Here comes the bride
0 Comments | Dominion Post; Wellington, New Zealand, Sep 2, 2009 | by FITZSIMONS Tom
Russian mail-order brides inspired a new comedy by Wellington playwright Vanessa Rhodes. But at times she found it more daunting learning about the other side of the romantic equation – staunch Kiwi farmers, Tom Fitzsimons writes.
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TWO PUZZLING Kiwi dictums about writing fiction go like this: One, write what you know. Two, write what you don’t know.
They belong to the poet Bill Manhire, who runs the creative writing school at Victoria University where the playwright Vanessa Rhodes honed her craft. At the school she studied scriptwriting under playwright Ken Duncum.
When Rhodes came to write a play about a romance between a Russian mail-order bride and a Waikato dairy farmer, which opens at Circa Theatre this week, she was clearly in the latter camp.
“I knew very little facts about Russia and I knew absolutely nothing about farming or dairy farmers,” she says.
Instead of ploughing in regardless, she resolved to do some research. So began a series of interviews with Russian migrants to New Zealand, as well as some with gruff single farmers.
It was her own countrymen that she found tougher, she says.
“It was a little bit daunting at first because I had to cold- call a few farmers, and felt very ignorant.”
When she found an ideal candidate, she turned up at his farm with a box of chocolates in hand. He was, she says, a little taken aback at first.
“But once he got going, he was really passionate. He’d done it his whole life and his father was a farmer, so I got an insight into that.
“I don’t know that he would ever go and see the play, but he could understand how a bloke might look for a woman in (this) kind of story.”
The Russian interviews were similarly illuminating, helped by the fact she’s always been fascinated by the culture and writers like Chekhov.
Many women had made the journey to New Zealand so their sons would not have to enlist in the army – often a traumatic experience for young Russian males, she says.
She was also struck by the generosity of her hosts.
“They were amazingly welcoming – I was welcomed into people’s homes, and they cooked me meals, and gave me vodka when I arrived.
“And that to me was more like Maori and Pacific Island culture – a lot of extended family, and dancing and singing
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