Note From Backstage
A WORD FROM BACKSTAGE
Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat…this is what is going on in my brain right now as we motor through rehearsals for Samuel Beckett’s Play for the Otago Festival of the Arts. Play is somewhat of a diversion from our usual fare but what a wonderful and complex piece of theatre it is to work on. Sculptor Hannah Kidd has built three remarkable urns for the actors to be housed in, as they wrestle with deep seated Beckett themes – habit, perception, isolation, consciousness – and Stephen Kilroy has been mastering the single spot that illuminates the actor’s heads peering over the tops of the urns, triggering them to speak. This remarkable piece of theatre hasn’t been performed on a professional stage in New Zealand for close to thirty years. We’re very excited to be presenting it in the Standard Insurance Building at 201 Princes Street from 9 October -13 October at 5.30pm. This is a FREE event and you’re welcome to stay for five minutes or an hour, whatever suits you in the moment. I’m hoping you have plenty lined up in the Festival to see. Dave Armstrong’s spectacular Where We Once Belonged and the Australian puppet show The Grimstones: Hatched, are both being housed on the mainstage of the Fortune for the Festival. All tickets are available through Ticket Direct.
Backstage we’ve been busy working on Paul Baker’s new script The Night Visitors and setting up the Studio 4 x 4 Young Playwrights Initiative which begins its ten week programme on 13 October. I have had so many wonderful responses from budding young playwrights wanting to be part of the course - it’s very exciting. I’ll update you on that initiative next month, and also let you know how rehearsals are going for Calendar Girls!!! It’s selling so fast we can hardly keep up.
Aroha
Lara Macgregor
Artistic Director
