Spinning Straw by Kate Herbert, details & excerpt 2008

Jenny Lovell,  Julia Markowski, Geoff Wallis

Spinning Straw is a play about the impact of substance abuse on a pregnant 18year old and a woman who tries to help her. Annie, who prefers to be called “Pig”, is a chronic binge drinker and pill popper. She is pregnant with her second baby but, despite her first child being in care, she persists in her drinking and ignores the danger to her baby. Her neighbour, Margaret, who is a recovering alcoholic herself, tries to reform Pig but there is little hope. Pig is more concerned with the impact of pregnancy on her lifestyle and plans to sell the baby to the highest bidder on the Internet. Spinning Straw incorporates pathos, comedy and music. Interwoven with the story of Pig and Margaret is the fairytale of Rumpelstiltskin, the strange little fellow who spun straw into gold for the miller’s daughter in exchange for her first born child. The play is peppered with lullabies, references to folk remedies for hangovers and morning sickness.

Characters

WOMAN AKA MARGARET: 40s. She is PIG’S neighbour, divorced, a recovering alcoholic whose child was taken from her during her alcoholic phase. She is maternal and tries to help PIG to have a healthy baby and to overcome her addictions. She does not speak about her own background and, for a relative stranger, seems overly concerned with the GIRL’S welfare.

GIRL AKA PIG: 18. PIG is a substance abuser and school dropout with an abusive childhood. She had another child at 16 who was taken into foster care. PIG is more concerned about how a pregnancy will kill her social life and how much money she can make from selling a baby.

MAN: 40s. The MAN represents different characters but is generally a cipher, a character that echoes the WOMAN’S thoughts, challenges her, sings lullabies and is the NARRATOR of the Rumpelstiltskin story.

RUMPELSTILTSKIN played by actor playing WOMAN

PRINCESS played by actor playing GIRL

Setting

A transparent screen hangs Upstage from Centre to Stage Right from lighting bar to the floor. A sofa sits Centre-Right stage and a Stool stands Centre Left. Actors appear behind and in front of the screen.

Music

Recorded rock music; abstract soundscape; lullabies sung by MAN.

First staged at La Mama Theatre, Faraday St Carlton, 29 Oct to 15 November 2008

Writer& Director: Kate Herbert

Cast: Geoff Wallis as MAN, Jenny Lovell as WOMAN & RUMPELSTILTSKIN, Julia Markowski as GIRL & PRINCESS

Creative team: Meg White (Set), Roger Alsop (Sound), Angela Cole (Lighting) Douglas Montgomery (Stage Manager)

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EXCERPT – Spinning Straw, a play by Kate Herbert

A transparent screen hangs Upstage from Centre to Stage Right from lighting bar to the floor. A sofa sits Centre-Right stage and a Stool stands Centre Left. Actors appear behind and in front of the screen.

1

LX wild, moving Club lighting

 

MUSIC Hard Rock.

 

Behind scrim, WOMAN, GIRL and MAN dance as if at a club. MAN dances between them and seems in control of his movements whereas WOMAN and GIRL do not. Abstract movements indicate drinking, smoking, snorting lines, popping pills. WOMAN bends over to retch then continues dancing, drinking etc. MAN applauds. GIRL bends over to retch. GIRL continues dancing, drinking etc. WOMAN collapses to floor. MAN picks her up. WOMAN continues dancing, drinking etc.  GIRL collapses to floor. MAN picks her up. GIRL continues dancing, drinking etc. MAN applauds. This is performed as a sequence until WOMAN and GIRL end up on the floor at the same time. MAN picks them both up and stands holding them up and laughing.

 

LX change

 

All step out from behind screen.

 

MUSIC stops.

 

2

GIRL scrounges around for cigarettes, coughing. WOMAN sits down looking patient. MAN watches from upstage. It should seem as if they are a family unit initially, as if he is father and she mother. GIRL does not see or hear him but WOMAN is aware of him.

 

WOMAN:  So you can eat more red meat or you can take an iron supplement.

 

MAN: Oh, for crying out loud!

 

WOMAN: (ignores MAN) Did the doctor tell you…?

 

GIRL: Have you got any fags? (hunting)

 

WOMAN: (as if for the 100^th time) Annie, I don’t smoke. I’ll get an organic iron supplement for you…

 

MAN: She doesn’t care!

