Blog

Tuesday 24 January 2012

Happy New Year everyone!

It’s secondment time at Toi Whakaari - the period over the summer when the incoming third-year actors travel to secondments with companies all over the world. Read about some of their experiences below.

Alice Canton is currently in Bali learning mask carving, Topeng (masked dance), and Kecak (monkey chanting). Link to her blog here: ‘Crouching Tiger, Hidden Monkey’

Tameka Sowman is currently in Niue watching the sun set. This is what she says about it: ‘She celebrated her 22nd birthday there as well, swimming with dolphins and snorkeling with snakes and beautiful marine life. She is researching her island island side, that til two weeks ago she had never ever confronted. It is amazing to discover that she is from one of the most untouched places on the planet, a place that is truly the ‘heart and spirit’ she was seeking to find. Only now to translate that into a language that people don’t need to understand, but to sense its presence…’

And Tom Eason, Tai Berdinner-Blades, Jaci Gwaliasi, Holly Chappell and Andrew Paterson have been in Berlin for several weeks now, teaming up with students from the famous Ernst Busch drama school to create a company, Ich Warte, under the direction of Willem Wassenaar (Toi graduate with the MTA in Directing, 2006). They’ve been workshopping and performing two showings of The Seagull at the Brotfabrik, the theatre and film centre at the end of Prenzlauerallee in the north of Berlin. Read the Ich Warte company blog here and about the other amazing things they’ve got up to on Tom’s blog, Goodbye Newtown. (He’s now in San Francisco, and we’ll see them all back here as third-years for the first day of Term I, on Thursday 16 Feb.)

Thursday 1 December 2011 – The actor directing the role

I was in Auckland yesterday running the latest of the Professional Development Forums and I met an Irish theatre director who was here working with Massive Theatre. He suggested I check out Anne Bogart’s blog.

Anne is the director of SITI Company in the States and is a friend of our former director Annie Ruth (below). This section from her most recent entry immediately struck me.

I met a Russian actress once who said, “The job of the actor, is to direct the role.” I found this simple trope profound and revolutionary. In our present theatre environment, too many actors expect the directors to direct their roles and too many directors assume that their job is to direct an actor’s role. But ultimately, if you consider the totality, the director’s job is not to direct the actor’s role; rather the director’s job is to direct the PLAY. The actors should consciously and intuitively direct their own role while the director is occupied with directing the play.

It made me get excited about this clarity potentially affecting our training going forward. It speaks to a phenomenon I noticed as I observed the rehearsals of all of the productions towards the end of the year. The actors waiting to be directed into their roles. The more we can train this skill set – the actor directing the role – the more we prepare ourselves for the actual work they will encounter.

Anne’s blog is on: http://siti.groupsite.com/post/october-2011-director-s-hook

Christian Penny

Director

Thursday 24 November 2011 – Learning in Te Po   

Teina Moetara (Head of Context and Practice at the School – this is a picture of him leading in Koiwi, the school’s weekly hui of learning) sent this in response to the last entry:

Morena everyone!

I was reading through the blog just now, and have been thinking about the last entry.

“Reflection on some early period in the training tended to reveal a time where commitment to the learning was clear or less clear. A time when a dream was forming.  A time where a vision was being generated.

Reflection on the middle stage almost consistently involved a period of confusion and doubt. Lots of students referred here to a framework we reference across the school. The pit of learning. And then a later stage where learning came together – usually in action – and the student felt able to relate all three stages of the journey together.

This was followed by reflection and appreciation of the effect students had had on each other and the role staff had played. There were also observations about areas we could improve on.

Two observations hit me immediately.

Sharing this as a group generated a lot of coherence for teachers and students. We could make more space for reflection in our programmes. We could develop more process to capture difficulties between staff and students, and students with each other, earlier.”

I’m excited.  What I’ve really been thinking of is the connection between this and the tikanga marae framework.  Specifically between the idea of wananga as a place that happens inside the metaphorical whare.  Rongo is the atua (quality).  This space represents the unknown or Te Po.   The journey and process through the unknown if transposed properly from the tikanga marae model can happen positively for those that experience it.  If it is expected as part of the process, people may enter into Te Po without as much kick-back, or it could be planned for and happen quicker within the learning journey.

