Actress and playwright Tashia Dorsey would not dream of indulging in any of the high jinks her characters get involved with.
Take for example, P M Widow, from her latest work, The Re-birth of a Pre-Menopausal Widow, which recently won the Best Overall Production Award at the Abu Dhabi edition of the Short+Sweet Festival – an international event showcasing 10-minute plays.
“P M Widow was born out of me having a midlife crisis here,” says the 47-year-old elementary schoolteacher, who moved from the United States to the UAE four years ago.
“I had been in Al Ain for two years and had given up on acting, which has always been my saving grace. I’m a very dramatic person and needed that outlet – and felt like I was going crazy.”
After a casual conversation with friends over dinner a year ago, she went home and began writing the character.
“I didn’t want to wait any longer for the right role to come along,” she says. “So I created my own character, and now I get to say what she does, how she acts and reacts.”
The backstory of P M Widow revolves around the untimely death of her husband. Everyone suspects she murdered him, but nothing has been proven.
She capitalised on her infamy to become a television and radio host, who dishes out preposterous advice to women based on her experiences. Dorsey debuted P M Widow at the Rooftop Rhythms open-mic sessions last year, and combined her monologues into a 10-minute play for Short+Sweet.
Theatregoers in Dubai will get a chance to see the play's dark humour when she presents The Re-birth of a Pre-menopausal Widow as a wild-card entry, along with another comedy, The Detective, in the Top 40 section as part of Short+Sweet at Alserkal Avenue tomorrow.
“P M Widow does things that I might think about but wouldn’t have the courage to carry out, except murdering my husband of course,” she says with a hearty laugh.
"She is vivacious, outgoing and outspoken, like me, but does things that I probably would have in my 20s, but which I have learnt to streamline at this age. I live vicariously through her with some things." Dorsey's earliest memory of being drawn to stage was when her grandmother took her to watch Mary Poppins on Broadway.
“I cried during the whole show because I wanted to be on stage singing and not in the audience. I remember that vividly,” she says.
She started singing when she was 5, and 12 years ago tried her hand at community theatre and the professional stage in New York.
When she moved to the UAE, she did not allow a lack of acting opportunities crush her passion, and began organising mystery theatre dinner shows in Al Ain and Abu Dhabi. Now, P M Widow fuels her creativity.
“She is full of stories and there are several monologues that I’ve put down but not performed yet,” says Dorsey.
She is also trying to expand Abu Dhabi’s theatre scene by producing children’s plays.
“The theatre scene in Al Ain is non-existent and that is mainly because this emirate has a very transient expat population,” she says.
"There is a growing theatre base in private schools, but the opportunities are still few and far between." Her theatre company, UpStage Entertainment – a real family affair, with her husband and 17-year-old daughter involvedbackstage – staged children's play, The Land of the Lost Stories, in October, with a few more in the pipeline this year.
“We also plan on doing more workshops to give youngsters experience in drama.”
• Short+Sweet Dubai begins tomorrow and continues every weekend until March 10 at The Junction in Alserkal Avenue. UpStage Entertainment will stage The Re-birth of a Pre-menopausal Widow at 2pm on Saturday and The Detective at 7pm on Friday and Saturday. For more details and the full schedule and list of plays, visit www.shortandsweet.org or call 04 338 8525
aahmed@thenational.ae
