Editorial

Welcome to the twelfth edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We have an interesting selection of stories and items for you in our final issue for 2016. First up, we would like to remind you that this year’s National Examiners and NZ Universities Committee for Theatre/Performance Research meetings will be hosted by Otago University on Tuesday 15^th November. There are also some important events coming up that you should note in your calendar. This includes the Auckland University’s symposium Accessible Arts: Practice and Barriers which is happening today – but is an important event we thought we should bring to your attention. Don’t forget that the University of Otago is hosting the interdisciplinary conference entitled ‘Performing precarity: Refugee representation, determination, and discourses’  from 21-23 November 2016. Should be an interesting event. Also, we’ve included some information on the ADSA conference next year which is entitled ‘Performing Belonging in the 21st Century’. The deadline for the ADSA conference is looming – abstracts are due in on Monday the 20th of November! There is also the Social Alternatives’ call for papers on ‘Issues on Performing, Community, and Intervention’.  We also have information on Victoria University’s latest play – The Trojan Women – and a link to the review. In our last “NUTS People” segment for the year, we are profiling Victor Rodger and Stuart Hoar. We are not sure if we will be back again next year, but if we are, we will be looking for your support and contributions to make this newsletter work.

Kind regards,
NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

NUTS People

In each edition of NUTS NZ we profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests. In this issue we have Hilary Halba and Kiri Bell from The University of Otago. As always, NUTS NZ asked each of them to answer the following questions:

• What is your research about?
• What theatre/performances have you seen recently?
• What have you been reading lately?

Photo credited to Deborah Marshall.

Victor Rodger

This year my theatre entity, FCC, produced two plays: Puzzy by Hawaiian-Filipina writer Kiki – with additional material by myself – and Wild Dogs Under My Skirt by my cousin, Tusiata Avia.  As this year’s Robert Burns Fellow at the University of Otago, I’ve worked on a few projects: Black Ice (a family drama), White Noise (an academic comedy), and I also worked on a cabaret called Christ(church) Almighty which will – hopefully – get on its feet in Christchurch next year.

I have recently read Girl on The Train and – most recently – Gone Girl. This is because I’ve been dabbling with the thriller form myself. Currently, I’m reading Eileen by Ottessa Moshfegh which was shortlisted for the Booker this year.  After that, I’m going to read The Mandibles by Lionel Shriver whose controversial speech at the Brisbane Writers Festival certainly made me roll my eyes.

The most recent performance I saw was a show devised by two NASDA honours students, Asovale Luma and Shea Kouka, in Christchurch called Mai Slam.  They used six local kids from Aranui and the show was a mixture of spoken word, song and skits.  It was a work in progress and was certainly a bit rough around the edges but I came out of that show feeling like I’d had more  fun watching that than just about anything else I’d seen this year.  I also recently caught Not in Our Neighbourhood by Jamie McCallister.  He’s my pick of the current writers in NZ for his ability to be able to write relevant, hard-hitting drama as well as well-crafted low-brow comedy.

Stuart Hoar

I’m currently rewriting a play about a drone pilot who meets a NZ woman. They have an affair but he neglects to tell her precisely what his job is. This play was written a year or two ago and has had a reading by ATC.  I’m also trying to finish a novel I’ve been writing for a long time, only a few thousand words to go.  I’m also researching for a new play I hope to start work on soon; this is a play about Michael Joseph Savage and Ned Kelly.

Books I have lately read are The Writers’ Festival by Stephanie Johnson, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carré, Attila the Hun by John Mann and a new play This I Know to be True by Andrew Bovell.

Plays I’ve been to recently include Billy Elliot, Call of the Sparrow, Retro Williams, The Protest, The Pink Hammer, Lucrece, Zen Dog Sartori, Shot Bro and A Ghost Tale.

Symposiums

Accessible Arts: Practice and Barriers

Friday 11^th November 2016, 1.30-3.30pm

M2 Drama Studio, Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, 74 Epsom Avenue

A half-day symposium for practitioners, researchers, students and disabled people who share an interest in disability arts and accessible arts practices.  Presentations and discussions will focus on how participants might better achieve inclusive outcomes in schools, community settings and higher education.

Discussants:

Emma Bennison (via Skype) – CEO Arts Access Australia

Stuart Shepherd – Curator and Lecturer at Bay of Plenty Polytech, and Tutor at Mapura Studio

Margaret Feeney – Studio Coordinator and Arts Tutor, Mapura Arts Studio

Laura Haughey – Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies, University of Waikato

Sue Cheesman – Senior Lecturer in Dance Education, University of Waikato, and tutor for Touch Compass

Chairs:

Rod Wills and Molly Mullen, School of Critical Studies in Education/Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre

This event is free and includes afternoon tea.

Places are limited so please register via https://www.eventbrite.com/e/accessible-arts-practice-and-barriers-tickets-28926871050

For more information contact: m.mullen@auckland.ac.nz

Conferences

Performing precarity: Refugee representation, determination, and discourses

21-23 November 2016

The University of Otago, Dunedin, 

Keynotes:
Professor Suvendrini Perera (Curtin University, Perth, Australia) & Professor Nikos Papastergiadis (University of Melbourne, Australia)

The current European refugee crisis continues to be a major focus of media attention as well as a point of political, cultural, ethical and social conflict. Images of migrants are constructed, mediated and circulated to create compelling representations of refugee-hood that serve a variety of agendas and conform to specific identities and expectations. They are, in this sense, performances. In addition, refugees in Europe and other regions, including Australasia, are subjected to detention and/or expected to perform/conform in certain ways to meet the shifting demands of determination processes and the cultural preferences of different regions. Once released from detention and/or recognised as refugees, another set of performances ensues – ‘welcome’ from the host country and ‘gratitude’ from the refugee. This interdisciplinary conference aims to draw together scholars from a wide variety of fields to examine the ethics and politics surrounding refugee representation, determination, and discourses.

ADSA: Performing Belonging in the 21^st Century

 27 – 30 June 2017

Auckland University of Technology, Auckland University, Massey University

KEY DATES: Monday 20 November 2016 – Abstracts Due and Monday 11 December 2016 – Notification of Acceptance

The Māori concept of tūrangawaewae suggests a place to stand, a homeland, a way of belonging. Belonging, like identity, is a matter of ongoing performance: on stages and in the streets, in community halls, clubs, sporting arenas, churches and parliaments. In ‘Belonging and the politics of belonging’ (Patterns of Prejudice 2006), Nira Yuval-Davis observes that ‘Belonging is about emotional attachment, about feeling “at home”’ (197), and later notes:

The politics of belonging includes also struggles around the determination of what is involved in belonging, in being a member of a community, and of what roles specific social locations and specific narratives of identity play in this. (205)

Belonging may be deeply felt, but it is also manifestly constructed and capitalised upon, a matter of collectivity and communality, of inclusion and also of exclusion. We make ourselves into an ‘us’ by marking others as ‘them’, say we are of this place and they are not. Belonging is thus also a matter of desire, as much of longing to be as it is of being per se. Echoing Zygmunt Bauman and Leonidas Donskis, who want to ‘rediscover the sense of belonging as a viable alternative to fragmentation, atomization, and the resulting loss of sensitivity’ (Moral Blindness 2013: 12), we invite participants to think out loud about the diverse ways that belonging can be seen to be performed, onstage and off in the 21^st century.

Topics might include:

• Ritual, theatrical and everyday performances of belonging
• Indigenous performances of belonging
• Pasifika and Oceanic performances of belonging
• Postcolonial performances of belonging, and of longing to belong
• The construction and performance of belonging in the context of diaspora
• The performance of privilege as it sits next to the performance of belonging – especially in the postcolonial state
• The many ways belonging and its obverse, otherness, can be performed in relation to communities, to those who align as ethnic, or LGBTI, who are of varied abilities, or who identify as seniors or youth
• The tension between practitioners who ‘belong’ – in particular, Indigenous artists – and scholars who might not
• Belonging, place and site-specific performance
• Intermedial belonging
• The performance of belonging through social media
• Protest, performance interventions, and (de)constructions of belonging
• Performing citizenship, participation and belonging
• Asylum and refugee theatre, non-citizenship in performance and the staging of dis-placement
• Pedagogical performances of belonging
• Actor training, belonging to character and role, and inhabiting the performance space

Maximum 250 words.

Email abstracts to: belonging@aut.ac.nz

Join us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/search/top/?q=performing%20belonging%20adsa%202017

CONTACT

Dr Sharon Mazer

Associate Professor of Theatre & Performance Studies

Auckland University of Technology

smazer@aut.ac.nz

CFPs

CALL FOR PAPERS: Social Alternatives: Issue on Performance, Community and Intervention

The concept of ‘intervention’ usually signals the arrival of an outsider or a group of outsiders seeking to enable some kind of change within an individual or a particular community. Alternatively, intervention can be understood as an interruption: an intercession, an attempt to disrupt the status quo and cause change. In theatre and performance for, with, or by communities, intervention can evoke the image of the well-meaning ‘expert’, someone who applies the processes of drama to help heal fractured communities, give voice to the voiceless, or empower participants to acknowledge their own oppression.  While the act of intervention is often accompanied by good intentions, it raises numerous questions on an ethical front, in particular issues of power and the right to speak on someone else’s behalf. How can the concept of intervention in performance be theorised, problematized and alternatively articulated? How does intervention manifest in theatre for, with and by communities? How does an interruption in the status quo of a community impact that community?

