Book strikes right anti-colonial note

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white vanishing coverA book by an English & Media Studies staff member has been described as “a powerful statement of anti-colonialism” by an international reviewer.
In a review just published in Ariel: A review of international English literature, Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley’s 2012 book White Vanishing is called “a valuable document within the arena of Australian cultural historiography”.
White Vanishing is a longitudinal critical survey of a prevalent trope within Australian culture, the ‘lost in the bush’ myth. The book argues for reading this mythology (popularised in movies such as Picnic at Hanging Rock) differently to literal or nationalistic interpretations, by focusing on its often overlooked racial, gendered and colonialist ideology.
The reviewer, Australian fiction writer Giulia Giuffrè, notes White Vanishing is “well researched and thorough in its survey of the literature in and about the topic,” containing “a great deal of useful material and thought-provoking arguments” as well as insights that are “perceptive and shaming”. It is also, Giuffrè notes, something of a “juggernaut”.
Dr Tilley, surprisingly, agrees with the latter criticism. “Absolutely, it’s a warship of a book – and in a way it had to be. It’s putting an argument that although not controversial within particular academic circles is not likely to be at all popular with many Australians. It’s suggesting that the common characterisation of Australian culture as favouring ‘fairness’ might be better understood in terms of fairness of skin than fairness in treating others. If you’re going to make a critique like that you need your evidence thoroughly marshalled. So my aim with the book was to put the supportability of the argument beyond doubt – and then elsewhere in other ways I can have the liberty of perhaps expressing it in more subtle terms.”
Dr Tilley also agreed that the book was inherently anti-colonial. “Absolutely the book has a political stance – everything is political, including academic research and, as I point out in the book, creative writing, film, theatre and media. My argument is that any kind of creative or discursive output is enhanced if it recognises its political stance consciously, rather than pretending neutrality.”
Dr Tilley said that, since the book’s publication, she had noticed some shifts in public understanding of the ‘lost in the bush myth’ in Australia. “There have now been some fantastic artistic and creative deconstructions of the myth, particularly in the theatre. Sisters Grimm’s The Sovereign Wife used parody to skewer the ‘lost in the bush myth’ in ways that were much more entertaining than my book – but culturally speaking, we need both forms of engagement with our mythology, the detailed deconstruction and the lampooning, and each contributes to the possibility and the interpretation of the other.”
White Vanishing is published by Rodopi and available at: http://www.rodopi.nl/senj.asp?BookId=CC+152

Post-script! Another review of White Vanishing (in the journal Critical Race and Whiteness Studies) has just been published and is available at: http://www.acrawsa.org.au/files/ejournalfiles/212Iyer20141.pdf  Reviewer Sumedha Iyer of The University of New South Wales says White Vanishing is “engaging and rigorous in its analysis, and does a great deal to fill the epistemological gap in disappearance mythology in Australian literature. Even for readers who are not au fait with literary textual analysis or whiteness theory, Tilley’s book makes it easy to trace the insidious and enduring inheritance of the white vanishing trope in terms of its origins in the oppressive function of colonialism.”

Research round-up – from ‘Harry’ to the Holocaust, EMS research is diverse and defining

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harry

Oscar Kightley as Harry Anglesea in the 2013 TV3 crime drama ‘Harry’.

Six English & Media Studies researchers took advantage of the Winter teaching break to present their research at key international conferences from Oslo to Australia last month, on topics ranging from Facebook to forgiveness.

Dr Brian McDonnell presented a paper to the New Zealand Studies Association’s “Across the Pacific” conference in Oslo. The theme of the conference was New Zealand and the Pacific, and Dr McDonnell presented on “Harry: New Zealand’s First Polynesian-centred Television Crime Drama”. His talk analysed the TV show Harry, directed by Chris Dudman and broadcast as 6 1-hour episodes by TV3 in 2013. It featured Oscar Kightley as the eponymous Harry Anglesea, a tough detective with the Major Crimes Unit in South Auckland, as well as Sam Neill as Major Crimes Unit boss Jim ‘Stocks’ Stockton.  Dr McDonnell spoke about the genre links between this show and well-known overseas examples, such as Cracker, Prime Suspect, Luther, Forbrydelsen (Danish: The Killing), The Wire, Wallander and Underbelly. He explored the genesis of Harry, especially the role of its creator and producer Steve O’Meagher, and how it broke new ground by having a Samoan protagonist.