 

GIRL:  (grabbing cigarette from under something) There you are, you little bastard. (looks around) Now, where’s the freakin’ lighter? (hunts)

 

WOMAN: Annie, smoking depletes your vitamin C, and pregnant women need Bs and folate.

 

MAN: Leave the girl alone!

 

GIRL: You got a lighter?

 

WOMAN: (to GIRL) What?

 

GIRL: (overlap) Have you got a lighter?

MAN: (overlap) Have you got a lighter?

 

WOMAN: (exasperated) No, Annie, I don’t have a lighter.

 

GIRL: Don’t call me that.

 

WOMAN: You might be better off… (if you stopped smoking.)

 

MAN: (mimics) You might be better off…

 

GIRL: (overlap) Matches? Have you got matches?

WOMAN: No.

 

GIRL: How do you light the stove without matches?

 

WOMAN: I don’t live here. You do.

 

GIRL looks around

 

GIRL: Where did you hide the matches then?

 

WOMAN sighs

 

Got any cash? Gotta buy matches – and another packet of fags.

 

WOMAN gives GIRL cash and tosses herself into a chair as GIRL exits.

 

GIRL: (off, calls) I’ll get us some beers.

 

WOMAN begins to protest but gives up

 

MAN: Mmm. Beer good. (stand behind her, rubs her tummy almost intimately)

 

 WOMAN turns to look at MAN. MAN suddenly steps away.

 

MAN: Told you.

 

WOMAN sighs, deflated

 

MAN: You could take up knitting?

 

LX Change

 

MUSIC: GOLDEN SLUMBERS instrumental over scene change

3

On sofa, GIRL lies with her head in MAN’S lap like child at bedtime. MAN sings one verse of Golden Slumbers then narrates Rumpelstiltskin story and plays other characters. GIRL acts like delighted, sleepy child, sometimes mouthing words of story as if she knows it well. GIRL then enacts the Princess role. WOMAN hides behind sofa obscured by MAN. The enactment of the story is a little histrionic.

 

MUSIC: GOLDEN SLUMBERS instrumental. MAN sings first lines of lullaby after 4 bars of instrumental. Instrumental continues to end of scene.

 

MAN: (sings) Golden slumbers kiss your eyes,/Smiles await you when you rise. Sleep, pretty darling, do not cry, /And I will sing a lullaby.

 

MAN: Once there was a miller who was poor but who had a beautiful daughter. Now it happened that he had to go and speak to the king, and in order to make himself appear important he said to him, (rough-voiced MILLER) “I have a daughter who can spin straw into gold.” The king said to the miller,  (as KING) “That is an art that pleases me well. If your daughter is as clever as you say, bring her tomorrow to my palace, and I will put her to the test.” And when the girl was brought to him he took her into a room that was quite full of straw, gave her a spinning wheel and a reel, and said, (as KING) “Now set to work, and if by to-morrow morning early you have not spun this straw into gold during the night, you must die.” Thereupon he locked up the room and left her in it alone.

 

GIRL sits slowly upright, becoming the Princess.

 

So there sat the poor miller's daughter and for the life of her she could not tell what to do. She had no idea how straw could be spun into gold and she grew more and more frightened until at last she began to weep.

BAUERNHOF by Kate Herbert - details & excerpt

BAUERNHOF a play by Kate Herbert

 

LOCATION / PERIOD: 1990-something After Unification. Gedelitz. A village in West Germany just east of the old border. A 300 years old barn-farmhouse converted to a more modern farm dwelling but it still has wood-heating and a central barn within the house. It is Christmas in a very cold winter.

 

WOMAN: German. In her 70's. She wears rough farm clothing which is clean but old. She appears rustic, earthy at first glance  but there are echoes in her face and demeanour of her youthful elegance.  She is slight and has been pretty as a young WOMAN. In spite of age and grief, the ravages of the war and the harsh weather she still has shades of her past glory. She acts as patron to MAREIKE somehow reliving her lost artistic past through her.

 

MAN: Australian of German origin. 50's. Speaks German not like a native. German heritage. Has money earned from a business in importing and retailing domestic appliances.  He has come to Gedelitz where he says someone from his family once  lived.