Social Alternatives is seeking to extend the discussion on performance and intervention and welcomes a range of submissions exploring this theme. Opportunities to contribute involve: academic articles, short stories, poetry, scripts and commentaries. It is anticipated that responses to this theme will be wide, and may take the following points into consideration:

• Re-envisioning intervention as ‘joyful encounters’
• Verbatim theatre as intervention
• Performance and interventions in gender representation
• Intervening in the public space through performance
• Theorising strategies and acts of intervention in performance
• Community theatre intervention
• Prioritising process or product in performance intervention
• Theatre, therapy and social conflict
• Intervention as interruption
• The impact of intervention in/through performance

Abstract Due: 1^st December 2016. Guidelines for Contributors can be found at:  http://socialalternatives.com/contributions

Social Alternatives is an independent, quarterly refereed journal. It is committed to the principles of social justice, commenting on important social issues of current concern or public debate. We publish practical and theoretical articles on relevant topics, as well as reviews, short stories, poems, graphics, comment, and critique.

Direct enquiries and submissions for this issue to the guest editors:

Dr Natalie Lazaroo, School of Education and Professional Studies, Griffith University natalie.lazaroo@griffithuni.edu.au

Dr Sarah Peters, School of Arts and Communication, University of Southern QLD sarah.peters@usq.edu.au

Performances

Victoria University recently performed a new translation of The Trojan Women.  See the performance details and link to a review by John Smythe below.

THE TROJAN WOMEN
By Euripides’
A New Translation by Simon Perris
Directed by Bronwyn Tweddle
Presented by THEA301 at Studio 77 Amphitheatre, 77 Fairlie Tce, Wellington
From 5 Oct 2016 to 9 Oct 2016

http://www.theatreview.org.nz/reviews/review.php?id=9640

New Degree Offerings

Victoria University are launching a new MFA degree in 2017 — scholarships are available! See the link below for further details.

http://www.victoria.ac.nz/news/2016/09/new-postgraduate-arts-degree-hones-creative-skills-for-job-market

Editorial

Welcome to tenth edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We have an interesting selection of stories and items for you in our second issue for 2016. In this issue, in our “NUTS People” segment, we profile Hilary Halba and Kiri Bell from The University of Otago. We have also included information on the upcoming symposia and conferences for the multidisciplinary research project “The Performance of the Real” at Otago University. We have two academic vacancies that have opened up at Massey University to circulate. We are also pleased to promote Marianne Schultz’s latest publication Performing Indigenous Culture on Stage and Screen. We also thought we would bring to your attention an interesting article by Associate Professor Tracey Moore (The Hartt School at the University of Hartford), entitled ‘Why Theater Majors Are Vital in the Digital Age‘ which was recently published online by the Chronicle of Higher Education. In the article Moore argues that ‘Theater (slow, communal, physical) may be the cure for what ails us in the digital world’. The article raises some important points about the value of University Theatre Majors which might be useful in our own advocacy for university theatre programmes in NZ. We plan to circulate our eleventh edition of NUTS NZ on the 12th of August, and we will need items of news by 29 July (especially an academic and  postgraduate student to  showcase). As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

Kind regards,
NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

NUTS PEOPLE

In each edition of NUTS NZ we profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests. In this issue we have Hilary Halba and Kiri Bell from The University of Otago. As always, NUTS NZ asked each of them to answer the following questions:

• What is your research about?
• What theatre/performances have you seen recently?
• What have you been reading lately?

Hilary Halba

Research: My research and background are in acting and actor training, documentary and verbatim theatre, and Maori and bicultural theatre, drama and performance.

Theatre: I haven’t seen any theatre performances recently as I have been performing every night for the last two 2 months in “Winston’s Birthday,” (written by Paul Baker and directed by Lara McGregor). You could say, however, that I have watched that performance every night from the stage.

Reading: Most recently, I have been reading abstracts for the Hui & Symposium I have just co-convened.

Kiri Bell

Research: I am researching a range of theatrical techniques in order to stage auto-ethnographical and biographical stories about Māori children adopted into Pākehā families through closed stranger adoption.  Some of the techniques include: Māori performing arts, physical theatre, poetry, shadow play, and song.  I am also researching closed stranger adoption in Aotearoa, in particular with regards to Māori children adopted into Pākehā families and the impact and consequences this form of adoption has had on adoptees.  My research will culminate in a one woman, multi-media bicultural documentary play.

Theatre: Aside from seeing a number of works at Allen Hall Lunchtime Theatre, which is always interesting, entertaining and such good value for money, the other theatre I have seen lately is Paul Baker’s Winston’s Birthday at the Fortune Theatre.  This play was thoroughly entertaining and, as always, Peter King’s set design was fantastic.

Reading: I am reading a number of works at the moment, and yet it seems that I am still not reading enough!  I am reading Maria Haenga-Collins Master’s thesis Belonging and Whakapapa: The Closed Stranger Adoption of Māori Children into Pākehā Families, and I am reading Erica Newman’s Master’s thesis A Right To Be Māori?” Identity Formation of Māori Adoptees.  I am also reading Through The Body: A Practical Guide to Physical Theatre by Dymphna Callery.  I think this book is a must for all theatre practitioners.

Publications

Performing Indigenous Culture on Stage and Screen by Dr Marianne Schultz

Examining corporeal expressions of indigenousness from an historical perspective, this book highlights the development of cultural hybridity in New Zealand via the popular performing arts, contributing new understandings of racial, ethnic, and gender identities through performance. The author offers an insightful and welcome examination of New Zealand performing arts via case studies of drama, music, and dance, performed both domestically and internationally. As these examples show, notions of modern New Zealand were shaped and understood in the creation and reception of popular culture. Highlighting embodied indigenous cultures of the past provides a new interpretation of the development of New Zealand’s cultural history and adds an unexplored dimension in understanding the relationships between Māori and Pākehā throughout the late nineteenth and into the early twentieth centuries.

Conferences

The performance of the Real is a new multidisciplinary research project that is being led by Dr Suzanne Little and Assoc. Prof. Hazel Tucker at Otago University. The project has been successful in receiving funding over five years and a number of symposia and conferences have already been programmed this year including:

The Performance of the Real Postgraduate and Early Career Symposium: 

June 8th – 10th 2016 Keynote speaker: Bree Hadley (Queensland University of Technology) (we are heavily subsiding this symposium to keep costs down for postgraduate students) – we are open to late submission of abstracts

Mediating the Real: 

August 31st – September 2nd 2016 Keynote speakers: Misha Kavka (The University of Auckland); Allen Meek (Massey University) & Agon Hamza (Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts)

Performing Precarity: Refugee Representation, Determination and Discourses

21-23 November

Keynotes:

Professor Nikos Papastergiadis (University of Melbourne, Australia)

Professor Suvendrini Perera (Curtin University, Perth, Australia)

Registration is via the website and there are more details on the site about the theme and who is involved, including her very hardworking steering committee.

Academic Vacancies

Massey University is advertising two theatre studies positions which can be viewed via the Massey website. These include:

Part-Time Lecturer in Theatre Studies (A175-16SF) at Massey’s Albany (Auckland) Campus.

Applications are invited for a part-time (0.4 FTE), fixed-term three year Lectureship in Theatre Studies in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University.

For more details please visit: http://massey-careers.massey.ac.nz/9310/part-time-lecturer-in-theatre-studies

Senior Tutor in Theatre/Expressive Arts (A176-16SF) at Massey’s Palmerston North Campus.

Applications are invited for a 0.8 FTE, fixed-term senior tutorship in the Theatre/Expressive Arts programme of the School of English and Media Studies at Massey University on the Palmerston North, Manawatu Campus.

For more details please visit:http://massey-careers.massey.ac.nz/9311/senior-tutor-in-theatre-expressive-arts

Editorial

Welcome to the ninth edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We have an interesting selection of stories and items for you in this first issue for 2016. In this issue Martyn Roberts has kindly provided us with an outline of his latest project, Dark Matter. We have included a flyer and link to a newspaper article about Head Wound, directed by Angie Farrow, that should be of interest. We have details of the upcoming ADSA Conference “Resilience: Revive, Restore, Reconnect,” as well as details regarding the upcoming Symposium “Empowering Performance.”  There are a few prizes and competition to note too. Unfortunately, we could not  include out “NUTS People” segment  in this edition but it will b featured in the tenth edition.

We plan to circulate our tenth edition of NUTS NZ on the 13 of May , and we will need items of news by 29 April (especially an academic  and  postgraduate student to  showcase). As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

Kind regards,

NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

Performances

Dark Matter

Martyn Roberts, Lighting Designer and Professional Practice Fellow in Theatre Studies at The University of Otago presented Dark Matter at the Dunedin Fringe Festival in March 2016. This work presented for the first time, since graduating in 2014, a public showing of his MFA Theatre Studies material. Martyn’s MFA focused on his practice as a lighting designer and in particular the development and refinement of his methodology which involves creating states or scenarios that sit at the edge of perception and understanding. This was explored through three workshops and Dark Matter, a final showing where audiences were engaged in an open and ‘meaning-making’ process creating threshold states. ‘Threshold state’ refers to a point of perception that compels the viewer to engage with an image or sound to create meaning before it vanishes. It was Martyn’s intention to create threshold states across the disciplines of light, sound and site specific space. He also used photography to bring a greater understanding to how meaning, perception and recognition occur in these threshold moments. Dark matter, as in use it here, is a metaphor to describe the unseen, intangible or emergent elements of a performance. Martyn sought to use how we experience these elements to examine aspects of his design process. He is interested primarily in visual design work that privileges the partial and the unseen in order to invite audiences to take an increasingly active role in the meaning-making process. This has long been a focus of his practice as a designer. In this project, Martyn worked to develop, refine and articulate his approach through experimenting with the design tool of light, and by corollary, with sound and space.