Dr Sy Taffel presented a paper called Antisocial|Asocial|Associations: Mapping the Social in Social Media to the Australia and New Zealand Communication Association conference in Melbourne. The paper, which is being published in the peer reviewed conference proceedings, argued that media have always been social structures, so queried what’s new and different about the types of social connection made by social media? Dr Taffel used a unique combination of political economy, software studies and actor network theory approaches to answer this question, and argued that each approach reveals overlapping ways in which social media commodify and monetise social ties such as community and friendship. A particular focus was on Facebook, which famously claims in numerous marketing materials to be making the Web more ‘social’. Dr Taffel challenged the assumed meaning of the ‘social’ in ‘social media’, exploring existing definitions of the terms alongside the range of online content the term is understood to refer to.

Dr Allen Meek presented a paper to the ‘Future of Past: Representing the Holocaust, Genocide and Mass Trauma in the 21st Century’ Conference in Melbourne. The title of the paper was “Media, Trauma and Biopolitics”. Dr Meek argued that modern biopolitics, which attempts to control society at the level of biological life, provides an important perspective for understanding trauma as a model for extreme historical events. He explored the idea that while the Holocaust is commonly understood as a trauma for modern society, this can stop us from being able to see Nazi racial politics as an extreme version of something intrinsic to modern forms of power.

Dr Kim Worthington presented a paper at the Australasian Association of Literature ‘Literature and Affect’ Conference in Melbourne entitled “Confronting a forgotten past: Shame, guilt and blame in Jaspreet Singh’s Helium”. In interpreting Singh’s haunting 2013 novel, Dr Worthington’s paper engaged with the philosophical work of Paul Ricouer, whom she argued understands remembering and forgetting as not simply involuntary processes, but as ones that are often consciously willed and manipulated for political purposes. Her paper explored the complex relationships between memory and forgetting and the emotions of shame, guilt and blame. “Inevitably,” Dr Worthington said, “this also involves questions about the (im)possibility of reconciliation and forgiveness in both personal and national contexts.” The paper argued that what is needed for forgiveness and healing in dealing with historial trauma is more than a rational assessment of past (inherited) crimes: an emotional confrontation is also necessary, and Singh’s work suggests literature can provide this.

Dr Kevin Glynn presented a co-authored paper at the Institute of Australian Geographers/NZ Geographical Society Joint Conference held in Melbourne. Written with Julie Cupples of the University of Edinburgh, the paper was entitled ‘Reframing Indigeneity: The Difference an Indigenous Broadcaster Makes.’ It explored two incidents: police “terror raids” on Tuhoe in Te Urewera in 2007, and controversies over public pronouncements by Air New Zealand in 2013 about a company policy that prohibits employment of people with ta moko. Using these case studies to look at the differences between mainstream and Maori Television Service coverage, the paper argued that both events revealed contestation between competing visions of national identity, belonging and participation. While mainstream media trafficked heavily in racialised discourses of terror and securitisation in relation to the Urewera raids, Maori Television coverage drew upon grassroots counterdiscourses and counterknowledges that depicted the situation in the Ureweras very differently. By the time of the Air New Zealand controversy, Maori Television had developed around itself an active participatory culture of digitally engaged audiences making avid use of Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. The paper explored the forms of indigenous citizenship active within this new media environment to assess the contribution an indigenous broadcaster can make to challenging the epistemic violence inflicted through colonisation upon indigenous ways of knowing and being.

