Image: Interlude HA Hanke

UNE Theatre Studies recently launched an exciting new collaboration with the New England Regional Art Museum (NERAM).

Patrons of the Hinton Collection gallery will now be able to view an 8-minute monologue created in response to Interlude (1938) by H. A. Hanke, by scanning a QR code next to the painting.

Theatre lecturer Dr Richard Jordan was inspired to write the piece on a recent visit to NERAM, where the woman near the centre of Interlude (in green) caught his eye. 

“Unlike the other figures in the painting, she stares out at us directly, knowingly. She is out of place, she doesn’t belong there, yet something in her expression is defiant too: a cuckoo in the nest. 

As a playwright, I wanted to capture this emotion in a contemporary setting, through the study of a woman who is perennially on the outside looking in. When confronted with her colleague’s seemingly ‘perfect’ life, she feels compelled to run towards that perfection…”

The piece is part of a larger project which seeks to use ‘ekphrastic’ playwriting (that is, playwriting that responds to visual art) to view established art works from a new perspective, and blur the boundaries between theatre and digital performance.

Fellow UNE Theatre lecturer Dr Julie Shearer directed the monologue, which features acclaimed Armidale actor (and UNE Theatre alumni) Lisa Goldzieher in the central role. The piece was filmed and edited by Iain Mackay at UNE Media Studios.

You can view the monologue when you next visit NERAM, or by clicking here: https://player.vimeo.com/video/1008289128