PLAYING TO WIN Kiwi actress Danielle Cormack’s passion for playing strong female roles was born out of a childhood obsession with writing them.
Kiwi actress Danielle Cormack explains how her passion for playing strong female roles in Wentworth and Rake was born out of a childhood obsession with writing them.
There are many people who inspire me and continue to do so. Among them is the formidable singer-songwriter Patti Smith, but more on her later … When I was about eight years old, I started writing plays. Please don’t be mistaken – I had no preternatural talent for the craft of playwriting. I was by no means a future Caryl Churchill or Tennessee Williams, I just felt more comfortable telling stories through the form of a play rather than writing them. There was a notable lack of structure and overriding arcs, and the climax usually happened in the opening act. But looking back, those elements had no importance in my work. It was all about character. The lead character was mostly always female (yes, of course I’d cast myself ), and on the rare occasion I’d write a male lead, I’d cast myself in his role, too (insert eye roll here). I mined what I could from my limited life experience, observing immediate community and family to draw my heroine’s characteristics.
As with most children, I had a knack for noticing the absurd or differences and it clearly informed my work, as there were an overwhelming number of characters with flaws. And I use that term affectionately and with positive reference. I highlighted the darkness in my characters: they were patients in asylums, they suffered inner turmoil or jagged psychosis, they had a predilection for revenge and murder, they were punk and preferably had some form of physical affliction that rendered them far from perfect, they were cruel, broken down, funny, opinionated, not perfect, passive or inconsequential. One of my pieces, called The Buufons, was performed at Her Majesty’s Theatre [in Auckland]. In parts it was inspired by The Elephant Man, directed by another hero of mine, David Lynch. It was about a fantastical, physically challenged community exiled to the sewers, as they were deemed too ugly to live on the surface. They were smelly, dirty and sported extra limbs, but they also had magical powers, which they used over the people who lived above them. I played the Matriarch Buufon (self-cast, eye roll). I spent hours stuffing my mother’s stockings to create extra limbs and relished exposing the beauty, brains and leadership from such a grotesque-looking character.
And there the seed was planted for what I’ve carried into the choices I make around characters presently. I’m frequently asked why I think I’m cast in strong female roles.
Is it the assumption that strength is defined by physically kicking arse and being able to behave like a man? In some cases, the characters I play embrace those characteristics, but some are deeply flawed anti-heroes or are weak but have a legitimate point of view. And to me there lies the strength, because they have agency and vulnerability. It’s the strongly written female characters that I look out for. The ones that can transport me, allow me to be all the things that I can’t because I still have to function as a sane parent, partner and friend. Which is why I’ll always turn to the advice of Patti Smith. As she once said: “In art and dream, may you proceed with abandon. In life, may you proceed with balance and stealth.”