Doing everything: Women performers going it alone
They grew up in neighbouring Christchurch suburbs and spend their lives performing their very different onewoman shows around Aotearoa and beyond. Now both are on stage around the city over the next two weeks. By
As she walks her border collie around Elmwood Park in Christchurch, Ali Harper is “singing along to lyrics and trying not to look too nutty”. Meanwhile in Auckland, Penny Ashton is murmuring Shakespearean lines as she strolls around Glendene.
The women grew up a short distance apart in Fendalton and Papanui, Christchurch, and are two of the most active members of a very exclusive Aotearoa club - successful solo female theatre performers.
Harper and Ashton have spent decades producing and performing one-woman shows around New Zealand and beyond, and for the next two weeks their schedules have brought them into close proximity – their unique stage productions are both being performed in the Christchurch area.
Harper’s celebrated singing voice is behind a series of musically themed shows, dedicated to the likes of Carole King and Burt Bacharach. Her Judy Garland show will tour
Australia next year. Her latest production, The Supper Club, will bring music from the 1920s to the 1980s to The Piano on Armagh St from tonight.
Ashton’s Shakespeare-inspired comedy show The Tempestuous will offer audiences at the Lyttelton Arts Factory an “Elizabethan tale of magic, meddling and puffed bull’s pizzles”. For the past 11 years, she’s created productions themed around great literary figures, with added musical interludes.
Despite performing very different shows, the pair’s commonality extends to the same former high school – Rangi Ruru – and a mutual appreciation of the other’s craft.
“I think Penny and I are probably the only two women in New Zealand that have survived for as long as we have, producing and writing our own shows,” Harper said.
“I’ll often say to students that are graduating from drama schools, ‘you’ve got to be an entrepreneur’. And Penny and I are wonderful examples of that.”
In her early days in theatre, Ashton produced Rhys Darby’s first solo show and said both she and Harper were commercially minded practitioners who “choose things that sell well”.
After her run at the Lyttelton Arts Factory, Ashton will take her show to Nelson and Blenheim, prior to North Island dates in Hastings, Hamilton and Wellington.
For both, their popular one-woman shows have become a way of life. As Ashton put it, they are “quite the hoofers that hustle”.
The Supper Club runs at The Piano from tonight to August 17 (but no show on Monday). Tickets at www.aliharper.com.
The Tempestuous runs at the Lyttelton Arts Factory tomorrow, Saturday, and August 16, 17 and 18. Tickets are available online or by calling 021 240 1112.