St-Ambroise Montreal Fringe Festival

Zip - Jenna Gogan
Wick - Greg Van de Mark

Director - Sarah Mahoney
Author - Tabia Lau

In the near future, humankind has been destroyed. As the world draws to a close, our superheroes, Zip and Wick, have a chance meeting in Paris. Will our two archenemies find comfort, connection, and acceptance in this final encounter?

NATIONAL LIBARAY AND ARCHIVES CANADA
OTTAWA, ONTARIO

ACTORS

ROSEMARY BRANCH THEATRE
LONDON, UK

PETYA - RUTH TAPP
IMBI - KATARINA DJENADIC
ANNA - ELAINE GRACIE

DIRECTOR & CO-PRODUCER - SARAH MAHONEY
AUTHOR & CO-PRODUCER - CHERYL WHITE
SOUND DESIGN - GEORGE MADDOCKS


SUMMARY
A funny and moving story about three girls from Eastern Europe, trying their luck in London. They arrive in a dangerous world full of prejudices and scratch out a living while struggling to keep the golden promise of Western Europe alive. When one of them receives an offer from her hometown university, it changes their friendship forever. A new play by British writer Cheryl White, based in The Hague, about friendship, choices and loss.

By Cheryl White
Directed by Sarah Mahoney

Cast:
Ruth Tapp - Petya
Katerina Djenadic - Imbi
Elaine Gracie - Anna

Rosemary Branch Theatre
21-26 October, 2008

A review by Rosie Fiore for EXTRA! EXTRA!

If your neighborhood is anything like mine, the number of Eastern European people living around you will have increased dramatically since a number of countries joined the EU in 2004. In our suburb, every second corner shop now stocks Polish goods, and almost every service industry job seems to be held by a chirpy, well-spoken person from Latvia or the Czech Republic. Petya’s Story offers us a small insight into the lives of three such girls who have come to London to take their chances and try to change their futures. 

Petya and Imbi share a small flat. They both work as cleaners: Petya in a hotel, Imbi for a number of private clients. Petya dreams of marrying a rich husband who will take care of her and give her lots of babies. Imbi’s dreams are bigger: she has applied to university in her home country, and the play opens when she has been accepted. Now she has to raise £1,000 for her tuition fees.

This may not seem like an enormous sum of money, but for girls living hand-to-mouth on supermarket-brand pasta and Jaffa cakes, and earning £2-3 an hour, the problem seems insurmountable. However, Imbi is determined: she takes on another job and plans a car-boot sale (although she has no car). As she starts to work long hours and focus on her plans, her easy friendship with Petya begins to show strain. For the first time, she and Petya are at odds: Petya wants a good life: she wants to be accepted by the other girls at work (especially cool, promiscuous Anna), and she wants to party and find a nice boyfriend. She cannot understand Imbi’s focus.

In many ways, Petya’s Story is a classic tale of the complexities of relationships, and how extraneous pressures make the differences between people apparent. All three girls deal with issues of morality, of loyalty and truth. Petya offers to supply items for Imbi’s car boot sale: Imbi is happy to accept a fox fur which Petya takes from the lost property cupboard in the hotel where she works, yet rejects a diamond earring Petya finds on the floor because she sees that as theft. Petya wants a husband to support her, yet both girls scorn Anna, who sleeps with guests in the hotel and gets men to pay for things.

The performances are all strong, and Ruth Tapp as the ever-positive Petya stands out particularly. Yet I couldn’t help feeling the play could have been harder hitting and more in-depth. There was some sense that the girls led difficult lives and were working for below minimum wage, but we gained no real understanding of how hard it was for them, or indeed how they might be at risk from exploitation. There was some focus on the culture they had left behind, but I’d have liked to understand more about their sense of isolation in a strange country.  

I also felt that the play ran its course and the story concluded poignantly and satisfactorily, but then carried on for a further two scenes to wring a “Hollywood” happy ending out for both major characters. We didn’t need it. It made light of the growth the characters had undergone and simplified the complex situations in which they found themselves. 

