National Shakespeare Schools Production

Last night we went to see the three mini-Shakespeare plays presented by the SGCNZ: the National Shakespeare Schools Production for 2014. Over forty senior school pupils from around the country came together for only a week and have had workshops and various trainings, as well as managing to put on, between them, three cut-down versions of Shakespearean plays. Cut down to about 40 minutes each, so still quite substantial. And these pieces were rehearsed only in the mornings of the week the young people were together, which makes the high level of performance and direction all the more astonishing.

We went to see the three productions put on two or three years ago, and one of those, Hamlet, was very compelling. But the other two didn't quite take off as well. This year all three are top-notch, full of wonderful actors, and so well directed that even people who find Shakespeare not easy to take would be enthralled.

Henry V was the first of the three, with Henry himself being played variously by seven different actors, boys and girls. The continual swirl of the action, the large groupings coming and going and the sheer enthusiasm made this a great start to the evening. My only disappointment was that the delightful scene between the French princess and Henry was missing. But it was probably too long to include, and would have been less effective cut down. In spite of that, this was a clearly directed piece that gave the young actors plenty of scope for drama, emotion and action.

Love's Labour's Lost came next. Pared down to its bare essentials it still managed to make the most of the comedy and retain some delightful scenes. The actors got hold of the comedy style with gusto and wonderful energy, the boys in particular making the most of every movement. It was good, in fact, to see young actors in this play, which focuses on the immaturity of young people (especially young men) when they fall in love, and how a 'gap year,' as it were, might well be more effective in making love stronger for the long haul.

In this play, for the most part, the boys played the boys' parts and the girls played girls, except for girls who played the delightful constable and the pompous Boyet and academic Holofernes. But whoever was playing whoever, there was such energy (for instance when the boys realise each of them has fallen in love and kept it secret, or when they're in disguise as Russians) and sense of comedy that the whole thing was utterly enjoyable and showed how Shakespeare, even when he throws long-winded words around like a whirlwind (long words are a theme in this play), is still amusing and sometimes laugh-out-loud funny. (Even in the midst of Hamlet he lets Claudius mix up Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, something that audiences have done since the play first began; this was retained in the middle of all the seriousness of the rest of the play.)

Hamlet was played by two different actors (as he was in the previous version). This gave both actors time to refresh and bring renewed energy to this intense role. And were they intense! Sean Young and William Lu were equal to each other in strength and commanded the stage. There were some wonderful moments when they somehow swapped without your noticing, particularly at the grave scene where Ophelia (beautifully played by Rachel McLean) lies dead. At other times it was as if one actor handed over the role to the other. Beautifully done.

But the other actors in this piece were uniformly good: arrogant Claudius (Peter Thomson), emotionally-torn Gertrude (Maya Wyatt), pompous Polonius (Daniel Botha) and angst-ridden Laertes (Calum Hughes), to name just a few. The direction was full of invention (though my wife and I never quite figured out what people on the scaffolding were doing), including Polonius hiding himself inside his hoodie by having it on backwards when he was supposed to be behind the arras. And the fight scene with long duelling swords was as terrifying as you're likely to get. How they managed to get this rehearsed in the time allotted is beyond me.

What a climax this play has: not only the fight scene going on in front of the stage but Gertrude drinking the poison while her husband is trying to entice Hamlet to do so, deaths at the back, deaths at the front. It's a nightmare to put together and yet how wonderfully it works.

The performance is on again tonight, at 7.30 at Otago Boys High School's auditorium. Cash sales only at the door. Take the opportunity and see the wealth of talent there is around this country.

17.10.14 I'm pleased to see all those I mentioned here have been chosen to go on the trip to the Globe in London next year. And several of the main actors in Love's Labour's Lost have also been chosen to go. Excellent.

Burbling on about snow

Well, the weather people predicted there'd be snow yesterday.  There wasn't.  A bit of foul weather, but hardly worse than some other winter days we've had.  Snow is so often predicted for this part of the world that you get blasé about it.  I was glad there wasn't any snow, as I was meeting my son for lunch yesterday as well as playing for four young people who did singing exams.

