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.