Brenda Palmer

What do humans do that? Animals don’t.

We tell stories, maybe a bedtime story.  An actor parent, a Three Bears script and a baby audience.

That is theatre!

I’ve been at it for a lifetime … well since I was eleven.  Aged 11, standing under the apricot free in Toorak my dad told me that I would do the biological sciences because physics and maths were meant for the men!

At the same time, I was directing the five French children who lived next door in my production of Winnie the Pooh.  That didn’t signify.

Ever an obedient child I became a microbiologist.

Marriage and children later we  lived in Lyonville and I  taught chemistry in Daylesford.

No theatre in sight.  But then for a year I was hit by a paralytic disease.  Only able to move my eyeballs up, my mind was free to dream … about acting.

As children do, they left home so I found The New VIC Theatre School in Melbourne. I had my second career  training and set my sights on auditions and call backs.

I climbed some dingy, wooden stairs to an agent and got  to work.  Neighbours, Blue Heelers, Channels 9, 10, 7, ABC drama and comedy kept me going.

The first theatre was La Mama.  I am standing outside a door listening for my cue, in a dark lane, in a dirty puddle, in bare feet, in August, in the rain and I remember thinking “There is nowhere else in this world I would rather  be”.

Heaps of television and films and theatre have been my life and now I’m loving nurturing (if that doesn’t sound too pompous) a no-frills theatre experience in good ol’ Daylesford.

In Daylesford I’ve discovered  with Ian Scott a fellow actor, that folk like the idea of going to someone’s home in an afternoon to watch an hour-long reading of a play.

It seems I just can’t stop making theatre.

The actors are locals who put their hands up to be involved in the fun.

The productions so far have been:

The Play’s the Thing by Brenda Palmer,

Claire and Pierre by Duras,

Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf by Albee,

Sylvia Plath, The Girl Who Wanted to be God by Corbett Johns and Brenda Palmer,

And in the pipeline is Lady Macbeth’s story by Elizabeth Huntley

I’d love to continue to share my passion for drama and theatre with the Daylesford community.

The up-and-coming production is on Saturday 22 February and Sunday 23rd  It’s called “To Convoke” (I wrote it!).  It runs for 55 minutes and is about a house, two  sisters, a strange visitor and an ex-lover.

It will be performed at 40 Jubilee Lake Lane at 2pm.  Donation at the door.    Bookings are essential on 0498227180.