These are some of the tikanga frameworks we can employ that can help us enter into Te Po… tahitahi whare, pepeha, whakatau, koiwi.  All of these are models of wananga, and they happen inside of ‘the house’ - Rongo being the primary atua.

This also coincides with the article on coaching. (We as staff are looking at an article on coaching, written by a Doctor, Atul Gawande, in The New Yorker. http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/10/03/111003fa_fact_gawande ) 

“Unconscious incompetence, to conscious incompetence, to conscious competence, to unconscious competence.” 

When we employ frameworks around how we encounter others, different models, performance, secondments, marketing etc we are now outside of the whare and Tu is the primary atua.  We need to be on our game, alert and ready for action.  The tikanga frameworks that help us to realise these things are… powhiri, matataki, karanga, whaikorero, waiata, poroporoaki.

Just some whakaaro floating around.

Teina Moetara

Teina Moetara
Head of Course, Context and Practice
Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School     

  

Tuesday 15 November 2011 – Completion tutorials.

This year, we trialled a new way of finishing up the learning process.

In the last few years students who were departing had a one-on-one interview with the Director. In this interview they revealed their thinking about their training.  This highlighted a lot of useful data, but  it took a long time to action. The information had to be transcribed, passed on to Heads of Courses. From there to staff. This was often hard to action because by the time we had the information the relationship from which it emerged was lost.  

We wanted to try this year to make a more real time assessment of the learning and we were trusting that two things would occur here:

1/ That we would get some data on the course structures and delivery through this process and 2/ that we would come to know more about how the learning had affected students “in context”, that is, within the groups themselves.

It was my job as Director to attend all of these sessions and see if I could garner some sort of overview. This was a very beautiful process to be a part of.

Students reflected on their learning journeys in specific groups.  They were invited to look at key moments in the journey through their training. One from the beginning phase. One from the middle. One from near the end.

To some this was a new process. A little scary. By the end however,  all found it uplifting and integrating.

Reflection on some early period in the training tended to reveal a time where commitment to the learning was clear or less clear. A time when a dream was forming.  A time where a vision was being generated.

Reflection on the middle stage almost consistently involved a period of confusion and doubt. Lots of students referred here to a framework we reference across the School. The pit of learning. And then a later stage where learning came together – usually in action – and the student felt able to relate all three stages of the journey together.

This was followed by reflection and appreciation of the effect students had had on each other and the role staff had played. There were also observations
                                                      about areas we could improve on.

Two observations hit me immediately.

Sharing this as a group generated a lot of coherence for teachers and students.

We could make more space for reflection in our programmes.

We could develop more process to capture difficulties between staff and students, and students with each other, earlier. 

Christian Penny

Monday 14 November 2011 – Graduation Week 1

I’m going to write a few entries that cover the school’s life over the last few weeks.

These are a very intense few weeks in the school’s calendar – where the completing students look to finish their time at the school and the continuing students look to transition into the next phase of their training.

We have learnt over the years that this process needs some attention and we begin to orient to it as a school from the beginning of the fourth term in koiwi.

This involves all of the planning that goes into the graduation week events, as well as all of the work to stay connected to the true purpose and meaning of the event. Most of this is now student-led. This year by Nicola Smith (Year 2 BPAM) and it has been beautifully guided by Teina Moetara (Head of Context and Practice).

There are multiple aims:

Complete our learning together.  Complete as a school.  Celebrate those graduating.  Welcome family and industry.  Connect folk to the meaning of their work over their time here.  Host a range of meetings between graduating students and the industry. Listen to those completing so we can gain wisdom from their experiences and get better at what we do. Look at where we could have done things better.

