Category Archives: Palmerston North

Horse Comedy a Trifecta for Massey Playwright

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Theatre lecturer and playwright Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley has notched up an artistic trifecta with her third consecutive win at the British Theatre Challenge, this time with a dark comedy about the horse racing industry.

Dr Tilley, from the School of English and Media Studies, has won numerous awards locally and internationally for her plays – often using humour and absurdity to address serious social, ethical and environmental issues. She describes her latest winning short play, titled Fabio the Great, “a hilarious horse-eye view on humanity”.

In it, three horse characters muse on and argue about the perils of their existence while providing an comical, yet insightful, commentary on human behaviour. Fabio is the name of the stallion who spouts platitudes about the thrill of winning and being a champion, despite the pain and risks he endures. His equine companions (a mare and a gelding) urge him to escape before he, too, loses his manhood and fighting spirit to the emasculating scalpel.

The 10-minute play (which won Best Play at Pint Sized Plays New Zealand earlier this year in Queenstown) was one of five winners selected from around 300 entries from around the world for the UK competition run by Sky Blue Theatre Company. Each play will be professionally produced, performed and filmed in London in the first week of October, something Dr Tilley is thrilled about as there a few opportunities to professionally stage short plays in New Zealand.

Dr Tilley, who was winner in 2017 with her play Waiting for Go – about people’s addiction to cars – and in 2018 for Bunnies and Wolves – a reality show critique of the public/private health system, says she likes to use humour to get audiences thinking freshly about issues and aspects of culture that are accepted and taken for granted. Like horse racing.

“The play is a hard punch of anti-animal-cruelty, even to the extent of describing the death toll by over training of two-year-old horses, the brutal medical procedures, the doping to keep an injured horse racing), yet it’s wrapped in the soft glove of character-based comedy,” she says. “There’s actually a lot going on for a 10-minute play that deliberately and disarmingly starts off with an inane fart joke!”

Elspeth Tilley’s award-winning play Fabio the Great uses humour to probe the ethics of horse-racing (photo:Unsplash/Jeff Griffith)

Politics and humour can co-exist

The recognition for the play confirms, she says, that “political work – work that in this case has a strong message about animal rights, with some feminism thrown in for good measure – can win open competitions”.

Not that she is aiming to judge people who like horse racing. Rather, she hopes the play might inspire them to think more critically about the industry beyond the glamour of women dressing up for a race meet in heels, frocks and fascinators, the beauty and speed of the horses and big money to be made as a punter or industry participant. After all, she once had her own part to play – as a student in Australia in her 20s, she earned money to fund her studies working as an actor and model promoting horse racing on the Gold Coast.

Elspeth Tilley’s award-winning play on the dark side of horse racing touches on ideas of why humans feel they are a superior species (photo: Unsplash/Sarah Olive)

Humans vs animals

On a more philosophical note, she says the play touches on ideas of ecological equity, questioning the notion of why humans put themselves at the top of a species pyramid, and the assumed narcissism of seeing ourselves as superior to all other species.

“All three of my works that have made the winners’ list in this competition have been political works – the first one about climate change, the second about public health, and now this one with a strong message against the horse racing industry. To me, this shows that being political doesn’t disadvantage a theatre work in any way –  the works are comedic, but it’s comedy with a message.”

Dr Tilley, who rigorously researched the racing industry and equine welfare before writing the play, says she hopes her success will reassure those of her students who “seem to think that being funny and being political are mutually exclusive. But the long history of political satire shows they are elements that are stronger together.”

Dr Tilley says she’d like to see “a whole new generation of expert satirists – I think it is an increasingly important way to speak truth to power and get people thinking critically. I hope this encourages more young people to use the arts to get their own social justice measures across. It is possible. It works.”

Related articles

Creative activism on the move at Massey
Theatre to provoke new thinking on climate change

 

Reframing Literature Through a Maori and Pacific Lens

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A new Massey University course looks set to radically reframe what we traditionally consider in the study of literature.

Novelist and Massey creative writing lecturer, Dr Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi) has created a unique course entitled ‘Oceanic Literatures of Aotearoa: Ngā Tuhinga Kōrero o te Moana Nui a Kiwa.’

The course is being launched for second semester study both on campus and by distance and will allow students to explore customary Māori and Pasifika creation narratives, visual narratives and oral traditions.

