Calling
all creative rangatahi! We know you have great ideas about how to make the world a better place. Turn them into a short film, poem, story, song or piece of theatre, and you could win cash prizes. Check out http://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/create1world-2020/ for all the details of the 2020 Create1World Competition. It’s NOW OPEN and you have until June 2, 2020 to get your entries in.
Theatre lecturer and playwright Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley has notched up an artistic trifecta with her third consecutive win at the British Theatre Challenge, this time with a dark comedy about the horse racing industry.
Dr Tilley, from the School of English and Media Studies, has won numerous awards locally and internationally for her plays – often using humour and absurdity to address serious social, ethical and environmental issues. She describes her latest winning short play, titled Fabio the Great, “a hilarious horse-eye view on humanity”.
In it, three horse characters muse on and argue about the perils of their existence while providing an comical, yet insightful, commentary on human behaviour. Fabio is the name of the stallion who spouts platitudes about the thrill of winning and being a champion, despite the pain and risks he endures. His equine companions (a mare and a gelding) urge him to escape before he, too, loses his manhood and fighting spirit to the emasculating scalpel.
The 10-minute play (which won Best Play at Pint Sized Plays New Zealand earlier this year in Queenstown) was one of five winners selected from around 300 entries from around the world for the UK competition run by Sky Blue Theatre Company. Each play will be professionally produced, performed and filmed in London in the first week of October, something Dr Tilley is thrilled about as there a few opportunities to professionally stage short plays in New Zealand.
Dr Tilley, who was winner in 2017 with her play Waiting for Go – about people’s addiction to cars – and in 2018 for Bunnies and Wolves – a reality show critique of the public/private health system, says she likes to use humour to get audiences thinking freshly about issues and aspects of culture that are accepted and taken for granted. Like horse racing.
“The play is a hard punch of anti-animal-cruelty, even to the extent of describing the death toll by over training of two-year-old horses, the brutal medical procedures, the doping to keep an injured horse racing), yet it’s wrapped in the soft glove of character-based comedy,” she says. “There’s actually a lot going on for a 10-minute play that deliberately and disarmingly starts off with an inane fart joke!”
The recognition for the play confirms, she says, that “political work – work that in this case has a strong message about animal rights, with some feminism thrown in for good measure – can win open competitions”.
Not that she is aiming to judge people who like horse racing. Rather, she hopes the play might inspire them to think more critically about the industry beyond the glamour of women dressing up for a race meet in heels, frocks and fascinators, the beauty and speed of the horses and big money to be made as a punter or industry participant. After all, she once had her own part to play – as a student in Australia in her 20s, she earned money to fund her studies working as an actor and model promoting horse racing on the Gold Coast.
On a more philosophical note, she says the play touches on ideas of ecological equity, questioning the notion of why humans put themselves at the top of a species pyramid, and the assumed narcissism of seeing ourselves as superior to all other species.
“All three of my works that have made the winners’ list in this competition have been political works – the first one about climate change, the second about public health, and now this one with a strong message against the horse racing industry. To me, this shows that being political doesn’t disadvantage a theatre work in any way – the works are comedic, but it’s comedy with a message.”
Dr Tilley, who rigorously researched the racing industry and equine welfare before writing the play, says she hopes her success will reassure those of her students who “seem to think that being funny and being political are mutually exclusive. But the long history of political satire shows they are elements that are stronger together.”
Dr Tilley says she’d like to see “a whole new generation of expert satirists – I think it is an increasingly important way to speak truth to power and get people thinking critically. I hope this encourages more young people to use the arts to get their own social justice measures across. It is possible. It works.”
Creative activism on the move at Massey
Theatre to provoke new thinking on climate change
English and Media Studies alumnus Layal Moore has just kicked off Mooreish Creations, an online creative enterprise that can be accessed here.
Mooreish Creations is a culmination of Layal Moore’s best creative work to date. It arose from a strong desire to share her work and incite collaboration with others. For her, art and writing is a means of living and is very much inseparable. It provides a form of catharsis, yet also yields self-affirmation and reassurance.
