"I love to inhabit my characters" - Jo Willans from 'Eve's Game'
We’re chatting to Jo Willans, the writer of Eve’s Game, and producer with Republic of Song.
Tell us about the show in 100 words or less
Eve’s Game is a Victorian detective game with feminist themes. Eve Harrison has returned home from her debut in London and has invited her friends over for tea and a game of Paschal, the lady-detective game sweeping London’s parlours. It’s an immersive, interactive show with sleuthing and afternoon tea. Eve’s Game explores the changing roles and expectations of women, especially in the late Victorian period, where education and opportunities were evolving. It’s fun, thought-provoking and explorative, and presented in a period house, Miegunyah.
Anywhere Festival takes place anywhere but a theatre. Tell us about your venue. What is it about your space that adds to your audience experience?
Eves Game - Silvana Freeman as Eve Harrison - Image by Redfox Photographer
Cover image: Redfox Photographer
Miegunyah House has opened its doors for this show. It’s the perfect setting, built in the 1880s, and is a perfect example of a late Victorian Brisbane home, complete with stuffed birds in their glass domes… metaphor much?
What is your creative process like?
As a writer of historical fiction, I’m a bit of a library girl. For this show, I spent a lot of time looking at primary sources – newspapers, letters, parliamentary papers, lady’s instruction manuals, accounts of Queen Victoria’s debutantes, and especially the reformation of women’s education and the beginnings of Brisbane Girls’ Grammar. I love to inhabit my characters, dressing up, writing correspondence in their voice, reading what they might have read. It’s exciting and transformative. I found that I’m grateful to all of these women – the lady teachers, early suffragettes and advocates for workers’ rights. They’re the mothers of feminism.
Tell us your origin story. How did your company start?
My first historical fiction show was The Ballad of Rosie Quinn, a blindfolded play about convict women in Brisbane. It was the beginning of MeToo, and I became fascinated by an account of the female convict lodgings, and the men who infiltrated the prison and spent a drunken night there. Over time, I’ve become more and more interested in all the lost tales of women. The real woman who inspired the character of Eve, Evelyn Harris, became the mother of a Governor-General, and yet, she is simply remembered as a socialite, daughter of someone and wife of someone else. Even her son barely mentioned her in his book about his father. Such is the case with so many women.
Who is your perfect audience member? Who is going to LOVE this event?
We’re performing this show on the Mother’s Day weekend and the following weekend. It’s absolutely perfect for mothers and daughters, but also people who are interested in history, and of course those who love to sleuth.
Is there anything else we simply MUST know about the show?
We’re spilling the tea, at afternoon tea, on secret girls’ business in the Victorian era.
Eve’s Game is on as part of Anywhere Festival on May 8, 9, 15, 16 @ 4.30pm, 6pm and 7.30pm and takes place at Miegunyah House, Bowen Hills.
