Tag Archives: creative activism

Waves online programme

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Below you will find the full programme for Waves: Climate Change Theatre Action

Theatre Lab, 5D14, Massey University Wellington Campus, Wellington, 1pm November 1. (Waves is a paperless event, and so we have posted the programme here, and will provide free wifi to the audience.)  For more information about Waves, or to join us, see previous post at: Waves: Climate Change Theatre Action

Acknowledgements:

Thank you to ‘Theatre Without Borders’, ‘The Arctic Cycle’ and ‘NoPassport’, in particular Caridad Svich (recipient of 2012 OBIE for Lifetime Achievement in Theatre), Chantal Bilodeau (Artistic Director of The Arctic Cycle), and Elaine Avila (Recipient, Mellon Foundation Environmental Arts Commission, Pomona College, Los Angeles) for curating and coordinating the global programme of Climate Change Theatre Action 2015 from bases in L.A. and New York.  Through the vision and hard work of these three women, from today (the global launch) to mid-December, more than 100 Climate Change Theatre Action events will be staged in 22 countries, featuring the work of more than 40 distinguished international playwrights.  This is the third and largest global theatre action event organised by the team, the others being ‘The Way of Water’ (2012, theatre action on oil spills) and ‘Gun Control’ (2013).

Waves, the only Climate Change Theatre Action event in Aotearoa and the first in the world of the global schedule, is produced and directed by Elspeth Tilley, with lighting design by Emma Bennetts of Backlight, film editing and multimedia technical support by Samuel Williams, and video recording by Mark Steelsmith. Scene-change visuals between items are from the Pacific Climate Change documentary ‘Storm Islands’, provided courtesy of director Steve Menzies.  The Massey University School of English & Media Studies fed and costumed the actors among many and various other supportive inputs.  Artcop21 (the global cultural programme of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change 2015, of which Waves is a registered part) provided free hosting for our event at http://www.artcop21.com/events/waves/  Link to other Artcop21 events worldwide from that page.

A huge thank you to all the Waves performers (whose intriguing details are at the end of the programme) and authors for providing their time, talents and inspirational creative work to Climate Change Theatre Action to help contribute a crucial cultural and artistic element to the worldwide conversation about our planet’s wellbeing.  A huge thank you to you, our audience, for coming out today to show your support for the role of the arts in provoking new thinking about the issues that matter. Follow the global project at #climatechangetheatreaction to see more events unfold worldwide over the next six weeks.

Programme

 Item 1: Danny’s monologue from ‘The Atom Room’ by Philip Braithwaite

Read by Philip Braithwaite

Danny and Sarah are a modern couple.  They are living in a long-distance relationship: he is in Wellington, and she is on Mars. But this is a universe where the Earth has been catastrophically damaged by tsunamis and nuclear meltdowns, and the rich elite are moving to outer colonies and Mars.

Sarah is an engineer and scientist in the Mars programme. Danny is on his own on Earth, working for Envirocorp, the only organisation left that looks out for the environment. Every now and then they can meet in The Atom Room: the most advanced virtual avatar programme in the galaxy. In his monologue, Danny is engaged in a series of interviews, trying to talk about the death of his planet, and why he refuses to leave it.

About the author: Philip Braithwaite has won multiple playwriting awards including the 2001 BBC World Service International Radio Playwriting Competition, the 2013-14 William Evans Playwriting Fellowship, and New Zealand’s top playwriting prize, the Adam NZ Play Award, in 2014.

His work has been produced in New Zealand, Australia and Europe, and he has collaborated with the Royal Court Theatre in London, the BBC and SEEyD theatre company. His radio plays have been produced on the BBC World Service and Radio New Zealand. Oh and he once had a beer with Alan Rickman.  You will be the first in the world to hear a reading from this brand new work.

Item 2: Mōrehu and Tītī by David Geary

Mōrehu – Hamish Boyle

Tītī – Moira Fortin-Cornejo

Al Gore/Aurora – Sara McBride

Mōrehu is an ancient male punk rocker tuatara. In the Māori language of the Indigenous Peoples of New Zealand, Mōrehu means survivor or remnant. Tuatara means ‘spiny back’. Tuatara are rare, medium-sized reptiles found only in New Zealand. They are the last survivors of an order of reptiles that thrived in the age of the dinosaurs. Mōrehu is stuck on a drifting raft with Tītī, a young female sooty shearwater bird, muttonbird, Puffinsus griseus, or tītī (pron. Teetee). The young of these birds are a traditional food source for Māori, preserved in copious amounts of their own fat and salt. So though they may perish in large numbers before reaching adulthood, the tītī can rest assured those who eat them regularly will die prematurely of heart attacks.

