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Scenes of the Crime: Returning to the Past CHRISTINA STACHURSKI Two young women murdered the mother of one of them by beating her head with a brick in a secluded spot in Victoria Park, Christchurch, New Zealand in [954. At that time the Parker-Hulme murder and Pauline Parker's and Juliet Hulme's relationship were reponed and sensationalized worldwide. Now in the 1990S a resurgence of interest by New Zealanders in the two young women and their relationship and actions has produced not one but three works. Michelanne Forster's play, Daughters ofHeaven, was first produced by the Coun Theatre in Christchurch in [99[ and has since had productions in New Zealand's three other major urban centres. Julie Glannuzina's and Alison Laurie 's Parker and Hulme: A Lesbian View was published in Auckland in [991, and Peter Jackson's film, Heavenly Creatures, was shot in Christchurch in 1993 and released in [994. This proliferation of works focusing on Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker reflects a national trend: "[iln the last decade New Zealanders have been more than usually pre-occupied with producing and consuming narratives that revise the nation's history."1 Anne Maxwell convincingly argues that "the unofficial histories of the nation that have been marginalised in the interests of 'progress' or European expansion" as well as novels and films are playing an imponant part in the transformation of New Zealand's political landscape.' However, absent in Maxwell's argument is mention of the recent trend of mixif!g fact and fiction to produce re-visions of New Zealand history. The apparent historical veracity conferred on the fictional element by the factual element in this genre leaves such texts particularly open to producing persuasive perspectives of the ยท writer and protagonist(s). Michelanne Forster's play Daughters ofHeaven is a conjectural interpretation of the circumstances and relationships surrounding the Parker-Hulme murder. Significantly, there is no attempt to distance fiction from fact by, for Modern Drama, 40 ([997) [II 112 CHRISTINA STACHURSKI example, changing names and location. Forster uses excerpts from Pauline Parker's actual diaries and from the transcript of the court proceedings amongst invented dialogue. Both the Court Theatre's and Downstage Theatre 's Daughters OfHeaven programmes include photographs and notes about the actual murder and trial; posters for the Globe Theatre's and Downstage Theatre's productions featured photographs of the historical Pauline and Juliet, thus conferring historical authenticity on the performances they advertised . All of these productions have attracted large audiences. Why are New Zealanders so interested and involved in a re-examination of people, relationships , and events that happened forty years ago? Was the extensive worldwide reportage and documentation of the fifties not enough? And why now, in this particular social context? Michel de Certeau has an answer. He theorizes that the writing of history possesses a symbolizing function; it allows a society to situate itself by giving itself a past through language, and it thus opens to the present a space of its own. "To mark" a past is to make a place for the dead, but also to redistribute the space of pO,ssibility, to determine negatively what must be done. and consequently to use the narrativity that buries the dead as a way of establishing a place forthe living,3 It is easy and appropriate to transpose de Certeau's theory about the writing of history on to the performance of history, as performance is the social expression of a text; the words of the play text are only given meaning and life by theatre practitioners and audiences. Hence the social milieu within which a text is performed drastically influences the meaning or meanings given and taken from the text. Daughters ofHeaven does, therefore, not so much represent the past on the stage as re-present the past in the light of the present. Thus, the following discussion necessarily refers to the characters in Daughters ofHeaven and to the theatre practitioners and audiences of contemporary New Zealand rather than to the people actually involved in the historical events and circumstances. Gender roles and expectations have undergone a huge shift in New Zealand, as throughout the Western world, in the...

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