Layal says: “I create to live and I live to create. This stuff just ‘comes’ to me, who knows from where, but it’s a means of processing. I’ll never sell my creative soul”.
A new Massey University course looks set to radically reframe what we traditionally consider in the study of literature.
Novelist and Massey creative writing lecturer, Dr Tina Makereti (Te Ātiawa, Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Ngāti Rangatahi) has created a unique course entitled ‘Oceanic Literatures of Aotearoa: Ngā Tuhinga Kōrero o te Moana Nui a Kiwa.’
The course is being launched for second semester study both on campus and by distance and will allow students to explore customary Māori and Pasifika creation narratives, visual narratives and oral traditions.
Dr Makereti says when considering Aotearoa’s literary past, people tend to think of the first Māori literature as being produced in the 1960s and 1970s. But she says Māori and Pacific cultures were weaving narratives long before English explorers arrived on the scene. “Written literature was never alien to us because our ancestors were already using sophisticated coding built into carving, weaving and ta moko to tell our stories. Our wharenui are libraries of stories built into the walls and into the very faces of our tipuna.”
She says it is time academia acknowledged this visual communication is as much literature as oral and written forms and she believes students, especially Māori and Pacific students, need the opportunity to study the richness of their literary heritage.
“Viewing Māori and Pasifika literatures as a recent development devalues them – we can see this in the lack of courses on this subject available nationally, and the lack of research in this area. By re-contextualising the history of our literatures, I hope to re-energise interest in our contemporary writing too.”
Along with studying pre-colonial literature, students will also look at contemporary Māori and Pasifika stories and poems in English and critically evaluate how cultural and historical bias is embedded in reading and writing.
Full details of the course can be found here and it will commence on July 15.
Māori literature deserves academic recognition
Excellence in Māori literature celebrated
Writing an internationally acclaimed essay on the feminist themes of gothic novel Frankenstein may not be typical of how mothers spend precious evenings when their youngsters are in bed.
But for Helen Peters – Bachelor of Arts graduate and mother of four – immersing herself in writing about the social significance of a story about a mad scientist and his monster was bliss.
She graduated from the College of Humanities and Social Sciences (in absentia) last week and says being able to combine her passion for studying literature and history with motherhood was demanding but well worthwhile – for her personal fulfilment and being a role model to her children. The way she calmly deals with intermittent requests for rice crackers, ‘Gwain-Waves’ and drinks of water while discussing her intellectual life is evidence of her juggling panache.
Helen began her degree by distance three years ago by enrolling in one paper when she was living in Australia with four small children underfoot.
“I chose Massey because I could do it extramurally and I’d heard really positive things about the distance programme from friends,” she says.
She got an A+ for her first paper on Academic Writing, which boosted her confidence and encouraged her to continue studying.
Graduating is a milestone but being awarded a prestigious Highly Commended Undergraduate Award from the Ireland-based organisation was a highlight last year. She was one of four Massey BA students (the only ones from any New Zealand university) to receive the honour, after Massey lecturers impressed by her writing urged her to enter.
Discovering Frankenstein during a Gothic literature paper was a revelation that led to her award-winning essay. She’d had preconceived ideas about it from movies and popular culture. “I thought of it as a man with bolts in his head and a crazy scientist – a story that’s all about men. It is narrated by a man but it’s actually about women, and women’s place in society as the moral compass,” she says. “If you try and ignore this – like Victor Frankenstein does when he creates his monster – it leads to chaos and the breakdown of relationships and family. It was written in the 1800s by Mary Shelley, who grew up without a mother.
“I will never read another book again without seeing so much more – even one paper opens your world.”
The key to studying with young children, she says, is to have a great support network.
“It’s essential that you have someone who understands that you need that time to study, and also to reflect on what you’re studying as well – it’s not just reading something out of book and then regurgitating it. You’ve got to have that time to think it through and process it.”
Her husband Carl is her main support. “He jokes he’s supporting me so that one day I’ll have an awesome job and be able to buy him fancy golf clubs!”