Dr Makereti says when considering Aotearoa’s literary past, people tend to think of the first Māori literature as being produced in the 1960s and 1970s. But she says Māori and Pacific cultures were weaving narratives long before English explorers arrived on the scene. “Written literature was never alien to us because our ancestors were already using sophisticated coding built into carving, weaving and ta moko to tell our stories. Our wharenui are libraries of stories built into the walls and into the very faces of our tipuna.”

She says it is time academia acknowledged this visual communication is as much literature as oral and written forms and she believes students, especially Māori and Pacific students, need the opportunity to study the richness of their literary heritage.

“Viewing Māori and Pasifika literatures as a recent development devalues them – we can see this in the lack of courses on this subject available nationally, and the lack of research in this area. By re-contextualising the history of our literatures, I hope to re-energise interest in our contemporary writing too.”

Along with studying pre-colonial literature, students will also look at contemporary Māori and Pasifika stories and poems in English and critically evaluate how cultural and historical bias is embedded in reading and writing.

Full details of the course can be found here and it will commence on July 15.

Related articles

Māori literature deserves academic recognition
Excellence in Māori literature celebrated

Lifetime Achievement Award for Massey Luminary

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Great theatre can change minds and lives, says Professor Angie Farrow, who credits her childhood amid the lively antics of her extended family in London’s East End with shaping her dramatic sensibilities.

Farrow, a professor in theatre at Massey, an internationally award-winning playwright and a community arts initiator, recently received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award at the Manawatū Regional Theatre Awards. It’s the latest in a gamut of prizes she has received over her career, in recognition of her outstanding creative output on topics as diverse as love, death, refugees, the plight of the Manawatū river and Kafka, as well as her commitment to community theatre and her skill and passion in teaching theatre.

A dramaturg and executive producer of numerous community theatre events, including the biennial Manawatū Festival of New Arts, the Manawatū Street Theatre Project and the annual Manawatū Summer Shakespeare, she has won national and international awards for her plays, including The Pen is a Mighty Sword International Playwriting Competition in the US for Despatch in 2007 and Best Drama Script at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival for Leo Rising in 2014. In 2011 she was awarded for her ‘Outstanding Contribution to New Zealand Drama’ by the Playwrights’ Association of New Zealand.

But, after 23 years at the Manawatū campus as a pioneer in the expressive arts and theatre studies programmes in the School of English and Media Studies, and having recently been promoted to a professor, she is about to exit stage left and down the stairs of the elegantly refurbished Sir Geoffrey Peren Building to Wellington, to embrace a new phase of her life.

Professor Farrow discovered her interest in theatre at age 16, although the seeds were there all along, she suspects. “I grew up in a multi-storey house in the East End of London that was full to the brim with my extended family – my nan and granddad, aunts, uncles, cousins, brothers, sisters. There were plenty of dramas – fighting, cursing, arguing, celebrating, laughing, partying, which I must have absorbed unconsciously!”

When a brilliant ‘alternative’ drama teacher started teaching in her neighbourhood she went along with a friend who was “too scared to go on her own”.

The teacher introduced them to devised theatre, improvisation and dance drama. “It was like a foreign language to me, but I really took to it. In particular, it gave me a sense of power and, for the first time in my life, I understood how exhilarating it could be to make something from nothing.”

However, her “obsession” with theatre began when she discovered playwriting in her early 20s. “Writing my first play was a pivotal experience because I realised there were worlds and powerful voices inside me that I never knew were there,” says Professor Farrow, who has published five volumes of her short plays for stage and radio.

Theatre is a like a drug

Theatre has always been like a drug, she says. “Most of us who are involved in it see it as an addiction.” And while the process of creating theatre can be exhausting to the point of wanting to give it up at times, she invariably returns to it. “I do believe that theatre can change lives ­– I’ve seen it first-hand hundreds of times. People discover that they are so much more than they imagined. They find deep friendships, they sharpen their sense of integrity; they become politicised; they learn how to express themselves fully through voice, mind and body; they learn about discipline; and how to meet deadlines.”

Political focus

Other accolades include first prize at The Inspirato International Playwriting Contest in Toronto in 2013 for her short play The Blue Balloon, a magical, existential 10-minute play and an example of the power of short plays, or what she calls “haiku theatre where you say big things in small spaces”.

She believes that theatre can be a powerful agent of change for audiences when it addresses political issues without being preachy. “We live in a time when global issues can penetrate every aspect of our lives – we know about the famine in Yemen, the bush fires in Australia, the threat of climate change. Done well, theatre is capable of synthesising these ‘big picture’ realities into narratives that audiences are able to absorb without being overwhelmed.”

