by Geoff Chapple Colin McColl Principal Partner Principal Funder WELCOME Artistic Director These days penguins are everywhere – selling potato chips, frozen Theatre is an ephemeral business. Once a production has completed foods, chains of cafés and tourist destinations. The shelves of its three or four week run – it is usually dismantled and never souvenir shops are stocked with the little fluffy things; they are seen again. Hatch however marks a new direction for Auckland Core Funders even winning Oscars. Theatre Company by making our productions accessible to a wider audience. After its Auckland season Hatch will tour to the Festival of In the 19th century the Southern Ocean was densely populated Colour, Wanaka, Dunedin and a Southland tour to Balclutha, Gore, with penguins and intrepid Victorian entrepreneur Joseph Hatch Invercargill and Riverton to follow. Hatch then plays Christchurch, saw the possibilities of harnessing this natural resource to advance Nelson and Tauranga Festivals – and a proposed tour to smaller employment and industry in Southland. Yet while other less populous theatres in the Greater Auckland region. There has also been interest species of native birds were being wiped out; while the kauri forests from Australian festivals. Major Supporters of Northland were being decimated; while whaling on a huge scale in the Southern Ocean went unchecked; and while ethnic cleansing of Big thanks to Geoff for uncovering this bizarre chapter of New Zealand’s Tasmania’s aboriginal population was nearing completion - writers, history and to Stuart Devenie for bringing Hatch so vividly to life politicians and scientists from around the world went into uproar with his usual consummate skill, intellectual rigour and good humour. over Hatch’s Macquarie Island steaming works. Hatch felt he didn’t deserve the interference and attacks on his character that his business My thanks too to my design team, Denise Hosty and Tony Rabbit for seemed to attract. When his licence to Macquarie Island was revoked their commitment to the project. Media Partners he took himself off on lecture tours throughout New Zealand and Tasmania to clear his name and garner public support for his right In May we present The Next Stage season of new work. This is an to run his business. He was a persuasive public speaker – he’d been integral part of Auckland Theatre Company’s work in developing new Mayor of Invercargill and a Member of Parliament - and his audiences scripts, such as Hatch. It is an opportunity to see work in progress, apparently often voted in his favour! to hear writers and directors talk about the work and to offer your feedback. Our next main stage production is Roger Hall’s new comedy It’s been a great journey discovering Hatch and his world through Who Wants to be 100? (Anyone Who’s 99). Supporting Partners Geoff Chapple’s robust new play, and we are proud to be presenting the world premiere season as part of Auckland Festival AK07. The Enjoy! play has been workshopped over the last year by the Auckland Theatre Company Literary Unit - and my thanks to Geoff, Stuart Devenie, Ian Mune, Roy Ward and all who have assisted that process. AIR NEW ZEALAND / AUCKLAND ART GALLERY TOI O TÃMAKI / BDO SPICERS / CANON / THE HYPERFACTORY / ILLY MAIDMENT THEATRE / NBR / SKYCITY THEATRE / THE CASTLE TRUST / THE GREAT CATERING COMPANY MACQUARIE ISLAND Macquarie Island (34 km long x 5 km wide) lies in the Southern Ocean, 1,500 km south-east of Tasmania and approximately halfway between New Zealand and the Antarctic continent. The island is the exposed crest of the undersea Macquarie Ridge, raised to its present position where the Indo-Australian tectonic plate by Geoff Chapple meets the Pacific plate. It is a site of major geo-conservation significance, being the only place on earth where rocks from the Cast Joseph Hatch Stuart Devenie earth’s mantle (6 km below the ocean floor) are being actively exposed above sea-level. These unique exposures include excellent Creative examples of pillow basalts and other extrusive rocks. On 3 Direction Colin McColl Set and Lighting Design Tony Rabbit December 1997, Macquarie Island was listed as a World Heritage Costume Design Denise Hosty AV Design Tony Rabbit and Geoff Chapple Area. Macquarie Island is a site of outstanding international Production geological significance. Production Manager Robyn Tearle Technical Manager Bonnie Burrill Sound System Design James MacKenzie Senior Stage Manager Aileen Robertson AV Operator Adam Gardiner Lighting and Sound Operator Matthew Lamb Set Construction 2CONSTRUCT Costume Construction The Costume Studio Beard Construction Wig FX Properties Master Bec Ehlers Front of House Manager Karen Meibush Tour Tour Manager Adam Gardiner Operator Matthew Lamb Pre Planning Tour Management Nicola Blackman Hatch or the Plight of the Penguins is the second Auckland Theatre Company production for 2007. This production was first performed at the Hopetoun Alpha on March 15, 2007. Hatch or The Plight of the Penguinsis approximately 65 minutes long (without