HERSTORY’S PROTECTIVE COLLECTIVE
The cornerstone of this ground-breaking company is aftercare — taking responsibility for both performers and audience members if they find the material triggering. Dea Doglione reports.
Trigger warning: Please note this article references sexual assault.
The women behind HerStory Collective, Connor Amor-Bendall and Danika Leigh Ciullo, have a clear aim: “Aftercare,” they say in unison. Having met at the ScreenFit workshop series hosted by union member Nikki Si’ulepa, they first clicked through a shared passion to tell stories in their most raw, honest form, while maintaining that goal.
Outside Auckland’s Basement Theatre for the sold-out premiere of The Clitoris Conundrum, Danika, who directed the show, is thoughtful. “I see these violent sex scenes and I wonder what the purpose is… Why? Do you just want to get people emotional and get good reviews, or do you actually want to help people?”
“We’re all fucked up enough,” Connor, who stars in the production, concurs.
The show is about a woman who, after a long, happy relationship, confides in her girlfriend that she’s never had an orgasm — not with her, not with anybody. “I think my clit is broken,” she says. What follows is a piece that engages the mediums of dance, poetry and narrative, in revealing a woman in the grips of acknowledging her trauma and beginning the work to heal.
To keep their rehearsal room — and stage — safe, the company hired actor and sex therapist, Suzy Smith-Roy, to sit in on rehearsals and in the audience each night. “Suzy reviewed the script, working with me on how close to home it was and to fictionalise things for me, to check in during rehearsals if we ever got triggered or felt too vulnerable in any way,” Connor says.
“And it’s also for the audience, we wanted to check that the material was going to serve them,” Danika adds. “We tell people, ‘Hey, we’ve got a therapist if you need to talk, here are the triggers if you missed them, it’s okay if it does upset you — just go take a breath’. We wanted to present the material in a way that was truthful but wouldn’t cause harm to anyone watching it. That they don’t walk away feeling damaged, but instead are empowered to talk about a topic which normally we feel so much shame about.”
Telling queer and female-led stories is the collective’s focus and with a mostly female and non-binary creative team, cast and crew, except for takatāpui performer Andrew Cornish who plays the drag-curious Ariki/Aroha, HerStory Collective boasts a bunch of up-and-coming talent. The group of rangatahi, including fellow members Vena-Rose Lennane and Lydia Buckley rounding out the cast, are excited for what’s next.
“I’ve learnt a lot about going for it, even if you don’t think it’s perfect, and figuring it out on the fly,” first-time playwright Connor says. Having started writing the script while studying at The Actors’ Program, she credits their first meeting with inspiring her to commit to finishing it.
Danika agrees: “Without ScreenFit, I don’t think I would have got back into directing. I’d never considered pivoting my career until I got the chance to fall back in love with it in such a safe environment. And now, this will become something else. There are so many things we want to do; we already have people asking. To do The Clitoris Conundrum again, make it a series, make it a movie.”
“But first, we’re going to take a breather,” Connor smiles.
There’s plenty to look forward to with such a successful first step in HerStory’s journey, but only once their own aftercare is complete.
Dea Doglione is a Kiwitalian actor and writer based in Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland, currently starring in Lionsgate’s Dark City: The Cleaner. Both Equity New Zealand’s Communications Officer and Secretary of the Youth Committee, Dea takes a whanaungatanga approach to all her work.