AG/Aurora Australis – a famous person and The Southern Lights – makes an appearance as the raft nears Antarctica.

About the author: David Geary writes plays, television, film, fiction, and haiku on twitter @gearsgeary. He is of New Zealand Māori and Pākehā heritage, and is now also a citizen of Canada. He teaches at Capilano University, North Vancouver, in the Indigenous

Filmmaking and Documentary programs, leads playwrights’ workshops for Playwrights Theatre Centre, and works as a freelance dramaturge. He is the author of ‘Lovelock’s Dream Run’, co-wrote and co-directed the television documentary ‘The Smell of Money’ and his short story collection, ‘A Man of the People’ was published in 2003. He has worked as a scriptwriter and storyliner for television including Shortland Street, Mercy Peak, Jackson’s Wharf and Hard Out.  He won the Bruce Mason Playwrights’ Award in 1991 and the Adam Foundation Playwrights’ Award in 1994. ‘Mōrehu and Tītī’ was written specifically for Climate Change Theatre Action 2015.  This is its world premiere.

Item 3: Climate Change Poems from Aotearoa
Readings selected and presented by Dr Ingrid Horrocks

Many recent poems by New Zealand writers grapple, directly or indirectly, with questions of climate change. In “The Uprising,” which appears in nature poet Dinah Hawken’s latest collection, Ocean and Stone (2015), Hawken considers the rising oceans. So does Lynn Jenner in her book of poems, Lost and Gone Away (2015). Several Massey graduate students, among them poets Lynn Davidson, Sarah-Jane Barnett, and Janet Newman, have spent time exploring new ways to engage with and write about the environment. Ingrid will read fragments from some of these recent works.

About the authors: Dinah Hawken was awarded the Lauris Edmond Award for Distinguished Contribution to Poetry; Lynn Jenner has won both the Adam Prize in Creative Writing and the NZSA Jessie Mackay Award for Best First Book of Poetry; Lynn Davidson is widely published and just completed her PhD in Creative Writing at Massey University; poet and Massey creative writing tutor Sarah-Jane Barnett just released her new (and second) poetry collection, titled Work; and Massey Master of Creative Writing student Janet Newman just  won the Open category of the New Zealand Poet Society’s 2015 International Poetry Competition.

Item 4: Flotsam by Elspeth Tilley

Mariana – Anna Barden Shaw

Natalia – Charlotte Tilley

Stefan – Jack Hitchens

Mariana has a tough job, judging climate-change-refugee applications. Her teenaged daughter Natalia has been reading Facebook and is less than impressed with her mother’s decisions.  Things don’t look good, weather-wise – but it’s OK, Mariana can afford to build a nice big wall to keep it all at bay.

About the author: Elspeth Tilley is a graduate of the University of Queensland drama programme, the La Boite improvisation, devising and writing for theatre courses, the Gold Coast Institute of Technology acting courses 1 and 2, and the Queensland Film Academy screen actor training programme. An experienced actor for stage and screen, she now teaches theatre and creative activism at Massey University Wellington, publishes on performance and postcolonialism, and enjoys directing regular student theatre both scripted and devised.  She was inspired to write ‘Flotsam’ to illuminate the massive damage and inequalities climate change is wreaking in the Pacific.  ‘Flotsam’ is an official Climate Change Theatre Action selection, chosen by the curators for inclusion in the worldwide programme.  This is its world premiere. 

Item 5: Earth Duet by E.M. Lewis

Read by:  Grace Bucknell and Jack Hitchens

An elegiac poem, for two voices.

About the author: E.M. Lewis is an award-winning playwright, librettist, and teacher of playwriting. She was a finalist for the 2014 Shakespeare’s Sister Fellowship, received the Hodder Fellowship from Princeton University in 2010-2011, and won both the ATCA/Steinberg Award and the Award for Outstanding Writing of a World Premiere Play from the Los Angeles Drama Critics Circle for her play ‘Song of Extinction’. She won the Primus Prize for her play ‘Heads’. Her work has been produced around the world – and we are very excited to be able to bring it for the first time to New Zealand.

