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Jodie Dorday says that being an acting ‘multi-tasker’, able to act on stage or screen as well as dance and sing, has given her some wonderfully varied roles – among them, a woman with MS in Shortland Street, the dance teacher in Billy Elliot, a warrior in Zena and Cheryl West’s mum, Trish, in Westside.
She is bringing her talents to Centrestage Theatre in Orewa in a one-woman comedy, written by Roger Hall, called The Book Club.
Jodie did a season of this play on the North Shore in May. She says a one-woman show is a challenge, with a 45-page script to learn and around eight different characters to present.
“That fear of being on stage by myself turned into real enjoyment,” Jodie says. “Live theatre gives you the opportunity, when something goes wrong, to embrace and share it –the audience enjoys that improvisation. Once the lights failed, and I told the audience that Wally had forgotten to pay the power bill!”
After that season at The Pumphouse ended, Jodie realised she wasn’t ready to let The Book Club go. She has produced her own tour of the show over summer – as well as Orewa, she is taking it to Waiheke Island, Tauranga and Warkworth.
One reason Jodie chose Orewa is because her mother, performer Debbie Dorday, lives in Kensington Park.
Jodie first went on stage at the age of 19, dancing with her mum at the club she owned, Burgundy’s Cabaret in Parnell, in the 1980s.
She says mum Debbie was about as far from a ‘stage mum’ as you can get. “She let me find my own way. Really she only suggested ballet as a way of straightening up my feet, as I was pigeon toed.”
Jodie began acting to increase her confidence, auditioning for a role at Auckland Theatre Company on the advice of a friend. She was in her 30s at the time.
She enjoyed success in various roles, but got fed up with acting, which often meant being broke.
“I walked away from it, around 15 years ago,” she says. “When I look back, it was a great thing to do. I met my husband-to-be, had a child and we ran a business in Melbourne.”
She ran a cabaret show in Bali for several years, before being offered an audition for Auckland Theatre Company’s Billy Elliot.
So, it was back to tap dancing and singing – “all that training at Burgundys came full circle!”
Jodie says that she hopes locals will support The Book Club, which is about some very different women who all belong to a bookclub. “A male author comes to speak, and all hell breaks loose,” she says.
“We found that both women and men loved it – there was a lot of laughter.”
Jodie hopes that if the show is successful it will demonstrate that professional actors can successfully tour shows to community theatres.
“We want to move to the Hibiscus Coast to live next year, and I hope there will be a lot more shows like this coming to Centrestage, if the community support it,” she says. “I know Roger Hall is coming to see it, and my mum will also be in the audience!”
The Book Club is on at Centrestage Theatre in Orewa for three shows only, on 7, 10 and 11 October. More information in What’s On
