Friends and gardening are among the themes in Geraldine Brophy's 12th play and first musical, Floral Notes, which is touring the South this month. The New Zealand actress, known for roles in Shortland Street, calls it a ''micro-musical'' because there are two performers plus an accompanist.
The idea germinated when Brophy met Jane Keller, an American singer, at a workshop where she was teaching.
''She is a wondrous singer and jazz artist as well as a trained opera singer from America, and I thought why don't I write a show where she can expand her acting and I can have a bit of a sing with her,'' she said in a phone interview.
The two characters, Rosemary (for remembrance) and Iris (which means messenger) are former pen pals who reconnect and revive their relationship. She also wanted to celebrate gardening and its cultural world with the meaning of plants and flowers.
''One of the characters has breast cancer, which I think affects one in five New Zealand women - it's enormously high here but we obviously have a high recovery rate... It's one of those subjects that it's very difficult to find film or television or theatre willing to talk about it because it's so dark, but it's incumbent upon us to do so because it affects so many women's lives, men's lives, family lives.''
The show
Floral Notes is at the St James in Gore on March 10, at the Regent Theatre, Dunedin on March 11, at the Civic Theatre in Invercargill on March 12, and at the Opera House in Oamaru on March 13.
