GERRY is emotionally confused.
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He has been abused and he is lost.
Gerry is the lead character in Bay Theatre Players’ mid-year production, Forget Me Not, which previewed on Saturday, July 16 and opens on Friday, July 22.
Bill Douglas, well known to BTP audiences, is playing Gerry.
Bill says it is an “emotionally draining experience”.
And, he says, at the end of the show it’s good to be able to “sit down and unload”.
Forget Me Not tells Gerry’s story.
He was part of a British Government program which told more than 3000 British children they were orphans and sent them to Australia with a promise of warmth, fresh air, abundant food and opportunity.
Instead they arrived to deprived institutions where neglect and abuse were the norm.
The play unearths a secret buried by time that, in turn, exposes a world of historical injustices.
Bill says he had been aware of stories like Gerry’s, firstly through an ABC television documentary, but also through a meeting with a nurse who related how when she was a girl at school she had been part of a team which had played another team from an “orphanage”.
The orphanage children were strictly segregated, but she managed to speak to some of them.
Later at her own school she was berated for making the contact.
Bill says, “we only ever heard of the good things and the people who managed to get through it all. We didn’t hear about the ones that didn’t, like Gerry.
Only at the end of the story do you realise he needs a lot of help to have some semblance of a normal life. And he can only get that through his daughter”.
Bill’s first outing with BTP was as South Pacific lead role, Emile de Becque.
He began treading the boards in his Queanbeyan primary school in musical concert.
He arrived in the Bay in 2000 and within a very short time was working at the Playhouse.
He was last seen as Badger in last year’s The Wind in the Willows.
Tickets for Forget Me Not are on sale from Bargain Box, Homemaker Centre, 2 Cranbrook Road, Batemans Bay, or on 4472 5984.
Opening night is Friday, July 22 at 7.30pm.
Matinees (2pm) are on Saturday, July 23, Sunday, July 24 and Sunday, July 31.
Evening shows (7.30pm) are Wednesday, July 27, Friday, July 29, and Saturday, July 30.
The Batemans Bay Theater Players’ is a very active community theatre company operating our own 99-seat theatre, The Bay Playhouse.