Theatre: Aust. Leading Lady

Press, Volume CV, Issue 30979, 8 February 1966, Page 10

Theatre: Aust. Leading Lady

Briony Hodge, who as Adriano will have the leading female role in the forthcoming tour of Shakespeare’s “Comedy of Errors” through New Zealand, is a 24-year-old Australian-born actress. Briony and Barbara Ewing, the 24-year-old Aucklander playing Luciana, were students together at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Miss Hodge graduated from R.A.D.A. at the end of 1964

with a gold medal as the best player of her class. A term later Miss Ewing won a similar award as the most promising student in her group of graduates.

Although Miss Hodge began the academy course a term earlier than Miss Ewing, they have already played together in some student productions —notably “Summer of the Seventeeth Doll” and the Royal Academy’s “Royal Command Performance concert” for the 60th anniversary in which a number of dramatic excerpts were presented. Briony, a sft 9in blonde from Adelaide, won a scholarship to the National Institute of Dramatic Art in Sydney, which she attended from 1960 to 1961. She played Lady Politic Would-be in “Volpone” at the Adelaide Festival before

TECHNIQUE

“I decided I had better brush up my technique a little bit more. After all this is what you are up against —years of tradition and polised technique,” said Briony. She auditioned for and won a George Bernard Shaw Scholarship which paid for her tuition fees and board while attending the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art. Last year she was one of the academy’s students selected to go on a tour to Arizona, where she played in “Mac-

beth” and “As You Like It.” After leaving the academy Briony went to the Sunderland Festival of Arts in Scotland where she played with Michael- Aldridge and Joseph O’Connor. She took the part of Hermione in “Winter’s Tale” and Lady Percy in “Henry IV—Part 1.” She had short spells with the Canterbury Repertory and the Farham Repertory, and then had her first part in a West End play—a good supporting role in “The Professor” at the Royal Court Theatre.

Some of Briony’s pet likes are cooking (preferably Chinese foods), films and books. Pet hates include going to the live theatre “that’s too much like work!”