Head Wound

Soldiers who survive war might be considered lucky, but they can suffer lifelong psychological damage. A bold new performance work explores the human horrors of war through one man’s struggle to piece together fragments of memory and identity shattered by a traumatic head injury. This performance installation, presented at Palmerston North’s Te Manawa Museum, is directed by Massey University Associate Professor Angie Farrow in collaboration with puppeteer Leda Farrwo, digital lighting designer Luke Anderson, musician and composer Suzie Hawes, and writer John Downie.

For more information access the Massey News story here, or visit the link to the article “Installation Brings Museum to Life” in the Manawatu Standard.

Conferences

ADSA Conference 2016 Resilience: Revive, Restore, Reconnect. Update

Prizes/Competitions

The Marlis Thiersch Prize

• The Award is open to all financial members of ADSA.
• The publication period is January to December 2015.
• There cannot be more than one article or chapter by an author nominated in a given year.
• The winner is announced at the ADSA conference.
• The value of the prize is $500.

The Rob Jordon Prize

Editorial

Welcome to the seventh edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. We have an interesting selection of stories and news items for you in this 3rd issue for 2015. In this issue Dr. Sharon Mazer has kindly contributed a PBRF letter to help get us thinking and talking about how PBRF might impact on our discipline. We have included a short description of a Dramaturgy in NZ project that Dione Joseph is working on that should be of interest. We have details of a free public lecture that Prof. Helen Gilbert will be presenting at AUT on 1st of September. There are a few touring performances to take note of, in particular two verbatim theatre productions developed by Hilary Halba and Stuart Young, from the University of Otago’s Theatre Studies programme. Gaye Poole, Convenor of Theatre Studies at the University of Waikato, is also directing five projects in this half of the year. Another upcoming event to note is the International Applied Theatre Symposium, ‘The Performance of Hope’ hosted at the University of Auckland on November 9th, 10th & 11th.

We plan to circulate our eighth and final issue of NUTS NZ for 2015 in November, and we will need items of news by 30 of October. As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

PBRF Corespondent’s Report by Dr Sharon Mazer

Dear Colleagues

By now you are mostly likely finding yourselves at various information sessions and workshops in advance of the 2018 PBRF round. Here at AUT, we have a number of initiatives moving us to look critically at where we currently stand and to be thoughtful about strategies for improving our outcomes in the time that remains. One approach has been to pull out our 2012 portfolios, to use them as material for analysis and as a platform from which to begin crafting drafts of the key statements regarding our research programmes and outputs that can be revisited and revised over the next two years.

The biggest change from previous rounds will be the consolidation of the ‘Peer Esteem’ and ‘Contribution to the Research Environment’ categories into a single field worth 30%. While we don’t know exactly what it will look like when the time comes, here is an approximation that might serve as a template for identifying, recording and valuing what we have been doing as a matter of course.

Contribution & Recognition (1500 characters)

For this, it will be very much about making an effective list under each of the twelve headings. For each, the question is of value – both of the activity in itself and how it is recognised. The categories are still oddly overlapping, and sure to be revised further, but at present look something like this:

• Contribution to research discipline and environment
• Facilitation, networking and collaboration
• Invitations to present research or similar
• Other evidence of research contribution
• Outreach and engagement
• Recognition of research outputs
• Research funding and support
• Research prizes, fellowships, awards and appointments
• Researcher development
• Reviewing, refereeing, judging, evaluating and examining
• Student factors
• Uptake and impact

One final note: you may have seen the request for nominations to the PBRF panels for 2018. Do take a minute to look at the guidelines and consider what it might mean for you to make a contribution at this level – not only because we will all be grateful for having knowledgeable colleagues reviewing our portfolios, but also because such service is bound to offer a distinctive perspective on the field.

Best to all

Dr Sharon Mazer

NUTS PEOPLE

In each edition of NUTS NZ we profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests. It is our pleasure to be profiling Lecturer Dr Lori Leigh and postgraduate student Rachel Somerfield from Victoria Uni.  NUTS NZ asked each of them to answer the following questions:

• What is your research about?
• What theatre/performances have you seen recently?
• What have you been reading lately?

Rachel Somerfield

Research: A performer since childhood, I studied acting in Auckland and Montreal, Canada, going on to gain a degree in contemporary dance and choreography (Unitec) and others in languages, literature and Drama Studies (University of Auckland), after which I worked professionally for a range of Auckland-based performance companies before moving to Wellington in 2009 to pursue PhD research. A massive, more recent influence on my work is the experience of parenting.

I recently completed my PhD “Articulating Embodiment, Cognition and Creativity In Performance.” The thesis brings work from the cognitive sciences, somatic studies and philosophy together and into focus through the work of noted contemporary performance practitioners Kristin Linklater, Jacques Lecoq and others.  In my research, I drew on my background in movement, text and performance, as well as travelling to Shakespeare and Company in the Berkshires and diving into dialogue with readings and practitioners hailing from the ‘hard’ sciences and philosophy. The work as a whole explores the ‘via negativa’ principle that performance creativity is something to be cultivated and facilitated, released or ‘allowed’ through processes of psychophysical enquiry more than controlled through processes of self-manipulation; something that can span the fullest range of psychophysical expression and experience but which necessarily remains largely unknowable – unable to be fully predicted or articulated – for both performers and audiences.  To interrogate this principle, the research investigates the key roles played by embodied cognitive processes connected to, and connecting, attention, sensation, meta-cognition (or “embodied (self-)awareness”), memory, habit and sociality. The findings point to some of the powerful ways in which performance as a creative act both contributes to and springs from human communities, while also highlighting the importance of performance-based expertise for emerging inter-disciplinary debates about psychophysicality.

Theatre: A recent attempt to attend the theatre ended in tears, literally. Yes, I was the first to have to evacuate a screaming child from a certain Hannah Playhouse production of “Mr McGee and the Biting Flea,” as the sight of a determined farmer chasing a reluctant cow, through song, was abruptly too much for my young son on his first outing there.

Reading: Ever the student it seems, I am doggedly working my way through the required reading for a Playcentre Federation NZ course, as part of their Diploma in Early Childhood Education. The subject matter – play and human development in community – is close to my heart and comes in handy when working hands-on with feisty four-year-olds, worldly threenagers, teetering two-year-olds and the cast of characters generally to be found at my local centre, not to mention all of us at home.

Dr Lori Leigh

Research: What am I researching at the moment? Having just finished my book, Shakespeare and the Embodied Heroine, I have been researching what to research. Seriously though, I am always researching women, Shakespeare, adaptations, Early Modern staging with a bit of playwriting and improv thrown in for good measure.

Theatre: My recent trips to the theatre (some via cinema!) have included Globe on Screen’s Antony and Cleopatra; selected scenes from Richard III by our THEA 204 students; Cleanskin—an original play at BATS written by Andrew Clarke, a former scriptwriting student; and of course I’ve been watching heaps of improv by PlayShop Performance Company at BATS.

Reading: What am I reading and what performances have I recently seen? I have just finished reading (and reviewing) Tina Packer’s Women of Will.

Towards a New Zealand Dramaturgy

Dione Joseph is an Auckland writer with a vested interest in dramaturgy. She has been working in the field of theatre for the past ten years (six of those overseas) and returned home last year renewed and excited about working in the arts in the New Zealand. Towards a New Zealand Dramaturgy is exactly what the title suggest. A series of conversations with a range of practitioners (including playwrights, directors, producers, actors and of course dramaturges) across theatre, film, radio and dance and included voices from across the regions, expat kiwis and a number of different cultural perspectives. Twenty-six koreros and five online exchanges were undertaken during the course of three months equating to almost 60,000 words and an unspoken number of hours in transcribing. Some of the voices included in these conversations were Stuart Hoar, Tainui Tukiwaho, Renee Liang, Pedro Ilgenfritz, Gary Henderson, Mika Haka, Ahi Karunharan, Arnette Arapai, Geoff Pinfield, Karin Williamsm, Carol Brown, Nathan Joe, Victoria Hunt, Murray Edmond and Sharon Mazer. Dione’s first encounter with dramaturgy was at UCLA in 2007 and since then she has been involved with engaging, exploring and developing dramaturgical frameworks especially from a production (as opposed to script) perspective. This process looks beyond the dramaturgy of the text extending into casting, community engagement, multi-generational relationships and sustainability. Her dramaturgical process in holding these stories and allowing them to speak back to New Zealand has been based on an understanding of the need to ‘cradle space’ a process that she has used to locate these conversations in spaces that blends journalism and art to create textual compositions. These will be curated and published by Pantograph Punch towards the end of the year and will be thematically organized according to the various narratives drawn during the process. A Radio NZ interview with Justin Gregory offers a few of the many different perspectives on this journey Towards a NZ Dramaturgy. http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/standing-room-only/audio/201760220/towards-a-new-zealand-dramaturgy

Free public lecture by distinguished Professor Helen Gilbert, Royal Holloway, University of London.

Frontiers of Memory: Rethinking Performance, War and Heritage in Contemporary Europe.

Presented by Colab, Te Ara Poutama, and the Faculty of Design and Creative Technologies at AUT

Research shows that from early in the twentieth century, Maori, Aboriginal Australian, Native American and Canadian First Nations recruits have enlisted in their countries’ international war efforts in disproportionately high numbers, despite various racialised prohibitions against their participation and often with tragic consequences for their families and communities. With the flowering of indigenous arts over the last few decades, this history has been interpreted in original, profound and creative ways, potentially yielding rich insights into international dimensions of European war heritage and the ways in which it intersects with narratives of global dispersal, homecoming and belonging in other societies.

