Work for us
Marketing and Communications Manager
Fortune Theatre is seeking an energetic and highly motivated marketing professional who will share our vision of the theatre and communicate this to our key stakeholders and audiences.
The Marketing and Communications Manager is responsible for the theatre’s promotional campaigns, including, but not limited to, managing the design, print and distribution of all communication materials, advertising and public relations, managing the theatre’s customer database, website and social media presence and will be key contact between the theatre and the local education sector.
The successful candidate will be enthusiastic, methodical, focused and tenacious, with an attention to detail, creative and inquisitive, flexible and willing to take on a wide range of tasks. He/she will work closely with the Artistic Director, General Manager and the Fortune Theatre company. This person will hold a relevant tertiary qualification and have proven experience in a marketing/sales/sponsorship or similar role. A full driving licence is also required.
To request a copy of the position description and selection criteria; and to apply to for this role, please contact the Fortune Theatre General Manager, Jeremy Smith on T: or E:. The salary for this position will be negotiated with the successful candidate.
Applications close: 5pm on Monday, 14 May 2012.
A fierce and intriguing look in to the life of Mark Rothko
RED
Monday, 23rd April 2012
Reviewed by Bronwyn Wallace on Saturday, April 14th for Critic: Te Arohi
The Fortune Theatre’s latest award-winning production RED is a fierce and intriguing look in to the life of Mark Rothko and his assistant, over the space of two years, as he prepares to create a selection of murals for The Four Seasons Restaurant.
John Bach brings Rothko to life beautifully as he storms around the stage ranting about art and life. The self-centred, twisted soul lays the whole of the art world at our feet in a combination of comparisons and insults while his patient assistant listens on with us. Cameron Douglas’s complementary actions allow the assistant to grow throughout the piece; he is believable in his slow, yet newfound confidence and voice to speak against Rothko. This confidence leads to a lot of arguing (though this happens often enough with Rothko always having something to disagree with) yet it never gets boring, as we see Douglas crawl his way up to the top where he hopes to seek respect, as a man and a struggling artist – a struggling artist who doesn’t even expose his name, leaving the enjoyable mystery of “who is he?”
The tension and use of silence between the characters is a highlight. In one of the final sequences a stunning image is set before us as we see Rothko kick a bucket of water across the stage and for the first time Douglas doesn’t back down. Their eyes are locked and they are stoic in their silence as the only sound to be heard is the bucket rolling and stabilising. It’s these eerie moments that reflect Rothko’s creations hung around the space, uneasy and dark.
The set was fantastic, a huge kudos to the team who must have spent weeks deep in paint attempting to replicate those humongous images, which leads me to another highlight of the piece – live painting on stage! Douglas and Bach danced around each other as they bounded from side to side covering a massive canvas in maroon paint. It was so satisfying to see this kind of live action, and a mess made and not swept up by a stage manager in the interval. Every movement on the set affects the set. Every drop of paint is left to build the landscape of the studio. Everything about the piece is natural. The scene changes are smooth, believable and intriguing. The audience sits in silence as we watched and wondered what would happen next. These scene changes were aided nicely by the use of music, Rothko’s record player dictating the mood and speed of the scene.
I would highly recommend RED to anyone. Granted some people (art history majors perhaps?) will gain more from the piece, and it is very wordy, but don’t let that hinder you from attending. I love that it is packed full of references to the art world, which occasionally go over your head and yet sometimes are used as punch lines which make you feel gloriously educated as you laugh along with the crowd at Pollock’s expense.
This article first appeared in Critic: Te Arohi, Issue 8, 2012.
Posted 5:04pm Sunday 22nd April 2012 by Bronwyn Wallace.
The first reviews of RED
'Superb' portrayal of Rothko and assistant
Monday, 16th April 2012
Reviewed by Barbara Frame on Saturday, April 14th for the Otago Daily Times
As full-length plays go, Red is quite short. It requires two actors, an uncomplicated set and some paint. So why does it seem such anaudacious undertaking?
Because of John Logan's brilliant, Tony award-winning script, because of its towering themes - art, creativity, permanence, the sublime - and because of the demands it makes of its director, its actors and its audience.
On the surface, it's about a business relationship: in 1958 Mark Rothko hires Ken as his nine-to-five assistant, to organise his studio and carry out non-artistic tasks.
For Rothko, little seems to exist beyond the dimly-lit studio, his own monolithic egotism and the mystical intensity of his painting.
For Ken, however, there is a life outside, and it's in the fact that beyond the studio there is a wider world in which art, once completed, must survive, that ideas collide.
In recent years the Fortune has brought us other plays about art (Art, The Pitmen Painters), but this is the first to enter so completely into the messy, inspired, perhaps mad process of creation.
The exhilaration of transformation is demonstrated in a well-choreographed sequence where the two men exuberantly yet efficiently prime a large canvas in about a minute.
Torment is conveyed later in the play when Ken comes into the studio to find Rothko up to his elbows in something - red.
Director Lara Macgregor is to be congratulated for her patient exploration of the play's many-layered complexity. John Bach's Rothko overwhelms us, much as Rothko wants his paintings to do.
Cameron Douglas' Ken seems at first all likeable and eager-to-learn art school graduate, but it soon becomes apparent that he, too, has something to teach.
This is a superb production of a great play, and I warmly recommend it.
