Drama aplenty at Palmy Fringe Fest
Edinburgh started it, Wellington has one, and Hamilton does too. Now, Palmerston North has its own Palmy Fringe Festival. Carly Thomas took a look at the lineup.
Palmerston North is cool, OK? Those in the know know it and those that don’t need to come to the city’s first ever Palmy Fringe Festival.
If you want to see what makes the arts community here tick, the six-day event held in 14 city venues is a good place to start.
It was only going to be small, it being the first and all. But somehow, somewhere along the line, the ‘‘let’s start little’’ festival got big.
Even Kate Louise Elliott is surprised at the 75-odd acts that have signed up. She has always known Palmerston North is cool and since she became Centrepoint Theatre’s general manager last year, she has set out to show the rest of the country the city is worth a look at.
‘‘We wanted to do something that would showcase the amazing venues we have here and something that would unite the artists in the community – something we could all contribute to and work together on rather than keep trying to push on in our own areas.’’
Elliott got the ball rolling, firming up Palmerston North City Council support and obtaining funding and then she swiftmanoeuvred it over to Talya Pilcher, a longstanding theatre practitioner who is excited to be delivering the first Manawatu¯ programme.
Pilcher says the beauty of a Fringe Festival is that it is inclusive and all about creating new things and pushing boundaries. And she thinks Palmerston North is the right place to do it.
‘‘Palmerston North is well set up for a festival of this kind, with its compact CBD and many venues and eateries in close proximity. We have a great location and plenty of talent on show.’’
Much of it is homegrown, with plenty of locals putting their hands up to be involved. Warren and Virginia Warbrick will be letting their audience decide which version of Palmerston North’s story they will tell, Bek Coogan is bringing her own performance-art experience in Meet the Dealer and James Lissette will be combining modular synth sounds with spoken word and visuals.
Massey University has got on board with a new piece called Firing Line, exploring World War I and its effect on the people of Palmerston North.
Inspired by local history, the multidimensional performance uses drama, creative writing, poetry and digital media students from its creativity in the community course. Firing Line takes its audience on a journey into the past and on to the streets of Palmerston North as they follow a mute, amnesiac soldier around Coleman Mall, George St and the City Library.
Working with director Hannah Smith, composer David Downes and playwright Angie Farrow, students have been responsible for performance, dramaturgy, production design, music and publicity. Smith says it is powerful work.
‘‘We’re looking at war stories through a fresh lens and we’re looking at the city from a unique perspective also – literally taking the theatre to the streets of Palmerston North.’’
Amy Atkins is a young Palmerston North actor and writer who is also walking her talk during the Palmy Fringe Festival. She says the festival is exactly the place she wants to premier a project she has been working on for some time. Her one-woman play Period: A Comedy
about Menstruation is that project and Atkins is keen to use the festival as a testing ground for a work that she hopes will help break taboos.
Atkins has been interviewing women, gender non-binary and trans people from across New Zealand to find real-life stories about period experiences. She wants to change the way society talks about periods.
‘‘They’re just part of life, why can’t we normalise it? It’s not gross, it’s not exotic, it’s just a series of experiences I’m hoping to share in an empathetic yet light and funny way.’’
Atkins is no newcomer to the concept of the fringe festival. She travelled to the Edinburgh Fringe last year on a speech and communication scholarship, where she went to 50 shows in two weeks. Edinburgh is where the whole concept of Fringe began when artists and performers presented their works at the physical fringe of a mainstream arts festival in the city.
Doorways and alleyways, cafes, shopfronts and rooftops became makeshift stages in this low-tech theatre festival on the edges. It took hold with offshoots popping up all over the world.
And now, right here, on our doorstep, acts from all over New Zealand will be coming together, filling the city and offering up a wide range of performances. Pilcher says a big part of the ethos is that the Fringe Festival is low cost, low tech and has fast set-ups, with most events having only one or two performances.
‘‘Events are usually under an hour long, with the most expensive full ticket price being only $25, so fringe-goers will be able to attend multiple events over the course of an evening. There are many free and koha events, as well as content ranging from clowning and music suitable for the whole family to R18 standup comedy.
‘‘Palmy Fringe is not just for the arts community, we want to engage with all ages and across the wider Manawatu¯ community.’’
Visual arts get a look in too, with photographer Tony Reddrop using the Palmy Fringe Festival as a place to showcase some of the people who make up Palmerston North. For the past 12 months, when he could find the time, Reddrop would sit at the same location and take portraits of the interesting people passing by.
Some would tell him their stories and others would just be happy to show him a bit of who they are by how they chose to pose. The results of that year of observation are Reddrop’s Random Street
Portraits, life-size images displayed in three locations around Palmerston North and projected on to the Palmerston North City Library at night.
‘‘I was really trying to show the variety of people, the A-Z that you see in Palmerston North now. It’s got a lot more varied with an influx of people from overseas, with refugees and people immigrating. I wanted to show the change, that it’s not the place that people crack jokes about, that things have changed. I wanted to really reflect what the community is.’’
And our community is a pretty great one, according to Elliott, ‘‘funny too’’. Palmerston North’s Comedy Hub has coordinated a full programme of stand-up comedy using The Royal as its base and Nathan Cross says it sees the Palmy Fringe Festival ‘‘as a great opportunity to promote comedy in Palmerston North’’.
Every evening of the festival will have up to eight comedy shows running, including comedians Patch Lambert, Michael Fowler, Savanna Calton, Luke Callaghan and Josh Kingsford. Funny man Alexander Sparrow will go one step further by presenting five shows over five nights, taking on 35 different characters.
Kids too are cool, so Pilcher says there are plenty of performances with them in mind. The Birdman is the festival’s international act and in his widely performed show he juggles plastic bags, does interactive origami and balances a plethora of ‘‘stuff’’.
A Guy, a Girl and a Lawnmower is one of Pilcher’s family-friendly picks and the aerial, circus and storytelling show will also give people a glimpse of The Regent on Broadway in a different light.
‘‘Chairs will be set up on the stage, so rather than sitting down in the usual space, the audience will get an intimate experience on the big old stage of The Regent.’’
It’s a massive programme that, from the moment it kicks off in The Square on October 6, will be non-stop, quirky, thought-generating, inspiring and laughinducing. The first ever Palmy Fringe Festival will be epic because Palmerston North is cool, OK?
‘‘We’re . . . literally taking the theatre to the streets of Palmerston North.’’ Hannah Smith, theatre director
The Palmy Fringe Festival runs from October 6-13.