Hannah Norris plays an American Soldier in the first piece, My Pyramids. “Although my character isn’t named in the piece, she is Lynndie England,” states Norris. “She’s nine months pregnant, waiting for her trial after being involved in the abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison.
“It started with Judith just wanting to explore a bit about her, and then from that she created the triptych,” explains Norris. The other two pieces feature actors portraying David Kelly, a British weapons inspector who discovered there were no weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, and a young woman, Nehrjas al Saffarh, the wife to the leader of the Iraqi Communist Party. “She’s compiled a play with people who have been affected by the war in Iraq in different ways and provided them with a chance to tell their story – even though some of it is imagined. It poses the question, makes the audience think, what would I have done in this situation.”
The process of working with other actors while at the same time maintaining a solid focus on their own distinct monologues has had its challenges and its rewards, says Norris. “We’ve had a couple of reads together but Virginia, who plays Nehrjas, is based in South Australia. We’re not going to really get to work on how our pieces are all going to work together until we’re all in the theatre with Dan (Daniel Clarke, the director). The three of us are on stage the whole time and so we have to work out how we can do that without interrupting each other’s worlds.
“It’s going to be great to know our own pieces so well and yet be able to see how we react freshly to others. We’re really still present in their stories, there’s a couple of moments in the script where there are supposed to be reactions from other characters so I think we’ll be able to explore a bit more about what that might look like.”
Portraying real people, particularly controversial figures such as England, can be challenging for actors, but Norris is thoroughly enjoying the challenge of portraying the woman captured posing in numerous photos degrading Iraqi prisoners of war. “It’s really interesting,” she asserts. “I knew of Lynndie from the photos and part of the idea of the piece is that we do know her by an image or as somewhat of an icon, but we don’t know too much about her as a person. I’ve been doing a lot of research on her. When the piece was written it wasn’t too long after the scandal, so there are more interviews which Lynndie has done since then. More has been revealed about her which is helpful for me as an actor.
“It’s great to be playing a real person, to see in interviews how they respond to questions and how things affect them. I was surprised by things like the fact that she graduated from high school. Maybe it shouldn’t have but I had a certain expectation of how she was educated. Really such a big part of the story is how she was in love with this other soldier there who she became pregnant to, as well as her general history with men. He was ten years older than her, and being in love with him played a big part in her decision making as well as being in the army where you have to follow orders.
“I have to find the justification for everything I, as Lynndie, has done. It’s really interesting to trace back to the text and think about why might this have happened or work out how I can make this something I can fight for, something I can argue for. I have to be able to empathise with her and understand some of her reasons. It’s going to be a challenge for the audience. It does give an insight and make you question what you would do in a situation, what choices you would make in similar circumstances.”
BY JOSH FERGEUS