Receiving the lifetime award has, she says, humbled, honoured and delighted her. “Theatre is one of the best forms I know to cultivate and enhance community and because it gives me great joy to see people working harmoniously together and with a common purpose.” Over two decades, it also represents the “hundreds of people who have contributed to my experience, my success,”she says.

Teaching is her first love (in 2010 she won a $20,000 national tertiary teaching excellence award), and it is the students she will miss. “Theatre is an intellectually rigorous form, whether students are studying or writing plays or whether they are exploring a character as an actor. All of the courses we teach at Massey attempt to use critical and creative learning and it’s the combination that provides depth and rigour.”

The award has also helped her to focus on what happens next. She hopes to continue her playwriting as well complete an anthology of stories based on growing up in the East End. Mainly, she wants to make space for new things to happen, but right now she isn’t quite sure what those new things might be.

“Massey has been very good to me and has offered a place of discovery, stimulation and support, I will miss being around so many great colleagues and amazing students, but it really does feel time to open a new chapter.”

This year, Massey Community Theatre – made up of students and staff from the University’s varied drama programmes – swept up five awards in all. Firing Line, a piece of street theatre devised, written and performed by Creativity In The Community’s class of 2018, took out both the Best Ensemble and Best Original Script and Production awards. The show’s technical support team, comprised of Luke Anderson, Leith Haarlhoff, Sean Monaghan and composer/Massey artist-in-residence David Downes won the Technical Design and Operation award for their multimedia spectacle, and School of English and Media Studies staff member and technician Luke Anderson won the Gordon Alve Memorial Award in Technical Excellence.

Massey University and Square Edge Visiting Writer 2019 – Pip Desmond

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Massey University and Square Edge Visiting Writer 2019 to work on Topical True Story

Massey University’s School of English and Media Studies and Square Edge Community Arts are excited to be hosting award-winning nonfiction author Pip Desmond as the Visiting Artist for 12 weeks from March 2019. Desmond will be working on the true story of a family faced with the suicide of their 21-year-old son while in the care of a DHB acute mental health unit.

Say creative writing lecturers, Dr Thom Conroy and Dr Tina Makereti:

“We had 63 applications this year, and we would have liked to support many of these for different reasons. We were lucky to see some very strong projects and writers. However, in the end, Pip’s project emerged as the most compelling and urgent, due to its subject matter. We note that just as we were making our final decision, the media reported the Coroner’s ruling that the young man’s death was avoidable. Though not related to our decision, this news was confirmation that the work Pip Desmond is doing is extremely timely and relevant, particularly to young people and mental health support systems in Aotearoa New Zealand.”

Desmond has an impressive publication record, which includes the New Zealand Post Award-winning Trust: A True Story of Women and Gangs (2010) and The War That Never Ended: New Zealand Veterans Remember Korea (2013). Her latest memoir, Song for Rosaleen, has been longlisted for the 2019 Ockham NZ Book Awards.

Desmond explains about her new project:

“My aim in telling this story is to shed light on issues that deeply affect our society: how we deal with mental illness and our burgeoning suicide epidemic, involvement of families in their loved ones’ care, political responses at district health board and government level, and the tragic pattern of inter-generational suicide created by Māori dispossession.”

While she is resident, Desmond will collaborate with the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University, Square Edge Community Arts and the Palmerston North writing community to share her work and writing experience. She has a particular interest in ethics in creative writing, and presented a TEDxTalk about the topic in Wellington, which can be viewed on YouTube.

We’re also very pleased to announce that our 2020 Massey University and Square Edge Arts Visiting Writer will be New Zealand speculative fiction writer and three time Sir Julius Vogel award winner Octavia Cade. 2020 is a great year to highlight an exciting New Zealand science fiction writer, since Wellington will be hosting the 78th World Science Fiction Convention, CoNZealand.

For more information about Pip Desmond, Octavia Cade, or the visiting artist residency, contact Anne Meredith (email: A.M.Meredith@massey.ac.nz) or Thom Conroy (Phone: +64 6 9517508; email: t.conroy@massey.ac.nz).

Massey Theatre Cleans Up at Regional Awards

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The Regional Theatre Awards this year played host to a myriad of theatre companies from all across the Manawatu, and amongst the throng of talent shone Massey Community Theatre, made up of students and staff from Massey University’s varied drama programmes…and swept the night away with not one, not two, but five wins to their name.

