Latest news with #CourtTheatre
RNZ News
20-07-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Staging one of the greatest love stories in a 60s thriller
culture arts 44 minutes ago It's one of the greatest and most famous love stories and we already know how it ends before it begins. Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet is now on stage with ATC - reenvisioned in a 60s thriller, high fashion style. Experienced theatre director, Benjamin Kilby-Henson has had a diverse career; taking theatre groups to the Edinburgh Fringe, directed shows for the Pop Up Globe, musicals for Court Theatre - and yet his shows often have a film or cinematic element and feel to them. Benjamin Kilby-Henson speaks to Culture 101 about how he first felt about the idea of bringing Romeo Juliet; such a well-known story to the stage.
NZ Herald
11-07-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
Creative NZ head Gretchen La Roche on muscial journey and growing up in Gisborne
She has worked at the organisation twice before, but was most recently executive director at Christchurch's Court Theatre. There, she oversaw a complete turnaround in workplace culture and the opening of the theatre company's new $61 million home, its first purpose-built space in 54 years. La Roche has an undeniably impressive CV; only a small portion of her achievements have been listed so far. But it all started in Gisborne, when she asked her parents for a saxophone and was given a clarinet. 'I come from a really musical family and a long, long line of music on all sides,' she said. Her father, Ian Dunsmore, founded the Gisborne International Music Competition, which attracted competitors from across the globe until it ended after the Covid pandemic. La Roche was taught how to play the clarinet by a music teacher who lived just down the road. 'She had this great way of making you feel quite joyful in the lessons, even though I was really terrible,' she laughed. 'And I wasn't very good at practising.' La Roche is charmingly self-deprecating about her clarinet ability, but an old concert preview from long-time music critic William Dart offers some insight to the contrary. 'Her performance of Michael Finnissy's Marrgnu a few years ago, suspending columns of glistening arpeggios in mid-air, left me grasping for superlatives,' he wrote. Her success, she said, is built on a line of some 'long-suffering teachers'. She went to Gisborne Central School, Gisborne Intermediate and Gisborne Girls' High School. 'I know there were probably times when I tried their patience, and I'm grateful that they put up with me for as long as they did.' While she did eventually have to leave Gisborne – as one must do when pursuing a career as an orchestral musician – she feels her upbringing gave her ingredients vital to her success. 'I feel so proud to have grown up in Gisborne … for me, it was a community that afforded huge opportunity,' she said. 'People were really keen to help me realise ambition, vision and hopes and really stood alongside me, behind me, encouraged me and opened doors for me.' In Gisborne, we know how to get things done and find solutions through necessity, even if that means not always playing by the rules, she said. 'And thank goodness too that there's a strong history of really inspiring and strong women from Gisborne and up the coast.' La Roche spent four years at the University of Auckland, followed by further studies at London's Royal Academy of Music. After graduating, she spent most of her time performing and spent many years as principal clarinettist at the Christchurch Symphony Orchestra. Eventually, she started taking on more administrative work, which led her to strategy and organisation management. According to La Roche, it's been 'quite a shift', but underpinning it all is an abiding love for creativity and a belief that the arts add 'so much' to everyone's daily lives. Despite living away from Tairāwhiti for some time, she has a deep appreciation for its arts scene. 'It matters to people there. They want to be involved. They want to see it. They want it [to be] part of their lives on a daily basis.' She also pointed to the 'incredible craftsmanship, knowledge and expertise' of Ngā Toi Māori in the region, something she says is special and unique. One of the things La Roche has been praised for is her ability to show compassion, fronting up to creatives and listening to their needs. She wants to continue this in her new role. Gisborne and many other communities have told her in the past that all they want are the tools, the investment, and the mandate to 'get on with it'. She is looking forward to having more of these conversations and putting some serious investment on the table, on top of growing Aotearoa's recognition of the arts. 'We are doing our best to tell that story of why creativity matters,' she said. She believes every New Zealander deserves the opportunity to experience the arts and wants to make sure, despite today's constrained environment, we avoid growing a divide between 'those that can access and those that can't'. When asked if she plans to eventually return to Gisborne, she said she could not think of anywhere better to end up. One day, when she is back performing, she'll keep a keen eye on the newspaper for any gigs going. But for now, she's laser-focused on her new job, even as her clarinet looks at her accusingly from its corner.
The Spinoff
06-07-2025
- Entertainment
- The Spinoff
Why do so many New Zealand plays have such short lives?