Tidy up any loose ends. We call this process ‘Tahitahi Whare’.  Literally ‘sweeping the house’. We try to make sure that what needs to be said to the school, is voiced to the school. Those leaving are clear about the ongoing responsibilities they have: for the investment that the school, and the government of New Zealand, makes in them. The relationship between School and graduates is clarified, strengthened and developed. Instructions are given to those departing and those staying. The goal is to arrive at poroporoaki – the final separation – in a steady way. Ready to go. Complete. Calm.

Christian Penny

Wednesday 2 November

Third-year Design student Theo Wijnsma has created a most beautiful set design for the graduation production of Love’s Labour’s Lost.  Here’s a photo of one end of the model which itself was a key part of this triumph.

 As I sat watching the finished production I kept drifting “into” the design;  this reminded me of the way design really can enrich a production.  I almost felt I had forgotten this truth because I so rarely go to the theatre where design is treated in a complete way any more – such are the economics of our times.

However to me the real triumph of this story lies months prior. In the preparation that made all of this possible.  I saw the design emerge through a number of phases of critique and interrogation. When I listened to Theo reflect on this process in his final year tutorials with his class he said – “I felt like all of this critique was making the design. Making it stronger. It didn’t feel a criticism of me.” And I thought – that’s confidence. Later he was to add: ”it didn’t feel like work – it felt like fun”. 

Theo got quite sick during the production rehearsal. This meant he wasn’t able to follow the realisation in detail.  This is where his preparation became the champion.

The crews had to build and realise the design almost solely from his model and drawings.  The detail and rigour of his preparation really enabled this work to take place confidently. A crew member told me later that they ended up taking a scale measurement off the model in order to solve a particular question.

Here is the link to a nice video of the construction process as it occurred which demonstrates the great team work that made this all possible. What I like here is the way we are mixing rigour and leadership with team work to solve complex problems. And particularly to finish them.

Christian Penny

 

Friday 28 October

Next week we host “In Collaboration”. It’s our most recent event in which we try to find a place for current students to meet the industry and graduates. Here is the blurb I wrote for the programme.

I went to Auckland last week to run a session for graduates of Toi Whakaari. We looked at the work they were currently involved in, the challenges it was presenting them, the resources they had at their disposal. We made plans about how they could more strongly pursue their vision. What were the next steps we asked ourselves?

One was still working in the performing arts. Another was using the skills that she had begun to develop here, to lead an incredibly exciting youth development programme. Both graduates enjoyed being together and “thinking” about their work as they had at the kura. Feeling each other’s passion and commitment was highly motivating.

This is something of our vision for this day. We want this to be a meeting where the school’s current community and the growing number of graduates build their ties. We hope folk share ideas and vision. Link up. We want it to be informal. Steady. Purposeful; and with a view to the long term. By being here you help us strengthen this vision. No reira, nau mai.

Christian Penny

Friday 21 October

Risk – what is it?

Building on the last koiwi (the school’s bi-weekly community gathering) – the School continued its discussion on the nature, the purpose and the relationships that we have to risk and to failure.

One of the directing students, Shannon Friday, offered this beautiful piece of thinking that her mother had forwarded her.

It’s from Ira Glass, host and producer of “This American Life” on NPR (National Public Radio) in an interview with the Design Talk blog:

“Nobody tells this to people who are beginners, I wish someone told me. All of us who do creative work, we get into it because we have good taste. But there is this gap. For the first couple years you make stuff, it’s just not that good. It’s trying to be good, it has potential, but it’s not. But your taste, the thing that got you into the game, is still killer. And your taste is why your work disappoints you. A lot of people never get past this phase, they quit. Most people I know who do interesting, creative work went through years of this. We know our work doesn’t have this special thing that we want it to have. We all go through this. And if you are just starting out or you are still in this phase, you gotta know its normal and the most important thing you can do is do a lot of work. Put yourself on a deadline so that every week you will finish one story. It is only by going through a volume of work that you will close that gap, and your work will be as good as your ambitions. And I took longer to figure out how to do this than anyone I’ve ever met. It’s gonna take awhile. It’s normal to take awhile. You’ve just gotta fight your way through.” 

Christian Penny

Sunday 16 October  

And one more piece of Ken Robinson before we post the strategic plan.

