New musical comedy celebrates menstruation

New musical comedy celebrates menstruation

Discharge Comedy Collective will discuss and celebrate menstruation with its new musical comedy, “28 Days: A Period Piece”, premiering at BATS Theatre as part of the 2015 NZ Fringe Festival from 19 to 22 February.

“28 Days: A Period Piece” is the award-winning collective’s first venture into musical comedy.

“We’d been toying with the idea of doing musical comedy for a while and the NZ Fringe Festival seemed like the perfect time to do it,” says Director Caitlin McNaughton. “Fringe is all about taking risks and pushing your own boundaries as well as your audience’s. We’re really embracing that this time around.”

The show is set at the final dress rehearsal for “28 Days”, a fictional play about menstruation that will tour New Zealand schools. The men on the board of the funding body have promised it will be an “honest, fun and educational exploration of every girl’s path to womanhood”.

The women performing it aren’t so sure. Delving into their own memories of periods past, they begin to devise a new show – one that speaks the truth about menstruation.

Abby Howells, who wrote the script and lyrics, says that although menstruation affects a large proportion of the population, there is still stigma around it. “Especially among young people, there’s an attitude that you need to be ashamed of your period, that you shouldn’t talk about it. We want to talk about it.”

Musical Director Kate Schrader says the stereotype of female comedians always talking about periods feeds into the stigma and shame. “We just thought, screw the stereotype - let’s embrace it.”

“28 Days: A Period Piece” is Discharge’s third show about making a show. “What is this, Woman’s Hour?” which won Best Comedy in the 2013 Dunedin Fringe Festival and was nominated for Best Comedy in the 2014 NZ Fringe Festival, focused on a comedy collective writing a sketch show. “Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die”, which enjoyed a sell-out season at BATS Theatre in June 2014, was about three women devising a show for their favourite actor in the hope that he would fall in love with them.

Abby says the show-within-a-show structure allows the collective to take an idea, and then deconstruct and examine it. “We start with all the bad stuff, and the characters get to discover what’s wrong with it alongside the audience. It also allows us to make fun of ourselves.”

The cast is Kate Schrader, Abby Howells, Sasha Borissenko, Harriet Hughes, Rosie Howells and Josephine Byrnes.

Oliver Devlin composed the music.

“28 Days: A Period Piece” is on at BATS Theatre at 9pm from 19 - 22 February. Book tickets online at bats.co.nz.

What the reviews said:

“Lively and unpretentious … ” (“What is this, Woman’s Hour?”, Theatreview)

“An hour of hugely carried short and sharp laugh-so-hard-you’ll-piss-your-pants type sketches … ” (“What is this, Woman’s Hour?”, Theatreview)

“Laugh-out-loud…highly entertaining character-based comedy … ” (“Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die”, Theatreview)

“The audience roared its approval throughout … ” (“Benedict Cumberbatch Must Die”, The Dominion Post)

“I have never heard an audience laugh so hard for so long.” (Mary’s Christmas, Theatreview)

ENDS

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