Helen treats the time her kids are at school as her working day, from 9am to 2.30pm. From 7pm to 9pm, her husband helps by cooking dinner, bathing and putting children to bed.
“Even though all I wanted to do at the end of the day was curl up on the couch and watch TV, I would study while they were in bed.”
Her advice for students with young kids? Find that time of day that works best for you to study. If you do not have a partner as support, maybe extended family or friends can take kids for a few hours, she says. “Don’t be afraid to ask for time to study. It’s not selfish to ask for help – remember that the end result will benefit everybody.”
Another key to success in studying with kids is that “you have to have that real passion and drive for it,” says Helen, who wants to be a role model for her offspring, aged ten, eight and twins aged six. “When I’m studying I say to them ‘you can see mum making a big effort – one day you will go to higher education too’.”
With a BA under her belt, Helen plans to follow her passion for New Zealand history to do a master’s thesis on the oral histories of women in the mother and baby homes of the 1950s, 60s and 70s – a topic that has had little attention to date. She wants to examine how women were treated in these homes, inspired after seeing the 2009 New Zealand film Pieces of My Heart.
“As the tide of social mores was turning in 60s when birth control became more readily available, attitudes started to shift from conservative ideas about unmarried mothers into the attitudes we more or less see today,” Helen says.
“It’s no big deal having a baby out of wedlock today. I want to look at that era and have something tangible for those women to show; ‘this is what happened to me’ – for others to know about.”
While she senses some might question; “Why dredge up sad stories?” Helen believes women spend so much of history on the side lines. “There’s so much about women that the history books don’t record because they are more focused on men. Yet the history of women can tell you so much about the prevalent attitudes of society.”
She wants to find 20 women to interview who were accommodated in maternity homes around the country. “Girls would be sent ‘up north’ and come back seven months later, and nothing else was said. It was hushed up because of shame. As women, we want to talk about these big things. It would have been exceptionally painful to have had and held her baby and had it taken away, then go away and never talk about it.”
With her sights set on becoming a full-time academic engaged in teaching, research and writing, Helen believes the study of history – and humanities and social sciences in general – is vital.
“As a historian I think we live in extremely exciting – or interesting – times right now. You’ve got Trump, North Korea and more – one day I think people will look back at this time and think ‘what shall we read to understand what was happening?’.”
Her academic goals and dreams have evolved since she first began her BA journey, enrolling straight out of school in a law and arts degrees at Victoria University, eventually deciding law was not for her, but that she loved history. Helen studied on and off for two years until she moved north to be near her parents to catch her breath after a difficult relationship and mental health issues (post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and anxiety).
Her life direction changed when she met her husband, got engaged and pregnant, resuming study with a new sense of direction and a growing family.
Helen is a keen champion of the BA, despite the negative attitudes she’s encountered. “There’s this feeling that a BA is just fluffing around reading books or sitting around talking about poetry. What people don’t realise is that it teaches you to critically think about people and society.”
She believes it is important we have people who can “read books, peel back the layers and see what a novel is saying about society. And people who study history – imagine if we didn’t record the Nuremburg trials after WW II and any other atrocities? All of this is important. Engineering helps to build things, but it doesn’t tell us about what society is like.”
She sees plenty of fertile areas for further research and envisages herself writing history books on “byways” of New Zealand history, including the lives of women as criminals, and women in mental health institutions. In her own family, a relative was put away for her ‘uncontrollable rage’. “What is that exactly? How many women were put away to be out of their husband’s way?”
Studying history has the potential, she says, to spark interest and awareness about tricky areas of our past and to track social change. “Women are expected to be silent – you have a baby and it gets adopted out and you can’t say anything. Or somebody gropes you at work and you have to be silent if you want that job.”
That’s why the history of women is her focus. “It’s a real privilege to do a masters and give a voice to these sorts of silences.”
Helen exemplifies what’s achievable for mature students with families. Her children enjoy coming to the Manawatū campus library to help her carry books, as well as the enriching conversations her study sparks on diverse topics and ideas.
