SEED

Basement Theatre, Lower Greys Ave, Auckland

17/06/2014 - 28/06/2014

Production Details



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 4th 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



The complexity and messiness of realty

Review by Paul Simei-Barton 21st Jun 2014

Playwright Elizabeth Easther won the 2014 Adam Play Award with this sophisticated, witty and very contemporary meditation on the timeless processes of procreation.

Seed present a series of interlocking stories in which the mystery of fertility seems to transcend all the mechanisms of control supplied by an ever expanding array of technological interventions. [More

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Inconclusive Result

Review by Matt Baker 21st Jun 2014

Working in the arts industry is by no means a secure trade – especially in New Zealand. The independent contractor status coupled with the number of people versus number of jobs means that diversifying and creating self-instigated works is often a key component to longevity in one’s career. Actress Elisabeth Easther clearly understands this, and the result is her 2014 Adam New Zealand Award winning script, Seed, now playing at The Basement. 

The dialogue starts out playfully, and there are puns abound, not to mention the odd couplet, however, as the lyricism wanes and once we’ve heard every colloquial variant of the noun cum the content is revealed to be quite dry. Everyone says exactly what they think and feel, leaving the audience with no need to actively engage. Add to this some of the most brazen and morally corrupt attitudes of the characters, and the result is that there is no real emotional investment for the audience to make. [More]

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*sigh* June 21st, 2014

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Well-conceived take on modern life, love and reproduction

Review by Vanessa Byrnes 19th Jun 2014

Sex, death and taxes: three certainties in life but arguably the first one eternally sparks our interest as a subject in theatre. Our attitudes towards the ethics of sex and reproduction are like a barometer of the social mores that define how we live; a universal concern. 

The slugline “How far would you go to get a life?” presupposes the central questions here, about reproduction and choice, or the lack of either. Seed pitches stories from the lives of four women (and others) in bite-sized scenes within an eighty-minute narrative, to consider how the biology of reproduction aligns with the realities of life now.

Elisabeth Easther’s clever new play (winner of the Playmarket Adam Play Award 2014) brings a welcome female voice to the arena of modern living as it suggests that the complexities of contemporary women’s lives are not simpler but rather busier and more complex than ever. There are still only 24 hours in a day; despite technological advancements, reproductive biology has not essentially changed. Nothing is simple, and choice doesn’t always bring harmony.

The play employs narrative commentary throughout to connect characters with the audience as we follow Hillary, Maggie, Virginia and Shelley via their encounters with men, jobs, kids, clinics, and the challenges of reproduction. While this device works well most of the time, occasionally it pulls characters out of their situational dilemmas as it temporarily removes them from the action. I wonder if there are other ways of doing this? (Voiceover? Film? Other characters voicing it? Playing with time?). 

The casting here is well-conceived, and the piece relies on this company vitality to drive the work. Alex Ellis is extremely on-form as midwife Virginia. Her energy and verve propels the wit of Easther’s writing. She hits the puns that pepper the piece perfectly well. Ellis is a believable, slightly goofy midwife who’s desperate for a baby of her own. Her lightness lifts the piece.

Janine Burchett is both strong and fragile as Maggie; confused at first, then resolute in her final decision. Renee Sheridan’s clarity as Ad-Exec Shelley gives the piece a knife-edge that we can empathise with, while Fiona Mogridge’s Hillary offers wavering fragility.

Callum Stembridge brings warmth and humour to his various roles. He populates the play with several male (and female) characters; some nice observational touches at play here. I wonder what another female actor would offer the piece to counterpoint Stembridge’s various roles; kind of like the yin and yang ‘facilitators’ of the play around the central four. Something to consider.

At times I want more interaction between the two female couples to make sense of why their respective narratives are at play here; do they intersect further? This is hinted at in a late scene (waiting room). It might transpire in later versions of the play; in fact the piece has a televisual feel at times, and I sense it has a future in theatre or on screen beyond this season at the Basement. I can see it at as a TV drama that follows the dilemmas and choices these characters meet. 

Quick scene changes are the key challenge here, and Dion Boothby’s sleek design provides solutions to the problem of how to find flow in such an episodic drama. Emma Willis’ direction invites an accessible point of view from the audience, breaking the fourth wall but not demanding too much of its audience. This may develop further throughout the season in the intimate Basement space. 

Feminism has given us choice, and thank God for that. In the pursuit of gender equality I will strive to remember how lucky we are that we can stage and see a drama about these concerns. But biology remains the same and for me this is the real concern. There are still certain expectations about what women are allowed to want; what is ‘proper’ and what is ‘different’. We must keep challenging these ‘norms’, and this is why the perspectives in Seed are so important.

Life is busier than ever and while we want more, sometimes it’s impossible to get that one thing you think you want most. This clash between desire and loss provides eternal landscapes for drama. Every woman (and most men) will relate to this struggle as it plays out in Easther’s drama. Seed is a witty, funny and real piece of theatre that offers a rarely expressed point of view on sex, ethics, modern living and choice. I’ll be interested to see how it gestates further in this season and beyond. 

Over thirty years ago, David Bowie’s ‘Modern Love’ lamented the challenges of finding love in a result-driven contemporary world that doubted itself. I can’t help but think that these lyrics are still apposite for how we live, and the choices we make that are so often at odds with individual or collective ethical paradigms:

‘Modern Love’ (D Bowie)

I know when to go out
And when to stay in
Get things done 
But I try, I try

There’s no sign of life
It’s just the power to charm
I’m lying in the rain
But I never wave bye-bye 
But I try, I try

Never gonna fall for
Modern Love walks beside me
Modern Love walks on by
 …
God and Man no confessions
God and Man no religion
God and Man don’t believe
in Modern Love.

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