Dr Philip Steer presented a sole-authored conference paper at the ‘Prosaic Imaginary: Novels and the Everyday, 1750-2000’ conference hosted by the Novel Studies research cluster at the University of Sydney. Entitled “Strategic Banality: The Work of the Prosaic in Novels of Early Settlement,” Dr Steer’s paper explored the generic instability of the early colonial Australian novel, specifically its tendency to veer from narrating the vicissitudes of settler life to detailing agricultural production and other concerns more commonly associated with political economy. He argued that the strategic assertion of colonial banality across a range of registers functioned to assert the Britishness of Australian settlement. That is, if the colony’s suitability for the British subject was most immediately conveyed through the portrayal of characters’ achievement of a settled, rural lifestyle, this was complemented at a societal level by the statistical assertion of the colonial capacity for steady, regular economic production. Paradoxically, therefore, asserting the prosaic nature of settlement can be seen as one of the most audacious and wide-ranging strategies of the colonial novel.

Essay key component of Walters Prize shortlisted artwork

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good oil

Image from Maddie Leach’s collaborative artwork, ‘If you find the good oil let us know’

A creative essay by School of English & Media Studies senior lecturer Dr Ingrid Horrocks is currently featuring as part of the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery.

The essay forms a key part of Maddie Leach’s collaborative conceptual art project ‘if you find the good oil let us know’, which is a finalist in this year’s Walters Prize, New Zealand’s premier contemporary art award.  All four finalists are on display at Auckland Art Gallery Toi o Tamaki until 12 October 2014.

The $50,000 Walters Prize, named after the late New Zealand artist Gordon Walters, is awarded for an outstanding work of contemporary New Zealand art produced and exhibited during the past two years. The prize aims to make contemporary art a more widely recognised and debated feature of our cultural life.

Dr Horrocks’ work of critical-creative prose  is the closing piece in the publication, ‘if you find the good oil let us know’, which is the culmination of Maddie Leach’s 2012 Govett-Brewster Aotearoa New Zealand Artist in Residence project of the same name. The project as a whole unfolds an imaginative narrative of whales, cement, art works, scientists, seafarers, migrations, and oil companies via a community of letter-writers and readers.

Dr Horrocks’s contribution works both as part of the artwork, and as the single critical response to the work as a whole. It also involves a recorded performance of her work, which serves as the audio narrative of the project in its next incarnation online in association with the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery.

Maddie Leach is a senior lecturer and postgraduate coordinator for fine arts, in Massey University’s Whiti o Rehua – The School of Art at Wellington.

Link: http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/whats-on/news/finalists-announced-for-the-walters-prize-2014-new-zealand%E2%80%99s-premier-contemporary-art-prize

Link: http://maddieleach.net http://www.aucklandartgallery.com/media/6032904/twp2014_catalogue.pdf

 

ACE Wellington adds creative flavour

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ACE leading women

Clockwise from top: Creative leaders Jo Randerson and Deirdre Tarrant joined organisational leader Lana Simmons-Donaldson to share leadership insights at this year’s Wellington ACE program.

The Wellington ‘creative campus’ ACE (Achieving Career Excellence) women students’ leadership program had a special twist this year by collaborating with Arts on Wednesday to bring creative women entrepreneurs from the arts sector to the speaker line-up.
Dame Deirdre Tarrant (Companion of the New Zealand Order of Merit) kicked the program off with an incredibly frank and entertaining talk about her life and work as a dancer, choreographer, business owner and mentor.
The following week featured a visit from Jo Randerson, artistic director of Barbarian Theatre and award-winning New Zealand playwright. Jo talked about building a successful arts company from the ground up and generating new project opportunities through crowdfunding.
The third speaker was Massey University’s own communication leader, Lana Simmons-Donaldson, who is Massey’s Account Manager – Māori, Pasifika and New Migrants. She shared moving personal insights into leadership and perseverance, and particularly issues for Māori women leaders.
Originally developed by Professor Sarah Leberman at Manawatu, and delivered at Wellington by Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley (College of Humanities & Social Sciences) and Anna Brown (College of Creative Arts), ACE is a five-week programme for specially selected final-year women students. It explores issues for women in the workforce, such as assertiveness and gender-pay equity, and gives women students some insights into and positive strategies for handling gender-related challenges they might encounter.
“We tune the program carefully every year in response to participant feedback,” Dr Tilley said. “Last year our business students were very well catered for with fantastic organisation-based speakers, so this year we wanted to add something responsive to the needs expressed by creative arts and humanities students about work models that are not necessarily organisation-based.”
Dr Tilley said the focus for graduating students was often on employability, but it was important, particularly in the creative industries, to also foster what she called “employerability”, that is, the ability to generate projects and companies that employ others.
“Our speakers were so inspiring – they have taken risks, made sacrifices, and contributed to our culture and society in completely novel ways. Creative entrepreneurship has a set of challenges all its own, and it was great to balance that this year with the traditional organisation focus.”
The ACE program also includes exercises and activities on life-planning, assertiveness, work/life balance and managing workplace situations. Students are selected for the second-semester program based on both academic and extracurricular leadership, and receive a letter of invitation at the end of first semester.  This year, the speaker portions of the program were also open to members of the public and the Wellington campus community. “These speakers are so great, we didn’t want to keep them all to ourselves,” Dr Tilley said.

