1 2 The Rebellious Mirror Before and after 1984: Community-based theatre in Aotearoa A thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Theatre and Film Studies in the University of Canterbury by Paul Maunder University of Canterbury 2010 3 Acknowledgements Thanks to Peter Falkenberg for taking me on board, stirring some lazy grey matter and always providing the right stimulus at the right time; to Sharon Mazer for getting rid of stylistic eccentricities and generally making me dig deeper; and to my partner, Caroline for her support throughout this lengthy exercise. Above all, I wish to thank the innumerable colleagues who have worked with me, or alongside me, for the last forty years. It has been a wonderful journey with a whanau that, even today, continues to grow. Kia ora, Malo, Fa’afetai. 4 Abstract In this thesis I outline the contribution Community-based theatre has made to New Zealand theatre. This involves a defining of theatre production as a material practice. Community-based theatre was a tendency from the 1930s, a promise of the left theatre movement and, I argue, was being searched for as a form of practice by the avant-garde, experimental practitioners of the 1970s. At the same time, early Māori theatre began as a Community-based practice before moving into the mainstream. With the arrival of neo-liberalism to Aotearoa in 1984, community groups and Community-based theatre could become official providers within the political system. This led to a flowering of practices, which I describe, together with the tensions that arise from being a part of that system. However, neo-liberalism introduced managerial practices into state contracting and patronage policy, which effectively denied this flowering the sustenance deserved. At the same time, these policies commodified mainstream theatre production. In conclusion, I argue that in the current situation of global crisis, Community- based theatre practice has a continuing role to play in giving voice to the multitude and by being a practice of the Common. 5 Contents Introduction ………………………………………………………………………… 1 The Rebellious Mirror Before and after 1984: Community-based theatre in Aotearoa. Chapter 1: Certainly a Tendency ………………………………………………… 27 Community-based theatre, a definition, leading to an alternative view of early NZ theatre history. Chapter 2: From the Avant-garde to the Community A personal journey, shared with colleagues. i. Edmond’s thesis…………………………………………………… 57 ii. A personal account of the Amamus years ……………………….. 66 iii. Similar problems ………………………………………………… 84 iv. Town and Country Players ……………………………………… 88 v. The early M āori theatre …………………………………………. 95 vi. A long march …………………………………………………… 104 vii. The turning point ……………………………………………….. 117 Chapter 3: Maturity ……………………………………………………………… 127 Neo-liberalism and a cross section of Community-based theatre practices. Jim Moriarty and Te Rakau Hua O Te Wao Tapu……………………. 139 A broad engagement – Pou Mahi a Iwi, Cultural Work Centre Trust…. 168 Sam Scott and youth theatre …………………………………………. 197 6 The community and the nation – Taki Rua ………………………….. 205 Disabling contradictions – Tony McCaffrey and Elizabeth O’Connor 210 Talking House: a regional practice ………………………………….. 222 An ally in the capital - David O’Donnell ……………………………. 234 On the road- The Travelling Tuatara ………………………………… 238 Back to the future- Peter Falkenberg and Free Theatre ……………… 243 Back to the future 2 – the Our Street project ………………………… 252 A new century – the southern corridor project ……………………… 256 Chapter 4: The Tax-payers’ Money……………………………………………… 262 The impact of neo-liberalism on state patronage and educational theory. Chapter 5: Facing the Future …………………………………………………… 291 The place of Community-based theatre in the period of transition. Bibliography: ………………………………………………….………………… 305 1 Introduction The Rebellious Mirror Before and after 1984: Community-based theatre in Aotearoa “We have gathered to speak and to know one another” ( Marcos 83). 1 In 1973, I met in a scout hall with a group of young actors. They had been involved in Wellington’s elderly Unity Theatre and were keen to do something different. I had seen a play devised through improvisation by a youth theatre group in the UK and been impressed with the energy and immediacy of the performance, so we decided to work through improvisation and to devise a piece based on memories of our childhood and early adolescence. At subsequent rehearsals we pooled stories, the actors improvised these scenes and it was relatively simple to choose those that had theatrical life. I then put the scenes into sequence and added transitions. Our improvisations were structured through each actor having a sequence of intentions to play. Many of us had taken third form Latin and chanted amo, amas, amat, amamus… so we called ourselves, as a joke, Amamus Theatre group. The play, I rode my horse down the road, was critical of the perceived conservatism of the communities in which we had been raised. There was no set required, the one essential item being a divan style bed, symbolising the child and adolescent’s personal space. It was first performed late night at Downstage, Wellington’s professional theatre, 2 and later 1 Marcos is an assumed name for the urban intellectual who has become spokesperson for the Zapatista Liberation Movement in Chiapas, Mexico. He always wears a ski mask for public appearances so that his identity remains a secret. 