Tag Archives: Theatre

Creativity in the Community Returns in 2016

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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.

 

Families at War at Agincourt: Shakespeare’s Henry V to be performed in Palmerston North

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Picture 1It’s 1415: King Henry V of England makes a grab for France. His cousin, French King Charles VI, sitzkriegs.

Henry and his army capture the French port city of Harfleur. Winter’s looming, Henry’s army is sick and hungry, and everyone just wants to go home. The French King has other ideas, and blockades their escape. They meet at Agincourt, on October 25, 1415.

The French outnumber the English five to one; pre-battle Gallic confidence arrows upwards. The underdogs win, decisively, thanks to the English longbow, and the rest is history.

Six hundred years after the battle, Henry V director Simon Herbert attributes his interest in this little-known history play to a guided tour of England’s Warwick Castle he did as a small boy.

“They had a longbowman demonstrating shooting, and he told us all about the Battle of Agincourt. It grabbed my imagination, and I’ve wanted to direct Henry V ever since,” Herbert said.

“And Henry V is one of my favourite Shakespearian plays. It’s not well-known, but it’s got some of the best speeches and finest poetry Shakespeare wrote.”

One of the most interesting things about Henry V are the different stories it tells about war, and the different stories we tell ourselves about war.

“We tell ourselves its patriotic and noble, but is it, really?”

Henry V by William Shakespeare
Directed by Simon Herbert
Iris Theatre Company

15 – 18 October 2015, 7.30pm
18 October, 2.00pm

The Dark Room, Palmerston North
Tickets: $15, $10 concession

 

Students turn creative lens on dementia

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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).

Arts on Wednesday – Binge Culture Collective

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BCCThis audaciously inventive and interactive show, titled ‘For your Future Guidance’, was nominated for Most Original at NZ Fringe, and runner-up for Fringe of Fringe in Auckland.
Reviewers have said it shows Binge’s “commitment to creating daring, unpredictable performances that challenge conventional distinctions between ‘real’ and ‘staged’ performance”. Binge Culture Collective have been described as “one of the country’s most exciting, direct and original theatre companies”. Don’t miss it.

Wednesday 8 October, 12:30-1:30 in the Theatre Lab 5D14.
Tea, coffee and biscuits provided.

Also, take a look at our Facebook page: www.facebook.com/WellyArtsWednesdays

Mega-month of activity for August research roundup

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terrors of uncertainty

Associate Professor Joe Grixti’s book Terrors of Uncertainty has been re-released, along with other classic humanities texts, as part of the Routledge Revivals series

From Gothic and horror fiction to e-waste and the grand successes of The Naturalist, it’s been another very busy month for EMS research and scholarship – check out our news in this latest Research Roundup!

• Dr Erin Mercer co-edited a special issue of M/C – A Journal of Media and Culture on the Gothic, and published an article on the difficulties faced by contemporary New Zealand writers attempting to use the Gothic genre without reactivating colonialist tropes of haunting Maori, skeletal remains and a Gothicised New Zealand landscape. In the issue’s editorial, titled ‘Gothic: New Directions in Media and Popular Culture’ Dr Mercer and co-editor Dr Lorna Piatti-Farnell of AUT discussed the continuing importance of the Gothic mode in contemporary culture and how that mode is constantly evolving into new forms and manifestations. They argued that the “multi-faceted nature of the Gothic in our contemporary popular culture moment is accurately signaled by the various media on which these special issue essays focus, from television to literature, animation, music, and film. The place occupied by the Gothic beyond representational forms, and into the realms of cultural practice, is also signaled, an important shift within the bounds of Gothic Studies which is bound to initiate fascinating debates. The transformations of the Gothic in media and culture are, therefore, also surveyed, so to continue the ongoing critical conversation on not only the place of the Gothic in contemporary narratives, but also its duplicitous, malleable, and often slippery nature”. Check out the special issue at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/showToc/current along with Dr Mercer’s article on Supernaturalism and Settlement in New Zealand Gothic Fiction – tantalisingly titled “A deluge of shrieking unreason” at http://journal.media-culture.org.au/index.php/mcjournal/article/viewArticle/846

