Claire Waldron’s Stupid Bitch wants a puppy really begins even before the audience has taken their seats. She greets us as we enter the Heyday Dome at BATS, chatting to us and acknowledging friends and colleagues. As we get comfortable, she finishes tidying up the set and readies herself for her performance, never losing her connection with us. These brief minutes of preshow fiddling about give us, perhaps unwittingly, a distilled essence of the show we are about to watch.

In the hour-long piece, Waldron moves between embodied character (the loveable author and amateur actor Barb), lip-synching performance, movement work, poetry, stand up, improvisation and personal stream-of-consciousness reminiscences of her life, with an unaffected and engaging ease. She tells rambling stories of her own experience as a woman and mother, illustrates the plight of a homeless woman on the streets, rates a number of ‘problematic’ females from 5 to 1, introduces us to an extensive wooden peg family, shares some excerpts from her incomplete “play about a wedding” and much more.

The piece might seem like a hodgepodge of disparate ideas and diverse theatrical forms. In some ways it is. Whilst there is a charming messiness and roughness to the work (Waldron trips over elements of the set, a couple of sound cues are slightly off, the lights of the Dome space don’t come on exactly when they should) these are actually integral parts of the strength and appeal of the piece. Waldron seems to eschew the over-polished, mechanical precision most theatre aims for and in doing so adds greater depth and resonance to her work. She revels in the small details and in honest and authentic presentation. This is a piece that creates its own rules and has fun with them.

The reminiscences from her life are told with such generosity that you can’t help but be drawn into her world and performance. Quite often these stories jump from one thing to another, have no clear point and stutter and trail off, but again these qualities are essential empowering attributes of the work. She avoids any obvious, hit-you-over-the-head ‘meaning’. This is a rare theatre piece that contains deeper comments about the expectations forced upon women by society among other things without being heavy handed or preachy.

Her stage presence is so unaffected, at times it feels like you’re sitting in the backyard at a party chatting with an old friend after having too many white wines and a couple of joints. Waldron literally trains the light on herself in this piece and whilst revealing someone who has been called a witch and a (stupid) bitch (wanting a puppy) she comes across as a comfortable and at-ease performer who perfectly balances vulnerability with disarming and modest confidence.

The (uncredited) design consists of a large black piece of gauze hung from the ceiling that becomes a screen for images and text, a shroud, a curtain, a dress, a baby. In combination with some simple yet utterly striking lighting effects, and teamed with her own monochromatic clothing, these elements combine to provide the actor with a beautifully uncomplicated field in which her work can effectively resound.

Stupid Bitch wants a puppy is a piece of theatre that balances beautifully the actor’s desire to share with the audience’s desire to receive. Waldron’s lightness of touch, authenticity and generosity have helped her carve out her own indomitable niche in New Zealand theatre.

[A development season, entitled STUPID BITCH was reviewed in 2018.]

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