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Miller’s tale of memory games

Director Chenoeh Miller... "It was the perfect Ediburgh experience."

DIRECTOR Chenoeh Miller says she never grew out of doing lounge-room dance routines.

Educated in Canberra, she spent her childhood making up little plays, usually playing the lead character.

Now as an adult, she’s just written a play, but this is one she’s not in.

In “Cordelia”, Miller tells the story of Shakespeare’s tragedy “King Lear” through the eyes of the shadowy King of France, seen briefly in Shakespeare as the man who marries Lear’s youngest daughter Cordelia when she is thrown out for refusing to play her father’s childish game of “tell me how you love me”.

France will be played by Canberra’s Adam Hadley as the filter through whom everything is seen.

He’s shown hosting a dinner party and tells the story in a way that involves memory games, making “Cordelia” a prequel to “King Lear”.

Noa Rotem in the title role of Cordelia.
Created by Miller and produced by Dave Sleswick, from Brisbane, it is co-devised and performed by Rowan Davie and Janine Watson from Melbourne and Erica Field (as Goneril), Noa Rotem (who plays Cordelia) and Peta Ward from Brisbane.

Trained in theatre-making at the University of Western Sydney, Miller founded “Theatre of Love”, worked with the innovative physical theatre companies Version 1.0 and Zen Zen Zo, and set up Little Dove Theatre.

Her name “Chenoeh” is American-Indian for “Little Dove.”

Miller’s Japanese Butoh-inspired work “Six Women Standing in Front of a White Wall” was seen at the Multicultural Fringe in Canberra and the Edinburgh Fringe in 2007.

Erica Field who plays Goneril.
In Scotland, it enjoyed a sell-out, three-week season and won the “Scotland on Sunday” Best Direction Award.

In Edinburgh, she met the lighting designer Hartley Kemp who, now in Australia, will light “Cordelia”.  “It was the perfect Edinburgh experience,” Miller says.

She’d read “King Lear” at age 15 and it was her favourite – “I’d always wanted to rework ‘Lear’.”

So she did, assisted by The Street Theatre’s dramaturg Peter Matheson, who encouraged her to “make it as long as you like”.

After a preparatory workshop last year involving writers Joe Woodward as Lear and Anni Doyle Wawrzynczak, a former jazz singer, as his Queen, she further developed it in a Hothouse Theatre “A Month in the Country” residency in Albury, where she halved the script.

By now Woodward wasn’t available, so she wrote Lear out, focusing on the disturbingly honest Cordelia.

She also wrote out Gloucester, poor Tom and the Fool, but added in “moving and heartfelt” monologues for the commonly reviled sisters, Goneril and Regan.

Miller is adamant that “this is a texty play”, but swears she hasn’t looked at the Shakespeare since starting her version.

The set is “very minimal” and the period-inspired costumes by Imogen Keen will have an ‘80s twist, with billowing skirts and fluoro linings.

The music comes from ‘80s pop bands such as Split Enz, and the classically trained choreographer Cristina DeMello will be busy countering the earthbound movements of the Japanese-trained players.

With Robyn Nevin playing Queen Lear for the Melbourne Theatre Company’s Shakespeare next year, “Cordelia” could well be timely, and Miller is pleased to learn that Bell Shakespeare’s Peter Evans will be keeping an eye on it.

“Cordelia”, The Street Theatre, November 3-5. Bookings to 6247 1223 or www.thestreet.org.au

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Helen Musa

Helen Musa

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