Always absorbing, at times electrifying; seriously impressive
Sunday, 15th April 2012
Reviewed by Terry MacTavish on Saturday, April 14th for Theatreview
"People who weep before my pictures are having the same religious experience I had when I painted them," said the famous abstract-expressionist artist, Mark Rothko. Is it then blasphemy to use such art as mere decor in a restaurant where only the privileged will eat?
With the shameless guile of the seasoned reviewer, I have invited to Red a friend who just happens to have been a respected Art Department Head, lest I am at a loss to follow what will surely be high level artistic debate. I need not have worried: while Red certainly has depth and authenticity, it is accessible, enthralling entertainment.
Like Rothko I have stood awe struck in Pompeii's Villa of Mysteries, so overwhelmed and inspired that my first act on acquiring a house was to paint one room entirely and overpoweringly red. To be utterly absorbed in a colour is a breathtaking experience. John Logan in his turn was so moved by Rothko's red murals that this play had to be written.
It was 1958 when Rothko won the biggest ever art commission: the Seagram murals for the swanky Four Seasons restaurant in New York. After two years working on his stunning red canvases, he reneged on the deal, returning the huge advance fee.
In Red,Logan speculates on the reasons for this dramatic change of heart. Perhaps Rothko thinks he can stay true to his values by creating such powerful works that he will put rich punters off their dinners (he'd paint, he said, "something that would ruin the appetite of every son-of-a-bitch who ever eats in that room") but when an idealistic apprentice plucks up the courage to challenge him, he must re-evaluate.
The master/apprentice is an oft-used device in a two-hander, providing a confidant, but also inevitably a rival or threat, and it works because it is based in truth, exemplifying the eternal struggle between old and new. Once Ken the assistant is over his initial awe, the two argue about everything, from Jackson Pollock (admired by Ken, abhorred by Rothko) to the Greek gods (Rothko sees himself as Apollo, battling for truth and order against the chaos of Dionysus: Pollock again).
Even as paintings should evoke emotional and visceral response, so too should theatre, and director Lara Macgregor has produced a play of exuberant intensity to match Rothko's art. This tension informs all aspects of the production, from the opening, when Rothko fiercely contemplates the audience, positioned where his painting must be, through to the striking image that foreshadows the tragic end to Rothko's life.
The badinage between the two characters is beautifully paced, taut and thrilling with revelations and surprises, although Macgregor also provides us with neat examples of Rothko's dictum: "Silence is so accurate." However, the highlight that has my artist guest shivering with pleasure is the excitement of the actual physical creation of an art masterpiece. Cleverly choreographed, Rothko and his apprentice duck and dive around each other, preparing then splashing paint onto a huge canvas with exhilarating energy. Fabulous!
John Bach has not been on stage here since Someone Who'll Watch Over Me but his intelligent face and rich voice have proved unforgettable and I am not surprised that he makes the role his own with consummate ease. His Rothko is egotistical, pompous and cruel, but believably brilliant. It is a well-researched and beautifully realised performance by an actor who, like Rothko, is master of his craft.
Good casting too for the role of the young assistant, an aspiring painter himself, though arrogant Rothko shows not the slightest interest in this. As Ken, Cameron Douglas moves seamlessly from humble admirer in tidy suit to furious antagonist, providing a convincing foil for Bach. Their stimulating verbal battles include a glorious riff on the meaning of ‘red', in which the young man sees passion and life, while the old reads danger and despair.
Altogether the production values of Red are quite outstanding, showing that rare thing: an entire theatre company working at the top of its game.
The set, designed by Peter King, is so authentic an artist's studio that my painter friend is itching to get down onto the stage and start work. The attention to detail is superb, from the paint stained floor to the grubby hand basin. It provokes an exciting sense of anticipation: this is a working space and we will surely witness creation.
The studio is transformed to a thing of beauty by the moody shadows split by mysteriously lovely shafts of light illuminating paintings, while the little stove glimmers red and high windows subtly reveal the passage of time: lighting so luscious it simply has to be the design of Martyn Roberts. It is smoothly operated by Syd Nambiar, along with the classical music playing on Rothko's gramophone: a delicate soundtrack designed by Lindsay Gordon.
Properties Master Jen Aitken has accomplished the amazing feat, essential for the success of the production, of creating massive paintings that come as close as I can imagine to genuine Rothkos.
Even the programme is a stunner: glossy, elegant and informative, with readable background articles by some very erudite people: a worthy collector's piece in itself.
Red is a work with depths to be explored, that would reward a second visit: always absorbing and at times electrifying. Like Rothko's art, it is seriously impressive, and not just for the intelligentsia.
I wait apprehensively for some art world jargon as my knowledgeable friend turns to me at the end. Her face is glowing. ‘This is a cool play!' she announces emphatically.
Fortune Theatre Trust Information
TAKE NOTICE that a Special General Meeting of the Fortune Theatre Trust will be held at 5.30 pm on Wednesday 18 April 2012 at the Fortune Theatre, 231 Stuart St, Dunedin.
The purpose of the meeting is to consider, and if thought to pass, amendments to the Rules of the Trust.
The detail of the proposed amendments, which (a) clarify the definition of Membership of the Trust (b) reduce the number of Trustees by two and clarify the mode of Trustees’ appointments and (c) make a small number of minor textual amendments or clarifications to the Rules. to download a copy of the proposed amendments to the Rules or contact the General Manager T: or E: to request a copy.
to download the existing Rules, or contact the General Manager T: or E: to request a copy.
