By PAUL MILLAR
NONI Hazlehurst defies audiences to leave without feeling touched by her one-woman performance of an ageing, rambling homeless woman.
The multi-award winning Australian actor will make her first visit to Geelong as a performer next week to showcase Mother, a gritty drama that could be based on many of the forgotten women living on the grim edge of society amid homelessness and domestic violence.
The veteran performer said she had to draw on her own feelings and experiences to portray the traumatic life of Christy, a woman haunted by the events of her past.
The Logie winner plays the part of a beaten woman, a mother who has suffered physical abuse but refuses to yield, telling her story to anybody who will stop for a moment, even to some who don’t want to listen.
“She’s a survivor and wants to tell her story. She’s beyond caring if they’re listening, so there’s real humour there,” Hazlehurst told the Independent.
She hoped the audience would adopt her own experience of feeling like “there but for the grace of God go I’’ during the show.
“We’ve all been through some trauma at one stage in our lives and I use that as my own tool but it’s pretty bloody tough to bring this out.”
Set in the 1970s, award-winning playwright Daniel Keene’s script tells the story a woman abused by an alcoholic father and raised by a deeply religious mother.
The story is about life’s options and the devastating consequences of taking the wrong one.
Christy confuses reality with fiction as she tells her story, which Hazlehurst said was a plea for understanding.
“She’s not crazy, she’s just had some bad luck.”
Hazlehurst will perform Mother at Geelong Performing Arts from Thursday to 8 August.