Christian Penny

Saturday 15 October

A  graduate of the acting programme and the Directing Masters, Ngapaki Emery,  wrote to me about koiwi last Monday.

I attended koiwi the other on the morning that the Arohanui crew came in to exchange within the whakatau. I was a little late and snuck in during the korero of Tukiterangi Curtis. It was an amazing sight! Nearly 30 Maori and a few non-Maori in this company. Just this in itself was moving to me because I rarely ever see this. This many Maori as part of a company, let alone within theatre.

Teina (my partner) and I had seen Tukiterangi, on a program, on TV One, last Sunday called Wakahuia. He was speaking about the kura they had started in Rotorua that was based around the model of Tu (Tumatauenga).

I was moved to hear Tukiterangi speak on Monday; his spontaneity, his joy and real weaving of connection was warming. Then the most beautiful korero came out as he acknowledged that there are few Maori in the school “kei hea nga Maori?” he said, “kei hea te iwi kainga?” he then proceeded to acknowledge the work of Teina and the our kura, on how that even though there were few Maori – he could feel the Maori in the heart of everyone. That was a huge mihi. He likened the students to decorations of the iwi kainga also. I learned a great thing that morning about the lens I look through and asking the right question. What he said illuminated the fact that, we can each be ourselves, and at the same time, serve to represent a group of people, as well as hold our own identity. I think the school has taught me this the most. That I can still hold onto myself and the group. A constant work, but one that I don’t have to do on my own, in isolation. I feel that Toi has been really working with this question of what it means to carry tikanga Maori – but not make everyone feel they have to ‘be Maori’. It is exciting.

The supporting waiata for Tukiterangi was beautiful too, it got me thinking more deeply about the form of kapahaka and the particular performer that a kapahaka performer is. Two women came out full of sass, passion, ihi and wehi – the exact thing I felt Phillipe Gaulier (Master theatre teacher in Frnace) try and get us all to –that joy and revealing of ourselves to others in order to connect. These people so have that. I saw their performance and enjoyed watching their skills, stamina, and sustained energy the most. Some beautiful moments where I dreamt around their work.

Christian Penny

Friday 14 October 2011

This came into my email the other day from Penny Fitt the Head of Design:

In The Dance of Leadership by Peter Cammock, he describes leadership as:

“Context shaping: The task of shaping a context of faith – a context in which people gain the confidence to take risks and perform at the leading edge of their capacities.”

She added.  “I thought of koiwi in this moment and koiwitanga: the approach that Context and Practice take towards the students’ learning.”

Note: Context and Practice is the name we give to the theoretical studies programme we are developing in the school. We are always looking to relate the research to “context” (the where and the why) and to “practice” (the how). We want to keep our research applied – particularly to bettering our craft and the art we are all making.

Christian Penny

Tuesday 11 October 2011

In koiwi on Monday a couple of students from the first year of the Acting Programme got up and invited the school to come and see their work in their first public showing.  Nothing new in that. They are doing small scenes from Much Ado about Nothing and The Taming of the Shrew.

What was remarkable was that they invited us to view their work through a lens. A learning lens. A lens that steered us from judgement towards critique. They asked us to come and see the work, then reflect back our thoughts – and when we put them forward (in koiwi):

“Speak to a specific moment in our Classic Cuts work that relates to a key moment from your learning this year.”

Nice. Watch others learn with your own learning in mind.

Christian Penny

Friday 7 October 2011

Robin Payne – the former director of the School – came to visit koiwi on Monday. I sat with her for a while afterwards with a small group. She was very moved by the experience.

I asked her what was affecting. She said it was so warming to see the School in such good health.

She had observed a class on the Friday previous and had noted the students’ respect, attention and articulation. At the time, she attributed this to the quality of the teacher running the class – Barry Kur , a visiting master voice teacher. Later that day she interviewed a student – Alice Canton – who wants, next year, to go to Asia as a part of her third-year secondment.  Robin currently teaches there. Robin said that as they chatted, she realised the same qualities were present in Alice as in the previous class and she then thought – this is a culture in the school.