Ski trip yields important safety communication data

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Mount Ngauruhoe

Fieldwork with a view – Mt Ngauruhoe from the slopes of Mt Ruapehu

Staff and students from the School of English & Media Studies enjoyed the stunning view from their ‘office’ yesterday as they undertook fieldwork on Mt Ruapehu.
Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley and Bachelor of Communication students Oscar Mein and Eden Cowley helped collect data about people’s behaviour during a lahar warning test run by GNS Science and the Department of Conservation.
The fieldwork is part of a research collaboration investigating ways to optimise safety communication at the skifields that includes English & Media Studies staff and students and Massey’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research. Some of the issues for mountain users include lahar warnings, avalanche risk and general mountain safety.
“The agencies in the front line of mountain safety such as GNS Science and Department of Conservation have been working together for many years and have very good data about the risks and about public behaviour,” Dr Tilley said. “As we saw at the lahar warning test yesterday, though, it’s still the case that not every mountain user knows what to do. When the siren sounds, people need to immediately get out of the valley floor and climb to higher ground – some do, others do only when other public-minded bystanders call out to them repeatedly or a ski patroller moves them, and some remain where they are, hypothetically in the path of a massive fast-flowing gush of boiling water, sediment and boulders.”
“The next step in the research is to identify the missing link between someone knowing about a risk and responding appropriately. We also need to know more about those mountain users who genuinely aren’t aware of the risks or how to mitigate them.”
“That’s where communication staff and students can make a big contribution. We’ll be bringing a humanistic or people-centred approach to understanding the communication processes. Some of our students will have the opportunity to extend the research with funded postgraduate study, living on the mountain next ski season and conducting ethnographic and focus group research to identify communication patterns and norms, and make recommendations about how, when and where to create the most effective safety messaging.”
Dr Tilley said understanding ‘mountain culture’ could be the key to unlocking the right communication tactics. “Groups of people who share an interest and affinity, such as for family ski trips, snowboarding weekends or climbing expeditions, create and define their own group culture. They establish behaviours, thoughts, and norms that define their identity as a member of the group.
“Effective communication occurs when the identity that a message assigns to a person matches the identity she or he wants to claim in a situation – so to target a particular group, you have to have very good research about how they construct their identity as a group and what notions of identity are appealing.”
“Creativity also has a big role to play. As well as documenting the culture and its communication, our students will need to make innovative and creative recommendations about practical ways to communicate that produce a positive sense of identity that includes being knowledgeable and proactive about safety.”
Yesterday’s lahar warning test research project activity was recorded by Alison Ballance, producer and presenter of Radio New Zealand’s weekly science and environment programme Our Changing World. Alison’s story on the project will be aired on RNZ in the next week: go to http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/ourchangingworld/20140911 for the story and the podcast.
Links to more information:

Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing Thom Conroy will talk at Te Papa in Wellington

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Dieffenbach.feature
Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing Thom Conroy will talk at Te Papa in Wellington on his historical novel The Naturalist, early New Zealand history and Ernst Dieffenbach.

