Founders

Huntly Eliott died in Auckland on 27 May, 2000. Huntly wrote the following article in 1999. 

Message from Huntly Eliott

Back in 1973, the idea of starting a professional theatre in Dunedin seemed a logical one. For a start, the Southern Comedy Players, long resident at the Playhouse Theatre had closed down several years before. And at the time, all other main centres – and some smaller ones – had thriving 'Community' Theatres, and Dunedin had not. Somehow, too, it seemed that a useful synergy might develop between a live theatre company, and the city's television station. And I'd already been involved, some years before, in setting up an admittedly short-lived professional theatre venture in a Christchurch coffee bar. The previous year I had played the King in a Globe production of Richard II.

Some weeks after, lecturer in drama David Carnegie dropped into the television studios to audition for a presenter's role. I worked there as a producer, and we met after his camera session. We talked Richard and the Globe, Dunedin audiences and Dunedin theatres. We agreed on the need for a professional company – one which would bring together the City's then parochial audiences, provide regular work for its actors, and offer Dunedin theatre-goers some continuity: in a city where performance-less months were all too often followed by several short weeks of clashing productions, we decided, the question for theatre-goers needed to be 'what's on?', not 'is anything on?' We determined to meet again and expand the discussion. Already there was a third member to consider. Murray Hutchinson, a talented producer/director with DNTV, was due to return from a television fellowship trip to the UK, and from what I'd seen of him, I felt he might be interested. And if so, invaluable. Murray suggested Alex Gilchrist, with his largely dance and musical background, as a logical fourth member of the group. Thus was the founding quartet formed.

Anyone who has tried to name a television show or a theatre group will know what a task it can be. We met for lunches, we had formal meetings, drinks, a dinner party, and at all lists were drawn up, contenders eliminated, and little progress was made. Some names definitively eliminated resurfaced mysteriously at subsequent sessions. But 'Fortune' was the one which recurred the most, and was rejected the least. We became the Fortune Theatre Company. An ODT columnist commenting on the title at the time noted: 'my only wonder is that the foursome are not arguing about it still!' We met Patric Carey not long after he had directed his final show at the Globe, to explain that we were not setting ourselves up in opposition. 

In fact, though, I suppose that is exactly what we were doing, at least in the short term. Just as the old Fortune vied with the Globe for audiences in Elizabethan times. But then, we believed that the availability of good, regular theatre would benefit amateur as well as professional companies. The search for a venue was every bit as tricky as the hunt for a suitable name. The Regent Theatre Trust had recently been formed, and there was a mutual desire for us to perform within their building if at all possible. They had recently uncovered an old air raid shelter under the foyer, but the space was too confined for serious consideration. We searched in restaurants, a disused cinema, in halls and in every vacant space we could find. And ended up next door to the Regent. 

At the far end of the Atheneum Library was a cine club theatrette, complete with projection box and refreshments room. No longer the vital force it had clearly once been, the club now met on Monday evenings, and the 104-seat auditorium lay vacant for the rest of the week. We seized it with enthusiasm. We painted it up to a colour-scheme of Murray's choosing, built a stage with traps either side (enter Stage L involved lowering oneself down Stage R's trapdoor, crawling in near darkness to the Stage L trap, clambering up, brushing oneself down, and entering, hopefully dust-free, as rehearsed!). The dressing rooms, with, from memory, one tap and one toilet, were over the front of the building: through the library, down the corridor leading to the Women's Rest Rooms, through a heavy door, and up the stairs. 

Once the audience had been safely settled in its seats, actors were ushered downstairs, and the dressing-room door carefully locked behind them. Late arrivals were thus treated to a preview of the evening's characters as they paraded down the Athenaeum Library's book-lined centre aisle. The desire to create an audience by providing 'continuous' theatre enforced a punishing schedule that first year. We determined on a 3-week rehearsal/3-week performance timetable which allowed a two-day production turnaround. Considering all concerned had to maintain their day-jobs, this was a significant demand on cast and crews. We had tested the intended rehearsal period the previous year in a production of Hampton's The Philanthropist at the Globe. What we hadn't attempted was the three-week run and the fast turnaround. The schedule worked like this: 

• Bundle the audience out the door after the final performance of a show 
• Dismantle the set
• Move its flats and bits and pieces to the cellar below the Regent, or later, a few blocks down the road (a strange sight this, no doubt, in the central city at 3 or 4 am of a Sunday!) 
• Move in new set 
• Rig lights; rehearse technical elements: ready for a dress rehearsal Sunday evening 
• Touch up set and wardrobe on the Monday (nothing on Monday night, that was the Cine Club's time), and 
• Open on Tuesday

By the end of the first year, we had offered eight productions in less than 6 months; the four of us had mixed acting, directing, designing, administration and a hundred other tasks with the establishing of the theatre itself (and of course with the day-jobs) and it was time to take stock. Not only for our sakes, but for that of the many people including our families who had joined to help launch the company. We instituted a 'production week' between shows, and restored a modicum of sanity to the chaotic lives of all involved. Maintaining our various jobs was always going to be difficult and for me the crunch came early. 

1974 was the first year of the children's magazine series Spot On, at that time a twice-weekly production. Murray (the show's creator) and I were directing alternate studio sessions. The Two Tigers dress rehearsal, which Murray directed and in which I played a handful of roles, clashed head-on with a regular studio booking. And we knew the television powers-that-be were waiting for us to cancel the session. It was equally clear that such cancellation would be healthy neither for the programme nor for our continued association with the TV station. Murray, more critical by far to the rehearsal, spent the evening at the theatre; I directed the studio inserts, hurtling round at booking's end to join the final scenes. We had quickly learnt how delicate the balancing act can be, when you're having to juggle competing deadlines. But it was worth it: in Brian McNeill's The Two Tigers we had our first hit – and it was only our second production.