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Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action

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CCTA Aotearoa's Nine Playwrights

CCTA Aotearoa’s Nine Playwrights

With only a few days to go until Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa 2017, we are excited to bring you the full programme.

On October 23, we will be staging nine short plays at 2pm in the Massey University Wellington Theatre Laboratory:

  • Start Where You Are, by E. M. Lewis – a poignant look at how to remain hopeful in the face of calamity, by an award-winning Oregon-based playwright
  • The Penguins, by Elspeth Tilley – lifting our spirits through comedy as we find out what penguins think of humanity
  • Truth Like Water, by Kat Laveaux – premiering a compassionate view of the world from an emerging Native American playwright whose tribe stands in defiance at the Dakota Access Pipeline protests
  • A Girl’s Dance, by Ian Lesā – also a world premiere: a powerfully spiritual work from a new voice, Samoan New Zealand playwright and director Ian Lesā
  • Brackendale, by Elaine Ávila – a wry comedy about Bald Eagles and rubbish dumps, from a Canadian/US writer of Azorean Portuguese descent
  • Single Use, by Marcia Johnson – a Jamaican playwright’s very modern sketch of online dating in the 21st century and how we decide what’s important in a partner
  • Swing Among the Stars, by Philip Braithwaite – an interstellar future, from the imagination of a multi-award-winning New Zealand playwright
  • Homo Sapiens, by Chantal Bilodeau – a trip to the zoo, a century from now. What will be on exhibit? A provocative comedy from the co-founder of Climate Change Theatre Action, and;
  • Rube Goldberg Device for The Generation of Hope, by Jordan Hall – an interactive experience that will get you off your feet, from a fresh and inspirational Canadian playwright.

There will also be readings of the three winning pieces in our Climate Change Theatre Action Creative Writing Competition, and a short talk from Generation Zero about what you can do to pitch in in the fight against climate change.

Still Waving is a paperless event, so please download our full programme in a PDF file, here for more detail of cast and crew: Still Waving Final Programme PDF 3

If you haven’t got your ticket yet, get one now from EventFinda: https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2017/still-waving-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa-2017/wellington

And don’t forget, you can also join the ‘Becoming Penguin’ Performance Walk just prior to Still Waving if you’re keen – details at http://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/2017/08/30/becoming-penguin-a-performance-walk/

 

Becoming Penguin, a Performance Walk.

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King Penguin Couple. Photo credit David Stanley (Creative Commons 2.0)

King Penguin Couple. Photo: David Stanley (Creative Commons 2.0)

In your white shirts and black tails, in your navy-blue dresses or in wetsuits and flippers or anything ‘penguin’ from your wardrobe please come and join us on a waddle, a ‘becoming penguin’ performance walk. If you have nothing penguin in your wardrobe, come with a penguin state of mind and we will supply you with some penguin apparel.

As part of Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa, performance artist Catherine Bagnall will lead the walk from Parliament grounds up to Massey University Wellington, where the climate change play ‘The Penguins’ will be performed, along with other climate action plays from Aotearoa and the world. Walking from Parliament into the community symbolises the theme of Climate Change Theatre Action 2017 – that there are steps communities can take to act together and make a positive difference, even when governments won’t. And that every step, however small, is important.
It’s free to join the Becoming Penguin performance walk: if you then want to stay for the theatre action show, tickets to see the plays are available by small koha to Generation Zero and can be purchased from https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2017/still-waving-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa-2017/wellington
To join ‘Becoming Penguin’, meet at the Cenotaph next to Parliament Grounds at 1pm on Monday October 23.
Catherine Bagnall is an artist whose work focuses on the edges of fashion studies and its intersection with performance practices. Testing the bounds of self through performative acts of ‘dressing up’, her research offers new modes of experience that use performance to explore the possibility of becoming ‘other’, a different species for example. In the context of questions about humanity’s relationship to the planetary ecosystem and how we categorise ‘other’ species, ‘Becoming Penguin’ explores ideas about the end of the Anthropocene and the beginning of the post-human world.
See more about Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa 2017 at https://www.facebook.com/events/163701054197372/
Still Waving is part of the worldwide series of CCTA readings and performances of short climate change plays presented biennially in support of the United Nations Conference of the Parties. CCTA is organised globally by the Center for Sustainable Practice in the Arts, NoPassport Theatre Alliance, The Arctic Cycle and Theatre Without Borders. CCTA Aotearoa is brought to you by Massey University School of English & Media Studies, in partnership with Massey University Ngā Pae Māhutonga – the School of Design, Generation Zero, and Pukeahu ki Tua: Think Differently Wellington.

