Life of women's rights pioneer explored

Life of women's rights pioneer explored in the world premier of Silver Ship

State-of-the-art theatre technology will help bring to life a legendary figure of the women's rights movement when the world premier of Silver Ship: The times and short life of Mary Wollstonecraft is staged at Victoria University next week.

The play is written and directed by John Downie, Senior Lecturer in Theatre at Victoria and performed and designed by third year Theatre students. It will also showcase the Theatre programme's new LED (light-emitting diode) lights, as well as the work of the steel welder, a new addition to the programme's Scenography course.

Director John Downie says that Silver Ship is a story of the past and present, fiction and reality.

"I was interested in creating an opportunity for students to access the explosive revolutionary period of the late 18th century that created the basis of our present-day social democracies and the sensibility of modern individualism."

In the play, a group of present-day students is researching the concept of 'becoming-woman', when a spectre materialises in their midst. It is Mary Wollstonecraft, the 18th-century British writer, philosopher and passionate advocate of women's rights. Silver Ship follows two intertwining strands of story; the ongoing concepts of 'becoming' in modern society, and the life of an incredible woman.

"By contrasting the life of a women who lived in revolutionary times with those of present-day students, the play brings into question how our ancestors experience informs our future, like a kind of haunting," says Downie.

The play is a collaboration of efforts by third year Victoria Theatre performance and design students, and features choreography by Alyx Duncan, an original soundscape by Victoria graduates and award-winning sound designers Andrew Simpson and Gareth Hobbs, live film, steel sets and LED lighting.

What: Silver Ship: The times and short life of Mary Wollstonecraft, written and directed by John Downie, choreographed by Alyx Duncan, performed and designed by the students of THEA 302 and THEA 324.

Where: Studio 77, 77 Fairlie Terrace, Kelburn (Gate 10 of Victoria University).

When: Tuesday 31 May to Saturday 4 June 2011, 7.30pm. Please arrive 30 minutes early to collect and pay for your tickets, cash only.

Tickets: $8 unwaged, $15 waged (cash only)

To book: email theatre@vuw.ac.nz or call (04) 463 5359

John Downie will also present a short lecture, The Life and Times of Mary Wollstonecraft, at 6.30pm in Studio 77 every evening prior to the performance, except Tuesday 31 May.

He says Wollstonecraft was an extraordinary woman, with a life full of complexity and contrasts.

"She had a lover who was an American secret service agent and a husband who was an anarchist philosopher. She had her hands on a fortune, but remained poor all her life. She wrote the first modern text advocating the rights of women."

This lecture is free and all are welcome.

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