LOVING IT: UK-born actor and first-time director Iscah Montgomerie hopes the contemporary play The Wolves about a female football team will bring in a new audience to the theatre. Picture by Liam Clayton
Iscah Montgomerie is about to make her directorial debut at Unity Theatre with Sarah DeLapp’s play The Wolves. She talks to Kim Parkinson about what brought her to Gisborne and why this play resonated with her . . .
From being a working theatre actor in the UK to doing amateur dramatics in Gisborne, this is the first time Iscah Montgomerie has sat in the director’s chair.
“When Unity asked me to direct a play and told me I had free rein, I couldn’t refuse,” she says.
She began her research and knew as soon as she started reading The Wolves, it was perfect.
“It was great to find a play about young women that was contemporary and relevant.”
Written in 2016 and named as a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Drama, the play chronicles six Saturday mornings in the lives of nine adolescent girls as they warm up for their weekly football match in the high school league.
While they warm up they navigate the politics of the wider world along with their personal lives.
Iscah was born and raised in Edinburgh, Scotland and describes her upbringing as slightly unconventional.
Her mother was involved with the Edinburgh jazz festival and she remembers a childhood home bustling with parties, jazz musicians and music.
Her parents separated when she was young and her architect dad moved to London to study art.
She was very close to her grandparents and has fond memories of spending the summer holidays in England with her mother’s parents.
They were creative people. Her mother’s mother was a writer, and on her dad’s side, there was a poet and an illustrator.
So it was only natural Iscah would grow up with her head in a book and an inclination towards an artist’s life.
“I loved reading and my whole family was bookish. I always wanted to act but didn’t have the confidence when I was young,” she says.
“I was pretty independent and left home at 16 which seems very young when I look back.”
She quickly learned to fend for herself and worked in the club scene in Manchester for several years where she ran and promoted her own club nights.
It was a few years later after she had started studying English at university that she had a light-bulb moment.
“We were doing a group poetry reading to an audience and I was in my element,” she says.
So she joined a theatre group in Oxford and knew that she’d found her passion.
Around this time her father died, which hit her hard.
A friend who was living in Queenstown convinced her to come to New Zealand, promising that the change of scene would do her good so she bought a round-the-world ticket and set off on her OE.
It was here she met her partner Langley Gerrard who convinced her to stay and move in with him. While Iscah enjoyed her time in Queenstown with her new love, she still had the desire to go to drama school.
So she returned to the UK and got into The Poor School, a drama school in London known for its rigorous training.
Langley soon joined her and the couple would spend the next decade in Britain.
“Langley was so supportive of my acting and helped me all the way through, even though there was a recession when he first arrived and it took him a while to find work.”
After completing drama school Iscah worked as an actor and said one of her favourite roles was as Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams’ A Streetcar Named Desire.
“I just inhabited her — I adored it. I could’ve done it forever.”
She also did some comedy as part of an ensemble cast in a sitcom for the stage called Axis of Evil which they performed at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival and in Norwich.
In 2018 Iscah joined Langley who had returned to New Zealand earlier to care for his mother.
Her introduction to Unity Theatre came when she saw an audition notice for the play The Shadow Box.
“I was missing acting so much so did The Shadow Box which I really enjoyed. The director was great and it was a good role for me.”
That positive experience was part of the reason Iscah was happy to join Unity Theatre again for her latest theatrical endeavour.
“Now we are finally off book so I’ve told the cast this is where the work really starts. Now we get into the nitty gritty of it all, because you can’t really react when you’re reading from the script,” Iscah says.
“I get the feeling they are slightly perturbed by the repetition. I get them to do it over and over so it becomes second nature.”
The play deals with some difficult subject matter but also has humour.
From war and genocide, to menstruation, sexual consent and eating disorders, no subject is off limits while the characters talk about sport, pop music, culture and their relationships.
“Despite the sometimes heavy themes, the play sparkles with dark humour and the world of politics illuminates the characters’ own relationships and power struggles with one another,” she says.
“I hope audiences get an experience that they haven’t had in Gisborne before.
“I hope they get a glimpse into what it’s like to be a teenage girl.
“This is all about them. They have their inner lives — they are individuals, they have dreams and hopes and desires.
“We’ve all been teenagers and we’ve all had those hopes and dreams and we’ve all had those things that are quite small, seem huge.
“We’ve probably all felt the fear of wondering ‘what happens when I finish school, what am I going to do, where am I going to go’?”
Iscah said the play should resonate with young people and mums and daughters but there’s also something for the blokes.
In rehearsals she has worked hard to create a safe space where the cast are encouraged to try things and make mistakes.
“We have become a tight-knit group and it’s great to nurture this young talent. I would definitely direct again — I really love it.”
She is also hoping The Wolves will attract a new audience to the theatre.
“My goal is for it to sell out.”