 

MAREIKE: 16-17 years. German farmer's daughter. Pretty, naive, fast-talking, dizzy and talented country girl. She is the WOMAN's protegee'. Plays violin and has classical singing lessons. Hopes to go to the Conservatory in Berlin. Her grandmother's farm abuts the WOMAN's. She lives with her grandmother and her father.

 

SOPRANO Sings Wien intermittently

 

SET: The design will be an abstract reflection of the German farmhouse. It needs to reflect the icy outside landscape. Possibly old black and white pictures of the wartime period cover the walls or are projected. The naturalistic detail is not needed but some sort of heavy wooden table,  chairs, something to suggest a fire or pot-belly stove, a sofa or chaise longue.. The space could reflect its age and long worn state. A much thumbed photo album, a box of photos, possibly books on a shelf. It is Christmas and we could see a Christmas wreath with four fat candles of different heights, perhaps a tree and the Advent Calendar is referred to with 22 days opened. 

 

SONG WOMAN sings is 'Vienna, City of my Dreams' ('Wien, du Stadt meine Träume.')

 

NOTE: Translations of the German are under the phrases in smaller italics. When MAREIKE and the WOMAN speak together in German, the text is in English. Accents are only slight and grammar is correct if a little formal.

 

With MAN the accents and grammar are accented and they noticeably speak English as a foreign language.

 

SOPRANO Can be live or the song can be sung by the WOMAN herself if she is a singer.

 

MAREIKE might play another instrument if there is no one who can play violin.

  ______________________________________________________________________

Premiered at La Mama Theatre on 4 August 1999. Season 4-22 August 1999

WRITER: Kate Herbert

DIRECTOR: David Latham

WOMAN: Julia Blake

MAN: David Wicks

MAREIKE:  Anne Maloney

SOPRANO: Helen Saifert 

LIGHTING AND SET DESIGN: Meg White

STAGE MANAGER & LIGHTING OPERATOR: Rebecca Etchell
POSTCARD DESIGN : Cally Browning

PHOTOGRAPHY: Georgia Metaxas

__________________________________________________________________________

Excerpt from BAUERNHOF by Kate Herbert 

This excerpt is from towards the end of the play.

 

----------

MAN takes out his wallet and pulls out a small photo and hands it to her

 

WOMAN        Your mother?

 

MAN              You know her?

 

WOMAN        Ich? Nein. Why?  (Me? No.)

 

MAN              Perhaps in the war.

 

WOMAN        Berlin is a big city.

 

MAN              Very big.

 

WOMAN        We all have suffered in the war.

 

MAN pulls out a second photo

 

MAN              And this is my father. I never spoke to him again after Max died - except once, the night he left. My aunt came to look after us. The night my father left, I screamed at him, "I hate God's secret work. And I hate you". This was the last thing I ever said to him. The night my father deserted us for he last time I told my aunt about Pappy and God's Work. She told me to be quiet, not to tell anybody else or my father would be in great danger.

 

WOMAN        The Gestapo had big ears.

 

MAN              She was the only person I ever told about God's Secret Work- until you.

 

WOMAN        It is too late now.

 

MAN              Too late. Yes. The night after my father left, a neighbour came and took my mother into the living room. I remember thinking Frau Kettelman's face looked like crumpled paper. I listened at the door. "They grabbed him on the street this morning, Gudrun. " I opened the door and my mother was standing like a bird, balancing on one leg, clutching her cardigan around her, staring at our neighbour. She                        turned to look at me. I knew it was my fault Pappie was dead. I didn't believe in God's work and God heard me.

 

WOMAN        You are not to blame. You were a child. God does not kill you father. It is the Gestapo.