Nurturing the life of the mind is essential counter to the everyday challenges and busy-ness of family life. “When I sit down at my computer and start writing I feel ‘I just love this!’.”
(Helen graduated in absentia due to the logistics of family life, but plans to cross the stage to be capped for her masters).
CCTA Aotearoa’s Nine Playwrights
With only a few days to go until Still Waving: Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa 2017, we are excited to bring you the full programme.
On October 23, we will be staging nine short plays at 2pm in the Massey University Wellington Theatre Laboratory:
There will also be readings of the three winning pieces in our Climate Change Theatre Action Creative Writing Competition, and a short talk from Generation Zero about what you can do to pitch in in the fight against climate change.
Still Waving is a paperless event, so please download our full programme in a PDF file, here for more detail of cast and crew: Still Waving Final Programme PDF 3
If you haven’t got your ticket yet, get one now from EventFinda: https://www.eventfinda.co.nz/2017/still-waving-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa-2017/wellington
And don’t forget, you can also join the ‘Becoming Penguin’ Performance Walk just prior to Still Waving if you’re keen – details at http://sites.massey.ac.nz/expressivearts/2017/08/30/becoming-penguin-a-performance-walk/
Write, inspire and win! As part of our Climate Change Theatre Action 2017 event, ‘Still Waving,’ the Massey University School of English & Media Studies and Pukeahu ki Tua: Think Differently Wellington are proud to announce a climate action creative writing competition for new and emerging writers.
Prizes:
1st place – $300
2nd place – $200
3rd place – $100
Thematic guidelines
The creative writing competition aligns with Climate Change Theatre Action’s global theme, which is that “climate action requires a hopeful vision of the future”.
CCTA 2017 asks the question: “How can we turn the challenges of climate change into opportunities?”
We are looking for creative writing that provides hope, inspires positive action, and illuminates individual and collective solutions. There is still time to change the course of climate change: it is not too late, but it will require a collective will the likes of which planet earth has seldom seen. How can you use your writing, your particular voice, to help people visualise, embrace and achieve that change? What specific images can we find to illuminate why people should care about the environment? How can we move people without preaching to them or becoming didactic?
Politics is a surface in which transformation comes about as much because of pervasive changes in the depths of the collective imagination as because of visible acts, though both are necessary. And though huge causes sometimes have little effect, tiny ones occasionally have huge consequences. . . (Rebecca Solnit)
Genre:
We are accepting five types of entry:
To enter:
Please email your entry in the body of an email to climateactionwriting@gmail.com by 5pm (NZ time) on Friday October 6, 2017.
Entry is open to all new and emerging writers. We take this to mean anyone who has not published a book. By entering you agree to publication of your entry and your name in social media. You may enter as many different items as you like. Please include your full name and the city or town you live in, with your entry.
The judge:
We are grateful to Dr Ingrid Horrocks from the School of English & Media Studies for agreeing to judge the Still Waving Climate Writing competition. Ingrid’s creative publications include two collections of poetry, a number of personal essays, and a genre-bending travel book.
More about Still Waving:
Still Waving, our 2017 Climate Change Theatre Action Aotearoa event, will take place on October 23 at Massey Wellington campus. There will be plays, readings, a performance art installation, and of course the prize-giving announcement of the fabulous winners of this competition! Still Waving is part of the global Climate Change Theatre Action 2017, which involves 50 selected plays (including two from our school) and more than 180 events in 41 countries. This is the second time we have participated in CCTA and we are delighted to be back! Check it all out at: https://www.facebook.com/events/163701054197372/
New Plymouth author, reviewer and arts critic David Hill has been named Massey University’s literary Artist-in-Residence for 2016. Mr Hill will take up the position in later this month and will be living in a self-contained flat at the Square Edge Community Arts Centre on the Square until mid-July.
Co-sponsored by Mas
sey University and the Palmerston North City Council, the visiting artist programme is a unique opportunity to support community engagement between artists in creative writing, theatre and the media arts, which includes film-making.
