Mas­sive Com­pa­ny is bring­ing The Whole­heart­ed to Welling­ton in Sep­tem­ber. An hon­est por­tray­al of the extreme pow­er of love, it was devel­oped through con­ver­sa­tions with their local com­mu­ni­ty, ask­ing them to share their per­son­al sto­ries of affec­tion and ded­i­ca­tion. The result is a heart-warm­ing devised the­atre work that spans gen­er­a­tions, gen­ders and cul­tures.

Mas­sive Company’s Artis­tic Direc­tor, Sam Scott, says, “We make our shows for those who love to feel the impact of their the­atre expe­ri­ence; who want mean­ing and con­nec­tion through see­ing sto­ries that make them laugh and dream around their own lives. We make the­atre for those who want less injury and more beau­ty in the world. In this tricky, top­sy turvy world of ours, The Whole­heart­ed is a great anti­dote. This show is trans­for­ma­tive and fills its audi­ences with joy and hope about liv­ing.”

Mas­sive Com­pa­ny unites young and emerg­ing the­atre artists with estab­lished prac­ti­tion­ers, giv­ing new­com­ers time and space to flex their cre­ative mus­cle through devis­ing, per­form­ing and direct­ing. The work they pro­duce is dis­tinct­ly Kiwi, gen­uine and con­tem­po­rary.

Kura For­rester. Pho­to cred­it Andi Crown

Kura For­rester has been work­ing with Mas­sive Com­pa­ny since 2008. She’s an expe­ri­enced stage and screen per­former who shines in comedic and seri­ous roles. She’s one of the per­form­ers in The Whole­heart­ed and made some time to answer some of our ques­tions.

“I’ve worked real­ly hard at com­mit­ting to being an actor and this has paid off in the last two years, allow­ing me to get a good roll of work on. It took me ten years to work out how to bal­ance being avail­able as an actor and also man­ag­ing to stay alive mon­ey wise. It’s cer­tain­ly not easy, and a lot is sac­ri­ficed, but I feel very lucky in my work and have a good bal­ance going…..at the moment! Long may it last!

Mas­sive Com­pa­ny for me is such a fun, joy­ful, curi­ous com­pa­ny filled with won­der­ful peo­ple, I will always come back. The work and the peo­ple ful­fil me in lots of ways. I get a lot of joy out of the work. The Whole­heart­ed is a devised show and all of the actors were involved in all of the mak­ing process. As part of our research we were set a task of inter­view­ing peo­ple out in the world. We asked them ques­tions about whole­heart­ed­ness, what this meant to them, how their hearts were being in the world, what was their idea of heav­en on earth, and many oth­er ques­tions. We drew off a lot of this work as well as our own answers to these ques­tions. 

Work­ing with phys­i­cal motif to tell sto­ries is a big part of how we make the­atre in Mas­sive Com­pa­ny and can be seen in most of our shows. We use many dif­fer­ent tech­niques to make phys­i­cal work, often using inspi­ra­tion from real life and mak­ing it dynam­ic and inter­est­ing to watch. We work very hard and as actors have to be very fit and always ready to attack the work.

 Dur­ing the process of mak­ing this show it became very appar­ent to us all that in order to tell these sto­ries we need­ed to be liv­ing whole­heart­ed­ly in our own lives. And so, we all began to in our own ways, dis­cov­er what whole­heart­ed meant to us and tru­ly work to be this way in our lives. So yes, this show has affect­ed me a lot, I have worked to be more hon­est with myself and clear­er about what my heart wants and needs in this life.

 It’s always so awe­some as an actor to hear how your show has moved and touched people’s lives, The Whole­heart­ed has had pro­found feed­back. Some of my favourite moments have been hear­ing peo­ple say “This show real­ly cracked me open”, and young peo­ple respond­ing to the show with “I nev­er knew the­atre could be like this, its’ made me think about my own life”. These are always very spe­cial and reward­ing moments.”

Kura hopes the Welling­ton audi­ence will “be pro­voked to look inside them­selves and see how they are. To laugh and cry and whoop with joy! To smile and be so pleased they decid­ed to come!”