• Dr Radha O’Meara and Dr Alex Bevan were co-organisers of a symposium entitled Loops and Splices: Changing Media Technologies, on August 1st 2014. The symposium explored a recent turn in media scholarship that uncovers the overlooked and under-examined media technologies that contribute to historical and contemporary practice. Papers looked at how different media technologies have functioned in relation to historical and social practices, aesthetic traditions and specific cultural moments. Keynote speaker Prof Ian Christie (Anniversary Professor of Film and Media History at Birkbeck College, University of London) presented on ‘Denying depth: uncovering the hidden history of 3D in photography and film.’ English and Media Studies staff were also well represented as presenters at the symposium (more below). You can see EMS staff member Dr Sy Taffel’s blog about the symposium at http://mediaecologies.wordpress.com/

• Dr Sy Taffel presented a paper entitled “ArchEcologies of Ewaste” at the Loops + Splices Symposium. The paper explored how media archaeology and media ecologies can be complementary methods in examining a range of issues pertaining to materiality and the damaging effects of the toxic digital detritus that we discard. He focused particularly on ewaste in New Zealand, where there currently is no mandatory (or even free) nationwide ewaste collection scheme, unlike in the EU where the WEEE directive mandates that all ewaste is recycled in high tech local facilities. More than 80,000 tonnes of ewaste annually enter New Zealand’s landfills, adding noxious elements like mercury, arsenic and lead to the soil and water table. Dr Taffel argued that ideas from media archaeology (a way of exploring past technology with a view to creatively reassembling and reusing technology rather than seeing earlier products as obsolete) combined with media ecologies (a reincorporative model of cyclical technological redesign) could point us towards a new age of ‘repair’ ethos, where waste was reduced and new designs resulted from the creative clash of old and new. You can see Dr Taffel’s presentation at http://prezi.com/iap-xqlsvb2o/archecologies-of-e-waste/

• Dr Kevin Glynn presented on “Technologies of Indigeneity: Māori Television and Convergence Culture,” a research focus that has emerged out of his Marsden-funded project working with Dr Julie Cupples (University of Edinburgh) on ‘Geographies of Media Convergence: Spaces of Democracy, Connectivity and the Reconfiguration of Cultural Citizenship.’ Dr Sy Taffel reports on his blog that “the paper focused on New Zealand media representations of the Urewera raids of 2007, and a more recent case where Air New Zealand, who prominently feature Maori iconography in their branding, terminated an interview with a woman for having a ta moko (traditional body markings), which they claimed would unsettle their customers. The paper explored impacts associated with the introduction of Maori TV and social networking software such as Facebook and Twitter on the ability of Maori to represent themselves and partake in mediated debates surrounding cultural identity”.

• Dr Allen Meek presented at Loops and Splices on “Testimony and the chronophotographic gesture.” The paper addressed the role of gesture in Holocaust testimony. Specifically it looked at some sequences from Claude Lanzmann’s long documentary film Shoah. Dr Meek argued that most scholarship has tended to discuss this film in terms of the transmission of the trauma of the Holocaust from the survivor to the viewer. Instead, he drew on the Italian philosopher Giorgio Agamben’s essay on gesture to develop a different reading of Shoah. Agamben argues that photography and the moving image have taken the autonomy of human gesture away from the individual person. When human gestures and movements are recorded they become a form of visual information that can be used for purposes of political control and economic exploitation. Dr Meek’s paper showed how Holocaust testimony forms part of a larger history of recorded gesture in the cinema that we need to consider if we are to understand its relation both to the Nazi system of power and to our recording and viewing of testimony today.