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Join Thom Conroy as he discusses his intriguing novel about a free-spirited German naturalist who came to New Zealand with a controversial 1839 expedition to buy Māori land.

 

Of The Naturalist, Thom says, ‘I wanted to reintroduce readers to a man whose ideas sound closer to ours than those of his own era, and I hoped to contribute to a new way of looking at the history of New Zealand and its connections to the world.’

 

Dieffenbach’s strong views on colonisation cut across the thinking of the time. He engaged in heated debates with the Wakefields and Charles Heaphy (who were to become renowned colonists) during his three-month voyage aboard the Tory.

 

On arrival in New Zealand, Dieffenbach learned Māori, investigated local flora and fauna, and ascended Mt Taranaki. He advocated equality between Māori and Pākehā, arguing that the ‘savages’ were of equal intellect and sensibility to ‘civilised’ members of society.

Thom brings this fascinating man to life and offers a vivid depiction of a New Zealand on the cusp of widespread colonisation.
http://www.tepapa.govt.nz/WhatsOn/allevents/Pages/TheNaturalist280814.aspx

The Kete Series – Manawatu Poetry Book Launch

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Two of our senior tutors are having a book launch tomorrow. Tim Upperton and Joy Green are being celebrated for their collections of poetry entitled ‘The Kete Series – Manawatu Poetry’ tomorrow night (Friday) at the City Library, Palmerston North at 5.30.

Poetry, publishing and a ‘back-to-basics’ approach to doing business come together this Friday night when three Manawatū poets (and their books) shake off their dust-jackets to reveal the colour and creativity that ‘thinking local’ can bring to our community.

Award-winning weavers-of-words Tim Upperton, Joy Green and Leonel Alvarado along with HauNui Press, Swampthing Magazine and the Palmerston North City Library present an evening of poetry readings, music and mild mayhem – all in the name of National Poetry Day. Starting at 5.30pm, this launch of the new Kete Series home-grown poetry books is just one of the more than 60 events being held around the country to celebrate National Poetry Day. Reading poems from their books, Tim, Joy and Leonel, will in turn recite, excite and reunite audiences on the night with all that poetry can offer.

For the poetry lover, the three books will be available in a limited edition ‘basket set’. Cradled in a kete crafted by local Manawatū weavers, according to publishers HauNui Press “it’s the ultimate traditional tote packed full of juicy poetry goodness!”. In a press release David Lupton, event organiser of Palmerston North-based boutique publisher HauNui Press, noted that ‘We’ve come to think of our approach to book-making as ‘slow publishing’! Along the lines of the ‘slow food’ movement, slow publishing looks to support our local economy by using suppliers in our backyard and respecting the relationship side of transactions, kind of like the way local markets support gate-to-plate dealings between home cooks and growers. For us, it’s the ink-slinger to book-lover connections that are key.’ The books retail for $20 a copy and $80 for a limited edition ‘Kete Set’, which bundles the three titles together inside a traditional tote. The publishers spurned traditional boxed book sets in favour of beautiful flax kete woven specially for the project by another talented local group, Raranga Manawatū, based out of the Highbury Weaver’s Centre.  Books and Kete Sets will be available at the launch or from all good booksellers nationwide (or online at www.haunuipress.co.nz) after 22 August.

  • What: Book launch
  • Where: the Palmerston North City Library
  • When: 5.30pm on Friday 22nd August – National Poetry Day. 

For more information read this article in this weeks Tribune http://thetribune.realviewdigital.com/?IID=99786&STARTPAGE=PAGE0000001&ArticleTitle=294068#folio=1 

Or, visit the event page for the launch on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/events/508914752585277/

NUTS NZ # 3

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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 10th 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?
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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.

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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

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On Friday 8th 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

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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

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:

 

 Programmes

 New creative activism paper at Massey launching 2015

Creative Processes

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).

emma

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.