Design Teachers

The tutors at Toi Whakaari are also practising professionals. All have worked extensively in theatre, film or television both nationally and internationally and bring this experience to bear in their teaching.

Penny Fitt

Head of Design
Penny began work at Toi Whakaari in July 2003, after moving to New Zealand from Britain, where she was Head of Design at the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School.

Penny has also worked as a professional freelance designer since 1991 and has designed more than 50 theatre, dance and opera works, including work for the Bristol Old Vic Theatre Company; the Dukes Theatre, Lancaster; the Almeida Theatre, London, the English National Opera. She was Head of Design at the Octagon Theatre in Bolton, Manchester for three years where she designed Blue Remembered Hills by Dennis Potter, Arthur Miller’s Death of a Salesman and Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus among others.

Penny is a practising designer focusing on the collaborative processes involved in making new work. She designed Penumbra, an epic New Zealand story commissioned as the New Zealand theatre piece for the Auckland Festival 2007. It was performed in Skycity Theatre and directed by Jade Eriksen and Christian Penny. In 2008 she designed the set for the world premiere of The Trial of the Cannibal Dog, a New Zealand opera for the New Zealand International Arts Festival 2008. In 2011 she worked with Eko Theatre on The Southern Corridor Project, an innovative performance-collaboration involving the Somali and Maori communities in Newtown, Wellington.

BRIAN KING

Design Tutor

Brian was a member of the inaugural cohort of students who graduated in 2006 from the Toi Whakaari/Massey University Bachelor of Performance Design programme. He had previously gained an Advanced Diploma in Entertainment Technology at Toi Whakaari in 2003.  Since graduating he has been fully occupied as a freelance set and costume designer for theatre.

Recent set design projects have included the 2009 Toi Whakaari graduation season of The Caucasian Chalk Circle, directed by Christian Penny, Arthur Meek’s Collapsing Creation at Downstage (voted Production of the Year at the 2009 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards) and Lynda Chanwai-Earle’s Heat a STAB commission for BATS Theatre both directed by David O’Donnell,  Mozart’s Cosi Fan Tutte for Opera Otago, Dave Armstrong and Gareth Farr’s children’s opera, Kia Ora Khalid, commissioned by Capital E National Theatre for Children, and Dave Armstrong’s Le Sud which is currently on a national tour. Brian won the Weta Workshop Set Designer of the Year at the Chapman Tripp Wellington Theatre Awards in 2007 for The Hollow Men and was a nominee for the same award in 2009.

He taught the design course at the National Youth Drama School for three years post graduating, and was appointed full-time Design Tutor at Toi Whakaari in 2011.  

Brendan Heffernan

Design Tutor

Brendan has worked in the movies for the last four years as Art Director and Concept Artist, from two of the Chronicles of  Narnia films (Prince Caspian and Voyage of the Dawn Treader) to Andrew Adamson’s Mister Pip: and with a variety of directors from Sng Moo Lee (The Warrior’s Way) to Gabor Csupo (Bridge to Terabithia). Most recently he was Art Director of Guillermo del Toro’s The Hobbit, currently filming. He has also storyboarded for a variety of NZ films, directs his own short films (Night Storm and Transit), and has travelled widely around the world for work including Israel for a feature film about the life of Jesus, Kingdom Come. He was appointed full-time Design Tutor at Toi Whakaari in 2011, and is excited about developing the screen side of training for Design for Stage and Screen.

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Visiting Tutors

Toi Whakaari also has regular guest teachers in technology and management for stage, screen and events, movement, mask, puppetry, professional development and leadership, lighting, sound, voice, singing, text analysis, history, theory and philosophy of theatre and Taha Maori.

Throughout the year Toi Whakaari brings in specialist national and international guest tutors and lecturers. In the last year the following leading lights have taught our performance design students: Cathryn Monro, Christine Marfleet – Royal Welsh College, David Eversfield, Derek Simpson, Izzat Design, Jim Acheson, Kate Hawley, Lesley-Burkes Harding, Michael Vinten, Mark Simpson, Nicola Marshall, Nina Nawalowalo, Paul Bradley, Sam Trubridge, Stephen Bain, Therese Eberhard, Waka Attewell.