Forster - Daughters of Heaven

DaughtersofHeaven was first performed at the Court Theatre, Christchurch, on 19 October 1991 with the following cast: J ULIET H ULME Nancy Schrder P AULINE P ARKER Louise Frost B RIDGET OM ALLEY Yvonne Martin H ILDA H ULME Darien Takle H ENRY H ULME /J USTICE A DAMS Patrick Dowman W ALTER P ERRY /R EG M EDLICOTT Ross Gumbley A LAN B ROWN /D ETECTIVE Mark Hadlow H ONORA R IEPER /M ATRON Sandra Rasmussen H ERBERT R IEPER /T ERRENCE G RESSON Paul Barrett Directed by Elric Hooper Designed by Tony Geddes

Few people alive and residing in Christchurch in 1954 have difficulty in remembering the circumstances of hearing the news that a woman called Rieper had been murdered in Victoria Park, or recalling the guilty excitement as the details, not just of the crime but of the private lives of those connected with the perpetrators, were revealed. I was a first year student at Canterbury College at the time. I remember leaning against a green corrugated iron fence, balancing my bike, and exchanging wonder with someone equally ill-informed about life. I heard the word lesbian for the first time. Then, one day soon after, through a stack in the university library, I heard a distinguished historian, an eminent lecturer on Arab civilisation, deliver himself of a stream of malicious detail about the case. I was shocked, not so much at what I heard, as at who had said it.

I thought only the uneducated like myself spoke like that. I suppose, as with so many others, the Parker-Hulme case was part of my education, loss of provincial innocence and the beginning of disillusion. So when Michelanne Forster approached me about writing a play for the Court Theatre on the subject, I was enthusiasticit was part of my life, part of the lore of this city and, most important, an engrossing and bizarre story. I also felt enough time had gone bynearly forty yearsfor the events to have become historyhistory meaning the record of the past that can be contemplated in a detached and critical manner. In this last assumption, I could not have been more wrong. the case, albeit in theatricalor perhaps, especially in theatricalterms, the air was full of the sound of rising hackles and phrases like bad taste. the case, albeit in theatricalor perhaps, especially in theatricalterms, the air was full of the sound of rising hackles and phrases like bad taste.

Some people refused to talk about the case, while others would not stop. It was as if the story was still the personal and private possession of even those who had only the slightest contact with the events. The Parker-Hulme case was still a touchy subject. Michelanne Forster found two main sources for the play: the public record of the trial as it exists in the almost verbatim reports that appeared in the two major daily papers of the city, and interviews with survivors. Several people refused to speak to her, and several more were very guarded. However, through polite and persistent enquiry, she was able to assemble facts and, more important for the theatre, idiosyncratic detail that brought both the personalities and the provincial atmosphere of Christchurch in 1954 to life.

Michelanne Forsters play operates on at least three levels. The external and legal facts are established by the prosecuting council, Alan Brown. This provides the simple narrative. At the same time a commentary on the events is carried on by another outside observer, Bridget. This is not so much a fictional creation as a being in whom are gathered together opinions, attitudes and facts manifested in the city at the time. The case brought out all the small-town prejudices one would expect to find in a place like Christchurch in 1954: anti-intellectualism, hypocritical disapproval of sexual misconduct, religious bigotry, and strange survivals of folk superstitions such as those surrounding tuberculosis.

Between these two poles, the events of the case are recreated in a series of more-or-less naturalistic scenesthough these scenes are not always presented in strictly chronological order. Perhaps where these three lines intersect, tragic understanding may occur. While strictly adhering to the facts of the case and yet liberating observers from the need to say, It didnt happen like that, the play is presented in a manner that distances the eventsbut not so much that they become unreal. This is, indeed, making a virtue of necessity for no theatre can accurately present each locale in such a complex story. Ultimately the aim of any play, whether based on fact or presented as total fiction, is to present a world, no matter how strange or extreme, which is consistent within itself and convinces solely by itself. When it was pointed out to Michelangelo that his statue of Lorenzo de Medici looked nothing like the real man, the great artist replied that in a hundred years no one would know that, but everyone would be convinced that this marble image was how such a noble person ought to have looked.

Such is the aspiration, arrogance and sometimes the magical metamorphosis of art. Elric Hooper
Artistic Director
Court Theatre