This presentation approaches war as a brutal but dynamic global framework in and through which indigenous peoples in postcolonial settler states have negotiated aspects of cultural identity as well as the still-unfinished projects of social, political and economic equality. I will briefly explore contemporary performance-based stories and commemorations of the first and second world wars, drawing examples from theatre, film, memorial ceremonies and dance. Such performances not only expand our understanding of how iconic battle sites in the Mediterranean and on the Western Front take on meaning in different contexts today; they also situate memory as a fundamentally international set of practices constructed and contested across borders and between cultures.

The overarching aim of my talk is to prompt further discussion about the role indigenous arts might play in retooling mainstream war heritage initiatives for a more inclusive twenty-first century.

Event information:

September 1, 2015  |  5.30pm – 6:30pm.
Room WG404, Level 4, WG, Sir Paul Reeves Building, AUT City Campus.

Light refreshments provided beforehand from 5pm.
Presentation begins at 5.30pm followed by a Q&A.
Please RSVP to Sharon Mazer: smazer@aut.ac.nz

On September 3rd Helen will also be speaking on a panel discussion, Defying Time – How can objects and acts of commemoration stand for the dead in the presence of the living?

Biography:

Performances

Massey students use creative theatre work to stand up to rape culture

Rape culture was on the agenda at Massey University Wellington campus last semester, but in a constructive way as students took messaging about rape and sexual consent into their own hands.

Given free reign with their topic, students in Massey’s new multidisciplinary creative activism paper, Creativity in the Community, voted unanimously to work on an issue they agreed concerned all of them – how rape is understood and discussed both in the media and among their peers.  After several weeks of working through forum theatre exercises and hearing from topic experts and guest advisors on creative processes, they devised a moving live programme of film, theatre, short story, and spoken word poetry.

Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, academic coordinator of the project, said the students faced a difficult challenge to “strike a balance between confronting the issues and protecting the vulnerable in their audience”, while also achieving a piece of creative work that would be “powerful and memorable”.  The students wanted to explore the causes, angles, and manifestations of rape culture but also find ways to push their student community, and society more broadly, into seeing it differently.  They were also, as a group, reacting strongly to victim-blaming in recent media coverage of rape attacks – including suggestions students should wear running shoes to avoid being raped.

“The first working title of the piece was ‘No Running Shoes’ and it was quite reactive to that particular media item.  That was a good starting point but over a few weeks of using forum theatre exercises on power and consent the students identified a really important new way to view the material and deepened the complexity of creative engagement with what is a very dense topic.

“We found it useful in workshops to improvise everyday situations, not sexual, where students felt their right to consent was overlooked or ignored – even these proved very powerful, from things like whether they genuinely consent to participate in ‘shouting a round’ at the pub or having another drink, to being asked to loan money to a friend.  Then we would replay them with alternate improvised endings, swapping in new dialogue or actors to see where the action went.

“As a result of the forum exercises the group identified a particular causal aspect they wanted to explore in the situations familiar to them, which was miscommunication or completely different perceptions of what constitutes consent.  They first proposed creating a split-screen movie with two contrasting interpretations of a situation playing side by side – then as workshopping progressed this evolved to a split between the film showing spoken dialogue and live actors speaking the thoughts inside the filmed characters’ heads, which gave it real presence and immediacy on the day.”

Dr Tilley said the performing students were “absolutely gobsmacked and delighted” to achieve a full house for their performance.  “We ran out of seats and literally had to turn people away at the door – for a topic that is so difficult to talk about day to day, and which campus services struggle to get even two or three people to attend perfectly good information sessions on, this was outstanding.  There is a real power to creative work that can break down barriers around sensitive topics and get people into a space where they can open up new ways of thinking.”

Offered for the first time at Massey University in 2015, the paper Creativity in the Community is a project-based, applied, service-learning paper. At Wellington, facilitating the paper with a student-centred pedagogy that put students in charge of topic, budget, logistics and creative direction, Dr Tilley asked the students to nominate issues or causes they were passionate about, then choose one as a group.

“I was completely inspired by the outward focus of these students.  Despite issues of debt and other challenges that today’s students face, the nominated causes were not student-centric but all engaged with much wider issues of justice and equity in the local and global community.”

Early in the course, all students presented on a cause, and a confidential ballot to choose one was taken.  Rape culture ranked first as the group’s preferred topic.  Students began researching its dimensions, then a check-vote was taken a fortnight later when more was understood about the enormous scope and pervasiveness of the problem.  This confirmed the group was now unanimous: the class of both women and men all wanted to make direct and real change to rape culture on their campus and in their community, including connecting with Wellington Rape Crisis as a fundraising cause and source of information.

Their performance aimed to provoke both men and women to think differently about sexual consent, encourage ethical bystanders, avoid stereotypes, and provide a safety net and source of support and solidarity for the probable 20-30% of their audience with experience of sexual assault.  Support materials and counselling contact details were provided, both to the students on the course and to the audience.

Several of the students also found it useful to attend an extra-curricular information workshop on consent, run by Wellington Rape Crisis and the Massey at Wellington Students’ Association, and brought ideas back to class.  A series of guest lecturers including award-winning playwright Hone Kouka and feminist spokesperson Deborah  Russell also gave their time to the class to help guide their project.

“We are extremely grateful to Hone for helping the students find ways to approach difficult material creatively.  We watched The Prophet and it provided a touchstone for developing characterisations around the idea that good people can do bad things, because people reflect the social structures around them. Deborah’s pragmatic sharing of rape facts and figures was also extremely important, and changed how many of the students viewed the issues”.

Some of the key facts that students shared through their performance included that an estimated 90% of rapes are committed by somebody the victim knows, often an intimate partner; that reporting of sexual violence in New Zealand is very low, with only an estimated 9% of incidents ever being reported to police; and that in the United Nations Report on the Status of Women published in 2011, Aotearoa New Zealand was ranked worst of all OECD countries in rates of sexual violence.

The production also emphasised that everybody has a responsibility to act as an ethical bystander, and, if witnessing something questionable in terms of a person’s ability to consent, everyone should ask the question: “Are you OK?”

Some of the students’ creative writing work that evolved out of the workshopping process has subsequently been published in Massive Magazine – see for example Lena Fransham’s ‘Blurred Words’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/16926/blurred-words/ and Tessa Calogaras’ ‘Ground Meat’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17193/ground-meat/

Great Stage of Fools

August 20-23 there is a postgraduate production called Great Stage of Fools, which is part of Professor Tom Bishop’s Marsden Grant called Shakespeare’s Theatre Games ($535,000). The overall project examines the role of contemporary ideas and practices of play in late medieval and early modern English drama, especially Shakespeare, across the period 1450-1600.  Working from philosophical and other accounts of play, from records of play, games and playing, and from practical exploration of play in surviving scripts, the project looks at how attention to play as a form of human behaviour can illuminate works of dramatic art, and at how those works in turn reflect on play.  The production is a selection of works and skits of the early English theatre, including Shakespeare and some who came before him.  The programme will feature the early moral play iThe World and the Child, a tour-de-force piece for two actors that covers human life and its risks from birth to age.  The performance is at 8pm, 20-23 August in the Drama Studio on campus and is directed by visiting international clown master, Dr Ira Seidenstein.

In September our stage two undergraduates will perform Songs to Uncle Scrim, a song play written by former UoA Drama lecturer and well-known New Zealand playwright Mervyn Thompson, and directed by Associate Professor Murray Edmond.  In 1976 Mervyn Thompson and Stephen McCurdy wrote and adapted more than 20 songs to create a panoramic choral drama about the 1929 crash and the subsequent depression.  The 2015 economic crisis is once again the drama in which we live.  This will be performed at the Musgrove Studio September 17-20.

Verbatim Theatre on Tour

On Saturday 22 August Dunedin’s Talking House launches its extended national tour of two verbatim plays in Auckland. These productions are part of the practice and portfolio of work developed by Hilary Halba and Stuart Young, from the University of Otago’s Theatre Studies programme, since 2008.

The tour begins with performances of The Keys are in the Margarine: A Verbatim Play About Dementia, written by Cindy Diver (a longtime collaborator with Hilary and Stuart), Susie Lawless (a GP whose professional testimony appeared in the earlier play Hush: A Verbatim Play About Family Violence, 2009) and Stuart. Keys premiered in June 2014 at Dunedin’s Fortune Theatre, where it played an extended sold-out season. After Auckland, Keys plays at Hamilton’s Meteor Theatre 1-5 September, and then Be | Longing joins the repertoire.

Be | Longing, written by Hilary, Stuart, and Simon O’Connor, examines immigrants’ stories of arriving and settling – and unsettling – in Aotearoa/New Zealand, and invites audiences to ponder where they feel a sense of belonging. It was first performed at the New Performance Festival, curated by Stephen Bain, at Auckland’s Aotea Centre in February 2012, before playing a near sell-out season at Allen Hall Theatre, at the University of Otago, in March 2012. Last year, the writers re-edited Be | Longing and created a “Post | Script” from follow-up interviews with most of the participants who originally contributed testimony to the play. In the postscript those particpants variously report on what has happened in their lives during the intervening two years or so, comment on their sense of relationship to New Zealand at this later point, and reflect on the play and on viewing themselves and others represented onstage.

