Tell us a little about your background.
I grew up in Auckland where I attended Auckland University, enrolling in an Arts degree, a decision I have never regretted. I have been fascinated by theatre ever since. When I was a small child, my parents took me to a production of Alice Through the Looking Glass, and I swear I saw the actor playing Alice walk into and through the mirror. To this day I don’t know how it was done, nor how much to attribute to an overheated imagination, but I’ve never forgotten that moment where I realised that the stage was a different world, where inexplicable and impossible things could happen.
There was unfortunately no practical theatre study in the University curriculum at the time I was a student, but there was a very active on-campus drama society where I gained a great deal of experience in theatre practice, both onstage and backstage.
I wanted to learn and practise all the skills that made a theatre production – including set and costume design, and construction, lighting and sound, and also publicity and marketing, financial planning and management – so that as a member of a team I could understand the responsibilities and constraints associated with every part of the project.
I became acquainted with literary dramatic texts through my university courses in English, French and Japanese (which gave me my first exposure to non-Western forms of theatre). I have to confess that the practical theatre distracted considerably from my formal studies, but I somehow made it through and gained a (somewhat unexpected) first in my Honours degree.
While working on a PhD in textual editing, an area I am still working in with an edition of Shakespeare’s Richard III, I was offered a one-year appointment teaching in the new drama department at Victoria University in Wellington, which turned into three years. After that, I was appointed resident producer for the National Opera of New Zealand. Following a period of teaching part-time and freelancing, I spent a year in France thanks to a very generous bursary from the French government, studying at the theatre of the legendary French director Ariane Mnouchkine and her company, the Théâtre du Soleil.
I also attended classes in theatre with Luce Berthommé, a brilliant teacher, at the Scholar Cantorum. I remember interviewing her over lunch before I left France, and by the time she had filled my 120-minute cassette tape with profound and insightful observations about theatre and her approach to teaching and directing it, she had sipped one mouthful of coffee and eaten one slice of a mandarin. Still young, tiny, fiery, intense and always immaculately dressed in white, she was known around France for her creation and direction of a highly acclaimed post-modern theatre piece called La Noce, but she had already survived one bout with cancer, and she died a few years later without achieving what I believe is her due recognition.
At the end of that year I returned to the Southern Hemisphere, teaching in the Drama Studies section of the English Department at the University of Queensland. After seven very eventful years there, I was appointed Foundation Chair of Theatre Studies at UNE.
What are your defining memories from university?
My early training in theatre at Auckland University was very informal, working with other students, and then at other theatres round the city. University life in those days extended far beyond textbooks, lectures and tutorials, and included a wide range of cultural activities regarded part of a rounded education, which was considered the reason we were there. In theatre we were mainly learning together from each other, and by doing and experimenting, but I did get to work with some experienced directors, including Professor Sydney Musgrove, Head of the English Department and an internationally recognised Shakespeare scholar, and especially Dick Johnstone, who was a brilliant teacher/director who directed several productions for the annual University Outdoor Shakespeare. I also attended classes given by Theatre Action, a group of five graduates from the famous Jacques Lecoq school in Paris who spent several years teaching and performing in Auckland, initially based at Central Theatre, and was a founding member of what was initially called Theatre Co-op, later renamed Theatre Corporate.
What did your role at UNE entail?
At UNE my role was to head the then Department of Theatre Studies which consisted of eight academic staff (including one who taught visual arts). The fact that there are now only two is a vivid illustration of the way universities have been affected by cuts to government funding. I also taught and directed – my first production was a group-devised piece based on Freud’s The Interpretation of Dreams called Sigmund ... dreaming. I received several ARC grants which occupied a lot of time working mainly on the history of Australian theatre, and I served for a time as Associate Dean of Research in the Arts Faculty until a restructure amalgamated Arts with the Sciences. Toward the end of my time at UNE, I was involved in writing new online practical teaching materials, including the Master of Applied Theatre Studies, until I had to retire in 2014 for health reasons.
What was the most exciting or enjoyable part of your time at UNE?
Watching students’ eyes light up as they suddenly recognised the profound significance of a single line of dialogue, or the relevance of some aspect of a play from the distant past to their own world; seeing life through the eyes of characters whose experience was vastly different from their own; reading play scripts with originality and perception; and finding the courage to put their insights into action in front of an audience for academic credit.
.. and what was the most challenging part?
Convincing sceptical and intelligent conventionally trained colleagues from other parts of the university (and not all from the sciences) that research in the arts and humanities in general, and theatre in particular, is valid, important, useful and even, to some people, more than just a hobby.
What is one piece of career advice you might offer others?
Take risks.
Career and study-wise, what do you feel have been your greatest achievements?
Publishing the first English-language book on Ariane Mnouchkine; creating the Wellington Summer Shakespeare which began in the early 1980s and continues to this day; directing Waituhi, a new full-length opera composed by Ross Harris and written by Witi Ihimaera (of The Whale Rider fame); presenting a plenary paper at the World Shakespeare Congress in 2001; directing productions of Shakespeare on the lawns of Booloominbah and behind the Boiler House, including what I believe was the first production of Othello with an Indigenous actor, Victor Briggs, in the title role.
What advice would you give a university student in these challenging times?
Don’t do what you’re already good at – it will eventually just bore you. Work hard to confront topics that fascinate you because you want to understand them better. Get the best academic results you can, so as to maximise your choices when you make career decisions. Choose subjects that give you practice in important, transferable, generic skills like writing, close reading, public speaking, self-awareness, a broad knowledge of the world and its history, languages and cultures, teamwork, and critical, innovative thinking. Study what excites and challenges you and do it well.
