Liesel Badorrek and I really could have talked for hours over a bottle of wine. 

She’s a director whose career is both wildly varied and unmistakably her own. At The Ensemble she recently helmed the acclaimed The Half‑Life of Marie Curie, and her wider body of work stretches from CDP’s beloved Treehouse adaptations to children’s operas for Opera Australia, the operatic spectacle of Carmen on Cockatoo Island, and the physical theatre lineage of Loose Canon Arts.

As we’re both theatre obsessives, that spark made our conversation about her next project Bette &Joan at The Ensemble Theatre feel instantly electric. We kept circling how women are shaped, flattened and mythologised in the media, and how Bette Davis and Joan Crawford refused to shrink themselves to fit the roles assigned to them. 

What made speaking with Liesel so compelling was her refusal to limit them as rivals. She sees the women behind the legend. It was one of those fabulous exchanges where history, craft and psychology all snapped into focus.

So without further ado, here’s Faith’s Top 5 with Liesel Badorrek. Let’s get Baby‑Jane‑ing! 

Q1. Jeanette Cronin last explored Hollywood mythology at Ensemble in John Misto’s Dark Voyager, and audiences now carry the cultural memory of Ryan Murphy’s Feud: Bette and Joan. How does Anton Burge’s Bette & Joan sit in conversation with those interpretations?

I didn’t see Dark Voyager or Feud, but I’ve read about them. Both highlight how these women were mistreated by the Hollywood powerbrokers, and that’s the obvious part. We know women in that era had very little power.

What interests me more is celebrating their achievements rather than centring the men who undermined them. Pointing out misogyny is sometimes treated as the feminist angle, but it can actually undersell women.

Burge includes the abuse, the control, the studio heads, the casting couch. Joan acknowledged it; Bette, by all accounts, didn’t partake in it. Hollywood was ruled by men, but the more compelling story is what these women built in spite of that.

Bette and Joan meticulously crafted careers and public images that have lasted for decades. That’s the real story – not the feud, not the men, but the brilliance and longevity they created for themselves.

Q2. The play is built on a brilliant structural tension: two women in adjoining dressing rooms, speaking mostly to the audience rather than to each other. What drew you to that structure, and how did you use the space to build pressure on the stage?

The script reads like a long series of monologues, but I’ve made it more claustrophobic by placing the women firmly in their dressing rooms and keeping the fourth wall intact. They’re not raconteurs addressing the audience; they’re talking to themselves, reliving their lives.

I use pre‑recorded film as inner monologue and live camera feeds so we see them as if they’re inside the films of their own memories. We understand them through the lens of a camera. That’s how the world knew them, and how they largely saw themselves: Joan the movie star, Bette the film actress.

Instead of playing it like cabaret, I’ve created an intense, focused space. The dressing rooms become psychological chambers, and the pressure builds because they’re trapped with their own memories and self‑mythology.

There’s one moment where they almost break the fourth wall, but otherwise the tension comes from watching them circle their own histories, wounds and constructed personas.

Q3. The play digs into the “hagsploitation” era and the brutal economics of ageing in Hollywood. In rehearsal, what emerged about how Davis and Crawford navigated misogyny, reinvention, and the constant threat of not mattering?

Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? was the first of the so‑called hagsploitation films: stories about once‑glamorous women now aged, isolated and punished for it. Whenever we talk about “the feud”, we’re really talking about that genre.

Some argue hagsploitation reflects society’s discomfort with ageing women, and that’s true. But Davis and Crawford also exploited that discomfort themselves. They used the genre to take their power back.

They were seen as washed‑up. Jack Warner famously said he wouldn’t put two bucks into a film about “those two old broads” – and then the film became a huge success because they leaned into the risk and used their personas brilliantly.

In many ways they were playing heightened versions of themselves, turning the industry’s expectations to their advantage. That reinvention, that refusal to disappear, is what emerged most strongly in rehearsal. They were savvy, strategic and absolutely aware of how to weaponise the roles available to them.

Q4. These women are icons, yet Bette and Joan keeps tugging them back into their messy, vulnerable humanity. How did you work with Jeanette and Lucia to shape performances that honour the legend but stay rooted in emotional truth?

Their humanity is the most interesting part for us. We can never know the absolute truth of their inner lives; even their memoirs are curated, but this play lets us imagine what it was like to live as them.

Lucia, Jeanette and I are all around the age they were when Bette and Joan made Baby Jane. Lucia and I are working mothers, as both Davis and Crawford were, and that brings its own slog. They were also negotiating relationships where they were the higher‑profile partner.

We explored the universal things – love, pain, trauma, complicated parents, the exhaustion of trying to stay ahead of the game. That’s the joy of the rehearsal process: finding the human being inside the icon. In many ways, both women are remarkably similar. Their approaches differ: Joan the movie star, Bette the film actress, but their core experiences overlap.

This show is also camp and really funny. These women were hilarious, and I’m absolutely leaning into hag‑sploitation framing because it’s delicious, and I know audiences, especially queer audiences, are going to revel in it.

Q5. You’ve said the play exposes the “meticulous and deliberate construction of Bette and Joan’s images.” How did you use those visible dressing‑room rituals to reveal the women rather than the characters?

We also use filmed images, their own self‑constructed images, alongside the live action. There’s a shift in perspective between Act I and Act II so the audience gets a different “camera angle,” so to speak.

All those physical details reveal their attitudes to themselves and to the world. The differences in how they move, prepare, and present themselves make their inner lives very clear. The rituals aren’t just about appearance; they’re about identity, control, and the armour they built to survive Hollywood.

Bonus Question! 

What question were you secretly hoping I’d ask, and what’s your answer?

• Which actor – Bette or Joan- do you feel the most affinity with?

Joan Crawford.

She came from nothing, with no support, and built a career through sheer grit. Her rags‑to‑riches story is extraordinary. Even Bette Davis said the Mommy Dearest portrayal wasn’t who Joan really was. I admire Joan enormously. And she loved a frock – which I do too.

Bette & Joan opens 20th March –until 25th April 2026 At Ensemble Theatre.
For details see : : https://www.ensemble.com.au/shows/bette-and-joan/

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