A particular hallmark of the verbatim work we have created is the approach taken in re-presenting the testimony. In performance the actors use MP3 players (or iPods). With the testimonies of interviewees playing in their ears, the actors repeat not only the words of their subjects, but, as closely as possible, replicate their accents, inflexions, and hesitations. Just to complicate things, in rehearsal the actors also study closely the film of the edits they are to re-enact. Therefore, in performance, they replicate as accurately as possible not only the words and the verbal delivery, but also each gesture and involuntary movement of their subjects.

From September to November Keys and Be | Longing tour to Invercargill (15-19 Sept), Timaru (23-26 Sept), Wanaka (29 Sept – 1 Oct) and Alexandra (2 & 3 Oct) and play at the Hutchinson Studio, Fortune Theatre, Dunedin (20 Oct – 7 Nov), and at Wellington’s BATS (11-21 Nov).

Cast and crew of Keys

Hilary Halba and Stuart Young

University of Otago

Blue Stockings and More

Gaye Poole, Convenor of Theatre Studies at the University of Waikato, is directing 5 projects in this half of the year:

The ‘Lehar Spectacular’ for the Music Programme at University of Waikato for this coming weekend (a section of Lehar operettas); Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale as the 10th anniversary celebration production of the Sir Edmund Hillary Programme at Waikato (11, 12, 13, 14 November); and 3 fully rehearsed staged readings for her company Carving in Ice Theatre: Lucy Prebble’s The Effect, 6 & 7 October; Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice 24 & 25 October and Laura Wade’s Posh, October and 1 & 2 December.

All these events are at the Gallagher Academy of Performing Arts, Hamilton. www.waikato.ac.nz/academy

For Blue Stockings Gaye is working with a range of Theatre, Music, Graphic Design, Creative Technologies Hillary scholars  (see image), as well as colleagues and community actors. A Sir Edmund Hillary Creative and Performing Arts Scholarship rewards academic excellence, creativity and leadership so it made sense to Gaye to direct a play that both promotes receiving an education as a victory in itself, and is an accessibly written modern reminder that equality for educational opportunities is a hard-won benefit that should never be taken for granted.  World events highlight the lack of educational access and opportunities still for women in some cultures; England’s University of Cambridge only allowed women to graduate in 1948.

Blue Stockings offers a window onto a past era of gender hierarchies and class exclusions. Yet it is also constantly topical, particularly in its celebration of education for all and the liberating power of ‘learning to think’ for yourself. The Girton girls (and some of their teachers) are brave and persevering; they struggle to win the right to be educated and continue even against acts of moral cowardice, vandalism and intimidation aimed to stop them. Blue Stockings makes the case, not just that women should be awarded degrees, but that they should be able to participate in all aspects of university life, studying science or literature, riding a bicycle and even sailing the oceans to study the rotation of icebergs. It also asks the question ‘What if you had to choose between love and knowledge?’

During a long and gradual rehearsal period Gaye and the cast have been able to study the contextual and social history of ‘bluestockings’ in general and especially the Girton College girls of 1896/1897. Such texts as psychiatrist Dr Maudsley’s ‘Sex in Mind and in Education’ find their way into the ‘Wandering Womb’ scene. Jane Robinson’s book Bluestockings: the Remarkable Story of the First Women to Fight for an education was the initial inspiration for the play; it gives a clear picture of the girls’ day to day lives; study, friendship, cocoa parties, bicycling, prejudice, as well as the struggle to balance study and love.

Symposium

Registrations now open for:

International Applied Theatre Symposium: The Performance of Hope

November 9th, 10th & 11th 2015

Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Auckland, New Zealand, 74 Epsom Avenue

The Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre (CRUAT) welcomes you to their fourth international symposium. The symposium celebrates and questions applied theatre’s potential to be a liberating and humanising process. The symposium includes keynotes from Distinguished Professor Kathleen Gallagher, Professor Peter Freebody, Associate Professor Penny Bundy, Dr. Emma Willis, Dr. Jackie Kauli and Penelope Glass of Colectivo Sustento and Fénix & Ilusiones, as well as applied theatre performances, practical workshops and academic papers from local and international delegates. As in previous symposia there will be an event for postgraduate students on the morning before the conference opens.

 Information and dates

Schedule:

Monday 9 November -Wednesday 11 November 2015

The symposium begins with a morning event for postgraduate students on Monday 9 November, 10am-12pm.

The formal opening for all delegates will be early on the afternoon of Monday 9 November and the conference will close by 4.30pm on Wednesday 11 November.

A more detailed programme will be available in August 2015.

Registration: Register here

Early Bird registration closes 9 October

All registrations close: 4 November

Cost (New Zealand Dollars):

Early Bird $285 (Early Bird registration closes 9 October)

Standard registration $385

Student $260

Day rate (Tuesday or Wednesday) $260

There is no formal conference dinner, but previous symposia have included an informal but well-attended social programme at local restaurants and pubs and this year promises to be as much fun.

 Conference website:

http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/events/events-2015/11/the-performance-of-hope.html

Conference image: Fénix & Ilusiones prison theatre experience, Colina 1 prison, Santiago-Chile. Directed by Colectivo Sustento.

Achievements

Dr Emma Willis was recently awarded the Vera Mowry Roberts Research and Publication Award of the The American Theatre and Drama Society for the best essay published in English (essays must appear in a refereed scholarly journal or edited collection) focused on Theatre and/or Performance in the United States (recognizing that notions of “America” and the United States encompass migrations of peoples and cultures that overlap and influence one another).  The award was for a piece she wrote called “Emancipated Spectatorship and Subjective Drift: Understanding the Work of the Spectator in Erik Ehn’s Soulographie” published in Theatre Journal 66 (October 2014) 385–403.  The essay was also runner up for the ADSA (Australasian Association of Theatre, Drama and Performance Studies) Marlis Thiersch Prize.

Editorial

Welcome to the fourth edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance.

The NZ Universities Committee for Theatre/Performance Research was held at Victoria University on 10 November 2014. One of the issues that was discussed was the PBRF (Performance-Based Research Fund) exercise and the challenges we face as a community in how performance research is evaluated. As Sharon Mazer reported in her minutes from the meeting, the PBRF privileges ‘international’ research, whilst theatre and performance research projects are intrinsically local. According to Sharon, one way to position theatre work internationally is to invite colleagues from other universities to review and/or to incorporate critical analyses of performances for publication in scholarly journals. NUTS NZ is here to help coordinate and publicise any collaborative initiatives in relation to the PBRF, so please let us know how we can help.

We have an interesting selection of stories and news items for you in this final issue of NUTS NZ for 2014. We will back next year and we hope you will send us information on any upcoming events or initiatives that you think our wider theatre and academic community should be informed about. Please refer to the important dates below. We plan to circulate our fifth issue in mid-March 2015, and we will need items of news by 27 February. As always, submissions should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

We have enjoyed curating NUTS NZ this year and look forward to catching up with you all in 2015. Until then, have a great christmas and a very happy and relaxing new year.

Kind regards,

NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

NUTS People

In each edition of NUTS NZ we profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests. It is our pleasure to be profiling Senior Lecturer James McKinnon and postgraduate student Moira Fortin from Victoria University.  NUTS NZ asked each of them to answer the following questions:

• What is your research about?
• What theatre/performances have you seen recently?
• What have you been reading lately?

James McKinnon, Senior Lecturer & Theatre Programme Director, School of English, Film, Theatre, and Media Studies

Research: My doctoral research focused on how Canadian playwrights adapt and appropriate Shakespeare and Chekhov, and how their audiences respond. Since Canadian Chekhov adaptation does not align especially well with the strategic priorities of Victoria University, my interests have changed over the last few years to reflect my new context. My current research still deals with adaptation, but more as a fundamental skill combining creative and critical processes, than a special form of playwriting, but as a general form of creativity. If adaptation – i.e., putting familiar materials to new uses to solve new problems – is not a form of “uncreative” copying but an essential aspect of all creativity, this has big implications for how we teach theatre and literature: instead of stressing Shakespeare’s “originality,” for example, what we should be focusing on is how Shakespeare adapted existing materials to make his plays. Why? Because if we teach people that Shakespeare’s genius was his originality, it sends the message that creativity is a mysterious, innate gift that only a few geniuses are born with; but if we look at Hamlet not as a uniquely original work of art, but as a clever adaptation of an Old Norse epic poem, then we can use it to learn how to become creative.

Theatre: Binge Culture Collective’s Break Up (We Need to Talk) stands out in my mind as a unique and powerful performance experience. As a six hour, improvised durational performance, it puts huge demands on the performers, but the company was careful to make the experience “fun” for spectators by encouraging us to Tweet during the play, or come and go as we pleased, or follow the performance on a live stream. As a result, I was able to appreciate how much the actors were working without having to “work” myself – if I got bored, I could check the Twitter feed for a witty comment or go out for a beer, and when I came back I could jump right back in, my appreciation for the actors growing as I became aware how the performance had affected them in my absence. It transformed the theatre experience from aesthetic appreciation into something more like the excitement of athletic competition, with all of its risks and unpredictability.

Reading: I haven’t been reading anything lately except policy documents, dissertation chapters, and term papers. But I look forward to How Theatre Means, by Ric Knowles.

Moira Fortin – PhD Candidate, Victoria University.

