On Sun­day 6th Sep­tem­ber at San Fran, in a one night only per­for­mance to raise mon­ey and aware­ness for the Men­tal Health Foun­da­tion, Wellington’s per­form­ing arts fra­ter­ni­ty band togeth­er to hon­our a beloved friend and col­league. This trib­ute is their way of hon­our­ing a tal­ent­ed mem­ber of the per­form­ing com­mu­ni­ty, who left us after los­ing his bat­tle with the Black Dog.

Actor Rob­bie Tripe, 41, was known for his roles in top-rat­ing soap Short­land Street, where he played oppo­site street stal­wart Michael Galvin as defence lawyer Lawrence Cun­ning­ham in 2012, as well as in the hit Amer­i­can chil­drens’ series Pow­er Rangers.  Tripe’s oth­er TV and film cred­its include The Strip as well as The Truth about Demons and Radio Hau­ra­ki docu-dra­ma The 3 Mile Lim­it.  He act­ed exten­sive­ly in the­atre and was nom­i­nat­ed for best sup­port­ing actor in the Chap­man Tripp The­atre Awards for his role as Bernard in Death of a Sales­man.  He gained a sec­ond nom­i­na­tion por­tray­ing Trofi­mov in The Cher­ry Orchard.

Led by Musi­cal Direc­tor Fiona McCabe, the stel­lar ensem­ble cast for Black Dog Relief will com­prise cel­e­brat­ed per­form­ers includ­ing Sophie Ham­ble­ton (West­side), Car­rie McLaugh­lan (Beat Girls), Jane Keller (Boomers Behav­ing Bad­ly) and Carmel McGlone (Reser­voir Hill). The song list for Black Dog Relief has Tripe’s per­son­al touch, which he orig­i­nal­ly intend­ed to per­form in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Jen­nifer Ward-Lealand, Paul Bar­rett and Sharu Delilkan over two years ago.  This show has since been per­formed in an Auck­land ver­sion and includ­ed songs by lumi­nar­ies such as Fred Astaire, Cole Porter, Bob­by Darin, Chet Bak­er, The Gersh­wins and Bil­lie Hol­i­day.

Majes­ti­cal­ly pre­sid­ing over the event will be Emcee Gareth Farr, who has decid­ed to give his stage per­sona Lilith LaCroix an out­ing…”I thought that Rob­bie would get a kick out of it.  It’s very impor­tant for me to show how much I adore him as an artist and as a gay man – this is my way of giv­ing Rob­bie a befit­ting trib­ute and this is how I want to express it in my own way. We basi­cal­ly want this show to be a cel­e­bra­tion — not a memo­r­i­al of Robbie’s life and we want to acknowl­edge the joy that he brought to all of us, whose lives he touched along the way. We sin­cere­ly hope that this will be an unfor­get­table evening of music and song to give our dear friend a fit­ting send-off.  We also hope that it’s the first of many events that raise the aware­ness of men­tal health and well­be­ing with­in the per­form­ing arts com­mu­ni­ty. We’d like to think Rob­bie would approve.”

 

  • Sharu Loves Hats in col­lab­o­ra­tion with Cuba Cre­ative presents Black Dog Relief – A Cabaret for Rob­bie Tripe
  • San Fran, 171 Cuba Street, Welling­ton
  • Sun­day 6th Sep­tem­ber, 7 pm (approx. 90+ min­utes)
  • TICKETS: $25
  •  All pro­ceeds raised will be donat­ed to the Men­tal Health Foun­da­tion NZ