Still Waving: New Voices Climate Action Creative Writing Competition

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Write, inspire and win! As part of our Climate Change Theatre Action 2017 event, ‘Still Waving,’ the Massey University School of English & Media Studies and Pukeahu ki Tua: Think Differently Wellington are proud to announce a climate action creative writing competition for new and emerging writers.

Prizes:

1st place – $300

2nd place – $200

3rd place – $100

 

Thematic guidelines

The creative writing competition aligns with Climate Change Theatre Action’s global theme, which is that “climate action requires a hopeful vision of the future”.

CCTA 2017 asks the question: “How can we turn the challenges of climate change into opportunities?”

We are looking for creative writing that provides hope, inspires positive action, and illuminates individual and collective solutions.  There is still time to change the course of climate change: it is not too late, but it will require a collective will the likes of which planet earth has seldom seen. How can you use your writing, your particular voice, to help people visualise, embrace and achieve that change? What specific images can we find to illuminate why people should care about the environment? How can we move people without preaching to them or becoming didactic?

Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences. . . (Rebecca Solnit)

Genre:

We are accepting five types of entry:

  • Twitterature (tell a story in no more than 140 characters)
  • Flash Fiction 100 Words (tell a story in exactly 100 words – no more and no less)
  • Poetry (any length up to 200 words)
  • Short stories of up to 1200 words.
  • Personal essays of up to 1200 words.

To enter:

Please email your entry in the body of an email to climateactionwriting@gmail.com by 5pm (NZ time) on Friday October 6, 2017.

Entry is open to all new and emerging writers. We take this to mean anyone who has not published a book.  By entering you agree to publication of your entry and your name in social media. You may enter as many different items as you like.  Please include your full name and the city or town you live in, with your entry.

The judge:

We are grateful to Dr Ingrid Horrocks from the School of English & Media Studies for agreeing to judge the Still Waving Climate Writing competition.  Ingrid’s creative publications include two collections of poetry, a number of personal essays, and a genre-bending travel book.

More about Still Waving:

Still Waving, our 2017 Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa event, will take place on October 23 at Massey Wellington campus. There will be plays, readings, a performance art installation, and of course the prize-giving announcement of the fabulous winners of this competition!  Still Waving is part of the global Climate Change Theatre Action 2017, which involves 50 selected plays (including two from our school) and more than 180 events in 41 countries. This is the second time we have participated in CCTA and we are delighted to be back! Check it all out at: https://www.facebook.com/events/163701054197372/

Theatre workshop “outside the box” for prisoners

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A two-day workshop with an internationally renowned exponent of theatre that promotes social change has given a group of prisoners at Auckland Prison at Paremoremo a unique forum to share their stories.

The men performed short plays to a select audience, exploring solutions to the challenges they face in prison, from personal safety to mental health.

Ten prisoners took part in the project last week in a partnership between Auckland Prison and Massey University, and led by guest theatre practitioner David Diamond, founder and artistic director of the Vancouver-based Theatre for Living. His approach uses theatrical techniques as a vehicle for individuals and groups to explore controversial or sensitive issues. These are shaped into plays and presented to audiences in an interactive event that encourages new insights and understanding.

The workshop participants addressed issues such as gossip, intimidation and safety with fellow prisoners and staff, privacy and respect between prisoners and Corrections Officers, and isolation and mental health challenges. Under the directorship of Diamond – who is currently in New Zealand as a guest of Massey University to host workshops and as a keynote conference speaker – the men produced three short plays and performed these to 40 invited guests, including prison staff.

