Four dancers are standing while one is on the ground between Award-win­ning dir­ect­or and per­form­ance design­er Sam Trub­ridge is bring­ing a bold new per­form­ance to Te Whaea this August. Tak­ing inspir­a­tion from H Guthrie Smith’s ‘Tutira: The Story of an NZ Sheep Sta­tion’ (1921), Eco­logy in Fifths enacts this obsess­ive account of NZ eco­logy — now a recog­nised clas­sic in envir­on­ment­al sci­ence world­wide. Piece by piece, the NZ myth of a ‘clean green and nat­ur­al land­scape’ is unrav­elled to reveal the envir­on­ment­al ten­sions that lie under­neath our grassy pad­docks and forest can­op­ies.

Developed by Trubridge’s pro­duc­tion com­pany The Play­ground NZ, the show had its first devel­op­ment sea­son in 2010, receiv­ing glow­ing feed­back from test audi­ences. Spec­tac­u­lar per­form­ance design by dir­ect­or Sam Trub­ridge and stun­ning cho­reo­graphy by Sean Mac­Don­ald (Ngāti Kahun­gunu, Ngāti Raukawa, Ngāi Tahu) com­bine to present a power­ful, poignant lament for the lost eco­lo­gies and his­tory of Aotearoa NZ. An immers­ive sound­scape by NZ com­poser Bevan Smith trans­ports the audi­ence through the evol­u­tion of the story: a trans­form­a­tion occurs, as Guthrie Smith’s prin­ciples are inter­woven with Māori myth and legend. Mar­cus McShane, a pro­lif­ic and tal­en­ted light­ing design­er joins the design team. McDon­ald  is joined on stage by Han­nah Task­er-Poland, Emmanuel Reynaud, Bry­die Colquhoun, and Luke Hanna.

Envir­on­ment­al issues are a crit­ic­al theme in the pro­duc­tion that extend into its design real­isa­tion, with an emphas­is on devel­op­ing sus­tain­able prac­tices. With the short life of many struc­tures built for theatre it can some­times be costly to our envir­on­ment. As explained by Trub­ridge “Pro­duc­tions often com­prom­ise design or per­son­nel in order to make theatre that tours eas­ily. Our chal­lenge is to ask how we can sus­tain­ably pro­duce the ori­gin­al concept without hav­ing to lose the spec­tacle and intrigue of design led per­form­ance”

Eco­logy in Fifths is a new pro­duc­tion by the makers of Sleep/Wake (Auck­land Fest­iv­al 2009, NZNP Fest­iv­al New York 2015) and the acclaimed annu­al Per­form­ance Arcade fest­iv­al on Wel­ling­ton Water­front (2011-present). This new work devel­ops the company’s unique style and explores the integ­ra­tion of music­al com­pos­i­tion, cho­reo­graphy and set design. This orches­tra­tion of per­form­ing ele­ments reflects upon the eco­lo­gies in our every­day lives, illus­trat­ing how micro­cos­mic events can have a sig­ni­fic­ant effect upon glob­al crises.