When we were in Auckland last week, we had to reassure our host, who's only been to the South Island briefly, that it doesn't snow here every other day, as the forecasters tend to indicate. I'm not sure if he believed me.

Back in June this year, the weather people got it right, though here in Dunedin, as is so often the case, it was mostly the upper hills that got the heavy snow.  At the time, the ODT reported that a 'special weather advisory had been slapped on the whole country'.  I like the idea of a weather advisory being slapped on the whole country, though I have no actual idea of what it means.

We were also told that 'emergency refuge centres are being set up, motorists warned off the roads, and shoppers urged to stock up, but to refrain from panic buying.'  Of course, people didn't refrain, and supermarkets actually ran out of some items. But it was a bit of a mixed message: stock up, but don't panic buy. Of course, the supermarkets only have to announce they're going to be closed for one day (like at Christmas, or Easter) and people go crazy.  How did they survive before supermarkets opened on Sundays?  Did they all starve because they couldn't shop?

There was a time when it people just got on with life when it snowed; kids went to school, people went to work. These days it's become a major crisis, in spite of the fact that Dunedin is mostly negotiable in the snow - though you might have to walk rather than drive.  I can remember, as a child, walking to school in the snow, a trip of about three kilometres.  I was quite small, and was frozen by the time I got there, and somewhat later than most of the other boys. I was allowed to warm up in front of a small radiant heater - it might have had two bars rather than one - for a few minutes before getting on with the school work.  We might have had another similar heater down the back of the room. But in general we just froze.

Obviously they made kids a lot tougher in those days!

The First Grader & Room Service

My wife and I went to see The First Grader today - we were the only people in the cinema.  Admittedly it's a small cinema, seating no more than perhaps thirty.  Still, it was a shame that no one else had the pleasure of watching this great little movie.

Most people will know that it's the story of the 84-year-old Kimani N'gan'ga Maruge, who took up the Kenyan Government's offer of 'free education for all' only to discover that it wasn't really intended for older people.  Maruge has never had the opportunity to learn to read - and significantly, he has an important letter he wants to be able to read for himself - and so he goes along to school to find that he's joining the children in the primary school, much to the annoyance of the male teacher, who wants to throw him out.  The headmistress, Jane Obinchu, lets herself be persuaded that Maruge can learn, and then finds herself facing criticism from all quarters.   She's not the sort of person who gives in easily, and nor is Maruge, and between them they make a difference to the future of Kenyan education. 


We learn, in a series of violent flashbacks, that Maruge had joined the Mau Mau as a young man in order to free his country, and spent nearly a decade in various jails.  I'd forgotten about the Mau Mau, and my memory of them was that they were a villainous and murderous group who went round slaughtering white people in Kenya.  Of course that was what we heard because we were getting the white people's picture; this was in the days when colonialism was still strong.  The film gives us the chance to change our view of the Mau Mau. 


Oliver Litondo is a wonderful Maruge, and English actress, Naomie Harris (better known for her role as the very strange Tia Dalma in two of the Pirates of the Caribbean movies) is excellent as the headmistress.   This is a great movie - and empowering for old people too!


I watched another of the Marx Brothers movies yesterday: Room Service.  The first half was familiar from some earlier viewing, but I'd never seen the rest.   To be honest seeing the rest was no great joy; this is a piece of nonsense that could have starred anyone.   The Marx Brothers contribution is very straight, with none of the usual setpieces, no musical interludes, and only some of the wisecracks that Groucho is known for.   Most of it takes place in a single hotel room - it began life as a stage play - and it wastes the talents of a bunch of people: Lucille Ball and Ann Miller both appear, but any two Hollywood starlets could have done the roles; the women have very little to do that's outstanding.   Frank Albertson is the young playwright from the hicks, and treated as a piece of furniture or a prop most of the time. 


There are a couple of delightful bit players in it, neither of whom I can quite identify from the cast list.  One, a tall, thin and gaunt-faced man plays the agent with the big cheque that will rescue Groucho and his cast from being thrown out on the street.  He's a quiet centre in the midst of the chaos - for a time.  And there's the man who's from the We Never Sleep collection agency: he's always a moment behind the eight ball, but hard to get rid of nevertheless.  

