is my first love, because the audience has to use its imagination also. You have only your voice to convey so much. Unfor-

tunately there is no radio drama being done in the South Island now.” When she lived in Wellington recently for two years she had more radio and television work than she could manage. A three month contract for a film in Auckland followed, plus a guest stint at the Mercury Theatre in Auckland. Judie Douglass says she appreciates good roles, whether they be for male or female performers. She does not believe that more women’s roles are being written now. “It is a matter of the director’s selection for his programme of plays. The roles are there — perhaps not so many for me, now that I am getting older. But the women’s roles are certainly there.”

She rates the Wesker roles in “Annie Wobbler” as very good ones and is — nerves aside — looking for-

ward to tonight’s opening. “You have to be very fit and healthy to be an actor. It can be exhausting,” she

says. “Annie Wobbler” will play at the Court Two until August 24.