Dr Rand Hazou, who lectures in theatre studies at Massey’s Auckland campus in Albany and who spearheaded the partnership with the prison and Diamond’s visit, says the prisoners were “very committed to the process, responsive to the theatre exercises, and were very generous in sharing aspects of their experience with a lot of integrity”.

Mr Diamond says Theatre for Living is about people being the experts in their own lives and being able to use theatre to make change. In workshops, participants get the chance “to experience theatre in a different way – not as something mysterious and inaccessible that is outside their lives, but as a natural language”.

Theatre to rehearse behavioural change

He says the theatre is “a great place to rehearse behavioural change” due to the symbolic nature of its power.

During the workshops, he helped the prisoners to develop “a language of theatre” through group building games, as well as Image Theatre techniques, where participants are asked to create frozen images (tableaux) using their bodies. Through a deeper exploration of what their images represented and the crises they expressed, he worked with them to produce three short plays.

“The men were very flexible and took direction, some of them like seasoned professional actors. This comes, in part, from knowing the material of the plays so deeply,” Diamond says.

He was struck by the power of the plays the men made, rehearsed and performed in a short period of time. “My hope is that the recommendations that came from the Forum [plays] will create at least some movement in the prison.”

One prisoner who took part said: “Participating in the workshop has been so different. Things like these keep my brain alive.”

“Doing the theatre was very ‘outside the box’ for the prison,” says Diamond, “so a big thank you to Rand Hazou who pushed and also the people at the prison who risked accepting the project – and of course the men who engaged so deeply.”

Life changing experience

Diamond was also “very moved” by the haka performed in his honour by the prisoners. “Leaving was difficult after our time together. Their words about carrying this experience with them for the rest of their lives, and my knowledge that I will do the same, remain.”

Dr Hazou says the aims of the workshop were to:

  • Support the on-going engagement in theatre and creativity at Auckland Prison.
  • Provide a creative opportunity for prisoners to learn from a leading international theatre practitioner and cultivate their performance skills.
  • Use theatre to highlight particular issues relevant to the prison community.

Andy Langley, Prison Director of Auckland Prison, said: “Auckland Prison has been honoured to have someone of the stature of David Diamond giving his time to work with a group of prisoners in a thought-provoking way. This kind of creative collaboration contributes to Corrections’ rehabilitative programmes for prisoners to reduce re-offending, and supports prisoners to address their offending behaviour and other challenges they face.”

David Diamond is a keynote at the 2017 Australasian Association for Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies (ADSA) Conference: ‘Performing Belonging in the 21st Century’ this week.

Auckland Writers Festival – 16-21 May 2017

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Four writers associated with the School of English and Media Studies are presenting at this week’s Auckland writers’ festival at the Aotea Centre. Do go along to support them if you can!

Tina Makereti: “Poutokomanawa — the Heartpost,” free public lecture on Māori and Pasifika writing  – Wed. 17 May 5 pm

Gina Cole, PhD student in Creative Writing: Gala opening, 18 May 7 pm and “Pacific Tales” 19 May 2:30 pm

Hannah August: Chair for a discussion with Lloyd Geering and A.N. Wilson, 20 May at noon

Sue Wootton, graduate: “Matters Medical” 20 May at 4:30 pm

More information and venues at: http://writersfestival.co.nz

Public Plenary Lecture – Celeste Langan

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Celeste Langan, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of English, will be speaking in Wellington at the upcoming RSAA conference “Transporting Romanticism” on Friday 17 February.  Details are below:

Under Arrest: Transport and Security (Excitation and Citation)

Friday 17 February 2017
4.45pmpm
The Pit 12B09 – Te Ara Hihiko, Massey Wellington

