The Revlon Girl: Cast returns to put on 'emotional play'
Set eight months after the Aberfan disaster, which took 144 lives in a small Welsh mining village on October 21, 1966, The Revlon Girl follows a group of women grappling with loss.
As an actor, Hannah Kennedy traditionally struggles to prompt herself to get cry on stage.
Although with The Revlon Girl play she has no such problem.
Kennedy, Kellie Post, Victoria Morgan, Sophie Worner, and Maggie Pirie - all of Invercargill - are the cast that is about to embark on performing The Revlon Girl across three shows, starting in Gore on Wednesday night.
The Revlon Girl is a powerful award-winning play based on the Aberfan Mining Disaster - most particularly the mothers impacted.
Set eight months after the Aberfan disaster, which took 144 lives in a small Welsh mining village on October 21, 1966, The Revlon Girl follows a group of women grappling with loss, searching for ways to reclaim hope.
“It’s quite intense and it’s a pretty emotional play,” Kennedy said.
“Emotionally it can be pretty draining [for the cast]. For me - for example - I normally really struggle to cry on stage; it’s one of those things I struggle with as an actor, but not with this.”
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The play was written by Neil Anthony Docking and the play won the Best Drama award at the Wales Theatre Awards.
The Majestic Frog Collective earlier this year put on the show at the Community Lounge at the Scottish Hall in Invercargill.
The cast and crew have now got back together to perform the play again, this time providing audiences in Gore, Invercargill, and Dunedin all with the chance to view it.
“The people that were working on it - Pip and Victoria as the organisers, and then everyone in the cast - it’s an amazing group of creatives and actors, and we just really enjoyed working on it together,” Kennedy said.
“Despite the heavy subject matter, the connection we found together as actors and creatives was just brilliant.
“I don’t think any of us have ever revisited a play like this before. To finish up and say goodbye and then come back to it six months later, it’s been really fun.”
The interest in April this year prompted them to put on the three shows from November 27 to November 30.
“We had a fairly small venue [in April], and it sold out. We probably weren’t expecting to do as well as it did and we all had a lot of fun, so we thought why not do that again.”
The hope is the visits to Gore and Dunedin will be well supported, as well as the Friday night show in Invercargill.
“We’ve got lots of theatre friends in Gore, and they do a lot of really cool theatre in Gore so I’m hoping we might be able to attract a few people,” Kennedy said.
“Dunedin is a bit further afield but there is a big theatre scene in Dunedin and what a cool opportunity to take a thing that we’ve done down here and share it around.”
