REPERTORY IN N.Z.

New Zealand Listener, Volume 16, Issue 393, 3 January 1947, Page 9

REPERTORY IN N.Z.

Visiting Player’s Enthusiasm

GORDON CHATER, a young English actor recently demobilised after war service with the Royal Navy, and now touring New Zealand with a theatrical company, says he has become keenly interested in New Zealand’s repertory movement. He has hopes that we _will establish our own National Theatre with its own company ot players. And he is amazed that no expert from overseas has seen fit to take a musical play, depicting Maori culture, on a world tour. Here are some extracts from a talk which he gave recently from 2YA. -N London’s West End there are 32 theatres each performing eight or twelve times a week. Seats are.almost unobtainable unless they are booked from four to eight weeks ahead. And _ now, though it was not so before the _ war, people who go to the pictures once a week. will also go to the play once a , week. The interest in flesh-and-blood shows is intense. Here there is a dearth of professional theatre. In Sydney there is the beautiful Minerva, where one can see plays of a London standard, but here in New Zealand one must wait for a touring company and depend on repertory. For that reason the standard of repertory is high. I have found since 'I have been here that the proportion of people interested in the repertory movement per thousand of population is phenomenal, and quite incomparable with any other country in the world. Not only this, but the facilities for promoting and fostering the stimulating and rewarding art of the theatre are immense. Hastings, for instance, has a , municipal theatre of which Oxford University would be proud, and Waipawa, with a population of 1,116, has a theatre

as attractive and full of atmosphere as the Old Vic in London. Most interesting of all in New Zealand is the attitude of the repertory actor. In England and Australia the amateur. goes to see a professional play rather in the spirit of seeing how much better he is than the professional player. In New Zealand the amateur actor goes in the spirit of learning something. ‘Here in New Zealand it seems incredible that there is no National Theatre. Perhaps I am ignoring the availability of theatres, the difficulty of backing, or some such other obstacle; but I can visualise ‘a national theatre company of New Zealand playing a repertory of plays throughout the centres and the smaller towns for six months, then touring Australia or Malaya or China, and returning for three months in which they could prepare the next year’s repertory. : I can see it not only as a bunch of actors and technicians, but as a community movement, like a ship, where the company is composed not only of general technicians, but specialists-doc-tors, lawyers, welfare officers, and accountants. I am certain from audiences I have studied that, provided they are given ‘theatre of the highest standard, they will relish: it, and that a National Theatre would not only fulfil a great artistic need for this advanced and progressive country, but that it would be a stable and paying business. The Maoris Thrilled Him I. must end by saying that, having seen a great deal of the Maori repertoire, it astonishes) me ‘to realise that no one from overseas has organised a ‘musical play on spectacular lines with a company of Maori artists, written by a Maori, and designed by a Maori, to tour the world. There is no equivalent of their inherent histrionic art anywhere but in New Zealand. To have sat listening to their beautiful natural voices, to have thrilled to their rhythm, and to have been carried away by them, was as unforgettable as my feelings that very first time I sat through a theatrical performance 20 years ago.