• In other recent research highlights, Associate Professor Joe Grixti’s book Terrors of Uncertainty: The Cultural Contexts of Horror Fiction has been re-released as part of Routledge’s ‘Revivals’ series of classic and important books. Routledge Revivals is a programme designed to reissue a wealth of out-of-print and unavailable titles written by some of the leading academic scholars of the last 120 years. To date, the programme includes titles by the likes of Sir Andrew Motion, Hermione Lee, Zygmunt Bauman, Karl Jaspers, Malcolm Bradbury, Simone Weil, Emile Durkheim, Charles Kindleberger and W. Arthur Lewis, now along with our own Head of School of English & Media Studies, Dr Grixti. Terrors of Uncertainty covers horror fiction from Frankenstein and Dracula to Psycho and The Chainsaw Massacre, illustrating how horror fiction has provided our culture with some of its most enduring themes and narratives. In selecting the text for reissue Routledge notes that: “Considering horror fiction both as a genre and as a social phenomenon, Joseph Grixti provides a theoretical and historical framework for reconsidering horror and the cultural apparatus that surrounds it. First published in 1989, this book looks at shifts in the genre’s meaning – its fascination with excess, its commentaries on the categories and boundaries of culture – and at interpretations of horror from psychology, psychoanalysis, sociology, cultural and media studies”. Terrors of Uncertainty brings together a provocative range of perspectives from across the disciplines, which combine to raise important questions about the relationship between fiction and society, and the way in which we use fiction to resolve or evade our fears of uncertainty. Available in both hardcopy and e-book at: http://www.routledge.com/books/details/9781138794511/

• Essential New Zealand Poems: Facing the Empty Page was recently published by Random House featuring work by a number of staff and PhD students from the School of English and Media Studies: Dr Ingrid Horrocks, Dr Jack Ross, Tim Upperton, Sarah-Jane Barnett, and Aleksandra Lane. Ingrid Horrocks and Aleksandra Lane were named by reviewer Philip Matthews in the Dominion Post as two of half a dozen of “the best of a new and younger generation” of poets to whom readers should “Pay attention now and in the future” (Your Weekend, Dominion Post, 5 July 2014, p. 27).  For more information, go to the publisher’s site at http://www.randomhouse.co.nz/books/siobhan-harvey-harry-ricketts-and-james-norcliffe/essential-new-zealand-poems-9781775534594.aspx

• A launch event for Essential New Zealand Poems – Facing the Empty Page held at PNCC Library on 7 August featured local poets Johanna Aitchison (former Visiting Artist and Tutor) and Tim Upperton (Tutor and current PhD stuent) in conversation with Harry Ricketts, poet, academic editor, reviewer and cricket writer. Johanna, Tim and Harry discussed and read from the recently published ‘Essential New Zealand Poems’ edited by Siobhan Harvey, Harry Ricketts and James Norcliffe (another former Massey University School of English & Media Studies Visiting Artist).

• A creative essay by Dr Ingrid Horrocks which forms a key part of Maddie Leach’s collaborative conceptual art project if you find the good oil let us know, features until September as part of the Walters Prize exhibition at the Auckland Art Gallery. See our previous post on this fascinating artwork and Dr Horrocks’ involvement here.

• Associate Professor Lisa Emerson along with Massey colleagues from Education and Communication ran multiple workshops in the lower North island for tertiary teachers on Literacy in the Transition to Tertiary Education. These presentations are based on their research, funded by the government’s Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) fund, on transitioning into tertiary study through academic literacy development, and were supported by Ako Aotearoa.

• Dr Thom Conroy launched his book, The Naturalist, on Friday 15 August – the book then spent several weeks at Number One in the NZ Bestseller list. See previous post here. See also: Thom’s interview with Kim Hill, available at: http://www.radionz.co.nz/national/programmes/saturday/audio/20145074/thom-conroy-channeling-dieffenbach

• Senior Tutors Joy Green and Tim Upperton launched their books as part of the Kete Series – Manawatu Poetry at the PNCC Library on Poetry Day – Friday 22 August 2014. This series, published by HauNui Press features Joy’s and Tim’s poetry collections as well as that of Leonel Alvarado, School of Humanities. See more here.

