‘The Half-Life of Marie Curie’: A Theatrical Tale Of Two Great Women 

The tale of two great women from history is being brought to the stage at the Ensemble Theatre with The Half-Life of Marie Curie, a new work from American playwright Lauren Gunderson set in the backdrop of great scientific discovery and social change.

For the show’s director Liesel Badorrek, who joined the production fairly late after the previously attached Anthea Williams stepped down, it’s been a fantastic opportunity to learn about the brilliant lives of Marie Curie and Hertha Ayrton in their careers as scientists and suffragettes.

“I only had five days before the rehearsal period, and so in four days I read the play about a million times and did as much background reading as I could,” Liesel says of the unconventional process to City Hub.

“I normally do a lot of preparation, but I don’t know if doing more would’ve helped me with this one! We discovered a lot on the floor and Rebecca Massey and Gabriel Scawthron are really fantastic actors who bring great beauty and comedy to the work.”

The Half-Life of Marie Curie was originally a play written for Audible, which means there’s little-to-no other productions for Liesel to draw on when creating this show alongside Anthea. She says: “It’s been a very collaborative process with the two actors, and an amazing team of tech, sound, video and lighting design people too!”

That exploration has allowed Liesel and her team to dig into the relationship of these two women that is, while partly fictionalised, 100% based on reality. “It’s almost impossible to overstate what an international celebrity Marie Curie was at the time of winning her first Nobel Prize with her husband, Pierre,” Liesel explains with her recently acquired knowledge.

“And then there’s the extraordinary, equally brilliant figure of Hertha Ayrton, an electromechanical engineer, physicist and militant suffragist. These were incredible women who were breaking new ground. I feel a bit ashamed that I didn’t know more about them before I came into this, to be honest.

“But it’s been a brilliant education and they’re incredibly inspiring,” Liesel continues. “I mean, we’re still living under a patriarchal paradigm and women are still fighting to be able to achieve things on their own terms. But what must it have been like when they weren’t even allowed in scientific societies, because married women were the property of their husband, despite being geniuses and inventing things no one had ever seen before?”

The Half-Life of Marie Curie set to be a crowd-pleaser

Liesel stresses that The Half-Life of Marie Curie is far from just a historical document, though you’ll definitely learn something if you come along. “The play takes place at a pivotal moment in both of their lives,” she says, “and Lauren Gunderson has imagined what those private conversations between these two women might have been like.

“I think sometimes we can get bogged down in what the absolute truth is with a work like this, and if you want that you can watch a documentary. What we’re making, while being steeped in truth, is a piece of drama and theatre that needs to be dramatic and beautiful. That means we can take liberties, make them more expressive for theatre than they might normally be.”

Liesel adds: “It’s a play about two women who are good friends that become really deep friends, and watching this friendship grow between Gabrielle (Marie Curie) and Rebecca (Hertha Ayrton) has been really delightful, because I just don’t reckon you can fake that on stage in a theatre like this.”

With a set looking like a Petri dish and a theatrical depiction of two of history’s fiercest female scientists and innovators, Liesel says of The Half-Life of Marie Curie: “I think it will be a really refreshing understanding of a friendship between two incredible women in history in a space which is truthful, honest and funny. I think it’s going to be a real crowd-pleaser!”

The Half-Life of Marie Curie is playing at the Ensemble Theatre until July 12th.