Sophie Vincent with her dad, Hartley Vincent, the founder of fashion retailer Hartleys, who died in 2024. Photo / Supplied
Sophie Vincent with her dad, Hartley Vincent, the founder of fashion retailer Hartleys, who died in 2024. Photo / Supplied
Opinion by Sophie Vincent
THE FACTS
Sophie Vincent’s father, Hartley Vincent, founded NZ fashion retailer Hartleys
The first store opened in Auckland 30 years ago. There are now more than 25 stores across New Zealand, still run by the Vincent family
Sophie Vincent channelled her grief over Hartley’s death to create SCAPE, a play exploring themes of loss and time through a story of a girl summoning her father’s ghost.
I’ve always been acutely aware of how fleeting time is. That it runs out, that it’s not promised. At 26, people love to tell you how young you are, that you have all the time in the world. But when you’re like me, and your dad had youat 57, and people on school holidays would mistake him for your grandpa – “Oh, that’s my dad – he’s just old,” I would say – you become aware of how finite time is, even before you know your times tables.
My dad may have been an older parent, but throughout the bulk of my childhood, he was young in spirit and character. He was never too old to carry us up to bed after falling asleep in the car, or to teach us how to ride a bike. His motto was “avoid retirement, stay alive” – and that’s exactly what he did; running his beloved family business Hartleys every day with my mum, Sandi.
At the age of 18, my drive to become an actor took me to the USA to attend New York University’s Tisch School of the Arts. My parents wholeheartedly supported and encouraged this decision, and I didn’t take that lightly; but I was daunted by what it meant to live overseas as they aged.
I started to count on my fingers how many months total I’d get with my dad, aware we’d never live under the same roof again, and discovered new wrinkles each time he’d pick me up from the airport.
Although he was the kind of person I thought could live past 100, I was always aware that I’d live the majority of my life without him, even before he got sick. While other young people were worried about who to date, and where to live out the best days of their free, uninhibited youth; I was worried how many Christmases I’d have left with my dad.
The spring of 2019 introduced me to Kyndall Sillanpaa – a female director with immense edge. She was making her directorial debut with the two-hander Nick Payne play Constellations, and gifted me the opportunity to play Marianne.
London-based Kiwi actor and playwright Sophie Vincent has collaborated with Kyndall Sillanpaa to create the play SCAPE, which premieres at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, from August 1-9.
Constellations is set in the multiverse, where the two characters play out different versions of reality, with each one ending in Marianne’s death by assisted suicide after a terminal brain tumour diagnosis.
It became a monumental responsibility when she told me her reason for selecting this play was because her dad had died from cancer two years prior. She was trying to make meaning out of a loss that profound.
Kyndall was the first person I’d met who’d lost a parent during young adulthood. The idea of this kind of loss was nauseating to me. The thought of losing my own dad – something that was inevitable – haunted me. The stories of the deepest parts of her grief helped transform me into a character too sick to suffer any longer.
The performance to this day is something Kyndall and I still feel proud of. I was most proud that my dad got to be in the room to hear me say the lines:
“The basic laws of physics don’t have a past and a present. Time is irrelevant at the level of atoms and molecules. It’s symmetrical. We have all the time we’ve always had. You’ll still have all our time.”
This show was the last time Dad ever got to see me perform. I repeated that line of dialogue, holding his soft and cold hand for the last time at his funeral five years later, after leukaemia and a brain bleed took him suddenly at the age of 82.
Hartley and Sophie Vincent, on Sophie's wedding day.
When by pure chance Kyndall and I found ourselves both living in London in early April this year, it felt like there were two people, somewhere far away – maybe in the afterlife – who had a hand in things.
We huddled over coffee cups and talked about how I now understood the hell of a quiet room, the pain of watching your dad die over a phone call, the constant yearning for him and resentment for those who got him for longer. These conversations turned into SCAPE. A solo show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival where grief rewinds like a rented tape.
Kyndall had hours of home videos that her dad had recorded. We discussed what it would be like to have the ghost of our fathers haunt the tapes that hold our childhood memories. What it would be like to meet them somewhere, asking what we would sacrifice for just five more minutes.
The story follows a girl who summons her father through an old VHS, and finds his ghost waiting on the other side – alive. Childhood memories unfold in a new light, as reality distorts and warps into something unsettling. The past won’t stay dead and the present cannot be avoided.
The grief of losing their fathers inspired Kyndall Sillanpaa and Sophie Vincent to create the play SCAPE.
Ultimately, Kyndall and I are in such different places with our grief. It’s humbling to see her, years into this loss, still trying to make meaning of it. She’s given me the strength, through her story, to not only create again, but take on a festival as big as the Edinburgh Fringe.
Taking a show to the Fringe is a laborious and thrilling challenge. It’s a huge time, energy and financial commitment; but mostly, it requires guts. If my loss, and obsession with time has taught me anything – it’s to not waste it. That you have to conjure up all the courage you have and go after what you want.
So, when the lights go up this August, and I stand alone on that stage, I’ll be thinking of my dad, in his front row seat every night, who taught me that “failure is not the worst thing in the world – the very worst thing is not to try”.
It feels daunting to think of sharing my grief to an audience of strangers. But when I feel nervous, I think of other young people who may find themselves at our show – some of whom know what it is like to lose a loved one, and those who someday will; SCAPE is our message to them.
Sophie Vincent and Kyndall Sillanpaa’s play SCAPE premieres at the 2025 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, from August 1-9.