 

MAN              I helped I was the traitor. After my mother died - it was near the end of the war - my aunt looked after me. She tried - but it's not possible to replace a mother. And she was very young. Young but very strong. Even before my father died, my mother relied on my aunt. But even my aunt was frightened now. Frightened of the Russians soldiers coming into Berlin. Every night she made me sleep in my clothes. All my clothes: leather trousers, pullovers, coat, scarves, walking boots. And I had to keep my back pack on in case we needed to escape in the middle the night. It was stuffed with warm socks and dried food my aunt had got from somewhere. One night, we heard the knock. A secret knock. She pulled me out of bed and we left for the last time. Frau Kettelman waited outside with her two                        children. There was no light because of the black-out. Just the new moon. I remember seeing strings of cloud drifting across it high above the trees. It felt as if we were on the moon. We walked through this blasted landscape, picking our way in the darkness, through smoking rubble. I remember fires burning and gunfire in the distance. Women and children were walking like zombies carrying little cases, or babies on their hips or clinging  like monkeys on their backs. We walked, all of us, women and children and old people, out of the city in a long slow vibrating crocodile, away from those terrifying soldiers who    were coming from the east. We felt like criminals.

 

SOPRANO rises in volume then fades a little during dialogue

 

My aunt and Frau Kettelman led the way, whispering all the time.  "Schweiz" over and over. We were walking to Switzerland: my aunt, Frau Kettelman, her two daughters and me. I remember walking through trees. Lucky Berlin has so many forests. We walked south. I didn't know if we were escaping the Nazis or the Allies or the Russians. So I walked and I kept on walking. For days. It was cold. So cold. I walked until my aunt went into labour on the road. She kept stopping, bending over panting. Frau Kettelman found a hut. I watched my aunt give birth to that baby. She didn't make a sound but. The baby came out all pink and slippery and sort of over-cooked. I saw its head, then Frau Kettelman pulled it out like a loaf of bread from the oven. It didn't cry. My aunt looked at him when he came out and Frau Kettelman put him on her belly. This tiny baby stared as if it could see her and was silent as a spy.

 

 MAN has walked to the shelves and is randomly looking at books.

 

WOMAN        The horses.

 

SOPRANO stops

SOUNDSCAPE low.

 

MAN              What?

 

WOMAN        I must give the food for Willi und Nikko. Please, you will let me stand up?

 

MAN stares at her then at the barn door, gathering his wits, recognising where he is. He shakes his head.

 

WOMAN        Then you must give the food.

BAUERNHOF by Kate Herbert - REVIEWS 1999

REVIEW

Bauernhof by Kate Herbert

The Age Monday August 9,1999 Reviewer: Helen Thomson

 

A vision of warped lives

What a pleasure it is to discover such a gem of a play as Bauernhof. It is a subtle, haunting and satisfying play that cleverly weaves a pattern of significances out of seemingly random events. It is also a thriller, carefully plotted to tease and alarm.

The playwright, Kate Herbert, has indeed been fortunate to secure Julia Blake to play the part of the woman in Bauernhof. Her carefully nuanced performance is crucial to the production’s success. She creates a character who is at peace with herself, and it is only slowly that we comprehend how hard won that peace must be.

An old woman smilingly leafs through old photographs, and the transparencies that form part of the designer, Meg white’s stylish set provide clues to what she is looking at. They are faces from the Second World War, as their clothing reveals: Lederhosen and army uniforms define their German identity.

The woman has two visitors, a young girl who lives nearby, Anne Maloney, and a stranger, an Australian, lost in the bitterly cold winter weather. She invites the man into her house, and he tells her of his German birth and his post-war Australian upbringing.

David Wicks as the man, projects a stolid, recognisable ordinariness, a businessman simply revisiting his past, it seems. It comes as shock, in the second half, when the lights reveal him standing over the woman, who is tied up.

It is revenge he seeks, and he tells a hitherto hidden story to his frightened listener, who he takes to be the aunt who betrayed parents, caused their deaths, and abandoned him at the war’s end.

The play draws us into judgement, and we discover the clue to the mystery from the tiniest details. It cleverly evokes a complex sympathy as the woman’s past reveals how intimately the horrors of war have an impact on individuals.

The woman never openly reveals her true identity. And because she cannot do so, she also cannot atone or obtain forgiveness. She stands at the end of the play – a silent and tragic figure.     

  Bauernhof has many layers, music being one of them. The singer, Helen Saifert, provides emotionally haunting interventions that contrast to the moral ugliness of war.   

The play is a quiet one, a few hours in the farmhouse of an old woman whose companions are the horses she also stables in the house. At its end we are moved, and have been drawn into a sympathetic vision of lives warped by historical catastrophe.

 

Bauernhof is a new La Mama work that deserves to go on to a larger-scale production but the intimacy is a major strength.