Then in koiwi she witnessed it as a whole.  What affected Robin most strongly was the students’ ability to sit in silence. To tolerate big spaces – free from the anxiety to fill the void.

She revealed to me that part of the reason she had left her role was that she wasn’t confident she could carry the values and “heart” of the school forward as it continued to grow in scale.  Seeing  that “heart”  present in this new building and scale, she felt her dreams and hard work were bearing fruit – were still living and growing on in our work today.

Christian Penny

Friday 30 September 2011

Since we are about to post the new strategic plan, which commits us to the ongoing development of our educational model, I thought it would be worth revisiting one of the thinkers that kicked off our dialogue over half a decade ago. Bill Guest – our Associate Director at that time – came across Sir Ken Robinson’s talk at the TED conference website. I still return to this regularly for inspiration.

Christian Penny

Tuesday 27 September 2011

A couple of learning stories.

Story one.

I was chatting with Luci Hare the other day.  (She is an actor in her second year of training – this is from The Roaring Girl production we did earlier this year.)  I was letting her know that I could see all the work she had put in on the show. I had heard that she had done a lot of preparation for her role in her holidays and it showed. She had been well cast and well directed, by Rachel More Henry. She was able to bring her innate scale to the role and had been able to build in a heap of detail into her performance.

We chatted on some more.  She thanked me for coming to see the work.  

I was a little surprised. I was thinking to myself “well that is a part of my job”.  Luci added: having me in the audience had felt like having a hand, at the base of her spine, as she performed. A support. Now I was really surprised.

I let her know this. I shared how often I had noticed that the presence of a staff member –  particularly a teacher – in a rehearsal or a performance, could produce more anxiety. Luci agreed. She had noticed this herself one day when Nathaniel Lees had come into rehearsal and her whole group had lost the plot. Suddenly they dropped all of what they had been working on in an attempt to “look good for the teacher”. Rachel had pointed it out to them. Luci had felt it.

She had then enquired of herself: why was this happening?  She realised that she needed to change her relationship to the staff. She encouraged herself to stop seeing them as critics, solely. She recounted to me, how she thought to herself: “these people are here to see you develop – that’s what they want – why do I keep casting them in this other role”. And she changed.

Story two.

After the season, Cameron Jones came to see me. He had played a considerable role in Roaring Girl as well. (Here he is with Jacqui Gwaliasi.) He had been frustrated and disappointed with what he had achieved. He had applied a particular process to his work and he realised it had left him disconnected from the audience. We reflected on this together. The rationale for his choices. The interventions of others at key points. Why he had accepted or rejected their offers.

I was impressed by his willingness to learn from what had been a difficult process. How he was determined to face this event and make sense of it. As we tracked through what he did, we could see how different choices had had different effects, and where he might direct his attention now, were he to do it again. He also realised that what he had attempted wasn’t all wrong but did need adjustment and alteration.

I like the self-responsibility in both of these stories. A willingness to use the difficulty to generate a learning question that can then be worked into a new approach and then further growth.

This was echoed again in Koiwi, on Monday, by Aaron McGregor and Keagan Fransch. They noted how as learners, in their first year of study at the school, they had cast themselves in familiar “learning roles” on arrival.   Aaron as an “angry man” and Keagan as an “over-listener”.

Both approaches had worked well enough in other settings, but here, they were getting in the way of the risks they needed to take to develop a real vulnerability in their performance. They invited us all to reflect on how our approaches to learning were affecting our progress and our abilities to reach our goals.

Christian Penny

Friday 23 September 2011

This was forwarded to me this morning by Kate Robertson, our Head of Entertainment and Technology. She had been reading a few inspirational quotes from Steve Jobs (of Apple fame).

“I think the artistry is in having an insight into what one sees around them. Generally putting things together in a way no one else has before and finding a way to express that to other people who don’t have that insight.”

Smithsonian Institution Oral and Video Histories, April 20, 1995

This resonates a lot with our new strategic plan which we will be posting on the website shortly.

