Australian television audiences should be familiar with Sunshine West’s Marta Kaczmarek.
The Polish native’s acting credits include roles in Blue Heelers, Underbelly, Rush and Rake, along with notable stage performances and film cameos.
Kaczmarek will return to the stage at Theatre Works in St Kilda this week for an adaptation of Émile Zola’s 19th century novel, Thérèse Raquin.
Kaczmarek will star as Madame Raquin in Gary Abraham’s version of Zola’s gothic horror, which tells the story of a young woman trapped in a loveless marriage to her sickly cousin.
The plot thickens when the Raquin family relocates to Paris and Therese meets her husband’s friend Laurent. A passionate affair follows and its consequences set in motion a series of devastating events.
“It’s a tragicomedy,” Kaczmarek says. “Our society has become so desensitised, so [for the production] to show the emotion, the depth of human emotion and where it can take you, is just amazing.”
Kaczmarek, who began her acting career at a dramatic arts academy in Krakow, Poland, moved to Australia in the early 1980s.
She relocated to Melbourne’s western suburbs after her daughter was accepted into the Victorian College of the Arts in 2007.
The former teacher and real estate agent now divides her time between acting and running the lifestyle program at an Ardeer nursing home. But her passion is the arts, and she hopes her role in Thérèse Raquin will draw attention to theatre in the west.
“We are so under-subsidised. We need more performing spaces.”
