Louisa So and Deanie Ip Work Together in New Stage Play

Best Actress Deanie Ip (葉德嫻), will be starring in her first ever stage play, The Beauty Queen of Leenane <親親麗南> alongside Louisa So (蘇玉華), Poon Chan Leung (潘燦良), and Ling Man Lung (凌文龍).

The Beauty Queen of Leenane by Irish playwright Martin McDonagh focuses on tensions between a mother and daughter and how they torture and vent their grievances upon each other. The critically acclaimed story shows the complexities and rivalry that often exist in families between loved ones. Hong Kong audiences, who lead time-pressed and repressed lives, would understand the layered feelings portrayed in the play.

Though Louisa and Deanie play the mother-and-daughter rivals in the play, they have worked well together and been supportive of each other in their first collaboration. Once the cast realized that Deanie is a very easy going person, they talked freely and found the right chemistry together.

Deanie said, “Actors need to have some sort of a personality disorder. Whenever we act a role, it is like meeting a new friend. You have to be an active listener in order to understand them. I started playing maternal roles at a young age, so I have acted as numerous types of mothers. This however is different and I think it is so fun. I am grateful to work with Louisa, which makes this much more exhilarating!”

Louisa shared, “I must have done a lot of good things in my past life to have met Deanie and be able to work with her. If she didn’t agree, we wouldn’t have done this play. With a good script, and all the preparation work already done, everything is coming together perfectly.”

In order to prepare for the play, Deanie has been focusing on her health including eating healthily, and doing plenty of exercise. To release stress, Deanie chooses to relax with good music.

Although their characters in the play are stuck in destructive relationships, Louisa is much more rational in extricating herself from problems. She realizes that every person needs to take short breaks and get some mental breathing room, before going back to confront the problem. Otherwise, it would be very painful to deal with.

The Beauty Queen of Leenane will appear on stage in Hong Kong in December.

Source: HK01

This article is written by Hailey for JayneStars.com.