Item 6: Our Corner of the World by Jacqueline E. Lawton

Emily – Alice Guerin

David – Tobias Nash

Emily and David have moved to Detroit, where you can buy a house for a dollar. Emily stands on the porch of their once-condemned new home that they are slowly renovating. The lawn that surrounds the house is covered with abandoned tires and dirt. There is a cracked sidewalk and an empty street.  Emily stands on the porch and cradles a young baby in her arms. David enters on a bike. Emily does not turn to look at him.

About the author: Jacqueline E. Lawton was named one of the top 30 national leading black playwrights in the USA by Arena Stage’s American Voices New Play Institute and is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships including the 2015-2016 Kenan Institute’s Creative Collaboratory Project Grant, two Young Artist Program Grants from the DC Commission on the Arts and Humanities for Playwriting; the Ellsworth P. and Virginia Conkle Endowed Scholarship for Drama; the Jean McKenzie Schenkkan Endowed Scholarship in Playwriting; and the Morton Brown, Nellie Lea Brown, and Minelma Brown Lockwood Endowed Scholarship in Playwriting.

Item 7: Expressive Arts Club Climate Change Creative Writing Competition Finalists
Melting Clocks, by Braidicea Warriner, read by Braidicea Warriner

A Race to Extinction, by Stevie Greeks, read by Elspeth Tilley

Fade Out, by Sophia Dempsey, read by Sophia Dempsey

Item 8: Prizegiving
Announcement and presentation of the prize for best piece of Expressive Arts Club Climate Change Creative Writing

Item 9: Korero
Please stay for a chat. We invite you to ask questions of the performers and artists, express your views, and generally linger for a relaxed korero about climate change and what we can do about it.

About the Fantastic Waves Performers:

Alice Guerin.  Last year Alice played a Russian spy and a Swedish housewife in the same show.  She’s excited to be in Waves as she truly cares about climate change and believes it is a topic that needs to be talked about more.

Anna Barden Shaw wanted to be part of the Climate Change Theatre Action as it is something that she feels passionately about. Over the years she’s played all sorts of roles from witches to prostitutes, the last being a settler’s wife in ‘The Ragged’ earlier this year. Now she finally gets to play someone a little more mundane – a lawyer, a mother of a politically aware teenage girl (which she also has!). Her astrology always said she should be a lawyer – Anna figures this is the closest she will get.

Braidicea Warriner recently completed a Bachelor of Arts where she developed a passion for writing screenplays. The weirdest thing she’s ever written is a love poem from a grassy lawn to a willow tree. Some of her favourite-sounding words include; effervescent, epiphany, clandestine and cacophony.

Charlotte Tilley has studied drama from age 7 and has distinctions in Trinity College London musical theatre and performance exams. Previous stage roles include an orphan, a wolf and the captain of a sinking ship, with her favourite being Rapunzel for ‘Fractured Fairytales’.

Grace Bucknell fell in love with performing when she was cast as chief ferret in ‘Toad of Toad Hall’ aged 10. She has studied drama for 10 years and is completing her diploma.

Hamish Boyle has spent the past the past three years regularly escaping into Wellington from the Hutt, only to stumble around the stage and screen and call it acting. Credits include Summer Shakespeare 2015 and 2016, Young and Hungry 2015, and Alone it Stands with Lord Lackbeards.

Ingrid Horrocks is a Senior Lecturer in the School of English and Media Studies at Massey Wellington. Ingrid is a poet and nonfiction writer. She has published books of poetry and travel writing, and her work has been anthologised in collections such as Essential New Zealand Poems and New Zealand Love Poems.

Jack Hitchens.  So far Jack has been in 6 different musicals, including The Gabe, from New Zealand’s original ‘Next to Normal’ cast which premiered mid last year. He originally had his stage debut, wearing a full red ruby dress with intense high heels and bright red lipstick, as a sassy sister, Ruby, in the pantomime, Pantalot.

Moira Fortin-Cornejo.  Birds seem to like Moira… she has played many birds before, and from different cultures, Chilean and Rapa Nui.  Now she’s very happy to play a New Zealand bird… not a kiwi… but nearly!