These dissatisfactions notwithstanding, Petya’s Story is heartwarming, well acted and engaging. You cannot help but love ditzy Petya and care deeply what happens to the girls. Perhaps, when we next meet a Lithuanian office cleaner or Polish waitress, we might stop to think who she may be, and what her story is. 

Tuesday-Saturday 7.30pm Sunday 2.00pm and 6.00pm
 £10 (£8.00 concessions)

The Rosemary Branch Theatre
2 Shepperton Road,
London
N1 3DT
Tel: 020 7704 6665 (theatre & box office)
email: [email protected]
EXTRA! EXTRA! www.extraextra.org 

LITERAIR THATER BRANOUL
THE HAGUE, THE NETHERLANDS

World Premiere June 17-22, 2008
PETYA - RUTH TAPP
IMBI - KATARINA DJENADIC
ANNA - ELAINE GRACIE

DIRECTOR - SARAH MAHONEY
AUTHOR - CHERYL WHITE
SOUND DESIGN - GEORGE MADDOCKS
PRODUCED BY STITCHING THE ENGLISH THEATRE






SUMMARY
A funny and moving story about three girls from Eastern Europe, trying their luck in London. They arrive in a dangerous world full of prejudices and scratch out a living while struggling to keep the golden promise of Western Europe alive. When one of them receives an offer from her hometown university, it changes their friendship forever. A new play by British writer Cheryl White, based in The Hague, about friendship, choices and loss.

This play will have its world premiere in EAST WEST EAST Theatre Festival in The Hague, featuring three young British actresses on the brink of their careers.

World Premiere of Petya’s Story in The Hague

(Fri 20 June 2008)




In the tradition of Ken Loach’s movie It’s a Free World and Marina Lewycka’s award-winning novel Two Caravans, Petya’s Story brings an intriguing plot to the stage; the play is a brave attempt to understand and relay the intricate and controversial motives that draw millions of skilled young Eastern Europeans to Britain. Accepting squalid working conditions, social insecurity and abuse, they chase the mirage of a better life by breaking away from the experiences of their parents and grandparents, determined to control their own destinies.

It is not revealed where the girls come from, except that they apply Slavic grammar to English conversation, they all know a certain Orthodox ritual honouring the memory of the departed and they possess a certain cherchez-la-femme vigour that is often lacking in their emancipated Western counterparts.

Imbi, Petya and Anna meet in London: Petya in search of a nice husband (possibly an electrician, like her father); Imbi wants to improve her English and go to university; and Anna…well, Anna chooses the fast track to wealth, as she makes no secret of her living off her seduced, elderly lovers. While reaching for their dreams, the girls form alliances that are useful and pragmatic: they share the rent, their clothes and their hopes.

Being the embodiment of the cliché about easy Eastern European women to the outside world – cleverly hinted at by the frilly white hotel cleaner’s uniforms – they could not be more different. Imby's roots are quite obviously more middle-class than proletarian, Petya's ambitions are limited to marrying well, whilst Anna is most determined to carve glamour and abundance out of whatever she can attain though her charms. Interestingly, she is the only one who will not admit to a shred of doubt as to whether the path she has chosen was the right one, throughout the play.

The characters do what Eastern Europeans do best, in abundance: talk. They vibrate and convince through stories and jokes, reminiscences from the homeland and endearingly naïve recounts of their dreams. They do so with grand gestures and hefty words, an innate sense of drama and logic that is intrinsic to those who have archived many stories of the past in their souls. The shabby London neighborhood, the draining bus rides between their manifold jobs, the dirty looks – this all fades away; the girls have left their families, their beliefs and traditions behind, in order to absorb what they believe to be the world of freedom, choice and opportunity –a definite upgrade in their eyes.

The young actresses, Ruth Tapp, Katarina Djenadic and Elaine Gracie, impress by their credible and thorough manner – not to mention the brilliant dialectal performance of the two Scots and one Serb speaking real Slavic English. They play with passion and consistency, creating an atmosphere that seduces and lingers long after the curtain has fallen.

