‘I never expected to see a woman climax from eating a mango,’ said one audience member after seeing The 7 Stages of Pam at Cooran Community Hall in the picturesque town, west of Noosa on Sunday.
That was just one of the surprising and delightful scenes from this participatory theatre project teaming the Mature Women Actors hub with Perseverance Street Theatre Company director Sharon Hogan.
Hogan explodes the canon, using classical works like the famous speech on the ‘seven ages of man’ in Shakespeare’s As You Like It as a conceptual lens to dramatise the lives of three contemporary Australian women named Pamela.
PHOTO: Vivienne Wynter
The three Pams, a teacher, a nurse and a lifelong traveler, search for love, meaning and security across seven life stages from childhood to their final breath.
The show travels from 1950s to 2050s Australia through times of social and technological change.
Each Pamela (played by 11 actors) rides the ups and downs of their lives with wit and tenacity.
It would be hard not to find something relatable in these stories of buying lollies with shillings in the 60s, buying rust-bucket cars in the 70s, drunken fathers, stern nuns and first pimples, periods and pashes.
PHOTO: Bernie McKay
Hogan says ‘there’s a lot of feminine energy’ in this show and the audience was mostly women, although my male companion said he enjoyed it.
‘At school I didn’t get Shakespeare. It was about things that didn’t relate to me.
‘This show did a gender flip and re-imagined Shakespeare’s seven ages of man into modern themes reflecting Australian women. I loved it.’
Theatre about real people
High art and classical works can be dated and inaccessible to people without arts training.
The 7 Stages of Pam shows how accessible and easily enjoyable theatre about real people and contemporary issues can be made.
The show blended storytelling, acting, musical and physical theatre to explore milestones in the three Pam’s lives with humour and pathos.
It was developed over a three-month workshop and rehearsal program, creating a theatre performance from the authentic, rich and diverse life stories of the performers.
The project involved 17 women aged 45 to 74 including 11 actors who performed engagingly, energetically and joyfully.
PHOTO: Bernie McKay
The script was tight and well written but sagged a little when a couple of actors did not project their voices and a couple forgot their lines. (The audience was forgiving and the pace picked up quickly.)
The simple set used Hogan’s typically elegant devices such as large coloured scarves to identify each Pam or double as veil for a nun or a bride, a beach towel and even (rolled up) as a newborn baby.
PHOTO: Bernie McKay
The audience loved it
The music of the 60s and 70s and references to the social mores of the times were used effectively. It was obvious that around 200 audience members in the sold out venue enjoyed it, singing along, laughing out loud and applauding some scenes.
Shakespeare’s seven ages of man were infant, schoolboy, lover, soldier, judge, pantaloon and old man.
The seven stages of Pam were childhood, adolescence, a few stages of adulthood, middle age and death.
Shakespeare called man’s seven ages a ‘strange and eventful history’.
For this reviewer, Pam’s stages were an eventful history of liberation from limiting gender, class and age roles.
For example, one Pam dies ecstatically in her senior years after orgasming with her younger lover.
These stories could not be told without regional theatre companies like Perseverance Street Theatre, a fairly new company based in Gympie.
In 2023, Regional Arts Australia Executive Director, Ros Abercrombie told the Australian Community Foundation ‘… wherever you land in this country, there’s an amazing breadth of cultural practice and experience and an incredible creative ecosystem embedded in the fabric of regional communities.’
This is true of Gympie, Noosa and the Sunshine Coast and it’s true of Perseverance Street Theatre, which has created a thriving creative ecosystem in the short few years of its existence.
Universal characters
Out of this ecosystem comes authentic, universal characters who resonate with audiences.
Pam, with her longings for love, independence, naughty adventures, a child taken away, professional fulfillment, fidelity and fun is really all of us.
Bravo.
PHOTO at top of story: Group shot of the cast of The 7 Stages of Pam. SUPPLIED