Sara McBride played Santa when she was 12, so gender bending roles are nothing new to her. The play was about Santa being forced to go a health and fitness camp to lose weight.  In one scene, she had to run through the audience and … her pants accidentally fell down in front of everyone. Like the true professional she is, Sara pulled her pants up and kept acting. That early brush with mass embarrassment didn’t diminish her love of theatre as she has continued acting and singing throughout her adult life.  Currently, Sara is part of Wellington Footlights, where her specialties include singing, dancing, and making sure her costume doesn’t fall off.

Sophia Dempsey is a veteran of three NaNoWriMos, twice winner of the senior high school poetry competition, and likes to indulge in Facebook conversations that look like philosophy students got drunk on metaphor.

Stevie Greeks is an Expressive Arts student, who believes in the power of the written word to start important discussions.

Tobias Nash is a writer and student whose acting experience comes mostly from school plays, helping out with university projects and pretending to be interested in other people’s opinions, but he’s keen to broaden his horizons and try something new.

Creativity in the Community Returns in 2016

recycling zines

Students produced a zine about recycling (on sustainable paper) with an eye-catching cover.

Expressive Arts staff are delighted with the success of the new and innovative creative activism paper, 139.333 Creativity in the Community, and proud to announce that it will be offered again at both Wellington and Auckland campuses in 2016.

Launched in 2015, the paper generated three groundbreaking and diverse student projects in its first year.  Staff are looking forward to building upon its success and taking it to new heights of innovative creative activism and creativity for social justice next year.

In 2015, one group of students at Wellington who worked in a student-centred pedagogical mode voted to use their project to confront rape culture. They delivered a thought-provoking yet also sensitive multimedia/theatre production and achieved a full house in the theatre lab venue (and we even had to turn people away – an incredible achievement for such a difficult topic). See more about their event at http://www.massey.ac.nz/news/?id=6662  Some of those 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/, Tessa Calogaras’ ‘Ground Meat’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17193/ground-meat/ and Hannah Bridges’ two works – ‘Glitter’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17201/glitter/ and ‘For Libby’ at http://www.massivemagazine.org.nz/blog/17184/for-libby/

At Albany, students developed short films, music videos and a theatre performance in partnership with a nearby residential care facility, Aria Gardens, looking at issues associated with living with dementia.  See more at http://www.massey.ac.nz/news/?id=6652

Back in Wellington, a second student group was deeply concerned about environmental issues, and created awareness through a ‘Rubbish Monster’ art installation along with a zine offering practical solutions, which they planned, wrote, designed, produced and negotiated a deal to have delivered for free throughout Wellington city. The zine used slang to grab attention then offered tips that students could easily apply when flatting.  You can read their story at: http://www.massey.ac.nz/news/?id=6764 

“All in all we are delighted with the way that the paper has enabled a range of students to showcase the issues they care about through the channels that matter to them,” paper curriculum designer Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley said. “None of the students found the paper easy – dealing with the messy realities of actual issues, community partners, deadlines, real audiences, ethics and budgets, never is. But they also loved having the opportunity to put into practice the skills learned throughout their degree, and gain experience for their CVs.  They learned heaps – one student even said ‘I could write a dissertation on what I learned in this paper’ and many of them have been coming back for more, signing up to participate in extracurricular creative activism projects such as our forthcoming Climate Change Theatre Action event.”

Creativity in the Community (139.333) will be offered in first semester 2016 at both Albany and Wellington – see http://www.massey.ac.nz/paper/?p=139333 for more information.

 

Waves: Climate Change Theatre Action

Join us for Waves, a provocative afternoon of short plays by international and local playwrights, spoken word poetry, and readings from the finalists in our Expressive Arts Club Climate Change Creative Writing Awards.


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Waves is our contribution to Climate Change Theatre Action (#‎ClimateChangeTheatreAction‬), a series of worldwide readings and performances led from New York by Theatre Without Borders, The Arctic Cycle, and No Passport as part of Artcop21 – the global cultural programme of the United Nations Conference on Climate Change.

We are the only Climate Change Theatre Action event for Aotearoa – so register now to be part of the audience at 1pm on Sunday November 1st in the Theatre Laboratory (5D14) at Massey University Wellington Campus.

Students and staff from Massey’s theatre studies and expressive arts programmes will entertain, console and confront you with works humorous and intense, problem-illuminating and solution-focussed, powerful, sometimes funny, sometimes catastrophic, often moving and inspirational. The works include exciting new world premiere short plays from David Geary (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Geary), Jacqueline Lawton (http://www.jacquelinelawton.com/bio.html) and E.M. Lewis (http://emlewisplaywright.com/). Our own English & Media Studies creative communication tutor and NZ playwriting star Phil Braithwaite (http://www.playmarket.org.nz/playwrights/philip-braithwaite) will give us a reading from his new work, The Atom Room, plus we launch some brand new talents.

