Die already with humour

Press, 6 July 1988, Page 21

Die already with humour

Rubin Battino has written several plays but “Die Already” is the first to have a New Zealand venue for its first performance. Battino is an American professor of chemistry at present on academic leave at the Department of Chemical and Process Engineering at the University of Canterbury. His two-hander, “Die Already,” will open its season at the Court Two on July 11.

- The play concerns a middle-aged couple dealing with a live-in parent who is ill and dying. Both characters voice their feelings about the dying mother. Battino says “Their characters and history are explored with some humour and drama since they are both loud, animated and verbal.” The play is being staged in association with the university’s drama programme.

The two actors taking the part of the couple are the Court Theatre’s Bill Le Marquand and Nicola Wellbourn. Le Marquand is a professional actor who has worked on stage and in television, radio and film. Wellbourn works for the Canterbury Hospital Board and has acted and sung in several productions, including “Mack and Mabel” and “The

Scatterbrained Scarecrow of Oz.” Battino has written about a dozen plays ranging from an entertainment based on Hamlet called “Mostly Gertrude” to a farce on marital therapists, “The White Elephant,” and an antinuclear drama, “August 6.” He is a part-time practising psychotherapist trained in Gestalt therapy, bionergetic analysis,

neurolinguistic programming and Ericksonian hypno- therapy. He takes workshops in the last two. His first play, “Marathon,” is about a 24 hour group psychotherapy session. It had a recent reading at a meeting of Christchurch psychotherapists. The ‘‘Die Already” season will be a lunchtime one, with performances beginning, at 12.15 p.m. The season will end on July 15.