Snow - I can do without it

As I write this, it feels as though it's going to snow, alsthough the sky is relatively clear. My fingers aren't quite sticking to the keyboard with the cold but I've just gone and put some fingerless gloves on, (which makes typing just that much more difficult - though I've found I can play the piano wearing fingerless gloves, which could be an advantage when playing in a cold hall).

My lack of interest in snow has to be balanced against the requirements of ski-fields and such for snow and more snow. Personally, while snow is beautiful, it's something I can do without. (I remember as a child walking for about 45 minutes to school the snow - no 'snow days' then - and arriving so frozen I was in tears; which didn't endear me either to my classmates or the teacher!)

But I realise a lot of people in this country thrive on snow - and a lot of the visitors too - which is no doubt why they like to read things like ski goggle reviews, things that hold no interest for me whatsoever.

Maybe that day of being frozen in the snow has traumatised me forever when it comes to snow....

Photo of Whakapapa by Ben Gertzfield

Flying Boats

I've had a bit of a thing about flying boats for some time. It was one of the topics I did some serious research into preparatory to writing an article on it, when I first began writing for publication, back in 1988 or thereabouts. I eventually published an article online on the topic, many years after I couldn't find a home for the original piece.

I actually went on a flying boat - or rather, it was called a 'float plane' - last year while I was on holiday in Taupo. Once it's up in the air, of course, it's no different to any other kind of plane (though the original flying boats certainly were different) but it's the getting off the water and landing (if that's the word) again that's the interesting part.

And talking about research (see paragraph one) I came across this note in the Te Ara Enclyclopedia today while looking up information on Orakei: The first flying boat to be flown in the southern hemisphere took off from Bastion Point on New Year’s Day, 1915. It was designed and built by pioneering aviators Leonard and Vivian Walsh, with the help of their sisters and an engineer. Later in the year the Walsh brothers opened a flying school on the Mission Bay foreshore, training 100 pilots for the war in Europe. Flying boats were an important part of the Waitemata scene until 1989.

Until 1989! Flying boats were barely visible after the 1950s, according to some sources.

On another topic altogether (typical of the style of this blog) I've just been looking at a site that's advertising itself as one of a number of online Elementary schools. The site in the link will take you to a kind of overview of online schools, which is okay, but they also feature on this page something called 'infographics.' These are kind of like those posters they used to have up on classroom walls so that the kids could absorb the information day by day (especially at those times when the teacher was being excessively boring).

However, what slightly amazed me were some of the topics. For instance: 16 Things about Hugh Hefner; Stats on Prostitution; A Gun for Everyone; The Brief Guide to Boogers; A Passion for Beards; Striptease....

To be fair, the infographic on prostitution is not salacious: it shows concern for the fact that huge numbers of women are forced into prostitution everywhere in the world, and that many suffer badly as a result. It also discusses trafficking. The Gun poster is subtlely critical of the excessive number of guns in the US.

But the Hugh Hefner one is something I wouldn't want on the wall of any classroom where my kids were studying, and the striptease one is no better. Neither of these take any sort of moral stance; they're written as though Hugh Hefner's lifestyle was in some way admirable, and equally, the striptease one comes across as though it (and its variants, such as poledancing) were a pretty okay thing. (Have you noticed how many programmes on TV now feature a scene in a club where poledancing is going on, often right up beside the characters who are discussing the latest bit of the plot.)

I wonder why anyone thinks this is somehow educational? Think I'll go back to flying boats - at least there are no moral issues with them....

Photo of RNZAF PBY-5 Catalina XX-T - taken about 1945 - place on Flickr.com by 'Adelaide Archivist.'

Boy

Waititi [Taika Waititi, director of the movie, Boy] has been described as “worryingly” multi-talented. “Ha! I’m going to burn out? I think my friends are worried that I’m going to have a meltdown.” He has worried about this himself. “I used to be freaked out about being interested in so many things. I always thought, when I was in my youth, that I’d have to choose one thing and just stick with it and try and be good at that,” he says. “But there are so many creative ideas that come into your head that don’t necessarily suit a painting. They could be a story or a film. They could just be a cake. If you have lots of different mediums at your disposal, ways of expressing yourself – the more the merrier, I think.”