Mr Hill is delighted to to be awarded the reseidency and is grateful for the time it will provide to focus on his writing projects. “I’m also looking forward to being involved in Massey’s new BA Creative Writing major, which is being introduced in 2016, and especially the chance to work with high school students who may be interested in taking up this course in the future.”
Senior lecturer in Creative Writing Thom Conroy says, “Massey is really lucky to have David as the literary artist for 2016. In addition to having experience with a wide range of writers and extensive publishing accomplishments to his name, David is also in the increasingly rare position of being an author who supports himself entirely by his own writing. These characteristics make him an ideal liaison between Massey and the greater Palmerston North community. We can’t wait to have him settled in the Square Edge flat, and into his office in the newly refurbished Sir Geoffrey Peren Building.”
His novels for teenagers and children have been published in over a dozen countries. He is a past winner of the Esther Glen Medal and the New Zealand Post Children’s Book Awards. In 2010, he was Writer in Residence at the University of Iowa in the United States. While serving as Artist-in-Residence he intends to work on a Young Adult novel set during World War II, as well as a picture book based on the life of New Zealand aviator Jean Batten.
Mr Hill will also lead a panel on Young Adult fiction at the Palmerston North City Library on May 20, as part of Off The Page, a joint Massey University-Palmerston North City Library writing series, which has been running for over a decade. The panel will also feature writers Fleur Beale and Anna Mackenzie. Free and open to the public, Off The Page brings some of New Zealand’s finest writers to the Manawatū, including Witi Ihimaera, Elizabeth Knox, Bill Manhire, Karlo Mila, Owen Marshall, Tusiata Avia, James George and Elizabeth Smither.
Further information on the Off The Page events can be found here.
Inspired by our innovative Expressive Arts curriculum and its focus on ‘performing the change you want to see’, Massey University College of Humanities & Social Sciences and the New Zealand Centre for Global Studies are proud to present #create1world, the first Creative Activism & Global Citizenship initiative in New Zealand.
This conference, competition and think-tank for senior highschool students will be held from 9am to 3pm, on July 1, 2016, at Massey University’s Wellington campus.
If you are in Year 11, 12 or 13, we invite you to first of all to enter our competition. It aligns with NCEA for Media Studies, English, Drama and Music so we’re sure there will be a category that you can enter.
Then, come along to the conference day on July 1, and be inspired by some of the most exciting artists of our time, and hear about their work using art to cross borders, create peace, solve planetary problems and connect diverse peoples.
The day will kick off with a global linkup showcasing creative artists (celebrity musicians, painters, filmmakers, actors and more) both local and international, who are committed to creating unity and justice through their music, theatre, and media work.
Then we’ll hear from Kiwi students – the finalists in our competition will be invited to present your own creative activism work in the areas of media studies, music, creative writing and drama, and we’ll announce winners and award prizes.
Finally, join a creative brainstorm where your ideas are heard and recorded – you could really make a difference to our future and our world.
See more detail at our website massey.ac.nz/create1world
You can also follow us on Twitter at https://twitter.com/team1world or Facebook at https://www.facebook.com/create1world/
We look forward to seeing your creative entries and to welcoming you to the #create1world discussion on July 1.
Writers Week is fast approaching. In addition to every other excellent New Zealand Festival happening, from 8—13 March you can also get your fill of stimulating discussion in Wellington’s Embassy, BATS and Circa Theatres.
Packing quite some punch is the Gala Showcase: Fighting Talk on Thursday 10 March. Five writers who have never appeared on stage together before will share their personal stories on the theme of ‘rapprochement’ {noun: the development of friendlier relations between countries or groups}. Robert Dessaix, Mariko Tamaki, Etgar Keret, Courtney Sina Meredith and Sally Gardner are coming from all corners of the globe to be in Wellington, and each have a tale of conflict, and possibly also of resolution, to tell.
Writers Week includes sessions on running and the science of endurance, to genetics and brain surgery, selling books, special effects, slam poetry and magical worlds.
Visit the Festival website to see a full list of events: http://www.festival.co.nz/2016/writers-week/
