Family history helps hatch new musical
Image: Josipa Draisma & Mara Kneževic, THE HEN HOUSE. Photo: Anna Kucera
When Josipa Draisma and siblings Mara Kneževic and Sime Kneževic were going through their late grandmother’s belongings and discovered evidence of 30-some years’ employment in a chicken factory, they decided her migrant story deserved telling, and in an unusual way.
“The Hen House isn’t strictly a musical. We prefer to think of it as a play with songs,” says Draisma, founder of In Wild Company, which is staging the work with PYT Fairfield this month. Incorporating original choreography and music inspired by 1970s pub rock, disco and punk, the sometimes funny, sometimes sad stage work aims “to elevate these female migrant experiences as extraordinary herstory often untold in Australian theatre,” she says.
The Hen House follows recently arrived Croatian migrants Pavica and Mila, (played by Josipa, who shares her grandmother’s name, and sister Mara) as they navigate their new working life on the factory floor. Pavica loves it, Mila does not, and both are confronted by the “blokey” attitudes of the time and place.
“One of my favourite scenes in the play is our ‘station sequence’ where we follow our two lead characters along the production line and we get a darkly comedic taste of what the production line of a chicken factory looked like in the ’70s for migrant women,” says Draisma.
The siblings drew on personal and family histories, archival research and collaboration with director Anthea Williams and others to create The Hen House. But music holds a special place. At family gatherings, “usually an accordion and guitar come out and we sing together beautiful Dalmatian songs,” says Draisma.
“It has been a joy working together as a family! Our grandmother would be very proud of us.”
September 7 – 9
Riverside Theatres, cnr Church and Market Sts, Parramatta
riversideparramatta.com.au