In the spotlight was Firing Line, a piece of street theatre devised, written and performed by 139.333 Creativity In The Community’s class of 2018. Drawing on themes and imagery that evoked Palmerston North’s place in the First World War, the performance took out both the “Best Ensemble” and “Best Original Script and Production” awards for its skilled, colourful cast and engaging presentation. The show’s technical support team made up of Luke Anderson, Leith Haarlhoff, Sean Monaghan and NZ composer David Downes was not forgotten either, winning the “Technical Design and Operation” award for their enthralling multimedia work that turned Firing Line into such a spectacle.

Two Massey University School of English and Media Studies staff members also received individual awards; technician Luke Anderson won the “Gordon Alve Memorial Award in Technical Excellence”, and Professor Angie Farrow, known internationally as an award-winning playwright and coordinator of theatre papers at Massey, received the prestigious “Lifetime Achievement in Theatre Award”.

Massey Community Theatre endeavours to create further award-winning performances – and people – moving forward.

Massey drama students explore free speech and control in play

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The importance of speaking out and the pervasive effect of keeping silent transcends the ages in a play being staged in Palmerston North.

Massey University students will tap into Greek mythology and the #metoo movement for their production, The Love of the Nightingale.

The 1988 play by Timberlake Wertenbaker is based on the Greek myth of Philomele, who was raped and silenced brutally by her brother-in-law Tereus.

The play touches on themes of feminism, silence and power, as Philomele regains her voice.  Director and senior theatre tutor Rachel Lenart said using Greek mythology was a great way to highlight contemporary problems.

“We always try to do something with political and social resonance.

“With the #MeToo movement very much alive, it’s an interesting time for us to perform this play.”

It challenges the audience to think about times when they should have spoken up about something but didn’t.

“The characters are always on stage watching in, like society watching the action unfold. They’re allowed to react accordingly,” Lenart said.

She drew inspiration from a quote by German playwright Bertolt Brecht.

“Art is not a mirror to reflect society, but a hammer with which to shape it.”

The cast is made up of first-year students studying drama in performance, which can also be taken by older students for their elective studies.

It provides an opportunity for new actors to mix with and learn from more established actors in a safe environment.

Lenart said interest in theatre at Massey is on the rise, and past students are returning to volunteer behind the scenes.

“Massey is one of few options for theatre in Palmerston North. It’s a lot of responsibility.

“You don’t have to move to Wellington to do theatre. We are as interesting as anywhere.”

The Love of the Nightingale will be performed at Massey University’s Sir Geoffrey Peren Auditorium, Thursday and Friday, at 7pm. Entry is by koha.

Summer Shakepeare brings ‘The Comedy of Errors’ to the Esplande, Palmerston North

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Summer Shakespeare director Peter Hambleton has presented the Bard in Palmerston North before.

In 2009 he directed Summer Shakespeare’s All’s Well That Ends Well on the car park in front of the Esplanade Scenic Railway station, incorporating the miniature trains as part of the action.

For this year’s The Comedy of Errors, which opens in the Esplanade Rose Gardens on Thursday, Hambleton has moved from miniature trains to model boats.

When the audience arrive, they will be greeted by a small flotilla of model boats bobbing on the Esplanade Rose Garden pond.

“The community aspect of the production is really important to me. I’ve done a few Summer Shakespeare productions now and celebrating and involving the community, and making it fun for the audience is all part of the Summer Shakespeare spirit,” Hambleton said.

The models are being provided by Maurice Job, a member of the Palmerston North Aeroneers.

“The Comedy of Errors is a story about seafaring and shipwrecks, and Maurice has a wonderful collection of model boats. What we’d like is for people to bring their own models and add them to the fleet on the pond.”

For Sunday’s Esplanade Day 2pm matinee, Hambleton is expecting Job to turn up with a large model of a battleship.

Boats wouldn’t be the only models on show during the hour-and-a-half long play-through production.

“Nic Green has constructed a replica clocktower that will appear in the show. You’ll have to come along that to see why that is.”

As well as the teamwork and collaboration involving “a raft of people from across town”, Hambleton said he had attracted a great cast, including several local theatre award-winners.

“The play is about two sets of twins separated at birth and brought up in different countries. They get together again during one day in the city of Ephesus.”

In a gender-bending twist to the comic tale about double mistaken identity, Hambleton has the lead male characters played by women, and some of the female roles played by men, with the setting a thoroughly contemporary one.

“Shakespeare wrote this play with Palmerston North 2018 in mind. It has taken all this time for this startling piece of information to be revealed,” Hambleton said.