2 I rode my horse down the road, (Amamus Theatre Group, late night Downstage, April 16-18, 1971). 2 toured New Zealand as part of a repertory of our work. Performances took place then under the umbrella of the mainstream and within buildings that clearly signalled their theatrical purpose (R.Williams “Sociology of Culture” 132-133). Horse, as we referred to it, was a slight piece, but had the innocence and energy of youth and was about ordinary New Zealanders. We used our collective experiences as content and improvisation as a means of production, rather than being under the thrall of an absent writer. The play is mentioned in New Zealand theatre histories (e.g. Thomson 83). Thirty six years later, a few weeks before Easter, the cast of Rain, Love and Coalsmoke 3 assembled in the St John Ambulance Hall in Blackball, a small ex- mining village on the West Coast and even more distant from the urban centers of mainstream theatre than the scout hall. The cast consisted of myself as writer, director and actor, my partner, a midwife who has acted in previous Community- based theatre productions, two professional colleagues from Rotorua who had been contracted to assist with the production, plus four local people: a forestry worker, a polytech tutor, a meter reader, and a school leaver. The professionals were being paid, the rest were having their travel costs reimbursed. The funding had come from a variety of sources, only one of which was an arts fund. An application to Creative New Zealand, the main arts funding body, had been turned down. Yet in the same round, I, as an individual artist, was awarded a grant to participate in an encounter with a famous experimental theatre director in Poland. We had three weeks to rehearse three, linked, one-act plays for an evening of workers’ culture which would be a key part of a weekend commemorating the centenary of a strike which took place in Blackball, and which was the catalyst for the 3 Paul Maunder, Rain, Love and Coalsmoke, (Regent Theatre, Greymouth, March 22, 2008). Script available at www.blackballmuseum.org.nz/resource/stories , 12/6/09. 3 formation of the national union movement. There was therefore, a social and political purpose to this project, as well as an aesthetic one. The audience would be a mix of locals, unionists from around the country, Labour Party stalwarts, government ministers, and relatives of the strikers. Few of them would have regular attendance of mainstream theatre productions as part of their life-style. Some would never have attended such a production. The organising of the weekend was a big task for this small community. I had lived there for five years and was asked to co-ordinate the committee, which was made up of representatives of local community groups, local unions and the local branch of the Labour Party. My role was both that of insider and outsider, for I knew the differing cultural expectations of the locals and the visitors. I had written the three plays, snapshots of key moments in local history during my time living in the village and drawn on oral history interviews I had conducted, casual reminiscence and labour history. The three plays were set on, and in front of, the veranda typically attached to the front of a miner’s cottage. The veranda remains a mediating space between the public and the private, a boundary which is constantly transgressed. Normally, this sort of production would take place in a community setting, but I had chosen to present the plays in the Regent Theatre in Greymouth, partly because there was no local venue big enough, but as well, on this occasion, to dignify workers’ culture with the theatrical trappings of the mainstream. This decision put greater pressure on the production, for we had to meet the technical expectations that go with those theatrical trappings, and perform in a large theatre space. Rehearsals went smoothly, apart from the inevitable strain, because of work commitments, of getting everyone in the same place at the same time. The school leaver was a member of the Seventh Day Adventist Church and, as the performance 4 was taking place during Easter, had to balance two competing claims of solidarity: one to her church and family, the other to this union-inspired event. Another of the local actors had difficulty with the playing of a key role, needing to move past habitual emotional-intellectual patterns which were deeply embedded.