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My Children, My Africa
December 11, 2006
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The theater world is full of talented song-and-dance women who can act well enough to make a musical go but who don't have the dramatic chops for "serious" plays. The exception is someone like rising local star Meghan Heimbecker, currently appearing in the Wilma Theater's production of Athol Fugard's challenging Apartheid-era work, My Children! My Africa!
As a kid growing up on the Main Line, Heimbecker starred in musicals at Upper Darby Summer Stage, where she now spends her summers as a director and instructor. She also acts and teaches at the Walnut Street Theatre. "I'm always singing and dancing," she said, "but I get booked for the straight shows. I teach musical theater, but my resume is heavier on the drama."
Heimbecker has a BFA in acting and minor in musical theater from Point Park Conservatory in Pittsburgh, and she's working toward a Master of Arts in theater from Villanova University. Her real education, however, is coming on the stages of Philadelphia's professional theaters.
In the spring, she'll star in the musical Enchanted April at the Walnut, but right now Heimbecker is focused on portraying tough-minded student Isabel Dyson in My Children! My Africa! Wilma co-artistic director Blanka Zizka is directing the show, which opens December 13 and continues through January 7.
In the play, Isabel encounters the segregated South African world of her dedicated black teacher (Glynn Turman) and his prized student, Thami Mbikwana (Yaegel Welch), whom the teacher, Mr. M., is determined to pair her with. "She is very headstrong," said Heimbecker of her character, "and when someone challenges her, she does not back away. ... The other thing about her is that she's naïve in a sense. ... Part of the journey for me is trying to flesh out how she's trying to understand fully where these two guys are coming from, because their word is so radically different from hers."
First produced in New York in 1989, My Children! My Africa! isn't the first Fugard play to go up at the Wilma, which has previously staged Statements After an Arrest Under the Immorality Act, The Road to Mecca and Playland. This show, however, is Heimbecker's first encounter with the acclaimed South African playwright.
"When I heard about the auditions and that there was a role that might be right for me," she said, "I got it from the library and fell in love it. I said, 'I have to do this play.'"
My Children! My Africa, $35-$50 ($10 student rush), Wilma Theater, 265 S. Broad St., Philadelphia, 215.546.7824; www.wilmatheater.org |
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