A collection of short plays written in Palmerston North by Massey University students opens on October 1 and runs until October 3 at the Globe Theatre.
Follow the link for more information:
http://www.stuff.co.nz/manawatu-standard/lifestyle/72338760/palmerston-northmade-theatre
It’s 1415: King Henry V of England makes a grab for France. His cousin, French King Charles VI, sitzkriegs.
Henry and his army capture the French port city of Harfleur. Winter’s looming, Henry’s army is sick and hungry, and everyone just wants to go home. The French King has other ideas, and blockades their escape. They meet at Agincourt, on October 25, 1415.
The French outnumber the English five to one; pre-battle Gallic confidence arrows upwards. The underdogs win, decisively, thanks to the English longbow, and the rest is history.
Six hundred years after the battle, Henry V director Simon Herbert attributes his interest in this little-known history play to a guided tour of England’s Warwick Castle he did as a small boy.
“They had a longbowman demonstrating shooting, and he told us all about the Battle of Agincourt. It grabbed my imagination, and I’ve wanted to direct Henry V ever since,” Herbert said.
“And Henry V is one of my favourite Shakespearian plays. It’s not well-known, but it’s got some of the best speeches and finest poetry Shakespeare wrote.”
One of the most interesting things about Henry V are the different stories it tells about war, and the different stories we tell ourselves about war.
“We tell ourselves its patriotic and noble, but is it, really?”
Henry V by William Shakespeare
Directed by Simon Herbert
Iris Theatre Company
15 – 18 October 2015, 7.30pm
18 October, 2.00pm
The Dark Room, Palmerston North
Tickets: $15, $10 concession
Various School of English and Media Studies staff are taking part in a poetry showcase being held in Palmerston North next week. Specifically Thom Conroy and Joy Green are in a team competing in 50 GREAT PHOTOS, 50 SMALL POEMS, pitting their skills against others to write a poem in 10 minutes about a photograph chosen by a member of the public.
In addition, Tim Upperton will be reading at the e- book launch of “Anthology of Poetry Ma…king”, which also features the work of Margi Metcalfe and Joy Green.
Further information on both events can be found at :
http://poetrybeyondwords.org/read-me-bedford/.
Join us in Wellington on Wednesday 12 August for the launch of an exiting new online anthology.
A collaboration between staff and students in Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies and the School of Design, produced in partnership with the Alexander Turnbull Library, National Library of New Zealand, Te Puna Mātauranga o Aotearoa.
PUKEAHU: AN EXPLORATORY ANTHOLOGY
Edited by Ingrid Horrocks, Lynn Davidson, Lena Fransham, and Thomas Aitken. Designed by Rosie Percival.
http://pukeahuanthology.org/
The launch will include short readings from 6:30pm by:
Angela Kilford
Lena Fransham
Bill Manhire
Vivienne Plumb
Thomas Aitken
Chris Tse
Lynn Davidson
Date: Wednesday 12 August
Time: Wine and refreshments from 6 pm
Location: Te Ara Hihiko/Block 12, Level C. Massey University, Entrance E off Tasman Street, Pukeahu/Mt Cook, Wellington
School of English and Media Studies PhD student Sara McBride has won the Wellington leg of the 3 minute thesis competition. Sara is co-supervised by English & Media Studies with the Joint Centre for Disaster Research and her research is on cracking the puzzle of how we can better prepare people for disaster, particularly earthquakes. She’ll be off to the finals in August. Congratulations Sara!
More information on the 3MT competition can be found on the Massey University website.
A great review of Wellington Massey Expressive Arts graduate, Annabel Hawkins’ first collection of poetry, This Must be the Place:
‘The move from a blog, where the posts were an amalgam of structured poems, as well as open-form entries with no real structure, was a challenge. Here, in This Must be the Place, these have been collected, worked on, revised, and her words are bound together with feelings and memories. The form is stricter, but the intentions and honesty remain in the collection. Hawkins avoids high-brow language and form, aiming instead for accessibility. Her language oscillates, as if working to a pattern, between poeticism surrounding time and abstract emotions, and specific language of both time and place—with references to polar fleeces, durries, skateboards, ripped jeans, Briscoes, all carving out an eternal moment in time.’
If you’d like to read more, click http://bit.ly/1Lm1nCx.
Massey Albany’s Creativity in the Community students continue to receive well-deserved news coverage of their work with the residents of a local dementia care facility.
Click here to see the segment on last week’s TV3’s “Newsworthy” programme.
Join us for the exciting launch of a debut poetry book by Massey Expressive Arts graduate Annabel Hawkins. This Must Be The Place is a rich collaboration between two Wellington friends: Annabel who wrote the words and her friend Alice, a Design graduate who designed the place to put them.
Madam Black (2015), a short film written by Matthew Harris, tutor at Massey University’s Albany campus, will appear in New Zealand’s Best Competition at the New Zealand International Film Festival on Saturday 25th July, 6:15pm at Sky City Theatre.
Described by selector Christine Jeffs as a “sweet and quirky tale which abounds with charm and humour”, the film tells the story of a wayward glamour photographer who runs over a child’s pet and is forced to fabricate a story about its disappearance.
