'Eleanor and Mary Alice is about personal meetings between Eleanor Roosevelt and Mary Alice Evatt, and with short comments by Churchill, Roosevelt and Herbert Evatt. The lives of these two influential women are framed by politics, war, refugees, modernist art and especially Moya Dyring’s painting. As Eleanor tours Australia in 1943, after flying across the Japanese patrolled Pacific, she seeks support to fly on to the battlefront. The two women meet again in Paris in 1948 when Mary Alice tries to overcome Evatt’s annoyance with Eleanor, and they discuss Dyring’s art and the end of her marriage to artist, Sam Atyeo, who is Evatt’s secretary.
'In the background Evatt is elected UN General Assembly President and Eleanor is Chair the UN Human Rights Committee developing the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. ' (Production summary)
First performed at Heide Gallery, Melbourne in conjuction with the Moya Dyring exhibition.
Performed at Perth Centre for Contemporary Photography as part of the Human Rights exhibition.
Director: Deborah Leiser-Moore.
Performers: Sarah McNeill/Glenda Lindscott (Eleanore Roosevelt) and Petra Kalive (Mary Alice Evatt).
Cellist: Adi Sappir.
'This article explores the performance of emotions in relation to gender identity in the fulfilment of public duties in the modernist era. It explains how emotions were knowingly expressed and evoked in public appearances by Eleanor Roosevelt (Eleanor) to political purpose. The article outlines the formal and informal connections between the Americans, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Australians, Herbert and Mary Alice (Mary Alice) Evatt, developed in the play Eleanor and Mary Alice and how these influenced national alliances in wartime and the subsequent United Nations' refugee policies. The article further explains how gendered attitudes to emotion both facilitated these processes as it blinkered recognition of their vital function and obscured the contributions of Eleanor and Mary Alice. Cast in a motherly, caring role as the President's wife, Eleanor contradictorily showed considerable courage - as did Mary Alice - as well as leadership.
'It is argued that the consideration of emotions in modernist politics and within its gendered patterns can be framed as an identifiable theatrical process and by utilising the idea of substitution. While these historical events proved foundational to subsequent alliances between Australia and the United States, the emotional dynamics surrounding political events remain implicit. Yet such examples of performed emotion as a controlled condition offer crucial insights about political decision-making.' (Publication abstract)
'This article explores the performance of emotions in relation to gender identity in the fulfilment of public duties in the modernist era. It explains how emotions were knowingly expressed and evoked in public appearances by Eleanor Roosevelt (Eleanor) to political purpose. The article outlines the formal and informal connections between the Americans, Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt, and the Australians, Herbert and Mary Alice (Mary Alice) Evatt, developed in the play Eleanor and Mary Alice and how these influenced national alliances in wartime and the subsequent United Nations' refugee policies. The article further explains how gendered attitudes to emotion both facilitated these processes as it blinkered recognition of their vital function and obscured the contributions of Eleanor and Mary Alice. Cast in a motherly, caring role as the President's wife, Eleanor contradictorily showed considerable courage - as did Mary Alice - as well as leadership.
'It is argued that the consideration of emotions in modernist politics and within its gendered patterns can be framed as an identifiable theatrical process and by utilising the idea of substitution. While these historical events proved foundational to subsequent alliances between Australia and the United States, the emotional dynamics surrounding political events remain implicit. Yet such examples of performed emotion as a controlled condition offer crucial insights about political decision-making.' (Publication abstract)