Playwright Sam Brooks on the importance of looking back to move forward. Theatre is an ephemeral art form. That's the beauty of it. For an hour or two, the performance exists for the people who are in the same room as it, and then it goes away. The next night, the same actors might say the same lines in the same places, but it's still different. It's never the exact same thing. Then the play closes, and it goes away. Sometimes, it goes away forever. Whether it happened at a tiny fringe venue or a massive stage, there are plays that are one-and-done, for whatever reason. That's especially true in New Zealand, which unfortunately lacks a culture of revival, or revisiting shows. Reviving a show is something that the average theatregoer might be aware of without knowing the exact definition. Essentially, it's the practice of putting on a show again after its premiere run, with a completely new team and interpretation. The recent production of Black Faggot that played at Christchurch's Court Theatre and then Q Theatre is a revival of the 2013 production, for example, with none of the same creative team. That's meaningfully distinct from, say, Silo Theatre's upcoming production of Mother Play – while it might be a New Zealand premiere, it is a completely new production. Other countries, particularly those with strong theatregoing traditions, have much stronger revival cultures. Shows get enshrined into the canon and have new productions, and new interpretations of them produced regularly, with people often showing up in droves. For example: If you're a certain brand of homosexual, you'll have strong opinions on Audra McDonald's take on Gypsy's protagonist Gypsy Rose Lee compared to Patti LuPone's take, compared to Bernadette Peters', and so on. If that meant nothing to you, sub in 'All Blacks kicker' for 'Gypsy Rose Lee', 'Dan Carter' for 'Audra McDonald', 'Beauden Barrett' for Patti LuPone', and 'Andrew Mehrtens' for 'Bernadette Peters' (apologies to both fans of musical theatre and the ABs). This is the kind of thing that doesn't happen here, even for international plays. There have been two professional productions of A Streetcar Named Desire in Auckland in my lifetime, for example, which means two chances for me, and any Auckland theatregoer, to see one of the most acclaimed plays of all time. New Zealand, simply put, does not have that same culture of revival – especially when it comes to our own 'canon'. Once a play is performed, it often exists for its initial season and very rarely again. There are a few reasons for that. The relative youth of playwriting in this country is one of those – Roger Hall's Glide Time is widely regarded as the turning point for audiences recognising that New Zealand could generate its own theatre is only 50 years old, and even the grandfather of New Zealand theatre, End of the Golden Weather, is just 75 years old. (That one was actually revived earlier this year, as the show that opened Christchurch's Court Theatre's new venue.) The worldwide theatre canon is hundreds, even thousands of years old. Compared to that, our canon may as well be a catalogue – and I might say that our best plays hold their own on the world stage with theatre cultures older and better supported. This same thinking has also historically been applied to basically anything New Zealand has succeeded at, but I promise it is also true of theatre. We also have a culture of making, and developing, new work. We develop, we produce, we premiere and we move on. Premiere productions being performed only once is an issue that extends beyond the cultural to the commercial – getting funding for a new work is easy, for whatever reason, but increasingly difficult for subsequent remounts. It does mean, however, that there are absolute diamonds that exist for one moment of brilliance, remembered by only those who saw them, before dipping into the archives, with only the most nerdy theatre people remembering they existed. (I think of work like Silo Theatre's Cellfish, and Miria George's and what remains as works that feel even more relevant now than when they premiered.) There is also a lack of access, for commercial reasons. We are a small country where theatre is often vying for funding against art forms with deeper roots, which means less money is available for venues to stay open, companies to develop and produce theatre, and even for playwrights to write them. With perhaps a little bit too much transparency: of the 53 plays I've written, I have been commissioned to write once, and received funding from Creative New Zealand to write two of these. The rest have been written under my own steam. In short: Less money means less art, less art being made means less art being seen, means less art in the canon. That access extends to it being difficult to find and read scripts in the first place. Places like Unity and second-hand bookstores might have a play section, but very rarely will you find New Zealand plays there. Similarly, libraries might have a resource, but while a great many New Zealand plays have been published, they are more representative of our canon than they are entirely reflective. Playmarket, New Zealand's playwriting agency, is a great resource for New Zealand work if it takes your fancy! Also? Reading a play – and I say this in earnest as someone who both writes and reads plays – is not the most interesting thing. It's a very different thing to imagine the world of a play in your mind compared to, say, imagining the world of a novel. Plays are often written for enthusiasts and experts to read and interpret, not for a general audience. They're less like books and more like blueprints. A play isn't like a book. It's not a song. It's not like a movie – even in the rare case when a play is filmed, it's no substitute for actually being there. Once those things are produced, they exist. If they're lucky enough to be a part of the canon, they're enshrined in perpetuity. Plays are a different beast. 'You had to be there' is tragically real – for a play if you actually weren't there for the premiere production, there's a very real chance that you might have missed it. This week at Auckland's Basement Theatre, I've been fortunate enough to be asked to curate a series of playreadings called Firing the Canon, which will involve five plays being performed for free, with 37 actors, emerging and experienced, performing across the week. These five include the aforementioned Glide Time by Roger Hall (marking his Basement Theatre debut), Smashed by Tawhi Thomas, Rēwena by Whiti Hereaka, The Packer by Dianna Fuemana and Cow by Jo Randerson. The goal is for the series to run long-term, in venues across the country, and to breathe new life into plays that might otherwise not be performed, for any of the above reasons. There's no way I can cover the huge spectrum of New Zealand theatre with only five plays. I couldn't even do it with 50. But it's a little bit of a light shone in the right direction. Our theatre history might not be as huge as the UK's, or the USA's, but it's pretty mighty. But without an audience showing up, an audience taking interest, it might not be there at all. Theatre is an ephemeral form, but when an audience shows up, it can feel eternal.