Research: Theatre on Rapa Nui / Easter Island is an activity that began its development in 1975, with the work of a theatre group called Mata Tu’u Hotu Iti. This group performed old Rapa Nui stories in different natural settings on the island; usually they represented the arrival of ariki Hotu Matu’a which was enacted in the same place where the king, according to oral tradition, arrived. In the history of Rapa Nui performing arts it is possible to draw a line before and after Mata Tu’u Hotu Iti. This group, without intending it, set the framework for future performances. I was fortunate to see the last performances of Mata Tu’u Hotu Iti in 1999. From my experience of living and performing in Rapa Nui for twelve years, I can say that there have been few but significant changes in the way theatre is practised on Rapa Nui. In the beginning the theatre performances were very slow relying only in the character of the storyteller who was telling everybody what they had to do, whereas now they are choreographing battle and travelling sequences, giving more dynamism and rhythm to the performance. However, Rapa Nui, people like to perform legends and oral traditions in the same way they have done for years, and this preference often excludes other forms of creative expression.

I am about to start my third, and hopefully final year of PhD research, where I am looking at how tradition may influence the creation of contemporary theatre in Rapa Nui. The experience of Māori and Pacific Theatre practitioners here in New Zealand are of great interest to my research question; specifically in the “how” they have integrated different elements of their “traditional” performing arts with western actor techniques in their work; and how this experience, from Māori and Pacific Theatre practitioners here in New Zealand, could influence, inspire, and / or collaborate in the further development of Rapa Nui Theatre.

Theatre: The Pitmen Painters by Lee Hall at Circa Theatre. Great performances and use of technology showing the audience the different paintings the pitmen were creating. It was a nice mixture of theatre play and art exhibition. Now I’m looking forward to seeing The Kitchen at the End of the World by William Connor at Circa which is a story of marionettes who are aware that they are limited by their strings.

Readings: Pedagogy of the Oppressed by Paulo Freire.  The author postulates a new type of education, one which creates a partnership between the teacher and the student, entering into a dialogue between both parties where both are teacher and student at the same time.

“Shakespeare in the Bush” by Laura Bohannan. To me, this essay is the perfect example that literature is open to many interpretations.

The Ignorant Teacher by Jacques Rancière. The author proposes a new perspective in the practice of Education.

The Innocent Anthropologist. Notes from a Mud Hut by Nigel Barley. The author documents his experience during his field work, investigating the customs and beliefs of the Dowayo people without taking into account the nature of the Dowayo society.

Filosofía del Teatro by Jorge Dubatti. The author reflects on the concept of “convivio” which could be translated in English as a meeting/ gathering / sharing that should occur during a theatre performance. Is a more profound experience than the relationship between actors and audience that a performance should create. However, according to Dubatti, this concept is eluding more and more the experience the audience has when going to a contemporary theatre performance.

A Kiwi Perspective: What it means to be at the Lincoln Centre’s directorslab in 2014

Dione Joseph left New Zealand to participate in the Lincoln Centre’s directors lab in New York. NUTS NZ asked Dione to report on her experience as a kiwi artist and cultural ambassador.

The Lincoln Centre for the Performing Arts (or more colloquially known just as the Lincoln Centre) doesn’t really ring any bells here in New Zealand. Occasionally a peal here and there but certainly not in any clarion tones.So what if Elia Kazan and Robert Whitehead found a home in the Vivian Beaumont for The Repertory Theatre in 1965? Or that Herbert Blau directed the inaugural production of George Buchner’s Danton’s Death? Or even that Arthur Miller was playwright-in-residence and had the opportunity to premiere his new play After the Fall here with company members Jason Robards and Barbara Loden? Maybe it just doesn’t really matter. Especially not to a small semi-colon nation located at the end of the world whose people are typically associated with small brown flightless birds.

But then again…

I arrived at 150W 65^th Street this July for a three-week directors intensive with some trepidation and a flutter of proverbial butterflies.  After an extremely long application process, I had been one of the fortunate international directors to receive a place at the prestigious directorslab. But, in all honesty, while acquainted with many of the names, and more than a few of the productions, I certainly wasn’t connecting the dots to realize that the institution itself was home to a series of esteemed artists who had made their debut here or indeed that there were eleven resident organizations one of which was the Lincoln Centre Theatre. This was a site of performance history and equally, if not more importantly, since the founding of Lincoln center’s directorslab, a site of generating an active forum of discussion and dialogue for directors in America and beyond.

The Lincoln Center’s directorslab was the brainchild of Anne Cattaneo, current head of the lab and dramaturg of Lincoln Center Theatre. A program for professional directors in early and mid-stages of their career to gain an opportunity to interact, engage and indulge in an intensive creative session of discussions, workshops; shows while building networks to be part of an international theatre community. Best part: it’s completely free! There are no expectations of formal training or grades but an in-depth application process that challenges and questions not just how we direct but what sculpts the choices we make during the creative process.

That mandate inspired me. And when I found out on the first day of the lab as I sat between a director from Tokyo and another from Minneapolis I had this incredible feeling; I’m here. Aotearoa/New Zealand is here. In this room, with 35 other international directors and 35 locals from across the length of America, we are here. This year made twenty years since the inaugural lab in 1995 and one of the main reasons I chose to apply at this particular moment in time was because the theme appealed to me immensely: Audience. As a stage director who is increasingly finding myself regularly involved as a dramaturg and expanding upon five years’ worth of stage criticism, it made sense that the theatre community, and let’s be explicit, the international theatre community, is focusing on the intrinsic pact between artist and audience more than ever before.

As the only New Zealander, and indeed, the very first to be offered a space at the directorslab, I was both humbled and honoured at the chance to be able to listen, learn and share. Those three weeks were akin to being at a festival. The hours were easy to remember (10am-10pm) and we had a host of different guests, companies and artists visit during the day and regular shows in the evening. We had Terry Teachout from the Wall Street Journal come and share his insights on stage criticism, Nilaja Sun perform excerpts from her one-woman show No Child, a brilliant session with designer Ricardo Hernandez and compelling performances such as Heisei Nakumura-za and Fuerza Bruta.And we weren’t let off lightly either. All participants were divided into groups of six and seven and asked to tackle different questions that dealt with the overall theme. I gained a far more comprehensive notion of the differences between immersive and interactive theatre; the force of popular-audience driven successes especially in America; the consequences of political momentum in shaping theatre and history; the different models and systems to engage audience and community and how these vary internationally and a very valuable appreciation of music and its role in drama, musicals and operas.

But these weren’t simply information heavy sessions. We saw Peter Brook’s direction of Carmen in the library as well as the very first production of Venus in Furs. The environment while taking place in the basement of the Lincoln Centre was always cognizant of numerous shows constantly taking place. The lawn in front where we would eat lunch was full of actors, musos and other working directors, all affable and friendly towards this bunch of people whose ages ranged from people in their mid-twenties to those who had returned to the theatre after another career and were in their early sixties. Here was a community, and it did genuinely feel that as varied and disparate as our experiences and knowledges; easily compatible and wildly awkward personalities; cultural, linguistic and religious affiliations – here we all were together as stage directors. Not hobbyists or drama students but seventy individuals who had committed to this ridiculously creative life and lifestyle.

And we need more of us. As Anne reminded us on our first day: “Theatre is created by peers- the peer to peer relationship is key – that’s how all theatre is created. A group of friends – a director, a writer, a designer, and some actors – see the world in the same way and stay up all night in a bar and decide to open a theatre.” She was right. Not once did I ever get to bed before 2am and, although I probably suffered sleep deprivation and liver damage, the conversations that I had with my colleagues (and I call them that with affection and respect) were some of the best that I have had the opportunity to share within this industry. It wasn’t just what was being ‘taught’, it was the unofficial learning, sharing, exchange of information that is fundamental to growing a new generation of artists and audiences, equally engaged and respected in making collaborative work.

All the international artists were invited to share work from their country and those sessions, where I had the chance to learn and engage with the latest performances from Uruguay in the morning, South Africa in the afternoon, Uzbekistan in the evening and so many more, were hugely revitalizing.  It reminded me that despite our enormous geographical distances so many of our colleague are engaged in similar conversations: how to challenge institutionalized models which program only a particular ‘type’ of work, broadening gender representation, increasing youth amongst our audiences; debating whether subscription or membership models are more appropriate, how to create better touring opportunities; creating work for children that reflects their present needs, desires and is worthy of their imaginations. There was so much that we have in common but, then again, there were constant reminders that – in places such as Lebanon or in Argentina – the conversations are different. Work is developed in different ways. Process is valued and interrogated and audiences have varying levels of participation and this is different in Australia as it is in Uganda. Even across the United States, regional towns and big city centres have different responses and each are valuable, legitimate and part of the conversation.

In my session I spoke of the work being made by New Zealanders, including Briar Grace Smith, Victor Rodger and Arthur Meek; the various different approaches to audience and community development that were in use at Q, the Basement and Massive (informed through conversations with Angela Green, Elise Sterback and Rochelle Bright) and also the various approaches that we have to performance from kapa haka to The Factory and Generation of Z. The response was overwhelmingly positive; not only because the majority knew that New Zealand was more than a rugby-loving-more-sheep-than-people-nation but were genuinely interested in learning about how we make performance and where potential future collaborations could lead.

Having recently returned from The Edinburgh International and Edinburgh Fringe Festivals, I am more convinced than ever before that New Zealand is a key player on the international stage – not only with other Anglophone nations but with audiences in India, China, Brazil, Greece, Mexico, Serbia, Russia, Rwanda – why should there be any barriers to what could be?

