HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr: Beauty and the marriage of art and science
- A multiple award-winning play about the intriguing life of ‘the most beautiful woman in the world’ who also invented technology used in our cellphones, is live streamed from Iceland tomorrow.
What comes across in Leslie Lee’s obituary in the New York Times, is Lee’s authenticity. A black American playwright born to working class parents in 1930, Pennsylvania, he wrote plays about black life, and made no bones about it.
“…He bestowed integrity on people,” director Ruben Santiago-Hudson is quoted as saying by obituarist Bruce Weber, “even when they were ne’er-do-wells or people whose intentions weren’t the best for other folks.”
That authenticity infuses New York playwright and performer Heather Massie’s work, for Leslie was her mentor and dearest friend. It is because of Leslie that we are able to watch Heather’s multiple award-winning play, HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr live streamed from Reykjavik at 5pm this Saturday.
Hedy Lamarr, in case you are unaware, was an inventor who during WWII developed radio frequency hopping so that American torpedoes could more accurately hit their targets. Some of that knowledge came from listening when her despotic munitions dealer husband (her first) had her hanging on his arm as a trophy wife at meetings with the likes of Mussolini and his war mongers.
She left him, fleeing to Paris, and followed her interrupted acting career, which took her to America where she was flaunted as “the most beautiful woman in the world”. She then upset the Hollywood establishment after the war by establishing her own production company and also developed improvements to aeroplane aerodynamics while dating business magnate and pilot Howard Hughes. She was posthumously inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2014.
This life of art and science, played amidst the turmoil and change of the 20th Century, is what Heather portrays in an acclaimed show that has scooped at least 17 awards, and is to be performed at the Reykjavik Fringe Festival at 5pm on Saturday, and you can get a ticket to watch the live stream thereof at the National Arts Festival.
Heather was supposed to be performing the show in Makhanda last year, but Covid took care of that. Then, says Heather, it was to be on stage at the National Arts Festival this year, but Covid put a lid on her coming to SA. So Heather applied to the Reykjavik Fringe, and the US Embassy in Iceland gave support. Then, she says when she spoke to NAF artistic director Rucera Seethal, they realised the Reykjavik show coincided with the NAF dates, so Rucera clicked her fingers and said let’s hook the two together, tethering the gossamer network criss-crossing the globe.
It’s a network of fellow minds and imaginations that brought Heather to South Africa in 2017, by way of Zimbabwe when she assisted Leslie with classes he was giving at the Intwasa Arts Festival in Bulawayo in 2008, which led to her returning to Zimbabwe with her play in 2017, and someone suggesting that if she’s performing in Bulawayo, she may as well put the play on in Cape Town while she’s down in southern Africa.
And so she did, at the Alexander Bar Upstairs Theatre (sadly now lost to lock downs). She also performed at the Makukhanye Art Room in Khayelitsha, in George, at Theatre on the Square in Joburg, and the Sci Bono Centre. HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr was also billed to play the SciFest in Makhanda last year.
Science is the thread running through the art, connecting her to Hedy Lamarr’s incredible story, and with Leslie, who studied English and Biology and worked as a bacteriologist and pharmaceutical researcher before playwriting. Heather studied astrophysics first, pursuing acting after taking a drama course in between her science studies in order to gain her required university degree credits.
A further synchronicity is that Ryan Bruton, who is on the National Arts Festival technical team, saw her perform in Cape Town and connected her to the National Arts Festival and SciFest, is now living in her home state of Virginia where she studied to be an astronaut, and overseeing the live stream from Reykjavik.
Tomorrow we’ll have the privilege of seeing Heather inhabit the character of Hedy Lamarr, along with 30 other characters she plays in an inspirational performance that reaches across cultures and generations.
Don’t miss HEDY! The Life & Inventions of Hedy Lamarr is live streamed on the National Arts Festival website at 5pm tomorrow. Log in on nationalartsfestival.co.za and purchase a ticket for R40.
Photograph by Al Foote.
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