Christian Penny

 

Tuesday 20 September 2011 

On the theme of convincing and story-telling:

 Last Friday Kim Workman spoke to a group of people at Toi Whakaari including staff, students, graduates, and a Board member, about his life’s work which can broadly be described as restorative justice and re-thinking crime and punishment.

He talked for an hour or so about his life experiences in this area.  At no point did he try to persuade us of anything. As Bette Cosgrove reflected, he simply told us stories. And from those stories came many questions. And while we sat together thinking about those questions, for a while we stopped being a tutor, an administrator, a student, a Board member, a graduate and became human beings trying to relate the stories we had heard to our own stories and the story we are trying to make together at Toi Whakaari.

Christine Richardson
Business Manager, Toi Whakaari

 

Friday 16 September 2011

The Leadership Team in the kura have been meeting this week. We do this in every break – have a period of reflection, reconnection and looking forward. We have been examining our roles and responsibilities as leaders – to ourselves as a team, to the departments we lead, and most importantly to the whole school.

Penny Fitt (Head of Design) raised a great question – this is a picture of her working with another staff member Lisa Maule last year on the production Crossing Lines. She had noticed that at times we were trying to “convince” each other (sometimes in our team –sometimes our staff – sometimes our students) rather than lead each other. She observed of her own life that she had never been “convinced” of anything by anyone. She had always had to come to it of her own volition and experience.

Then as we worked on thru the day we began to notice more and more our tendency to convince rather than lead – it was startling. We wondered about the effect this has on our staff – the students and the school?

Christian Penny

Tuesday 13 September 2011

From Howard Gardner’s Five Minds for the Future:

“The question arises about whether ideas about creativity need to be refashioned to take into account the increasing number of projects and realms where the individual contribution seems less critical, the group mind more crucial. Clearly, the abilities to come to know individuals quickly, to forge a working relationship, to handle issues of conflict and credit, take on added importance. Brainstorming and improvisation come to the fore; personal Glory recedes in importance.”

These are the skills we are practicing in koiwi, in Context & Practice and in all of our collaborative projects within the school.

Christian Penny

Friday 9 September 2011

One of the themes in the last koiwi of the term was “success.” The board of trustees were visiting and the chair, Richard Moss, spoke to this first. (This is Richard speaking to Annie at her farewell earlier this year). He recounted how he had been a drama school student once in his life and how hard that had been. He then had been a teacher and he thought that was hard too – but not as hard as being a student. Even though now he clearly wasn’t an actor, he counted himself a success. Because he had used (translated i like to think) what he had learned from his training into the work he now does.

This was picked up later in the session by Laurel Devine (Acting grad) who was visiting too that day. She is in the Auckland Theatre Company’s production of On The Upside Down of the World (written by grad Arthur Meek), currently playing at Downstage.

http://www.atc.co.nz/home/whats-on/2011/on-the-upside-down-of-the-world.aspx#

She picked up that theme of ‘success” when being interviewed by current student Leon Wadham in front of the school. (This is Leon below, on the set of his pitched project – A Black Day for Beazley – earlier this year). Laurel told a story about struggling post her training: that the years post her time at Toi Whakaari were very difficult. She felt it was hard to keep going especially when she compared herself to other grads. They all seemed to be doing so much better. And then after a number of years of this she asked herself a very direct question. She said to herself. “Laurel – if no one ever asked you to do this work, never asked you again to work on their shows – would you still do it?” She paused and then added – “to my great relief the answer came back “Yes”. And from that point everything changed” she said. From then the definition of success was hers and hers alone.

The next day I invited her to reflect on koiwi as we had just begun the process of meeting as a community when she was a student. This is some of her reflection:

“I suppose what I was struck with was not a sense of unfamiliarity. The atmosphere felt like a natural progression to what was starting when we were there but had settled into something else. It was not an entirely different language – but perhaps a more refined version. So what I mean to say is – I so value everything that I experienced at Toi Whakaari at the time I was there – the challenges, the conflicts, the complexity, the experiments – the different directions because that has equipped me so well, and continues to do so – despite my flailing early on. I see that as a necessary step to where it seems to be sitting at the moment, a place in which I can participate actively as a graduate, not only within the context of the school like today but also when engaging and working with more recent grads. I found that last year briefly working with Tim and Shadon – like – there is a pool of knowledge and development of communication that we are all plugged into in a way.