I am so inspired to be back on home soil. To return to New Zealand after six years of living overseas and having had the opportunities and privilege to be a NZ ambassador as an artist. I left Auckland in 2005 to go to Massey University in Palmerston North. I thought at the time my future career was fairly obvious: I would be a vet. Six months later I found you need more than a love of James Herriot to stomach dissecting dead animals in a biology lab. And that’s when I turned back to the Arts. Almost ten years later, I’m back in the city I call home. As Anne said, “Theatre is empathy, theatre is community, theatre is understanding, theatre is holy- it is the transcendent way of life.  It crosses borders and represents the way we, as citizens of the world, will relate in the 21st Century.” And Auckland, right now, well there is nowhere else I’d rather be.

Te Ara –  The Encyclopedia of New Zealand

Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand is launching its latest theme ‘Creative and Intellectual Life’ on 22 October. As part of this, Murray Edmond has written an entry on plays and playwrights. ‘Te ara’ in Maori means ‘the pathway’. Te Ara – The Encyclopedia of New Zealand offers many pathways to understanding New Zealand. It is a comprehensive guide to the country’s peoples, natural environment, history, culture, economy, institutions and society. Te Ara consists of a series of themes, appearing progressively between 2005 and 2014.

More information about Te Ara is available here: http://www.teara.govt.nz/en/about-this-site

Publications

Then It Was Now Again: Selected Critical Writing by Murray Edmond

This book, published by the Atuanui imprint of Titus Books, consists of a selection of essays, reviews, statements, interviews, and letters published between 1972 and 2014, all of which have a focus on poetry, drama and theatre and wider related questions of culture in Aotearoa/New Zealand. The book was launched on Thursday 9^th October at the Shakespeare pub on Albert St, Auckland. For more information, or to order a copy for your library, please contact Atuanui Press: editor@atuanuipress.co.nz

Editorial

Welcome to the third edition of NUTS NZ – the Newsletter for University Theatre Studies New Zealand. The purpose of the newsletter is to help us communicate more effectively as a community of scholars interested in Theatre and Performance. A quick ‘save the date’ to note – Dr. James McKinnon has confirmed that Victoria University will be hosting both the Postgraduate Examiners Meeting and the meeting for the NZ Universities Committee for Theatre/Performance Research on Monday 10^th November. We have an interesting selection of stories and news items for you in this issue of NUTS NZ. However, we do feel this is only a small selection of various events/initiatives/research happening in theatre programmes across the country. The effectiveness of this newsletter depends on you to think ahead and send us news items about any upcoming events or initiatives that you think our wider community should be informed about. We are hoping that you might take a moment to forward this email to your program administrator with a ‘heads up’ about our next deadline. We have one more issue of NUTS NZ before the end of the year which is due for circulation on 30 November 2014. Please send us information by 31 October. Submissions for the final issue for this year should be sent to the NUTS NZ editor Jane Marshall:  j.g.marshall@massey.ac.nz

Kind regards,

NUTS NZ editors: Jane Marshall and Rand Hazou.

NUTS People

In each edition of NUTS NZ we profile an academic and a postgraduate student to show case “our people” and their current research/interests.  It is our pleasure to be profiling Asoc. Prof. Angie Farrow and postgraduate student Robert Gilbert.  NUTS NZ asked each of them to answer the following questions:

• What is your research about?
• What theatre/performances have you seen recently?
• What have you been reading lately?

Associate Professor Dr. Angie Farrow – Massey University

Associate Professor Dr. Angie Farrow – Massey University

Research: I am interested in big stories and what theatre has to do to tell them. In the past several years I have written full-length plays about genocide (Despatch, 2007), identity, community and belonging (Before the Birds, 2009) and river pollution in The Manawatu (The River, 2012). I began my most recent project in Berlin this year where I had a residency in the Centre for Arts and Urbanistics and worked with the local refugee centre in Moabit. The play, called Asylum, focuses on the international refugee problem. It traces the stories of two women, one a right-wing politician’s wife and the other, a refugee from somewhere in the Middle East (the play does not specify place in order to universalise the issues). Somehow their lives intertwine and the narrative provides an opportunity to explore questions about humanitarian responsibility at a time when the refugee problem has hit crisis point.   Although there are multiple characters, (the play is epic in scale) the cast comprises four actors from different ethnicities.

Writing Asylum has been an exhausting experience: entering the lives of people who have suffered loss of home and community or who have witnessed or experienced atrocities, has required a lot of emotional stamina. Refugee stories have filled my dreams and haunted my imaginings: translating them into theatre has thoroughly tested all my skills. But the drive to tell these narratives continues to fuel the process: the project is carried by an urgency that I could not have predicted. I hope to have a final draft of the play completed by the end of this year.

When I am not writing big, absurdly ambitious plays, I seem to be creating very short ones. Right now, I am putting the finishing touches to a book of 14 ten-minute plays called ‘Falling and Other Plays’ to be published in the spring. Short plays usually require less emotional stamina though they can be very time-consuming.

Theatre: Constellations by Nick Payne and directed by Massey Theatre tutor, Rachel Lenart (Circa Theatre, Wellington). It explores issues of chance, choice, coincidence and multiple possibilities in the trajectory of a young couple’s relationship. It asks us to compare the constellations of this relationship with those of the universe. “Every choice, every decision you’ve ever made and never made exists in an unimaginably vast ensemble of parallel universes.” (Constellations). This is a fascinating play, intelligently and elegantly directed by Rachel.

The Mercy Clause: Written by award-winning playwright, Philip Brathwaite (Centrepoint Theatre, Palmerston North), it features a young lawyer whose new client is suspected of killing his father. Was this a mercy killing? The play cleverly explores what it means to be merciful, yet, it provides no answers, only ambiguities and grey areas about the complexity of human behaviour and motivation. “Ethics and morals and right and wrong – they’re just words. They just mean what you decide they mean.” (The Mercy Clause)

Reading: Sculpting in Time: The Great Russian Filmmaker Discusses his Art by Tarkovsky. The book sets down Tarovsky’s thoughts and memories and reveals the original inspiration for several of his films. It is a wonderful read for anyone interested in the creative process.

The Crime of Sheila McGough by Janet Malcolm. The book provides a series of amazing insights about a legal narrative that took place in America. Sheila McGough, a lawyer, was convicted of crimes she did not commit and Malcolm’s examination of her case is revealing, compassionate, and fascinating. I have become a fan of Malcom’s unconventional reportage because she manages to convey the complexities and contradictions that reveal her fascination about what makes us tick.

Robert Gilbert – Post graduate student, Massey University

Robert Gilbert – Post graduate student, Massey University

Research: A couple of years ago, for a postgrad’ research project, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to combine traditional European story-form with Māori cultural dynamics by writing a play for children. The result was so personally rewarding that under the expert guidance of award-winning playwright and academic, Dr Angie Farrow, I sought to develop my writing further by attempting to pen a full-length play for adults. My recently completed master’s thesis looked at transgender representation in theatre, and the theatrical considerations in writing a play that might broaden the debate around transgender issues in New Zealand. This fascinating journey began with lengthy interviews of transgender kiwis. Apart from authentic source material for the play, the interviews gave me a rare insight into a word of marginalised people who are often ridiculed and misunderstood. The research included an examination of transgenderism, the theatrical representation of transgender characters, and cross-dressing in theatre from the ancient Greeks to Shakespeare and beyond. I also explored theatre forms and examples of dramatic narrative to guide my thinking and my own writing. The thesis included the play I wrote: Trans Tasmin. I was delighted with the opportunity to have two workshops of the script, one in The Dark Room in Palmerston North, and one at The Court Theatre in Christchurch. These were incredibly rewarding experiences and I was thrilled with the outcome. Subsequently, a professional theatre company has shown interest in the script, and with their guidance and support I am currently writing a new draft and crossing my fingers that, ultimately, it will be staged.

Theatre: I have been privileged to see nearly 30 productions so far this year. What a blessing to be in a position to have the soul fed so regularly. I have been inspired, moved and challenged. There have been so many highlights. These are but a few:

• Needles and Opium – devised and directed by Robert Lepage, at the New Zealand Festival in Wellington. What a genius theatre mind he has. Truly innovative.
• Black Faggot by Victor Rodger, also at the New Zealand Festival. Genuinely funny writing that cuts to the quick. Prejudices are exposed in a deceptively simple theatrical framework. Brilliant.
• Titus Andronicus at Shakespeare’s Globe in London. A bold and bloody production directed by Lucy Bailey who really maximises the Globe space. Deeply moving performances. Three and a half hours seemed like minutes. Breathtaking.
• Medea at The National Theatre in London. An inspired modern-dress production. Helen McCrory was devastating in the title role.
• There were three stellar performances at The Court Theatre in Christchurch which would be at home on any international stage: Eilish Moran in End of The Rainbow, Mark Hadlow in When the Rain Stops Falling, and Benjamin Hoetjes in Blood Brothers.

Reading: Crave by Sarah Kane. One of only five plays by this troubled genius. Profound, complex, disturbing, and heartbreaking.

Winter of the World by Ken Follett. The second instalment of a wonderfully researched historical trilogy. Epic escapism.

Shakespeare’s Restless World by Neil MacGregor. The discovery of Elizabethan England by examining relics and artefacts of the age. Absorbing, insightful and compelling.

Events & Initiatives:

Re-storying disability through the arts: Providing a counterpoint to mainstream narratives

On Friday 8^th August the University of Auckland’s School of Critical Studies in Education and Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre (CRUAT) hosted a half day symposium exploring inclusive practices in storytelling, theatre and film. The programme included presentations and workshops by three communityarts practitioners: Keith Park, Paula Crimmens and Hank Snell and was chaired by Rod Wills and Molly Mullen, Lecturers in the Faculty of Education. One aim of the event was to start a productive exchange between students, researchers, artists and other practitioners. In response to the presentations, attendees were invited to discuss the ways in which the arts can provide a counterpoint to mainstream narratives about disability. Based on this discussion future symposia will explore a range of issues and practices in inclusive and disability arts.

