Eleanor and Mary Alice is about personal meetings between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Alice Evatt, and with short comments by Churchill, Roosevelt and Herbert Evatt. The lives of these two influential women are framed by politics, war, refugees, modernist art and especially Moya Dyring’s painting. As Eleanor tours Australia in 1943, after flying across the Japanese patrolled Pacific, she seeks support to fly on to the battlefront. The two women meet again in Paris in 1948 when Mary Alice tries to overcome Evatt’s annoyance with Eleanor, and they discuss Dyring’s art and the end of her marriage to artist, Sam Atyeo, who is Evatt’s secretary.
In the background Evatt is elected UN General Assembly President and Eleanor is Chair the UN Human Rights Committee developing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Writer: Peta Tait Director: Deborah Leiser-Moore Performers: Sarah McNeill/Glenda Lindscott (Eleanore Roosevelt) Petra Kalive (Mary Alice Evatt) Cellist: Adi Sappir |
Performed at:
2018 Seymour Centre, Sydney as part of Human Rights Festival 2016 Perth Centre for Contemporary Photography as part of the Human Rights exhibition. 2014 Heide Gallery, Melbourne in conjuction with the Moya Dyring exhibition |