Otago Daily Times
26-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Otago Daily Times
The Court Theatre - back on centre stage
By Eva Kershaw of Frank Film "We stayed the course and my God, we're delighted with what we have." Court Theatre actor and artistic advisor Ross Gumbley is not talking about the new Auckland apartment where curmudgeonly cow-cockie Dickie Hart, his character in the recently opened End of Summer Time by Roger Hall, now lives. Rather, he is talking about the new $56 million theatre building that has been wooing audiences since opening its doors in early May. In helping plan the new theatre, Gumbley and his team attended nearly 2,500 meetings with designers, builders and architects to create a building that is intimate, operational and distinctly home grown. Taking a break from rehearsals, he points to the West Coast blackwood flooring, the laminated timber columns from Rotorua, the steel work made in nearby Bromley that dominate the expansive foyer. 'This foyer is the finest Aotearoa has to offer,' he tells Frank Film. Education and engagement manager Ben O'Brien-Limmer is similarly enthusiastic. 'We're really pinching ourselves, just what a gift this is,' he says. The Court Theatre had been without a purpose-built home since its establishment in 1971. Just months after being evicted from its home in The Arts Centre by the 2011 earthquake, the Court opened its new home in The Shed, a reformed railway shed in Addington. Back-of-house was cold and occasionally leaky and the stage was too big for most sets, but still, 'our audience fell in love with Addington,' says Gumbley. When the Christchurch City Council agreed to fund the new theatre building as an anchor for the arts in the post-earthquake city rebuild, it was important to get it right. 'They wanted a building that you walked into and was warm and inviting, the antithesis of corporate,' says Athfield Architects' Matthew Webby, who was employed to design the theatre alongside UK theatre specialists Haworth Tompkins. In a sea of large glass and aluminium buildings that has come to define the new CBD, that sense of intimacy and materiality was considered critical to the design of the building and the theatre spaces. 'At this scale of auditorium you can get a really close connection between audience and actor,' says Webby. From the front row seats of the Stewart Family Theatre, which can fit an audience of 379 people, the stage and its performers are within arms' reach. In the Wakefield Family Front Room auditorium, artistic director Alison Walls says seating for 150 people can be adapted for a traverse or round stage, allowing the audience to wrap around a performance completely. The acoustics are just as immersive. Gumbley says that from the back of the house, you can hear the pages of a script being turned back-stage. In the control booth, technician Geoff Nunn says the theatre's technical rig is 'exactly the same' as you'd find in London's West End theatres. It is not just experienced actors enjoying the new spaces. In one of the rehearsal rooms, associate artistic director Tom Bain takes a crew of young actors through the steps for The Spongebob Musical: Youth Edition, the first junior show in the new theatre opening on 1 July. 'It's colourful, it's joyous, it's over the top,' he says. With an already well-established patronage, many of whose names are engraved on the back of the theatre's seats, the Court Theatre is focussed on engaging Christchurch youth. The company runs three youth groups, offering acting classes for various age levels and culminating in youth-led productions. 'There's always been a focus on bringing through that next generation of performer and live theatre goer,' says O'Brien-Limmer. 'However, it's reached a whole new level coming into a space like this.' The Court Theatre is Aotearoa's only producing house with all its departments under the same roof. Looking through the windows from Colombo Street, the public can see straight into the theatre workshop, where the company designs and constructs all sets, props and costumes for its shows. 'It wouldn't be the dream job if I had to carry this stuff from one location to here,' says workshop manager Matthew Duffy, who now has direct access to the main stage. "He gestures to a prop he built recently for Spongebob – the front half of the Krusty Krab burger joint – which would only be on stage for a minute or so. 'It's a smaller stage (than Addington), so it's better for us,' he says. 'We can spend more time per square metre. Two months on from the theatre's opening, says Gumbley, it is still very much early days for the theatre, 'but you know, we're going to get this right.' -Frank Film
Epoch Times
20-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Epoch Times
‘An Iliad': A One-Man Triumph at the Court Theatre
CHICAGO—Imagine being in a room with the most famous poet in antiquity, the man whose storytelling influenced literature for ages, and listening to him regale you with events that took place during the most important event in ancient Greek history: the siege of Troy. This unforgettable experience is unfolding at the Court Theatre in Chicago. Based Homer's 'The Iliad,' (circa 850 century B.C.), this work, titled 'An Iliad,' is co-authored by Lisa Peterson and Denis O'Hare. It's a one-man play of Homer's epic poem that tells the story of the 10-year war between two civilizations. It's also a perfect choice for the Court's mission to reimagine classic works for contemporary audiences. A Classic Work of Great Depth For the longest time, scholars believed that Troy was a mythological place, but recent archeological excavations have led many archeologists to believe that Troy really existed. Its remains are at Hisarlik, a city situated in modern-day Turkey.
