Theatre’s new era
Centrepoint Theatre has created a whole new role and it has filled it with someone who’s no stranger to its stage. Carly Thomas caught up with Kate Louise Elliott.
Kate Louise Elliott rocked up to Palmerston North’s Centrepoint Theatre about 20 years ago. She was fresh out of drama school, full of beans with a ringbinder under her arm and highlighters clutched in her eager fist.
The theatre’s artistic director at the time was Alison Quigan and she had given Elliott her first proper job. She was to be in the play Four Cities, directed by Ross Gumbley, and she says she had fully researched her part. ‘‘I was a total geek.
‘‘Alison looked at Ross, looked at my stuff, then looked back at Ross and she said ‘she’ll learn’.’’
And she did. Quigan and Centrepoint fast-tracked her into her career. Elliott was firmly tucked under Quigan’s wing and one play rolled onto another and another.
‘‘I went on to do Pack of Girls, As You Like It and Shakers and then she said, ‘oh, do you want to stay on and do the Christmas show?’ And I said ‘yes’. And then at the end of the Christmas show she said, ‘hey, this is my programme for next year, do you want to do this one, this one and this one’ and it just kind of kept going.’’
After three years she was a much-loved member of the Centrepoint family and she says ‘‘nowhere else were any of my peers getting that sort of practice’’.
‘‘You get match fit. It wasn’t about being lazy, but you are rehearsing during the day and you’re performing at night, so you just pick up stuff’.’’
She picked up a part on Shortland Street and her first day on set involved 17 scenes. She admits she was completely terrified.
‘‘We were working with three cameras and I didn’t really know what that meant and luckily I had a wonderful theatre director. He said ‘darling, darling, this is your stage. That’s the audience’.’’
She played dual roles as twins Avril and Bernadette and her big moment was when she was drowned in the bath. She says she and Quigan continued to cross paths through the years. Quigan worked on Shortland Street just after Elliott and then later on, Quigan became the theatre manager at Mangere Arts Centre, just as Elliott did after her in 2012.
‘‘I think we have the same work ethic and we really gelled. She is still my mentor. She took me under her wing right from the start and I’ll never forget, right in the beginning at Centrepoint, when she said to me ‘what do you want for your career?’ She really wanted me to pinpoint that and I said to her, ‘I want your job as artistic director’’’.
‘‘You get match fit. It wasn’t about being lazy, but you are rehearsing during the day and you’re performing at night, so you just pick up stuff’.’’ Kate Louise Elliott, Centrepoint Theatre