Daughters Of Heaven

On 22 June 1954, in a secluded part of Victoria Park in Christchurch, Juliet Hulme and Pauline Parker battered Pauline's mother to death. This play examines the passionate friendship between two girls, and the events leading up to the murder.

Look one way and it's the story of a provincial New Zealand city being turned upside down by a murder. It's a story of Christchurch in 1954, restrained and nice with implicit British attitudes about class and gender, suddenly confronted with evil.

Look another way and Daughters of Heaven is about love - the sweeping away of reason and morality in a crazy tide of two-ness. "We had the right to do what we needed to do in the interests of our own happiness." says Juliet Hulme.

Daughters of Heaven has been a stage hit at The Court, Christchurch, Downstage, Wellington and The Globe, Dunedin.

"...the play is destined to reach a wide audience. My guess is that it will quickly become central to the canon of indigenous New Zealand drama." Shelagh Duckham Cox, New Zealand Books.

See here an article Michelanne wrote answering the five most asked questions about Daughters of Heaven.