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REVIEW

Bauernhof by Kate Herbert

Herald Sun Monday August 9, 1999

Snowed-in writer melts hearts

Reveiwer: Zelda Cawthorne

 

Kate Herbert doesn’t explain what propelled her to the village of gedelitz , just west of what used to be the Berlin Wall, early in 1997.

Whether by chance or design, she took refuge in a 300 year old Bauernhof ( farmhouse) while Germany froze in its harshest winter for half a century and rarely has an Australian playwright made more profitable use of a trip abroad.

The 90 minute play which germinated in the Bauernhof was first given reading at La Mama and the Melbourne Theatre Company.

Now, fully fleshed out, it is back, though Gedelitz remains omnipresent.

With its intimate atmosphere and rustic trappings including an open fireplace, La Mama is ideal for designer, Meg White’s evocative set.

La Mama also resonates with ghosts. They are made visible through White’s clever photographic displays and they echo right throughout this gripping drama about an elderly German woman whose wartime traumas and secrets lie hidden – until the arrival of an Aussie.

Herbert has a brilliant ear for language. Time and again you marvel as her two German characters switch from normal conversation to the stilted,  convolute speech patterns of the occasionally English-speaking.

She also has an acute understanding of the bitter disaffection which fuelled the Third Reich and which has festered anew since reunification, though Bauernhof is no thinly disguised history or social lesson.

As the layers are peeled away, this densely constructed piece evolves into a tense thriller.

Julia Blake is superb in the central role and is well supported by David Wicks.

Anne Maloney is refreshing as the young Mareike, though director David Latham needs to work with her on her entrances which are almost identical and her boisterous ingenue is predictable.

Adding to Bauernhof’s appeal are the musical elements – especially soprano Helen Saifert – though the play easily triumphs on script alone.

It deserves international exposure.

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REVIEW

Bauernhof by Kate Herbert

Sunday Age Sunday August 15, 1999

Reviewer: Steven Carroll

Kate Herbert’s latest play, after the hit of triptych and Hit and Run, is set in Gemany at the time of reunification. And reunification, past and present catching up with each other again, is the theme of the play.

I as in Germany when the Wall was kicked over. The phrase “reunification” made no sense to the younger people I spoke to because they’d grown up in post-war west Germany and had no memories, and no nostalgia for united Germany of the old days.

It is appropriate then that the two main characters in Bauernhof are older people. An elderly woman ( Julia Blake) – who has no name other than “Woman” – lives next to a property up for sale. She lived through the war and her house, to an extent, is a museum of her life. She flicks through old photography albums and reads old letters.

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Panda-effing-Monium - a Covid Musical, by Kate Herbert 2020 - details & excerpt

Panda-effing-Monium –a Covid Musical

This musical is unproduced as of 2021.

Credits

Book, Lyrics & Melodies by Kate Herbert

Composition / Music by Michael Herbert

Additional lyrics for Botox Blues by Joe Calleri

Story

Panda-effing-Monium is an original play with songs. It charts ten weeks in the emotional rollercoaster life of a family of four in Isolation (‘Iso’) during the COVID-19 pandemic, in 2020.  The play is light-hearted, identification theatre for Australians and others who found novel ways to cope with prolonged lockdown.

Each family member deals with ‘Iso’ differently as restrictions impact their work, home, school and social lives: John, a lawyer working from his home virtual office, relies on humour; Steph, a former journalist now University teacher, struggles to maintain order; sullen teenager, Emmy, keeps to her bedroom, posting selfies and only venturing downstairs to collect online orders; 6 year-old Luca, blissfully unaware of the pandemic problems, provides a child’s naïve wisdom about family dynamics and community behaviours.

The production includes 11 original, memorable songs (plus 2 reprises) that feature witty, topical lyrics and eclectic musical styles.

Songs

1. Panda-effing-demic / Panda-effing- Monium – Punk / Ska style
2. Glued to Our Home – Reggae style.
3. Back off Bogan! – Hard Rock style.
4. Hand Sanitiser – Punk / Children’s style.
5. Knock Knock – Ballad / Lament Duet.
6. Home School – Rap style.
7. Emoji Love – Pop-Rock style.
8. Business as Unusual – Funk style.
9. Riding My Bike / My Face, My Hair, My Feet, My Arse – Rhythmic chant.
10. Iso-Troppo – Latin / Cuban style.
11. Botox Blues – Blues style.
12. Glued to Our Home Reprise – Reggae style. 
13. Finale: Panda-effing-demic / Panda-effing-Monium – Ska / Punk Style.