• Dr Thom Conroy spoke on the Intersection between History and Fiction in Historical Fiction at Te Papa, 28 August.

• On August 25, two final-year undergraduate Bachelor of Communication students from CoHSS participated, with Associate Professor Elspeth Tilley, in an applied communication research project involving collaboration with Massey’s Joint Centre for Disaster Research, the Department of Conservation and Geological and Natural Sciences. The project, which involves gathering data on Mt Ruapehu to help understand and improve lahar warning and mountain safety communication effectiveness, was reported on Radio New Zealand’s Our Changing World Science and Environment program, see more here.

• Associate Professor Angie Farrow won won ‘Best Drama Script’ for her new play ‘Leo Rising’ at the Auckland Short and Sweet Festival 2014.

Enthusiastic, talented people: Fifty years of drama at Massey University

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MUDS

The cast of ‘As You Like It,’ 1980. Rear from left: Peter Henderson, John Ross, Anona Dawick, John Dawick (Director, and lecturer in drama in the MU English department), Jacqueline Rowarth, Nick Broomfield. Front: Penny Guy, David Guy.

‘Enthusiastic, talented people: Fifty years of drama at Massey University’: so runs the title of an article just published by Lucy Marsden about  the rich and innovative tradition of theatre at Massey University.  Marsden writes: “drama has been very popular at Massey; since the 1960s hundreds of Massey staff and students have collaborated with others … to stage a wide variety of plays, and found acting a creative and satisfying experience. They and their audiences look back on their productions with great pleasure and for some it has become a career”.

Marsden goes on to list a who’s-who roll-call of creative industry figures – from comedians and television producers to actors and beloved drama teachers – who got their theatrical start at Massey, as well as many public figures who although employed in other fields, enhanced their public speaking and performance skills through participating in theatre at Massey.

The article draws on a wealth of archival material that Marsden studied during and after her time as Massey University archivist.  She has a particular interest in the extracurricular productions delivered by the Massey University Drama Society (established as a drama club in 1960, and by 1964 designated MUDS and described as Massey’s “major cultural society”) in which students from every discipline have participated, but the article also explores the integral role of English department staff, who introduced drama to the English curriculum in 1962 and worked intensively from the 1960s onwards to facilitate and support MUDS productions and encourage extracurricular theatre as a complement to the theatre curriculum. The article traces the introduction of Summer Shakespeare and the Festivals of New Arts by Angie Farrow in the mid-1990s, and notes that School of English & Media Studies theatre staff continue that strong relationship with the cluster of additional theatre activities that surround the curriculum to this day, as directors, writers, producers and crew now not just at Manawatu but on every campus.

Herself a wonderful and evocative storyteller with an ear for the dramatic, Marsden documents the human moments of this rich history – the unexpected comedy of falls from the stage, the sudden moments of poignancy when a ruru calls during a soliloquy at an outdoor performance, the use of innovative staging and venues including actors wading through ponds and crawling under spectators’ chairs. In a companion article, titled ‘Smut, Satire and Hairy Fairies: Massey University Student Capping Reviews,’ she records the hilarious tradition of the irreverent Massey Student Reviews that ran from the 1930s to 2004.

If you’ve ever been part of a play, performance or review at Massey, both these articles are well worth a read (and your name may well be mentioned in them – there’s a long list of credits and acknowledgements to the many stalwarts of the theatrical tradition at Massey). Both articles feature in the latest special issue of Manawatu Journal of History. To see more, get your copy of Manawatu Journal of History, Massey Commemorative Issue, 2014 (only $25) by emailing manawatujournalsales@inspire.net.nz or pick one up from the Alumni shop on any campus.

New creative activism paper launching 2015

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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

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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.