It seems almost incredible to report, but Canberra actor Amy Kowalczuk has never acted in Shakespeare before.

By the end of the year, she’ll have performed in seven different roles, five times as an actor and twice directing, including the mighty role of Blanche Dubois in A Streetcar Named Desire.

Now Kowalczuk takes on the daunting role of “mad Meg”, Henry VI’s wife Queen Margaret, described by Shakespeare himself as having “a tiger’s heart wrapped in a woman’s hide”. 

The polar opposite of her gentle, intellectual husband, she’s front and centre in the rarely-performed Shakespearean plays that bear his name but which have some extraordinary acting scenes in them.

Lexi Sekuless Productions is taking on the second of these plays in Rockspeare Henry Sixth Part Two or 2H6, staged with radical costumes by Tania Jobson and a cool original soundscape by Ukrainian composer Ikoliks.

Sekuless staged the first part of the story in October 2023 and now she’s plunging us right into the centre of the Wars of the Roses, with Kowalczuk as Queen Margaret not the relatively low-key ingénue of 1H6, but now as the full fully fledged dominatrix.

The story kicks off with King Henry’s marriage to the penniless Margaret and the English court’s reaction. Tensions build between the houses of York and Lancaster and we meet Richard, soon to become the notorious Richard III and Margeret’s sworn enemy. 

It’s all grist to the mill to Kowalczuk, enjoying her close work with Sekuless who has made a specialty of exploring the deep texture of Shakespeare’s language on stage. 

But it isn’t as if Kowalczuk is a theatrical novice. 

At Hawker College her drama teachers, the legendary Steve Brown and Kate Rose, were doing much more exciting things, such as The Golden Age by Louis Nowra and 48 Shades of Brown: the play, directed by Jamila Rizvi.

Then in 1997 she scored the title role in Annie for Alpha Theatre. 

After performing in musical theatre, she also undertook the Advanced Musical Theatre Course with Canberra musical theatre legend Queenie van de Zandt in 2010, later begging Everyman Theatre’s Duncan Ley and Jarrad West to let her audition for Breaker Morant. 

Before long in 2012, they had her performing in a double bill of Woody Allen’s God and Mark Ravenhill’s Pool No Water.

In 2013, Derek Walker invited her to join in the cast of the four-hander, I Love You, You’re Perfect, Now Change, which was rehearsed at NIDA, then toured to Gorman House.

She went on to play Fantin in a 2017 production of Le Miz, but hasn’t done a musical since.

Now, Kowalczuk is on another learning curve, working with Sekuless on Shakespeare, an experience of which she says: “I’m being given a new lease on my performance abilities… We’re getting down into the nitty-gritty of Shakespeare.”

A good thing because, as she says, the play includes “a fantastic, juicy love affair, upfront, close and personal… You can’t get much closer than this.”

The young Marguerite of Anjou, she explains, was gifted to Henry the Sixth (Chips Jin) by her lover, the Duke of Suffolk, played by Mark Lee – “the ultimate pairing, a match of very strong characters.” 

But Margaret is in complete contrast to King Henry, known for his gentle incompetence as a ruler and Kowalczuk’s favourite parts include a monologue where she tells Henry off for bringing her to England and a fierce love scene between Margaret and Suffolk.

“Everything is said out loud, so you have to think quickly on your feet, it’s one of the most present forms of theatre I have ever done,” she says.

“There’s exciting dialogue, exciting movement, exciting costumes and exciting music but mostly,” she says, “it’s a highly political scramble”.

Rockspeare Henry Sixth Part Two, Mill Theatre, Fyshwick, October 9-24.