Without further dissecting the play and its cast, may we advise spectators to bring along an open mind, some patience with the unfolding plot and a lot of creative curiosity? Enjoy!

Eva László-Herbert
 The Hague Online 
www.thehagueonline.com

THE STREET THEATRE
CANBERRA, AUSTRALIA

World Premiere June 6-23, 2007

SUE - TRACY MANN
SIMON - LINDSAY FARRIS
AUTHOR - MARY RACHEL BROWN
DIRECTOR - CAROL WOODROW
DESIGN - IMOGEN KEEN
MULTIMEDIA - KIM O’CONNELL
LIGHTING DESIGN - DAVID LONGMUIR
SOUND DESIGN - KIMMO VENNONEN
ASSISTANT DIRECTOR - SARAH MAHONEY


SUMMARY
What do you do when out of the blue life turns you upside down, grabs your heart and squeezes it tight? When a mother recognizes that something isn’t right and needs all her love strength and resilience to support her son.

This multimedia production takes us on an honest, courageous and compassionate journey into one young man’s mind, to the place where borders are shifting  and battle lines are being drawn. 

And into his mother’s struggle to understand what is happening to maintain her loving relationship with her son and to somehow find help. 

Come on a compelling, fast moving roller coaster of a journey - dramatic, at times heartbreaking yet surprisingly funny - where different realities collide and everything changes.

“a rollercoaster ride of uncertain tension, increasing awareness and rising empathy. Farris and Mann offer outstanding performances. Farris charts Simon’s difficult journey with such truth and understanding that the audience is held spellbound by his powerful performance. Mann contains Sue’s pain and confusion with absolute conviction. Professionalism radiates through every aspect of this dynamic and engrossing insight into the plight of all who are directly or indirectly affected ...
Highly recommended”

Peter Wilkins, The Canberra Times

MASSAI CAMP
ARUSHA, TANZANIA

ANNIE - JULIE GREENSPOON
WALTER - RICHARD WILLIS
MILLY - KATYA MELLUISH
SALLY - RUPA MITRA
SOLTO - SHAMUS MANGAN
TULLY - DOMINIEK TIMMERMANS
BARBARA - SUSAN LAMB

DIRECTED & PRODUCED BY SARAH MAHONEY & MADELEINE COX
STAGE, PROPS, SALES & MARKETING - MARIE LUCIENNE-LAMBERT
STAGE & PROPS - ALLI CARR
SOUND & LIGHTING - SEBASTIEN JODOIN



SUMMARY

Walter, petty thief and talent-free forger, returns home from nine months in prison, to be greeted by the news from his two aunts that his bedroom has been rented to a lodger. In a plot to get his room back, Walter sets in motion a series of events, the results of which he may ultimately regret…

FORTUNE THEATRE
LONDON, ENGLAND


DIRECTED BY SARAH MAHONEY 
PRODUCED BY NORMAN YOURELL-KEATING











ACTORS:
NORMAN YOURELL-KEATING
PHIL JOHN
EMMA GOODWIN
GAVIN KERR
LISA MCKEOWN
KATHRYN SHARRATT
GARY SWAIN
LINDSAY BIDDLE

A thematic collection of excerpts to showcase acting talent for an audience of agents.

TNT THEATRE
MONTREAL, QUEBEC

KABALLAH - TARA
ELISE - ZOE 
JUSTIN - DAN
GUS - JOEL
JENNIFER - EMMA

DIRECTOR - SARAH MAHONEY
AUTHOR - LUCY ALIBAR-HARRISON

Presented as a festival of plays at McGill University.

Justin tells the story of the first two girls he fell in love with, Kaballah and Elise.  Kaballah an abused girl who protects herself by pretending to be a Velocoraptor befriends Elise and teaches her how to be strong while Elise polishes some of Kaballah’s rough edges.