The 2014 Adam Play Award winner premieres this June in Auckland 

How far would you go to get a life? 

17 – 28 June, Basement Theatre, Auckland  

IVF isn’t foolproof and IUDs aren’t failsafe. iPhones come with ovulation apps and being married doesn’t mean you have to breed. Seed follows four women as they try to get pregnant, stay pregnant or become un-pregnant – the dilemmas of modern reproduction. 

Seed by Elisabeth Easther, the winner of the 2014 Adam New Zealand Play Award, which recognises and celebrates the best in new writing for the theatre, will have its World premiere at The Basement this June.

Described by the Adam Play award judges as “highly entertaining, funny and sophisticated” Seed is a multi-narrative play about the business of fertility.

“I wrote the play, because it’s about me, it’s about people I know and it’s about my friends” says Elisabeth “it’s a question we all ask ourselves and we should talk about it, right? I still can’t quite believe Seed won the Adam Play Award. It’s something I wrote for me and I’m amazed it has touched people as much as it has”.

Today people have access to other people’s eggs, sperm, and a range of expensive avenues to go down when nature isn’t taking its course. And abortions are easy to access because reproduction is all about choice. At least it is in theory. 

Seed is about the horror some woman experience to learn they’re pregnant, even while in loving relationships, and about fancy fertility clinics that prey on people’s primal urge to replicate, in the hope of cementing the bond with their partner in a way a ring, a house or a promise just don’t.

Seed is a drama that’ll have you laughing till tears run down your face, and a comedy that’ll make you cry and it’s all about us.

Seed plays at the Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland,
from 17-28 June, at 8pm.
(No shows Sunday 22 June or Monday 23 June).
Tickets: $20 – 25 from www.iticket.co.nz 

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

Elisabeth Easther – Writer

After graduating from Toi Whaakari, the NZ Drama School, Elisabeth began her professional life as an actress, playing Victoria the dinosaur in a children’s TV series called Johnson and friends. But Elisabeth knew, if she wanted to make a living, she’d need to find other things to do too. Consequently she turned to writing – for magazines, newspapers, the radio, stage and screen and has been doing just that, in NZ and the UK, for the past 20 years.

She’s also played the country’s favourite villain on Shortland St back in the 90s (Nurse Carla) and more recently played a much more likeable character in a series of advertisements for Countdown Supermarkets. You can also hear Elisabeth on Radio New Zealand National where she provides commentary on Nine to Noon every 4^th Friday on The Week that Was, or doing book reviews.

Elisabeth has also been a breakfast radio host, a tour guide in Turkey, a magazine editor, a script advisor, a casting agent and a lifeguard. Currently Elisabeth spends the bulk of her work hours writing travel stories for the New Zealand Herald, performing voice-overs and writing scripts for the stage.

Emma Willis – Director

Dr Emma Willis is theatre-maker and lecturer in Drama at the University of Auckland.  She is a B.A. graduate of Victoria University of Wellington, with an M.A. and PhD. in Drama Studies from the University of Auckland. She has directed a number of new New Zealand theatre works, both devised and scripted, in Auckland and Wellington, including The Swimming Lessons and Never Never by Jackie van Beek; and Milk (Best Theatre Work 1998 Wellington Fringe Festival), Flood (Most Original Production 2000 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards), Fever and A Perfect Plan (nominated for 3 awards at the 2002 Chapman Tripp Awards).   Additionally she has worked as a script consultant for Auckland Theatre Company and as a freelance script assessor for Playmarket.  Emma has written and directed two radio plays for Radio New Zealand, The Fat Man (adaptation of a Maurice Gee novel) 2003; and Milk completed in 2005.  She has most recently collaborated as co-director and dramaturge with Malia Johnston on Dark Tourists, body / fight / time, Amanimal, and Red (forthcoming October 2014).  Her scholarly monograph, Theatricality, Dark Tourism and Ethical Spectatorship: Absent Others, is to be published in 2014 by Palgrave Macmillan.

CAST

Janine Burchett

A graduate of the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts, Janine began her professional performing arts career in New Zealand with Limbs Dance Company. A growing desire to act led her to Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School, and after graduating in 1996 she was nominated for the Chapman Tripp Newcomer Actress of the Year.

She starred in many television and theatre roles in New Zealand until in 2002, when she relocated to Sydney to perform as Mrs Darling and Tinkerbell in a major production of Pan at the Capitol Theatre. While in Sydney she co-devised the play ‘Convict Women’, which won an Australian Cultural Award. In 2004 she wrote, produced and acted in the short film ‘Gabriel’ which won a number of international film festivals around the world.

Most recent credits include Shortland Street (NZ), Harry (NZ), Backwards Showgirl Variations (AUS), The Truth Game (Circa Theatre, NZ), Legend of the Seeker, Spartacus – Blood and Sands (USA), Billy (TVNZ) and Rage (TVNZ).

Alex Ellis

Alex Ellis is an actress, publicist and producer of Flaxworks theatre company. Flaxworks, the creative partnership of Alex Ellis and Phil Ormsby, is a theatre company committed to produce an extensive portfolio of New Zealand theatre. She has performed in New Zealand tours of Biscuit & Coffee, Murder by Chocolate, Carol & Nev, and most recently, Drowning in

Veronica Lake and has performed Biscuit & Coffee, Murder by Chocolate and Drowning in Veronica Lake internationally. In 2011 Alex was nominated for Best Performer in both the Auckland and Dunedin Fringe Festivals for Drowning in Veronica Lake, won Best Actress in the Hamilton finals of the V48HR Short Film Competition for Speed Bumps and was nominated Best Actress in the National Finals.

Fiona Mogridge

Fiona began her career studying at a drama school in France,  and since then has appeared across theatre, film and television. Starting her televsion career on Hercules, she was nominated for a Best Supporting Actress for her role in Duggan at the 1999 Film and Television Awards, since then Fiona has gone on to work in a range of film and television roles, including in Street Legal and The Cult, as well a Swedish / NZ co-production, The Christmas Oratorio. She’s also appeared in major national commercial ad campaigns in the USA.

Renee Sheridan

Renée Sheridan graduated from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School in 2005 and has since worked professionally in both theatre and film. Theatrical highlights include Death of a Salesman, Almost a Bird Theatre Collective’s productions of The Glass Menagerie and A Streetcar Named Desire at Circa Theatre.

She has performed The Vagina Monologues, joined ‘site-specific theatre’ for HOTEL, and then came on as an original devisor/performer in the company’s equally successful prequel SALON. She rejoined Almost a Bird Theatre Collective for Jeff Koons and was in The Little Dog Laughed at Downstage Theatre. At Centrepoint, she performed in sell-out seasons of Penalties, Pints and Pirouette, The 39 Steps and Enlightenment and a most successful season of April Phillip’s premier production of Motel at Auckland’s Basement Theatre.

Screen credits include Shortland Street and The Gibson Group’s Paradise Cafe 2, award winning feature films Eternity and Shopping. 

Cast: Alex Ellis, Renée Sheridan, Janine Burchett, Fiona Mogridge, Callum Stembridge

Designer: Dion Boothby 
Lighting designer: Nik Januriek 
Lighting operator: Russ King