In the Herald Sun Arts and Entertainment page today. The first para made me rather
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Truth about teensEloise Mignon s digging deeper in her new role, writes Harbant Gill.Tired of playing a teenager, Eloise Mignon was rather pleased to ram her troubled Neighbours character Bridget Parker into a fatal car accident and promptly return to university.
Teenage traumas, hower, keep stalking the 23-year-old. The stage gig she picked up next, in Red Stitch Theatre's In a Dark Dark House, was the story of a lonely, dissatisfied teenager in a small town.
Now Mignon is playing a 16-year-old in her mainstream mainstage debut, in the world premiere of Australian writer Tony McNamara's The Grenade. The Melbourne Theatre Company invited her to audition.
"Oh, this teenager is different," says the fresh-faced bright blue-eyed Mignon as she sips on her pre-rehearsal morning cafe latte.
"It explores aspects of being a teenager that I didn't get to do in my Neighbours character. What I like about this one is working on a good piece of writing and digging into it and fleshing it out."
"In television you don't really get the time to do that, because the product is much more disposable and the scenes serve the story in quite a simplistic way."
Mignon plays Lola, the precocious daughter of a protective political lobbyist dad (Garry McDonald). Lola is incredibly astute and knowledgeable about the world, but pretty clueless when it comes to her own life.
As she struggles with her identity crisis, she starts dating a teenage emo freak and tries to seduce her mother's erotic writing partner Randy (Jolyon James), who is an ex-porn star.
Mignon is the first to admit the perils of doing comedy, but she is fast learning to work with the rhythm of the language, "because therein lie the gags".
It helps that she has grown up in theatre, in particular the Anthill Theatre, set up by her French-born theatre stalwart father Jean-Pierre Mignon and his performer-writer Australian wife.
While working with the likes of Catherine McClements, Jacek Koman, Robert Menzies and Alex Menglet, the Mignons booked both their sons and their middle child, Eloise, with an agency, through which they landed television gigs in children's shows such as Legacy of Silver Shadow and Silver Sun. While the boys chose different paths, Eloise Mignon did a "cattle-call audition" for Neighbours while doing an arts degree at Melbourne University and acting with a family friend's Black Lung Theatre.
She spent a couple of years at Neighbours, but it was not until she returned to theatre that Mignon decided on acting as a career.
She brings to the mainstage a noticeable talent, plus a wealth of wisdom from her father.
"My father has a big appreciation for writers, the text of the play, ad he's always talked about that," Mignon says.
"And he's always insisted upon a naturalism in acting, without foregoing theatricality. What he's taught me is to always be truthful at the core and then you can layer that with theatricality and nuances. He's always insisted on performance as a serious of layers to build a part. I'll play any part that comes my way, teenage or not, as long as it's a good script."
The Grenade, Playhouse, Arts Centre, April 10-May 15.
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