says Ingrid

Papua New Guinea is‘live theatre’ says Ingrid

The people of Papua New Guinea are very theatrical. “You can learn a lot from them”, says Bougainville-born Sydney actress, Ingrid Mason. “In fact I wouldn’t mind getting involved with a school of dramatic arts there.

The country too gives a theatrical backdrop with its blue sky and variety of hills, forests, rivers and so on”.

Ingrid Mason, 23, is the daugh ter of the late Paul Mason, DSO, one of the most famous of the Islands coastwatchers during World War 11. She was born at Tearoki Roman Catholic Mission.

Her father was manager of Inus plantation. Ingrid retains her links with Bougainville through a close friend, Mrs Leo Hannett.

Ingrid recently returned to Australia after seven weeks in Brazil and the United States. In Brazil she stayed with former Bougainville neighbours, Mr and Mrs “Kip” McKillop, who are now in business at Sao Paolo.

Ingria developed an interest in acting when quite young as she listened to her mother, Noelle, former journalist and playwright, read her stories and plays. At Abbotsleigh School, Sydney, she took part in several plays.

She has not yet had a major role in either play or film, but she considers 1976 is her year because it is the Year of the Dragon, and she was born in June of an earlier Year of the Dragon.

She had had several minor roles in plays at the Old Tote Theatre, Sydney and a part in a film, Picnic at Hanging Rock, which had a long run at the Lyceum

Theatre, Sydney. Currently she has parts in Certain Women, a long-running Australian Broad casting Commission soap opera, and Mrs Fraser, a film in which two men fight a duel over her.

And, as the photograph shows, she’s worth the risk of a duel.

On her way back to Australia after her recent trip she stopped in New York for a few days to survey the theatre scene and con cluded that Australia did not offer the same competition.

“It would probably be much harder to get work there, but you would learn a lot more in that atmosphere”, she said.

She says she will soon have to have major roles if she is to suc ceed as an actress. ‘7 am about 24 and I see actresses of 29 trying to be beauti ful, and still struggling because there is not enough work for everybody”, Ingrid said. “I don’t want to get into that position”.

If she does not make it, she would like to open a restaurant, or perhaps run a school of drama tic arts. She works as a waitress in a Sydney restaurant, work which she likes but finds a little embrassing when other actresses come in for a meal. But she con soles herself with the thought mat hundreds of New York actresses also work in restaurants. And it is good experience if she does give up the footlights or the screen to become an entrepreneur on Sydney’s fine food stage.