Strong Southern belles trade quips and hair tips for diabetes in Steel Magnolias
Credit to Author: Shawn Conner| Date: Mon, 10 Feb 2020 19:00:50 +0000
When: Feb. 14-March 8
Where: The Nest, Granville Island
Tickets: from $28 at steelmagnoliasvancouver.com
When we reach Lalainia Lindbjerg, the actor/producer is picking up some hair pins. Hair is a big deal in Steel Magnolias.
“The hair business in this show has probably taken up at least half of our directing time,” she said. “It’s been crazy. We have to have our hair washed, then set in rollers, and then styled, right while we’re sitting there.”
Most people will know Steel Magnolias from its movie version, but before it became the 1989 hit film starring Julia Roberts, Dolly Parton, and Shirley MacLaine, the comedy-drama was a short story and then an off-Broadway play.
Robert Harling was inspired to write the story, about resilient women in the American South, by the death of his sister in 1985 from complications due to type 1 diabetes. Much of the action is set at an in-home beauty parlour.
The big hair is necessary because of the decade in which the story takes place, the ’80s.
“What we’ve discovered as we’ve worked through the show, is that it (the time period) is important,” Lindbjerg said.
“My character (M’Lynn) was supposed to have been born in 1935, 1940. So what she’s lived through is that Fifties generation where they’re not super emotional. These women are unbelievably strong and not as gushy as we would be, typically. They don’t share their feelings. They’re a very different generation than we are.”
The setting is also important.
“Robert Harling said that he basically grew up with women who spoke in bumper stickers. They had these awesome, hilarious phrases that are a mix of dry humour and sarcasm. I don’t think you can do this as a stage show without setting it in the South.”
Steel Magnolias has been in the making since Lindbjerg appeared in a 2017 Theatre Under the Stars production of Mary Poppins. There, she met director Shel Piercy as well as three of the actors in the upcoming play — Jaime Piercy, Ranae Miller, and Sheryl Anne Wheaton. Chy and Gillian Barber round out the cast.
Picture: Rochelle Elise Photography.
“I was lamenting to Sheryl that I’d been cut off from certain roles,” said Lindbjerg, who is 45.
“And I remember saying, ‘Doesn’t it suck? I feel like I’m way more on my game than I ever have been, and now all of my opportunities have stopped.’”
Lindbjerg set up Boone Dog Productions with Piercy to do Steel Magnolias, but also with the idea of creating more shows in the future.
“I’d like to create something that opens up opportunities to older people who don’t seem to be as utilized anymore in the industry,” she said. “And then also we love the idea of a small intimate venue.”
Francesca Albertazzi, chief designer on the show Love It Or List it Vancouver, is doing the sets.
For the show, Boone Dog is partnering with the B.C. Diabetes Research Network and B.C. Children’s Hospital Research Institute (Diabetes Group) to raise funds.
“As I was putting this show together, it became clear that some of the diabetes community have a negative feeling toward the show, because they get stereotyped,” she said.
“But diabetes research and treatment has changed so much in the last 20 or 30 years that the story we tell is not really a story that happens anymore. When I heard that I thought, ‘This is our opportunity to not just do the show but educate people along the way.’”
She also learned that the father of one of the cast members had died of complications from the disease.
“It sounds incredibly naive, but with any project I take on, I want to leave the world a slightly better place. And I thought, if we could bring awareness of, and raise money for research, it’s a win-win.”
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