The quote above comes from an article in the NZ Listener, written by Diana Wichtel. The article is entitled 'Our Boy in Hollywood.'

Which reminds me that I haven't mentioned the movie, Boy, in this blog as yet. My wife and I went to see this a few weeks back, and I was pleasantly surprised. Not sure what I was expecting, but I had a note in the back of my mind that some reviewer hadn't been too impressed with it. Foolish reviewer. This is a marvellous movie that manages to be both funny and serious at the same time - often within the same shot.

Futhermore it's wonderfully cast: James Rolleston (he of the completely Pakeha name) plays the Maori boy of the title, a bit of a runt at that awful age (he's around eleven) where girls have suddenly become interesting. Unfortunately he has not a clue as to what to say to the one he's smitten with, and comes out with some adult rubbish that naturally puts her right off. But if Boy is clueless in this area, he's smart in other ways: he runs the household while his grandmother is away at a funeral - apart from his six-year-old brother, there's a girl cousin and a couple of little kids who don't seem to belong to anyone in particular. And when his father turns up after a jail term, Boy, initially under the delusion that his father is as special as he claims, soon discovers that he's no more than a boy himself - a man who's never really grown up in any way apart from physically. Boy tackles this problem with gumption and mana. And manages to get his father to begin to face some of what's wrong with him.

That makes it sound like a serious movie; underneath, it is. On the surface, it's full of delights, has subtle humour (and outrageous humour), and not a few quirky surprises in the storytelling. Equally it has spiritual depth (different to that of The Whale Rider but equally valid, and a moral viewpoint.

Apart from Rolleston, the other joy in this movie is Te Aho Aho Eketone-Whitu, who plays Boy's younger brother. He gives a performance as honest and alive as any you'll see on the screen this year. No doubt, like many child actors, in part he was just living the role. Nevertheless, not every child actor manages to convey their inner self so readily. Waititi plays the father himself, and is exuberant, foolish, extravagant, outrageous, endearing, violent and pathetic by turns. As annoying as the character is, Waititi still allows us to empathise with some of his difficulties.

The movie is shot through with a wonderful New Zealand feel - it could be nowhere else in the world.

In relation to that, I watched a video of Bridge to Terabithia recently. Who in their right mind thought that a New Zealand school could possibly look like an American one? Yet that's just one of the many peculiarities of this odd movie. The houses the characters live in are American in style, but the countryside around is decidedly New Zealand. The cars drive on the American side of the road, but it's a New Zealand road. The school bus is a cousin to the school bus in Forrest Gump, but it's full of New Zealand children, as is the classroom. A strange movie.

Beautiful Tree

The following appears in the latest Maxim Institute newsletter. I thought it was interesting for the way in which it talks about how education is regarded as being so important in the developing world, that people will set up their own schools if the Government system isn't working.

The Beautiful Tree is written by James Tooley, and it tells of the success of private schools in the developing world—slum schools in places like Nigeria, which the poor run for themselves. Paid for by scrimping and saving, making the best out of substandard facilities, these schools bring education to those who are so often written off, or the subjects of patronising, top-down do-goodery. Tooley tells story after story of teachers and schools with a deep commitment to their children, doing exceptional work. In Ghana, Kenya, India and China—the places Tooley's book stems from—private education confounds stereotypes. In many of these places, government schools are failing. They are too remote, too bureaucratic or too out of touch to do their basic work of educating children. In contrast, community schools are built on the backs of sacrifice and solidarity, filling the educational gap for the sake of the children they are committed to. Tooley quotes a teacher from Ghana: "This is an offering job ... you sacrifice yourself for the children."

