Penumbra

4 May 2011

Conceived and Created by Christian Penny, David Geary, Penny Fitt & Jade Eriksen. Directed by Christian Penny & Jade Eriksen.

Penumbra is the first show developed by Toi Whakaari students and staff to leave the confines of the school and head straight into an International Arts Festival – it takes prime place in the theatre programme of AK07 as a work of international calibre.

Penumbra is an epic journey through the interconnecting lives of over forty characters that span three generations. It tells a family-based story about the last fifty years of NZ’s history, from the 1953 Tangiwai Disaster, to the Bastion Point protests, to the 1999 Solar Eclipse.  The overwhelming majority of the cast and crew for Penumbra at the Auckland Festival are Toi Whakaari graduates and staff, many of whom originated the roles while at School.

Penumbra had its first full performance for an audience at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School in November 2004 and was the first ever graduation show to be a devised work.  This season of the show was worked on by acting, directing and entertainment technology students guided by, and with the vision of, Christian Penny (Head of Directing), Penny Fitt (Head of Design), David Geary (Acting Graduate 1989) and Jade Eriksen (Directing Graduate 2003). 

One of the many exciting things about Penumbra is the way technicians, designers, actors, directors and managers worked together to create the show – in the way the work was devised and also in performance.

Penumbra was developed, in part, through each actor and crew member completing certain tasks in isolation from their peers. These secret missions were as varied as volunteering at an old people’s home in Auckland to playing housie in Newtown, from tutoring youth at risk in music at a training provider in Gisborne to studying the manoeuvres of flight attendants on long haul international flights.

These ‘field studies’ then lead to the creation of 15 core characters and a technical and aesthetic design brought together in an epic that travels from the coast of Cornwall to the Ngati Porou East Coast, from Dutch Wairarapa to a Maori showband in Singapore.

“If you were standing at the heart of an eclipse you would be in totality – complete darkness,” said Christian Penny, co-director of Penumbra. “People who have witnessed this call it an awe inspiring moment where life stands still and our connection to the stars and universe is palpable.”

“However, in an eclipse a larger area is dominated by the penumbra – the partial shadow where the moon and sun aren’t in complete alignment.”

“We took the idea of the penumbra as our starting point because we live more of our lives in this space,  framed by a collection of shadows cast by our forebears – parents, communities, and the political forces that have preceded us and affect us in the present,” said Christian.

Reviews of the 2004 Toi Whakaari production:

“…both impressive and hugely rewarding… The storyline is compelling, the performances terrific and the staging inventive.” Capital Times. Download a copy of the full review here (159kb).

“…strongly reflecting the multi-cultural nature of New Zealand society today…” Dominion Post. Download a copy of the full review here (183kb).

Check out www.aucklandfestival.co.nz