Poverty and Muse
Playwright: Karen Zelas
Director: Martin Howells
Imagine Charitable Trust, through One Man Banned Productions, is producing the world première of Karen Zelas’s award-winning play, Poverty and Muse, to mark the 70th anniversary of New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins’ death (13th May 1947). We are working with the Christchurch Art Gallery to produce this work at the Art Gallery theatre auditorium as the best venue in Christchurch to mount a production about one of New Zealand’s iconic artists. Poverty and Muse is a thought-provoking look at the reality of being a cutting-edge artist. Largely rejected by New Zealand, and struggling with the guilt of leaving her mother to her sister’s care in order to follow her artistic career, we see Frances Hodgkins in later life: quirky, lonely, broke but resilient. Her companions are Poverty and Muse who are personified and played as a down-at-heel male and a beautiful sensual young woman. They engage the artist constantly in conflict, debate and humorous exchange. Her mind conjures people from her past and present, engaging in intimate dialogue, illuminating conflicts and losses, passion and sacrifice, obsession and self-doubt, ecstasy and despair. We see the interplay in Hodgkins’ life between success and inspiration, and the reality that despite being famous and acclaimed as ‘Britain’s foremost woman painter’, she was living in poverty. Frances is plagued by ruthless gallery-owners, her own obsession with perfection, and by a poverty that has long ceased being Bohemian and glamorous; she battles with life, aging and loneliness, as World War II transforms the world about her.
This is the intimate story of the woman behind the paintings, but wider than that it demonstrates the colonial plight, showing the enduring hardships and statelessness of the expatriate artist in any genre, relevant as much today as in the past.
Characters include: Frances Hodgkins, Poverty, Muse, sister Isabel, mother Rachel, nephew Peter, housekeeper Mrs Coggan, friend and potter Amy Krauss, art dealer Mr McDonald.
Poverty and Muse is Christchurch writer Karen Zelas’ third play and won the 2013 Playwrights Association of NZ competition for a new script. One Man Banned Productions collaborated with her in 2014 in the production of her second play, Geography of Loss, a striking poetic family drama. Karen has also published two collections of poetry and a novel.
References:
Letters of Frances Hodgkins – edited by Linda Gill (AUP, 1993). Quotations by kind consent of Auckland University Press.
Frances Hodgkins: A Private Viewing – Joanne Drayton (Godwit; Random House, 2005)
Director: Martin Howells
Imagine Charitable Trust, through One Man Banned Productions, is producing the world première of Karen Zelas’s award-winning play, Poverty and Muse, to mark the 70th anniversary of New Zealand painter Frances Hodgkins’ death (13th May 1947). We are working with the Christchurch Art Gallery to produce this work at the Art Gallery theatre auditorium as the best venue in Christchurch to mount a production about one of New Zealand’s iconic artists. Poverty and Muse is a thought-provoking look at the reality of being a cutting-edge artist. Largely rejected by New Zealand, and struggling with the guilt of leaving her mother to her sister’s care in order to follow her artistic career, we see Frances Hodgkins in later life: quirky, lonely, broke but resilient. Her companions are Poverty and Muse who are personified and played as a down-at-heel male and a beautiful sensual young woman. They engage the artist constantly in conflict, debate and humorous exchange. Her mind conjures people from her past and present, engaging in intimate dialogue, illuminating conflicts and losses, passion and sacrifice, obsession and self-doubt, ecstasy and despair. We see the interplay in Hodgkins’ life between success and inspiration, and the reality that despite being famous and acclaimed as ‘Britain’s foremost woman painter’, she was living in poverty. Frances is plagued by ruthless gallery-owners, her own obsession with perfection, and by a poverty that has long ceased being Bohemian and glamorous; she battles with life, aging and loneliness, as World War II transforms the world about her.
This is the intimate story of the woman behind the paintings, but wider than that it demonstrates the colonial plight, showing the enduring hardships and statelessness of the expatriate artist in any genre, relevant as much today as in the past.
Characters include: Frances Hodgkins, Poverty, Muse, sister Isabel, mother Rachel, nephew Peter, housekeeper Mrs Coggan, friend and potter Amy Krauss, art dealer Mr McDonald.
Poverty and Muse is Christchurch writer Karen Zelas’ third play and won the 2013 Playwrights Association of NZ competition for a new script. One Man Banned Productions collaborated with her in 2014 in the production of her second play, Geography of Loss, a striking poetic family drama. Karen has also published two collections of poetry and a novel.
References:
Letters of Frances Hodgkins – edited by Linda Gill (AUP, 1993). Quotations by kind consent of Auckland University Press.
Frances Hodgkins: A Private Viewing – Joanne Drayton (Godwit; Random House, 2005)