Education is about more than bureaucrats writing a curriculum, or finding ways to pass exams. In the words of "Sajid-Sir," headmaster of a community school in Hyderabad, "There are three corners of the triangle—parents, teachers, and students, and this triangle must not be a scalene triangle, it must be an equilateral triangle." The stories in The Beautiful Tree are a reminder to us in New Zealand, that schools exist for the children and families they serve—as outgrowths and flowerings of local community, pride and involvement. It is about helping children to grow, to stand independent and connected in their communities. In a nation with a plethora of schools, used to arguing over who should pay for education, this must still be our vision. Education, whether in Kenya, China or New Zealand, is about growing good people—this is the task our teachers, students and parents are called to.

Here's a video from the author in which he talks about his book:

School of Rock

Caught up with The School of Rock on telly last night, and wished I'd recorded it. It turned out not to be in the least bit offensive, unless you regard rock 'n' roll as offensive in itself - as plainly some of the parents of children at this uptight school do. It's probably a fairly conventional story - oddball teacher (in this case he's not a teacher at all) takes hold of a straight-laced class and turns them into human beings - and it's been done umpteen times. The difference here is Jack Black, who's never been an actor I was much endeared to. In this movie, however, he's so alive and so hilarious with it, and such a screwball with a passion that you can't help but love him. (Both the character and Black's playing of him.) Black fills each scene with such manic energy that it's a wonder he doesn't explode. He's absolutely crazy, but manages a bit of responsibility when necessary. He's certainly more alive than his boring flatmate - and the boring flatmate's even more boring girlfriend who accuses everyone else around of manipulating when she's the one actually doing it.
Joan Cusack is a classic match for Black's antic personality. She seems all together, but just every so often some weird look comes into her eyes, and you know there's another maniac just waiting to break out. She never quite gets the chance to do it, even though she's primed a little with some beer in one scene, and later on meets a rock bandsman with a brain as speedy as a snail's, and almost seems to be about to leap all over his superb body (which he invitingly keeps on touching!).
There isn't a member of the cast who puts a foot wrong: the kids are great, the parents have their own manic style (the moment when it's announced that their teacher is a fraud is wonderful, as they all melt into: there's an axe murderer teaching our children), and the various rock band players are as dopey as they come - but endearing.
Mike White wrote the script, and plays the slow-witted flat mate. Brilliantly.
I loved it.

The School Year

Here in England my great-nieces and nephews go back to school in early September. In New Zealand, where things are much more organised, they go back closer to the beginning of the year, around February.
When I applied to come to the London Opera Centre back in the mid-sixties (where I met the now-famous Kiri te Kanawa - excuse the name-dropping!) I thought I’d have several months to get some money together before the start of the new academic year, which I assumed would be in February. It was a bit of a shock to discover that the English start school in September, and that I was going to have to arrange a flight, accommodation, pay my fees, get myself some money together (I lived on £500 that first year) and finish up doing what I was doing in Dunedin all within a much shorter time.
When you assume that everyone else in the world does things the way you do it can be quite a culture shock to find out that your bit of the world is so different.

Throwaway Society

Much and all as I love the convenience of bic pens and their sidekicks, the razors and lighters, I do have to wonder how much better off the world would be if we didn’t have throwaway items like this. Or maybe I’m just trying to get off the guilt trip I feel when I go to a bookshop, as I did today, and see dozens of titles like: 20 Things You Can Do to Save the Planet, 365 Ways to Save the Earth, and so on.
Bic pens, as I recall, were amongst the first things to be regarded as disposable. When I was first at school, we used pencils in the younger classes, and then graduated to fountain pens – with even a period of using nib pens that had to be dipped in inkwells. Man, that seems ancient! (I actually flicked my fountain pen at the boy in front of me when he annoyed me once, and left ink all over the back of his shirt.)
I can’t remember now whether ballpoint pens made it into school while I was there – I suspect they were still regarded as instruments that would turn our pristine writing into scribble – and they did. But certainly it was in the time when I was first at work that they came in in full force. And began to be thrown away in their thousands. For a time, ballpoint pens had replaceable cartridges, and there were some stylish pens around that could be refilled. But not for long. Along came Mr Bic and that was that. Billions of ballpoint pens must have made their way to the refuse dumps over the decades, billions of bits of plastic and tiny springs, and inner bits. Bic’s promoting of the throwaway product was certainly innovative, but it may also have been disastrous, encouraging manufacturers to get us to throw away almost everything