The film is directed by Ivan Barge and set on Auckland’s North Shore, and it recently had its world premiere at the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood at the Dances With Films festival, where it won the Industry Award and an honourable mention in the Competition Shorts.
“It’s great to have the New Zealand premiere so soon after the international release,” Harris says, “and the New Zealand’s Best event is a great occasion which always has a sell-out crowd – it really shows the public appetite for short-form storytelling.”
The popularity of the NZIFF competition and of other short film festivals around the country, he likens to the recent trend in hors d’oeuvres style dining: “Seeing half a dozen short films is like the tapas of movie-going. Taking slices of life from different plates can be incredibly filling, and it encourages more conversation because you’re not locked into one long narrative. They’re great to go to with friends.”
This is Harris’ second appearance in the NZIFF NZ’s Best line-up. His award-winning 43,000 Feet also featured in the competition in 2012.
His previous short films have travelled the international festival circuit from Tribeca in New York to the Clermont-Ferrand festival in France, accruing various awards and nominations, and his last collaboration with director Ivan Barge on Snooze Time had over 140,000 views in its first week online.
Tickets for the event go on sale at 9:00am Friday 26th June via Ticketmaster or: http://www.nziff.co.nz/2015/auckland/new-zealands-best-2015/.
Sue Wilson plays the character Betty, who re-establishes a connection with her ‘memory’ (photo/Eilidh Penman)
Massey University theatre and media students have been using their creative talents for social good by exploring new ways to communicate with people who have dementia, as well as helping others to better understand the condition.
Students at Massey’s Auckland campus have developed short films, music videos and a theatre performance in partnership with a nearby residential care facility, Aria Gardens, in Albany. The works were created as part of a ground-breaking new paper led by applied theatre specialist Dr Rand Hazou.
One of the four groups on the course explored the use of doll therapy for residents experiencing ‘sun-downing’ – the mid to late-afternoon period when some dementia sufferers feel agitated and confused. Another used TimeSlips – an imaginative storytelling technique that doesn’t rely on memory, and is suited to engaging with some of the residents who have dementia.
Dr Hazou says the Creativity in the Community paper – offered through the School of English and Media Studies to Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Communications students – allows students to come up with creative ways to connect with a specific community setting and explore artistic methods to communicate issues relevant to that community.
“By partnering with Aria Gardens, we’ve had a unique opportunity to engage with some of the issues surrounding ageing and dementia, and find creative interventions that challenge negative stereotypes within the wider community,” Dr Hazou says.
“After giving students some introductory information on dementia and some coaching on communication techniques, we began visiting Aria Gardens to meet with residents and staff and build up relationships. The idea was that together we could work towards delivering creative interventions that explore issues of positive ageing and dementia.”
Dr Rand Hazou with students in the Theatre Lab
Over the last 10 weeks students visited Aria Gardens and designed their creative projects as a result of their interactions with residents. They also worked with Annabel Grant, a clinical educator within Massey’s Institute of Education, to understand the specific communications challenges that the elderly and those with dementia might experience.
Last week the students presented their projects at the Theatre Lab on the Auckland campus.
“We’re also planning on presenting our projects back to the residents and staff at Aria Gardens and inviting feedback and discussion,” Dr Rand says.
Jon Amesbury, the manager of Aria Gardens, says his 133-bed facility seeks innovative and creative ways to empower residents as part of its philosophy. He says the project was “hugely positive.”
“The residents who took part felt really empowered because they were part of creative projects that recognised their lives and experiences, which increases their self-worth.”
Mr Amesbury is entering the project in the national Excellence in Care Awards 2015. He says the project and partnership with Massey University is unique. He would like to see similar creative projects and partnerships developed more widely as the elderly population rapidly increases and issues such as social isolation, grief, sexuality, depression and anxiety they experience need to be addressed and understood.
Dr Hazou says the group creative projects also allow students to develop important teamwork and communications skills that help them to become “work ready and world ready”.
He says the aim of the paper, as well as other new courses being introduced at Massey, is to develop the students’ capacities as adaptive, engaged and responsible citizens. “We want to produce students who can use creative skills to engage with problems they see around them.”
This aim is also being mirrored in Massey’s redesigned Bachelor of Arts, as well as the introduction of the Major in Creative Writing and a Minor in Theatre Studies from next year.
Anna Beaton, a Bachelor of Communications student enrolled in the paper, says the project helped her learn to navigate “confronting” situations with confidence. Her project was a short film aimed to create awareness of dementia using sketching, watercolours, music, and voice-over narration.
Student projects were; ‘Sketchy Memories’ (a three-minute film depicting a narrative fiction based on dementia); ‘Pieces of My Mind’ (a music video on dementia targeting a wide audience); ‘One Moment in Time’ (theatre performance to demonstrate the benefits of doll therapy during the mid to late afternoon period of agitation and confusion in those living with dementia, referred to as ‘sundowning’); and ‘Youthless’ (a short film influenced by elderly residents and their experiences and perspectives on communicative difficulties and memory loss).
