Ex basketball player, community builder, and Circus Woman of great strength, endurance and humour. Maree is a long-term WOW member who has volunteered tremendous amounts of time, work and support to WOW and the greater community—whether encouraging others in class, or with her performance and emcee talents. She has been known to be an accidental stage manager, props manager, front of house person, delivery driver, costume repairer, food and beverage server, high-vis wearing rig putter-upper, and any other job that’s needed at the drop of a hat.
Maree has been a prolific WOW performer and been in many WOW shows. (Probably most of them!) She has turned up at many strange venues at weird times, passed out fliers on stilts, and signed up many new members. She is an awesome clown and improviser who went on to explore playback theatre, and has a wig for every occasion. The first group act that she performed in was at the Town Hall and called Whiplash, where she played Miranda, a loopy and flexible blond thing.
Maree has created many acts, and so many characters, the list would go on for miles. Notable acts were Smoking Yoga, “How do I Look?” and The Golden Gaytimes. Her many memorable characters include Heika the Biker with the hot buns (not cross) and Darlene from Port Kembla. She played a brilliantly cheeky Puck in Shakespeare Fantasia, even improvising on the day of a performance when one of the singers had laryngitis.
Maree represented WOW as the emcee at the Bubbles Ball Breast Cancer event numerous times and had women rubbing breasts (their own and others) and splitting their sides laughing at her ridiculously tiny mini bicycle antics. She was also a bit of a regular at The Vault popping up in all number of acts. She has helped fellow WOWers carry big stacks of hoops up Sydney’s Oxford Street weekly at 1am, treading the sticky boards of burlesque clubs and keeping them laughing on the long drive home!
Maree was a long-time member of the management committee, and contributed with great strength to keeping the organisation going through difficult periods. She has helped in just about every way she could, and was even Chair of WOW for a while just to keep it alive. It has taken a lot of dedicated women to keep WOW on its feet over the last 20 years, and Maree’s dedication has always been clear.
Some people know how to make the impossible seem possible. Maree is one of those treasures.