image of four young women with cricket bat in the bushYou’ll remem­ber Emma from her reviews right here on the ‘ista. Turns out she’s put­ting her money where her mouth is, so I had a chat with her about it.
Feb­ru­ary 5–9pm
Bats Theatre

Emma! You’re doing a play! What’s it all about?

Four women break into an aban­doned theatre one night to shel­ter from a storm. They’re battered, broken, bereaved. Over the course of their night there, the theatre’s ghostly occu­pants draw stor­ies from them, and begin to grow closer to the run­aways. How­ever, all is not as it seems, and the women must do all they can to get out alive. It’s a story about grief and found fam­il­ies, really. We all deal with a loss dif­fer­ently, and I found that ghost stor­ies tend to be a very inter­est­ing way to explore that concept. Ghosts are like us, but also not like us – they’re removed from time, but they’re cer­tainly not removed from emo­tion. I think it would be very hard to be a ghost. 

Tell us a bit about how this piece was developed?

We devised the first twenty­ish minutes of it with an ori­gin­al cast in Oct-Nov last year, then I wrote a play around it. It’s been in the rehears­al stages since late Novem­ber. 

Apart from being a critic for the Wellingtonista, what’s your background history with theatre?

I’ve been act­ing on and off for the last sev­en­teen years. I did my under­gradu­ate degree in theatre and film, and this show is the cul­min­a­tion of my MFA in Theatre.

If someone was not really a theatre buff, any tips you could give them about how to watch a play?

You really don’t need to be ‘into theatre’ to see theatre. Think of it this way – no-one ever says ”Oh, I can­’t watch [INSERT SHOW NAME HERE] – I don’t like tele­vi­sion.” NO-ONE does that. We all have some­thing we like to watch on tv, even if it’s just the news, or soap oper­as, or pan­el shows. Theatre is the same. There’s always some kind of per­form­ance on that’ll appeal to you. Wheth­er that’s a pan­to­mime, or a music­al, or a one-man show, there’ll always be some­thing that can appeal to you. I think we often get a little bit nervous going to theatre (if we don’t go often). It’s easi­er to watch face­less people on a tv screen who don’t look at you or react to what you’re doing in the audi­ence, and that can be scary, but theatre’s not an ali­en world. It’s just a dif­fer­ent way of cre­at­ive expres­sion.

Some tips

  • If you don’t go to theatre often, shows marked as ‘exper­i­ment­al’ might be a little much. I’m not say­ing don’t give them a go, but maybe start with some­thing that’s more well-hewn and recog­nis­able.
  • Wel­ling­ton is FULL of theatres. BATS sup­ports emer­ging artists with unique shows, but I’ve seen some of the best shows I’ve ever seen there. Circa tends to do more script-based stuff, and then there’s obvi­ously the St James and the Opera House. If you don’t go to theatre often, maybe start with an artist/performer you know? The Com­edy Fest­iv­al is com­ing up soon – there’s a lot of well-known per­formers com­ing to town.
  • Just give it a go! You live in Wel­ling­ton, one of the most cre­at­ive cen­ters in New Zea­l­and. If you’re not get­ting amongst you really should be.