Links:
Make sure there’s a seat for you and your party: register now to reserve seats at https://masseyuni.wufoo.eu/forms/waves-climate-change-theatre-action-aotearoa/

See more info and follow for updates at our FB event: https://www.facebook.com/events/1486295995032736/

Students turn creative lens on dementia

Sue Wilson plays the character Betty, who re-establishes a connection with her 'memory' (photo/Eilidh Penman)

Sue Wilson plays the character Betty, who re-establishes a connection with her ‘memory’ (photo/Eilidh Penman)

Massey University theatre and media students have been using their creative talents for social good by exploring new ways to communicate with people who have dementia, as well as helping others to better understand the condition.

Students at Massey’s Auckland campus have developed short films, music videos and a theatre performance in partnership with a nearby residential care facility, Aria Gardens, in Albany. The works were created as part of a ground-breaking new paper led by applied theatre specialist Dr Rand Hazou.

One of the four groups on the course explored the use of doll therapy for residents experiencing ‘sun-downing’ – the mid to late-afternoon period when some dementia sufferers feel agitated and confused. Another used TimeSlips – an imaginative storytelling technique that doesn’t rely on memory, and is suited to engaging with some of the residents who have dementia.

Dr Hazou says the Creativity in the Community paper – offered through the School of English and Media Studies to Bachelor of Arts and Bachelor of Communications students – allows students to come up with creative ways to connect with a specific community setting and explore artistic methods to communicate issues relevant to that community.

“By partnering with Aria Gardens, we’ve had a unique opportunity to engage with some of the issues surrounding ageing and dementia, and find creative interventions that challenge negative stereotypes within the wider community,” Dr Hazou says.

“After giving students some introductory information on dementia and some coaching on communication techniques, we began visiting Aria Gardens to meet with residents and staff and build up relationships. The idea was that together we could work towards delivering creative interventions that explore issues of positive ageing and dementia.”

Dr Rand Hazou with students in the Theatre Lab

Dr Rand Hazou with students in the Theatre Lab

Over the last 10 weeks students visited Aria Gardens and designed their creative projects as a result of their interactions with residents. They also worked with Annabel Grant, a clinical educator within Massey’s Institute of Education, to understand the specific communications challenges that the elderly and those with dementia might experience.

Last week the students presented their projects at the Theatre Lab on the Auckland campus.

“We’re also planning on presenting our projects back to the residents and staff at Aria Gardens and inviting feedback and discussion,” Dr Rand says.

Jon Amesbury, the manager of Aria Gardens, says his 133-bed facility seeks innovative and creative ways to empower residents as part of its philosophy. He says the project was “hugely positive.”

“The residents who took part felt really empowered because they were part of creative projects that recognised their lives and experiences, which increases their self-worth.”

Mr Amesbury is entering the project in the national Excellence in Care Awards 2015. He says the project and partnership with Massey University is unique. He would like to see similar creative projects and partnerships developed more widely as the elderly population rapidly increases and issues such as social isolation, grief, sexuality, depression and anxiety they experience need to be addressed and understood.

Dr Hazou says the group creative projects also allow students to develop important teamwork and communications skills that help them to become “work ready and world ready”.

He says the aim of the paper, as well as other new courses being introduced at Massey, is to develop the students’ capacities as adaptive, engaged and responsible citizens. “We want to produce students who can use creative skills to engage with problems they see around them.”

This aim is also being mirrored in Massey’s redesigned Bachelor of Arts, as well as the introduction of the Major in Creative Writing and a Minor in Theatre Studies from next year.

Anna Beaton, a Bachelor of Communications student enrolled in the paper, says the project helped her learn to navigate “confronting” situations with confidence. Her project was a short film aimed to create awareness of dementia using sketching, watercolours, music, and voice-over narration.

Student projects were; ‘Sketchy Memories’ (a three-minute film depicting a narrative fiction based on dementia); ‘Pieces of My Mind’ (a music video on dementia targeting a wide audience); ‘One Moment in Time’ (theatre performance to demonstrate the benefits of doll therapy during the mid to late afternoon period of agitation and confusion in those living with dementia, referred to as ‘sundowning’); and ‘Youthless’ (a short film influenced by elderly residents and their experiences and perspectives on communicative difficulties and memory loss).

