WHAT brings the famous star of shows such as “Chicago” and “Anything Goes”, Geraldine Turner, to The Street Theatre? 

Well, her new script “Drama Queen” will be read on May 27 as part of First Seen, a showcase of nine new performance works in-progress.

It’s a typical showbiz story. The Street’s director and “CityNews” Artist of the Year, Caroline Stacey, had directed Turner in “The Vagina Monologues” and before that the opera “Lakme” for her conductor husband, Brian Castles Onion, at the Canterbury Opera in NZ.

“When Caroline came to The Street, she hired me for ‘Jacques Brel Is Alive and Well and Living in Paris’ and later we worked on Alana Valentine’s play ‘MP’,” Turner tells “CityNews”.

She soon confessed that she had long wanted to write a play but had “been too scared”.

“Caroline called me and said, ‘you should join our writing program called the Hive,’ she says.

The play is based on Turner’s fraught relationship to her own mother. “I’m not going to run away from that… it’s not Gypsy Rose Lee’s Mama Rose… it’s a mother and daughter in a showbiz framework.”

Turner contacted the young lyricist (“lyrist” is the correct term, she asserts) James Millar, whose song cycle “LoveBites” she had admired. Turner educates me about the importance of the lyricist, singing a snatch of Irving Berlin’s “What’ll I Do” as certain proof that “if you say it, it’s banal; if you sing it, it’s beautiful”.

Millar brought in David King, the head of music at WAPA and they had a reading at The Street a year ago. Knowing that I was there, Turner cuts in, “I can tell you the script has moved on since then, and so has the score.”

“I wouldn’t dare call myself a writer yet, so I do take on board everything people say – sometimes it seems ridiculous, but if more than one person says the same thing, you really have to think about that.”

So how has it been, mingling with local writers?

“Some people do seem to be intimidated by me, but it’s usually before they’ve worked with me,” she says.

“I guess I present as someone who’s pretty formidable, but in fact I’m a marshmallow.”

The plan is that this “second seen” version will blossom into a full production, but she and Stacey are looking for a production partner and, of course, a band in order to give “Drama Queen” legs.

She feels “lucky” to have started in Canberra. “I’m a bit of a ring-in, but because I come from the country [Moss Vale] I can be counted as an ACT person… I’ve made friends here and it’s got a fantastic vibrant arts scene.”

First Seen at The Street Theatre, until May 31, “Drama Queen”, by Geraldine Turner, 8pm, May 27. Bookings to thestreet.org.au/ or call  6247 1223.