“Today reminded me of how I felt at a hui we had when I was in first year – it was an intimidating prospect at the time and a response to the flailing and somewhat confused Taha Maori program in existence then. Do you remember?

“To my amazement I found myself speaking at some point in the evening (how funny that seemed like such a massive undertaking at the time) – it was the first time I had understood the nature of a hui – where the space is open to speak and respond. Things are not tied up and yet it is circular. It was the first time I felt the rush of blood rising up in me, the uncontrollable urge – the spirit taking hold – where you are moved to speak beyond your control.  I have ever since had a great respect for that open process of discussion – so formal and informal at the same time. So full of protocol and yet accepting of difference. So accepting of conflict and understanding of the nature of change being a strange and slow and evolving one – like techtonic plates grinding against one another. A necessary tension. Perhaps that is why group process was so influential too.”

Christian Penny

 

Tuesday 6 September 2011

I visited Michael Leota (2010 Acting) at his performance in the Duffy Books in Homes school tour, in Naenae primary last week.

This is a national tour of a kaupapa driven theatre in education show: three actors, a simple set designed by our grad Brian King, directed by our grad Kerryn Palmer, and written by our staff member Cathryn Monro. The show only performs in lower decile schools and encourages reading… read at home, read aloud, read together… etc.  

Michael’s performance was outstanding. He is a skilled Krumper – this was his area of research at school and his physical precision suited this large scale “visual” work. He reminded me of a Commedia actor/street busker in a street somewhere.  What was also striking was his sense of purpose and service. He knew why he was doing what he was doing and why it mattered. The effect of his clarity on his audience was immediate.  The giving of the show was as much a gift as the show itself. It was very moving to see such high quality work for such an audience.  Michael had come back to speak to current students earlier this year about this work. He said then, very humbly and softly “I love this work. I was one of those kids. Duffy came to my school when I was a kid. I saw theatre for the first time. I wanted to give this back.”  I asked him what next. He said he’s going to run a youth group for his church next year. Practice shaping a community. Again I noticed – he is clear and driven by service. And in that there is liberation. 

http://www.booksinhomes.org.nz/Page/Theatre/TheatreHome.aspx

Christian Penny

  

Friday 2 September 2011

Since I came into my new role as Director of Toi Whakaari I have had the privilege of viewing the school across all the departments, as well as through the eyes of industry. I see that one of the functions of my role is to share and communicate what I see from this vantage point. That drew me to the idea of a blog. Short hits, stories, experiences, observations that keep helping us all know who we are – what we are doing – what we want our school to be and our graduates to become, and how we are doing it. How the graduate community inspires the current learners and vice versa.  A place where we can share with you – something of the detail and the “feel” of the life of the school. This is it!

I was in Auckland at the opening of the new theatre Q last Friday night. It was an amazing night for the performing arts. 16 years of voluntary commitment by literally hundreds of folk to build a new venue – a place we can do these things we all love and care about – dance, theatre, music, events. It was remarkable. There was so much hope for what we might create in this space.

Over the course of the evening I bumped into heaps of grads. What struck me was how deeply they all feel a connection to Toi Whakaari.  Some in a positive way – some in a more negative or unresolved way.  One of the things I hope for this blog, is that it can help connect grads and those currently learning here to a shared sense of ongoing development. Learning is occurring both inside and outside of the school and this creates an ongoing evolution of what we are.

I’ll be writing this, then, together with the staff and students of the school, for the duration of the school year. I look forward to it! And I hope to start opening the doors – just a little – into the rooms of invention, connection, collaboration, conflict and toil that is our work as artists here in Te Whaea and out in our industries. Nau mai.

Christian Penny