New creative activism paper launching 2015

Creative ProcessesMassey 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.”
“We are seeing increasing application by social justice groups in Aotearoa of the power of the arts to drive change – for example Women’s Refuge is working on a giant statue of Kate Sheppard made up of the voices of people who want to stop domestic violence, and Greenpeace has been staging performance art all over the country with a lifesize polar bear. Not to mention the amazing work that theatre practitioners, such as the group Te Rakau Hua o Te Wao Tapu Trust to name just one, have been doing for a long time because of the recognition of the power of theatre to change lives.”
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.
“Our Expressive Arts students already have a strong foundation in devising projects that use creative writing, theatre and multimedia by the time they reach third-year (see for example at left a student multimedia/theatre performance addressing issues of identity and binge drinking, from Wellington Creative Processes students 2014).  This paper enables them to capstone that training by taking it to the next level, working with a community partner.”
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.
“We are really looking forward to launching this project and seeing the students’ learning come to life in real social change,” Dr Tilley said.

Links:
139.333 Paper Information for 2015: http://www.massey.ac.nz//massey/learning/programme-course-paper/paper.cfm?paper_code=139333
Bring back Kate campaign: http://www.3news.co.nz/Kate-Sheppard-statue-nears-completion/tabid/423/articleID/354173/Default.aspx
Theatre as a tool to transform: http://artsaccess.org.nz/theatre-as-a-tool-to-transform

Full house for compelling performance

Violeta show 4   The audience for Violeta Luna filled the Massey University Wellington Museum Building theatrette to capacity on Friday for her mesmerising performance of NK603.
Members of the public joined Australasian Drama Studies Association conference delegates to watch open-mouthed as Luna transformed in front of their eyes from a traditionally-dressed Aztec woman planting seeds by hand to a blood-spitting, tape-bound embodiment of the toxicity she sees wrought on her people and the environment by monocropping and genetic modification.

Fixing the audience with her stare and moving among the seating to get up close and personal with attendees, Luna issued a wordless yet wholly eloquent challenge to all present.  Using visual images, music and physical theatre, despite not having a single word of dialogue, she effectively called into question the environmental, social and political consequences of the globalisation of agriculture.  Her show charted a trajectory from indigenous Mexican traditions of small-cropping and organic companion planting to foreign-owned mass crops, automation, wholesale use of pesticides, fungicides, and the alteration of seeds that renders them non-renewable.

Violeta show 1

“It is important for me to work with audience interactivity, with direct contact, where the public becomes co-creator of the work,” Luna said. “The experience of immediacy, of the shared instant and the accident, gains new meaning in these actions.”  Audience members at NK603 were in the firing line as corn was thrown, and some were handed bright blue balls of pastry representing over-processed, artificially coloured and genetically altered foods.

Violeta show 2

The following day Luna presented an equally powerful keynote address to the ADSA conference, charting the territory of her many theatre projects, both solo and collaborative, that address issues of social justice.   “My work is the result of a dialogue between the language of theatre and the language of performance art,” she told delegates. “I create a multi-dimensional space where different elements (music, dance, ritual, behaviors, etc.) converge to create new narratives and alternative realities.”Violeta show 3

Luna spoke about her collaborative works with Guillermo Gomez Peña,  Secos & Mojados, and Pocha Nostra, which have included a live acupuncture work where audience members placed needles with flags into Luna’s body to signify colonisation  “In performance art, the artist’s body is considered as the main platform for the work. The body is like a conceptual map where the artist creates her personal cartographies, a metaphorical space- a body that is in itself subject and object- and the signified and signifier of the creative work.”

Her repertoire has included a number of works collaborating with community groups, particularly immigrant women dealing with culture shock and marginalisation, who find rituals of healing become available to them through being able to participate in performative re-creations of their experiences.  “In performance art, the female body transforms into a ‘liberated zone’ for creativity, and also for the reinvention of gender within inclusive contexts, where ‘the feminine’ is not generalized through pre-fabricated concepts. Instead, it is particularised, presented, through a specific, self determined woman, with her differences, her own biography.”

Luna was brought to New Zealand by the Expressive Arts program in the Massey University School of English & Media Studies, as part of Massey’s co-hosting (with Victoria University of Wellington) of the ADSA 2014 conference.