interval). Please remember to switch off all mobile Proud to be the selected caterers for Proud to be the selected wines of phones, pagers and watch alarms. Auckland Theatre Company Auckland Theatre Company Macquarie Island IN PursuiT OF THE Good oil by Geoff Chapple Joseph Hatch was one of New Zealand’s most tenacious entrepreneurs. He set up the southernmost steaming works in the world - at began to drill the Invercargill Fire Brigade. He shifted to Riverton Macquarie Island - and the penguin oil his gangs produced there for a time as postmaster, with a sideline running sealing cutters, brought significant wealth to New Zealand. Hatch was also a very then moved back to Invercargill and pursued his druggist trade. colourful politician. Yet his history remains obscure, and his grave He was a restless chemist, continuing to develop other industries - unusually for so prominent a citizen - remains nameless. It has around animal extracts of fat and bone - he once bought a never had an identifying headstone. stranded whale for £30 - and poisons to control pests. In these same years he expanded the reach of his ships from cutters to Hatch was born in London in 1837 and educated there. He schooners. He became a member of Invercargill’s Athenaeum and shipped to Melbourne where he was apprenticed as a druggist, liquor licensing committee, a councillor, and a champion of town before emigrating to New Zealand in 1862. That was the year he gas, clean water and trams. In 1877 he was elected mayor. first saw Macquarie Island and was struck by the “multitudes of penguins and sea elephants” on the shoreline. That vision stayed The local hall and the debating chamber were Hatch’s natural with him through decades. As the son of a London Alderman, milieu. He was a silver-tongued speaker who could mount strong Hatch was naturally drawn to civic affairs. Immediately on arriving arguments, ridicule his opposition, and sway crowds. That talent, at Invercargill he helped organise the Chamber of Commerce, and and his firm views on advancing the colony, saw him elected to Parliament in 1884 as member for Invercargill. Hatch was for rendering down sea elephants, but had abandoned the trade as immediately nominated as second speaker for the Opposition in uneconomic. Hatch, fresh from his parliamentary defeat revived the Address and Reply debate - an indication that amongst the the industry. He continued to render down sea elephants, but his various independent MPs who made up the Opposition his great advance was to develop the technology beyond trypots to rhetorical skills were already acknowledged. With such skills, digesters, and to begin rendering down penguins. Hatch might have made a considerable political impact - a future Minister of the Crown, perhaps even a Prime Minister - but his The experiment was at first unsuccessful - the penguin oil decayed parliamentary career ended suddenly in scandal. In 1887, the and burst the barrels, but by improving filtering on the island, and sealing population around New Zealand and its sub-Antarctic refining in his mainland factories Hatch produced a pure product islands was judged sufficiently precarious that the Government that found a ready market around the world as batching oil - used used its power to close the sealing season. When Hatch’s ship for the spinning process of hard fibre cordage. Hatch expanded his Awarua left Bluff on July 5 that year, it was ostensibly headed only plant to five separate stations around Macquarie, and developed a for the legal sealing grounds around Tasmania. Yet on July 9 it capacity finally to render down 200,000 birds a year. reached New Zealand’s Auckland Island. No-one should have known about that visit, for the island was usually uninhabited, but The opposition to this industry built only slowly over 30 years. At the Awarua was unlucky enough to encounter on Auckland Island first the goings-on at Macquarie Island were simply beyond any eight survivors of a wrecked barque, the Derry Castle. They raised law or jurisdiction. Then Tasmania asserted ownership, but was a hullabaloo of welcome, and the Awarua skipper reluctantly took happy to license Hatch’s activities - Hobart was, after all, a whaling them off to Australia. and sealing town. But after the Great War the Antarctic explorers He toured halls both in New Zealand and Australia to put his side his business to slaughter annually vast numbers of the island began to publicly criticise Hatch’s industry and the call to close of the case. He illustrated these lectures with slides of Macquarie population.” News of the castaways arrival at Melbourne - with its obvious him down was taken up by well-known figures of the day. It put and sought the crowd’s agreement, by formal resolution at every implication that the Awarua had intended poaching seals from Hatch at the centre of what was the first truly international meeting, for correction of “misstatements” about his methods, and Hatch fought hard for his business and his reputation, but the Auckland Island - broke just as the 1887 election got underway.