The Critical Research Unit in Applied Theatre aims to serve as an international focus for research in applied theatre. Its activities include a wide range of research projects, events and symposia. For more information see: http://www.education.auckland.ac.nz/en/about/schools-departments/crstie/crstie-research/crstie-research-units/cruat.html, or contact p.o’connor@auckland.ac.nz or m.mullen@auckland.ac.nz.

Theatre to Help Firms deal with workplace bullying

A reading of Edward’s ‘In the Red Corner’ at the Theatre Lab at Massey, Albany.

Feelings and emotions are often marginalised in the rational world of business, but Massey University’s expressive arts and business programmes hope to change all that with the development of a play about workplace bullying. Dr Margot Edwards, a senior lecturer with the School of Management, wanted to create an effective intervention for dealing with bullying at work. Instead of producing the usual seminar, she decided to write a play. “I wanted to actually create something interactive to get people thinking in a different way about how bullying makes people feel and what the reasons behind it might be,” Dr Edwards says. Now Dr Edwards has teamed up with the university’s theatre studies programme to get her play, titled ‘In the Red Corner’, ready for performance. Students from the Massey University Theatre Society workshopped it through an open reading in the Albany campus’ state-of-the-art Theatre Lab. School of English and Media Studies lecturer Dr Rand Hazou says the project has been a great opportunity for the business and expressive arts programmes to collaborate. Dr Hazou says the play fits well within the tradition of applied theatre, which he has a particular interest in. “We introduced a new Applied Theatre paper here at Massey last semester – it looks at theatre applied outside conventional performance spaces as a way of bringing about social change. “When Margot told me she had written a play about bullying and she wanted to develop it so it could be presented in workplaces to spark discussion, I thought, ‘Great, this is exactly what I’m interested in – theatre with a real-life application that tries to bring about change in the way we see things.’” ‘In the Red Corner’ is set in the fictional Blackrock General Hospital and shows the interaction between a bullying director of nursing and a nurse union representative. The content is inspired by the research findings of one of Dr Edwards’ PhD students whose thesis looks at workplace bullying in nursing. Dr Edwards says she first began to think about writing plays after using role play when teaching leadership skills.

There are already plans to perform ‘In the Red Corner’ at a harassment workshop later in the year and Dr Edwards hopes customised versions of the play will be taken into workplaces where bullying is known to occur. She says her hope is that workers “walk out of the room as different people to when they walked in.” Down the track, both Dr Edwards and Dr Hazou would like to see Massey offer the services of an acting troupe to businesses, with theatre students being paid to perform thought-provoking plays in workplaces around the country.

Free Theatre Christchurch

Free Theatre Christchurch (est. 1979) is New Zealand’s longest running producer of experimental theatre. It was established by a group of staff and students at the University of Canterbury who wanted to create an alternative to the Court Theatre (for a brief history of Free Theatre see: http://www.freetheatre.org.nz/a-brief-history.html).

While the company has continuously run as an independent professional theatre company, its founder Peter Falkenberg was instrumental in establishing the Theatre and Film Studies Department (TAFS) at the University of Canterbury in 1997, which went on to develop the strongest postgraduate research culture of its kind in the country. Although remaining an independent legal and financial entity from the university, Free Theatre kept a close association with Theatre and Film  Studies for two principle reasons: the Department provided in-kind support for Free Theatre (space and technical assistance) in  recognition of Free Theatre’s contribution to high quality research and  teaching in the Department; and members of Free Theatre ensemble have, in different capacities, all been involved in performance research, which helps maintain the integrity of Free Theatre’s  experimental spirit. Creating, writing about, and teaching theatre and  film leads to a dynamic, exciting, mutually beneficial environment.

Since 2008, TAFS has been under constant attack from university management, surviving two attempts to disestablish the department. Despite surviving one such attack in 2012 (with the university council voting to retain the department because of its extraordinary research and community outputs) another proposal in 2013 was successful. The department will close in 2015.
However Free Theatre – which counts among its members former TAFS staff and students – has a strong reputation for innovation which has only grown in profile in the post-quake environment of Christchurch. As a result, the company has been offered the first arts-practice tenancy in the restored Arts Centre. In collaboration with the Arts Circus, Free Theatre will present a programme of new works, an education programme and provide space and facilities for festivals and events.

The company’s major work for 2014 will be Kafka’s Amerika and will be the first in the new space which is called The Gym:
Following on from the success of I Sing The Body Electric, which was named Best Theatre for 2012 by The Press, Free Theatre is laying the groundwork for a new theatrical project that takes further our experimentation with the latest available technology: Kafka’s Amerika. Conceived as an interactive multimedia theatre production, this innovative project explores the all-pervasive America of our present as achieved utopia or nightmare. How has the “American Century” (just passed) come to dominate our lives, the ways we think and act, and how might we in New Zealand move beyond the limitations of this mindset and forge a new identity in this century? These questions are especially pertinent to Christchurch, where our notion of who, what and where we are has been shaken to the core, inviting a dynamic and urgent conversation about the multiple possible futures we might work towards as we embark on the creation of a new city. In Kafka’s unfinished novel Amerika, these hopes and fears are symbolised by large angels that dominate a theatre that goes beyond its limits. Another connection we want to draw is to Paul Klee’s Angel of History as interpreted by Walter Benjamin, taking further an exploration we started in our most recent production Canterbury Tales. As part of the Kafka’s Amerika project we want to engage visual and sculptural artists to create angels that speak to the current situation. These angels will serve as interactive touchstones for the performance. The last chapter of Kafka’s Amerika, “The Nature Theatre of Oklahoma” serves as a foundation and starting point for our theatrical exploration. Other texts by Kafka will also be used as well as fictional imaginations from John Donne to Andy Warhol and his latest disciple Lady Gaga. The idea of surveillance by American agencies will also play a part in the conception of our theatrical enterprise as a kind of digital panopticon that will be created with designers, filmmakers and multi-media artists. The controversial whistleblower Edward Snowden will feature in our explorations as a possible stand-in for the protagonist in Kafka’s novel.

 Some recent media links on The Gym:

• http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/player/20143475
• http://www.stuff.co.nz/the-press/news/10317660/Gym-back-on-its-feet-at-Arts-Centre
• Like them on Facebook.  https://www.facebook.com/FreeTheatre?fref=ts

 Programmes

 New creative activism paper at Massey launching 2015

Massey University’s School of English & Media Studies will lead the way in Aotearoa/New Zealand arts education by launching a new paper in creative activism in 2015. Launching simultaneously at Wellington and Auckland campuses in first semester 2015, 139.333 Creativity in the Community will immerse teams of students in the art and science of creative communication for social change, with guidance from experienced Expressive Arts educators. Students will be able to make a film or documentary, stage a collaborative community theatre event, use creative writing, or combine all of these, to work with a community group on a real issue. Wellington course coordinator Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley said “communication activism pedagogy is an emerging trend internationally. It involves teaching students to apply their creative communication knowledge and skills to work with community partners to promote social justice.” The Creativity in the Community course will equip students to plan, implement and evaluate these kinds of applied arts projects, giving them hands on experience in delivering creative activism but also requiring them to understand the ethical and managerial dimensions. Dr Tilley said there was a strong research and scholarship base behind creative activism that students will connect with in ‘Creativity in the Community’ to understand how to make their arts interventions effective and compelling. “Internationally, students have worked on issues such as gender inequality and violence, ethnic and racial prejudice and discrimination, and health disparities and issues affecting those who live in poverty. Our students will research their communities and team up with local NGOs to choose projects that respond to genuine need. We know that this benefits the students as well as the communities, as service learning has been proven to develop skills in teamwork, project management, risk assessment, communication, professionalism and a host of other competencies that will ensure our students hit the ground running when they enter the workforce. A big plus of creative activism pedagogy is that it also develops students as engaged citizens who feel empowered to use their voice effectively to create a better world.”

Dr Tilley will coordinate Creativity in the Community at Wellington, while at Albany campus it will be led by Dr Rand Hazou, a specialist in applied and documentary theatre who has international research links with social justice theatre projects, as well as strong connections with theatre-for-social change groups in the Auckland region.

Recent Seminars

“Emancipated spectatorship and subjective drift: understanding the work of the spectator in Erik Ehn’s Soulographie”  by Dr Emma Willis (Auckland University).

Erik Ehn’s ‘Soulographie’

At LaMaMa Theatre in New York, 2012, Erik Ehn staged Soulographie, a cycle of seventeen of his plays each concerned with genocide. The project was marked by what Ehn calls ‘subjective drift,’ a shared contemplative practice where ‘I’ and ‘you,’ are ‘nicely confused.’ This presentation closely examines the ethical force of an aesthetic-contemplative mode in theatre through a study of subjective drift as interpretive and emancipatory work in the sense meant by Jacques Rancière when he speaks of an ‘emancipated spectator.’ In reflecting upon Soulographie I ask how the ‘emancipated spectator’ might be understood in more fully theatrical terms than those Rancière outlines and, furthermore, how such a figure – and the relationships that constitute him or her – might be read ethically. Such ethical relations are not dependent on a physical reconfiguration of theatrical space but are enacted when the theatrical subject itself – genocide – is emancipated through theatrical language. In its extremity, genocide is a provocative lens through which to ask what might be required of spectators and what is at stake when we speak of emancipation.