 

   

Link to 6 songs in sample recording: Panda-effing-Monium songs

Credits for sample songs:

Composition, Musical Arrangements & Piano by Michael Herbert

Lyrics & Melodies by Kate Herbert

Guitar, Bass, Drums, Sound Engineering & Musical Arrangements by Anthony Rochester

Vocals by Michael Herbert, Kate Herbert with additional vocals by Anthony Rochester

 

Duration

Approx. 90-100 minutes with no interval. 

 

Cast of Zoom Script Reading 26 August 2020

Geraldine Cook, Carole Patullo, Simon Palomares, Jenny Lovell, Maureen Andrew.

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Panda-effing-Monium – a Covid Musical by Kate Herbert 

 Excerpt from Scene One

 

SONG: Panda-effing-demic / Panda-effing-Monium – Punk / Ska style.

 

Sung by STEPH, JOHN, EMMY, LUCA MAN & WOMAN.

 

Choreography with full cast gives a sense of urgency and fairground madness, with performers ducking and weaving.

 

People ducking, people diving.

People walking, people skiving.

People standing at their gates.

People missing all their mates.

People hopin’ they don’t get caught.

People wishing that they’d bought

More tooooiii-let paper.

Yes, tooooii-let paper.

Who’d have thought it. Who’d have thunk,

That we’d be in such a funk

In 20–20.  In 20–20.

 

It’s a Panda-effing-demic

And it’s Panda-effing-Monium.

PandaMonium PandaMonium PandaMonium PandaMonium.

We just want to leave our home again.

It’s PandaMonium. It’s PandaMonium.

If we just had enough Ammonium

To stop this PandaMonium.

To stop this PandaMonium.

The PandaMonium.

The PandaMonium.

 

Stick it up your arm. Drink it like a Coke.

Swallow it to kill the bug. It’s really not a joke.

It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke.

 

When you’re working in your room,

Taking meetings via Zoom,

Schooling kids at kitchen table,

Doing New Maths if you’re able.

Why not have another drink.

It just might help you to think

More cleeeeear-ly.

Just a bit more cleeeeear-ly.

Who’d have thought it. Who’d have thunk

That we’d be in such a funk

In 20–20. In In 20–20.

 

It’s a Panda-effing-demic

And it’s Panda-effing-Monium.

PandaMonium. PandaMonium. PandaMonium. PandaMonium.

We just want to leave our home again.

It’s PandaMonium. It’s PandaMonium.

If we just had enough Ammonium

To stop this PandaMonium.

To stop this PandaMonium.

The PandaMonium.

The PandaMonium.

 

Stick it up your arm. Drink it like a Coke.

Swallow it to kill the bug. It’s really not a joke.

It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke. It’s not a joke.

 

LX CHANGE

 

STEPH, JOHN, EMMY, LUCA remain on stage. Man and WOMAN exit.

 

SCENE 1

 

STEPH, JOHN, EMMY, LUCA stand in a cluster DSC, facing front and staring out at audience. STEPH and JOHN, stand behind EMMY and LUCA.

 

STEPH: (to audience) Day 1. Iso-Diary. And the big doors slam shut on the world as we know it.

 

STEPH: So, now we close the door.

 

JOHN: Say goodbye to the world as we know it kids.

 

LUCA: Goodbye to the world as we know it kids.

 

EMMY: (melodramatic) Save me!

 

STEPH and JOHN close door with a wide sweeping gesture.

 

EMMY: (melodramatic) I’ll die if I can’t see my friends!

 

STEPH /JOHN: You won’t die!

 

JOHN: You might pine away to a wraith-like Goth haunting the upper storey of our home, but you won’t die.

 

LUCA: I don’t want you to die! (hugs EMMY tight)

 

EMMY: (playfully) You’re an idiot! (tousles Luca’s hair)

 

STEPH: Don't call your brother an idiot!