Expect some fast-paced action around the Rose Garden fishpond, with entry to the five 7pm and one 2pm performances by koha. There will be no wet weather venue, and any affected performance will be postponed until the next fine evening.

Topp Twins ‘striking example’ of power of popular culture

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The Topp Twins use comedy as a means to unsettle ideas around gender, sexuality and what it means to be a New Zealander, according to Dr Nicholas Holm, Massey lecturer and programme leader in Media Studies at the Manawatū campus.

Dr Holm presented a lecture on the Topp Twins at Te Manawa Museum in Palmerston North, which has recently celebrated the opening of a Topp Twins exhibition, running until October 29.

He described the Topp Twins characters as “pantomime fictions sprung to life and walking the fields and streets of provincial New Zealand, and when you encounter them you are asked to enter willingly and gleefully into their skewed world”.

“The Topp Twins are fantastic entertainers who also happen to be radically ahead of their time, and therefore have found ways through popular culture to gain widespread acceptance and even love. As such they exist in a fascinating and productive tension by virtue of their seeming ability to unapologetically reject powerful and normative cultural expectations while also being celebrated as wholesome examples of traditional entertainment.”

Through analysis of the comedy of the Topp Twins, Dr Holm identified the unexpected power of popular culture, as it “can serve as a platform from which to challenge assumptions and accepted ideas about how the world works, what is valuable and what is permitted, who counts in a society, and what it means to belong to a community”.

For more information about the exhibition see http://www.temanawa.co.nz/

Refugee play wins international award

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A play about the global refugee crisis penned by Massey University theatre lecturer and playwright Associate Professor Angie Farrow has won second place in the International New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest.

Her play, The Politician’s Wife, came second equal among almost 250 entries from all over the world. The judges’ commented: “This brilliantly written script deals with the refugee crisis from many different angles. We wish you great success with this timely script that deserves to be produced in many different venues!”

In its 15th year, the New York-based New Works of Merit Playwriting Contest was developed to bring works of social significance to the attention of producers and artistic directors.

Dr Farrow is delighted by the international recognition, saying there are few opportunities for playwrights to expose their work, in part due to the “ephemeral” nature of the genre. “Once a play has been produced and performed, you really just have the programmes and the memories.”

Since she wrote the work, she feels the play’s theme resonates with even more poignancy now, with Donald Trump elected US president on the basis of his strong anti-immigrant, anti-refugee and anti-Muslim views. These have been echoed in Brexit and in several European election campaigns.

Performed last year in Wellington and Palmerston North – The Politician’s Wife has an Antipodean focus on the refugee crisis. Dr Farrow, who teaches in the School of English and Media Studies at the Manawatū campus, says her work also tells a universal story about how privilege can sometimes make us immune to caring or empathising with the overwhelming suffering of our fellow humans, or can it empower us to respond with compassion!”

Refugee crisis in Berlin an eye-opener

She began writing the play in 2014, following a visit to Berlin on a writer’s residency, at a time when the refugee crisis was reaching new levels as people escaped conflicts in Syria and Iraq.

Being there brought her into contact with the unfolding events and with some of the refugees, as well as those who were helping them. She also witnessed the fear and resentment of some in host countries in reaction to a sudden, large influx of desperate people with different religious and cultural backgrounds.

The desire to explore the issue from multiple perspectives inspired her to write the play. However, translating such an emotionally and logistically complex issue into a piece of theatre forced her to think about what it might mean on an individual, as well as political, level.

Shortlisted for the 2016 Adam NZ Play Award, The Politician’s Wife is an unapologetic response to the global refugee crisis, which has dominated headlines and divided the world.

The play centres on Kim, a woman of privilege – the eponymous politician’s wife – who becomes caught up in the refugee crisis, which – in the play – is not accorded a specific geographic or ethnic label. Torn between her loyalties to her conservative husband and her desire to help displaced people on an offshore island, Kim finds herself unwittingly at the centre of a national scandal. As the drama unfolds, she must take a stance, and the consequences could throw her life, and the lives of those closest to her, into turmoil.

Dr Farrow is currently working on a trilogy of plays about issues affecting young women, focussing on identity, relationships and social media.

She has had international success with other works, including a short play, The Blue Balloon, which won first prize at Toronto’s Inspirato Festival from 400 international entries in 2013 and Best Wildcard Award at the world’s biggest short play festival in Sydney in 2014.

See full results and details of the New Works of Merit Playwriting contest.