Recent books on the modern revolution in transport enabled by the shipping container remind us that the term “logistics,” now used primarily to signify systems “allowing circulations to take place,” was first used by one of Napoleon’s former generals: a chapter in Jomini’s The Art of War was titled “Logistics; or the Practical Art of Moving Armies.” How might we think of what is after all the continuing project of “transporting Romanticism” in relation to global logistics and the shipping container? Reminded that books of poems are carried on the same ships that transport settlers and soldiers, what changes about our understanding of their power to transport? Recognizing the press as an “information delivery system,” how can we differentiate between the “hackney’d” phrase Byron identifies with cant and those “truths” that “must be recited,” truths “you will not read in the gazette?”  Focusing on the quotation and the capsule as figures of containerized movement in Byron’s Don Juan and Kleist’s Michael Kohlhaas, I’ll explore their attempts to develop a counterlogistics of the word.

 

Celeste Langan, Associate Professor in the UC Berkeley Department of English, is the author of Romantic Vagrancy: Wordsworth and the Simulation of Freedom, a study of why and how Rousseau and Wordsworth represent political freedom as freedom of movement. More recently, she has helped to develop the subfield of Romantic Media Studies, with essays like “Understanding Media in 1805,” “The Medium of Romantic Poetry” (co-authored with Maureen McLane), and “Pathologies of Communication from Coleridge to Schreber.” Her current book manuscript, Post-Napoleonism: Literature and the Afterlife of Sovereignty, traces the migration of the political concept of sovereignty into the domain of the literature. Drawing on the Freudian concept of “afterwardsness” or the après coup, the book illuminates ways in which the newspaper report of an event is foundational to a new idea of literature as mediated utterance.

 

 

This plenary is made possible by the W.H. Oliver Humanities Research Academy, Massey University.  It forms part of Transporting Romanticism, Romantic Studies Association of Australasia Biennial Conference, 16-18 February 2017, co-hosted by Massey University and Victoria University of Wellington. https://rsaa2017.wordpress.com/

Manawatu River becomes a Shakespearean backdrop

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Director Sara Brodie is bringing a bit of wild to Summer Shakespeare 2017, with the Manawatu River as a backdrop and all sorts of surprises planned.

In her position as the artist in residence at Massey University, the Kapiti-based director and choreographer has chosen The Winter’s Tale as her play.

“It’s comic and tragic and I want to evoke a winter’s night and the fantastic tale element of it as much as possible.”

A stretch of Palmerston North’s Esplanade river walkway will be the stage for the open theatre piece, and Brodie said all sorts of things become possible in such a setting.

“When the audience actually come along here it will all be set up like a mid-winter fair with braziers, bunting, food stories and fire poi. We enter into the court scenes first where the jealous ravings of King Leontes start.”

Brodie is no stranger to staging outdoor events and said the “happy accidents” that occur are one of the best elements.

“Beautiful sunsets or wind at just the right moment. Those sort of things that really add to the experience for people. This will be like going into the fantastical wilds.”

The annual event is in it’s 14th year and will be drawing on Palmerston North’s non-professional theatre community for the production that will be held next March.

A workshop will be held at 10am on Saturday at Massey University’s Sir Geoffrey Peren Building, which Brodie said will give people an idea of the process.

“It’s for anyone who is interested to come along to meet me and to hear about the production and see some concept imagery around it. We will talk about the story and get our teeth into some of the text and some exercises to have some fun with it.”

Formal auditions for The Winter’s Tale will be held at the end of November and as well as actors and dancers, Brodie is also on the look out for production behind-the-scenes people.

Globe Theatre Awards – Massey’s nominations

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We are delighted with the nominations for the Globe Theatre Awards across four Massey University productions this year.  Our student driven production, Arts Uncontrolled, received a nomination for best ensemble. MUDS (our drama society) received two nominations for Misfits, and Kelly Harris received a nomination for Best direction for our Summer Shakespeare production The Merry Wives of Windsor.  Our third year course Modern Drama received three nominations for their production of Love and Information, directed by Rachel Lenart.

The winners will be announced during an awards ceremony at the Globe Theatre in Palmerston North on 24 February 2017.

Theatre with Massey has had an outstanding year in Palmerston North! Congratulations to all our nominees.