Actors learn new moves
Injury may have brought Petone-born dancer Luke Hanna home but it hasn’t kept him out of the New Zealand Arts Festival.
Hanna was forced to leave his position with the Adelaide-based Australian Dance Theatre when he dislocated his shoulder in a scooter accident.
Home in Wellington, he coached actors in movement for The Tinderbox at Bats Theatre where director Jane Waddell spotted his work and recruited him to do the same for Peninsula in the festival.
Michele Amas, Laura Hill, Paul Mclaughlin, Phil Vaughan and Jason Whyte make up the ensemble cast, playing Peninsula’s 10 characters.
Hanna found he was warmly received.
‘‘ Dancers and actors work quite differently. Dancers, if they don’t feel that they get something, will just repeat it over and over again. Actors will have a conversation about it first.’’
Hanna said he searches for small ‘‘movement motifs’’, the often-unconscious moves actors make to express themselves.
‘‘ Actors have all these amazing natural instincts to do stuff. Sometimes two actors are doing the same stuff at the same time, but they are not aware of it. Someone like me can come in and point it out.’’
With each actor playing two roles, he searched for physical ways to make the shifts between the characters clear. In one scene a character sits and bends forward, and rises again as another character. As he does, other actors enter, singing.
‘‘Then I was like, ‘ Let’s make it really clear that when these guys come on is the same point that he sits up, rather than it being a natural sort of instinct, and unaware natural timing’,’’ he said. ‘‘It’s the little things.’’
Hill said much of television and film acting is working with just head and shoulders so she was enjoying trying to represent something with her whole body.
Hanna’s coaching had brought precision to the actors’ craft.
‘‘My inner five-year-old still wants to be a ballerina. Clearly that didn’t work out for me,’’ Hill said. ‘‘Some of the things actors do, [they do] unconsciously and it’s good having Luke here to point it out. He’s basically like a shrink, a physical shrink.’’
Peninsula was written by Gary Henderson. It is set on Banks Peninsula. It has been staged at the Christchurch Arts Festival, the Brisbane Festival and the Nelson Arts Festival.
Peninsula runs at Circa until March 31. For info or to book visit circa. co. nz or phone 801 7996.