Bee Cruse has made her stage debut with August: Osage County. After an acclaimed outing in Sydney for Belvoir the production has moved west for a season at Black Swan State Theatre Company as part of the Festival of Perth.
Tracy Letts Pulitzer Prize winning play is one of the great works of recent times, but casting the role of housekeeper Johnna Monevata for an Australian production must have presented producers with some challenges. The character is an American Indian.
Luckily Cruse is the perfect fit coming from Aboriginal, American Indian and Chinese descent. Her family comes from the Kamilaroi, Wiradjuri and Yuin-Monaro people of New South Wales. She shares how much she’s enjoyed the process of exploring her ancestry as part of the creative process of preparing for the role.
Cruse says the reception the production received during its Sydney run was “overwhelming”.
“It’s my first stage performance, my first big gig.” she explains, “I didn’t know what to expect really, so I just, I went with it and ran, getting all the love, getting the standing ovations every night was amazing!”
Sydney audiences have been described as catapulting out of their seats with applause at the end of the production that runs for three hours and have several intervals.
Cruse says playing Johnna Monevata has been a joy.
“She’s a strong Cheyenne woman. I really resonated with her, because my great, great-grandfather was Native American as well. That’s really as a bit of a rarity. There’s only a couple of indigenous families here in Australia that have Native American links.”
“I’m a proud strong Yuin Biripi woman here in Australia, but then playing a character that kind of takes me out of that indigenous bubble it was lovely, but hard at first.”
Cruse explains the challenge she took on, “I didn’t want to be an Indigenous Australian playing this character, I wanted to embody Johnna.”
While the show has a large cast who come and go, and some characters only appear at the very start of the play, Johnna is on stage for the entire production, an experience that Cruse describes as a “marathon.”
Prior to this work Cruse has largely worked in film, television and online media. You might have caught her in The Australian Wars, Total Control, Ten Pound Poms, The Shore, Nightwalkers, Dark Place, Las Rosas, After the Apology and Cleverman.
She’s also spent time working behind the camera as Associate Producer on the documentary In My Blood it Runs and as Director on Kweens of the Queer Underground.
Her live performance is diverse, she has fun in drag as BeeDazzled Shanks – the Prince of Redfern, and also loves dancing more traditional style as she has over the years with Buuja-Buuja Dance Group.
For her first stage production Cruse has got to work alongside an impressive list of Australian’s most acclaimed theatrical practitioners.
Pamela Rabe takes on the role of the family matriarch Violet Weston, whose been described as one of the great monsters of the stage. For the Perth production Caroline Brazier, Geoff Kelso, Bert LaBonté, Amy Mathews, Hayley McElhinney, Ben Mortley, Rohan Nichol, Will O’Mahony, Anna Samson, Greg Stone and Esther Williams round out the cast, many of them also appeared in the Sydney staging.
“I had imposter syndrome the first couple of weeks during rehearsals,” Cruse said. “But the cast being who they are, being so professional, but also being so loving and caring and gracious, they really just took me in.”
To prepare for the role Cruse learned a lot about the area where the play is set, and later this year she’s planning a trip with her partner to Oklahoma and hopes to visit some of the places she’s learned about through the process.
Before that trip can happen, she’ll be heading to Osage County on stage each night between tonight at Sunday 16th March. Tickets are on sale now.
