Jo Randerson All the world’s a stage
All the world’s a stage
On a wall at the back of Barbarian Productions theatre group’s suburban office is a mural of a flotilla of little boats drifting down a river. On each boat are cut-out photos of the folk who work there with tag lines of various jobs.
Barbarian founder Jo Randerson has many boats on the water right now – a play opening tonight at Wellington’s Circa Theatre, a book to be published at the NZ Festival next year, a lecture series, to say nothing of her day-to-day work at Barbarian and her role as a mother to two young boys, Caspar, 9, and Geronimo, 13.
There’s some satisfaction in moving those boats down the river towards the finish line. But the journey is what it’s really all about.
Randerson’s own journey from Bright New Thing on the arts scene in the 90s to established and accomplished creator has been quite a ride.
It’s taken her from Bats Theatre – a training ground for young and hungry thespians and a breeding ground for enormous talent – to festival stages all over Europe. There was a stint in a circus too.
Randerson, 48, has endured in an impecunious profession; holding on by the fingernails at some points but never straying from her determination to stay the course.
Perhaps there was one moment, she says, when she asked Bill Manhire, whose muchlauded creative writing course she did in 1997, whether she should look at a more secure way to earn a crust.
‘‘I remember when I was in my 20s I asked Bill ‘How do you do it? How do you survive? Maybe I should be a tutor at a university.’ He clutched my arm and said: ‘Stay out [of the institutions] for as long as you can. Stay out. Stay free!’ ’’
A former suburban bowling club in Wellington seems an unlikely HQ for her theatre company, which she started as a ‘‘lone barbarian’’ in 2001. The company has a strong ethos of community responsibility, social inclusion, diversity.
It shares the series of ramshackle rooms with music gigs for emerging artists and a rehearsal space for actors. It’s home to a Syrian restaurant three nights a week, to a toy library, an organic veg dropoff, little dribblers soccer groups, exercise classes, a Japanese cinema club.
It’s no accident that she shares the space with her community (Randerson also lives four doors up).
The daughter of an Anglican priest, she and her two siblings were raised with the community a constant presence in their home. ‘‘We had a lot of activity at the vicarage. There were always groups coming [over] – men for nonviolence, Russian Orthodox, peace activists . . .
‘‘I think in a way I have tried to recreate that. I like being in and out of a lot of different conversations and worlds.’’
Her interest in performance in part stems from the ritual inside the church – the costume, the sense of being on stage in a live exchange with the people in that setting, she says.
She still feels connected to the church. ‘‘That’s where I have come from and that’s where a lot of my moral and ethical thinking [comes from]. There are some amazing ideologies that I’ve grown up with, some amazing parables that I still hold to because they hold such truth to me. But my parables and my guiding stories have also come from other faiths, traditions, cultures. From te ao Ma¯ ori, from this land that we live in.’’
Growing up, Randerson never considered herself an artist. But she always loved a good story. ‘‘I read so much. I remember Saturday mornings I’d go and get 25 books lined up and I’d have finished half of them by Sunday. Russian novels, si-fi, non-fiction disaster books. I love stories and history.’’
Manhire recalls Randerson making quite an impact in his class all those years ago – she was awarded the prize for best portfolio.
Remarking on her quirky, fable-like stories he says: ‘‘It was as if someone were taking Christ’s parables (the Good Samaritan, and so on) from the New Testament, and then reworking them as stand-up comedy routines and monologues.’’
Randerson says she was not a confident student on that course, despite winning a coveted place out of a pool of many hopeful writers.
‘‘The whole art world was not a place I felt comfortable in. I was not raised in the arts.’’
There are many sides to Randerson: author, playwright, performer, director. In the early days she was a regular on the stand-up circuit.
But that stage, that art form, wasn’t the place for her, she says, largely because of the alcohol and the men. ‘‘That was pretty horrible. There was so much booze, backstage and in the audience. Lots of free drinks before you go on, lots of free drinks when you finish, no pay. ‘No good food but drink as much as you like!’ ’’
It was misogynistic, she says. ‘‘[I’d] usually be the only female in the line-up and you’d have all the jokes and the uncomfortableness around that. I think it’s changed. I hope it’s changed.’’
She can’t recall the name of the first play she ever saw, but she does remember it was at Bats Theatre and that it was fantastically weird.
It had a stand-up piano and a huge stocking puppet. ‘‘I can still remember that image. That sense of something really different from the rest of the world really appealed.
‘‘I find the world is an amazing, strange, absurd place, but we tend to play in quite known realms, so it’s exciting to play out of that.’’
B ats would become a spiritual home for Randerson in the 90s. There, and at the Victoria University drama club, are where she found her people. Her first play, Fold, was staged there. ‘‘It was a warm place of community, a lot of beautiful exciting people and a real sense of care and support – people looking out for each other.’’
They were emotionally wild days with a cohort of creatives – Bret McKenzie, Taika Waititi, Melanie Hamilton. ‘‘I feel like I was on some rollercoaster track . . . I didn’t feel conscious or aware of us being new young things. It was just what we were doing. It was just a very full and very rich time.’’
But that kind of life was not a sustainable one, she recalls. The money, or lack of it, was the problem. ‘‘There were always lines and lines and lines of champagne glasses, but where was the healthy bowl of soup for the performers?
‘‘I want us to properly look after our artists with what they need and for artists to be able to pay their bills safely, so they are not reliant on entering into these dangerous negotiations of exchange.’’
A lot of her mainly female contemporaries of that time left the profession to get a ‘‘proper job’’ to look after their families or support their partners in the business. It’s made her determined to give opportunities to people with children so they can continue making art.
She gets irritated that artists are being asked to brainstorm for free about the future of arts funding and support or provide background on the arts to highly paid consultants so that they can report back to arts decision makers.
Pay artists the exorbitant consultant fees and you’ll get a better idea of how the industry could work more effectively, she says.
Randerson, who graduated with a masters in theatre arts (directing) at Toi Whakaari in 2012, has received many of this country’s arts awards and fellowships. She’s collaborated with arts stalwarts Briar Grace-Smith, Douglas Wright among many, many others. Her work has been toured to Australia and Europe. This year, she was made an officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to the performing arts.
She runs Barbarian with her partner Thomas LaHood. They got together on the dance floor at WACT – the Wellington Artists Charitable Trust.
The former dance school in Wellington was a hub for the city’s performing crowd. ‘‘That’s where we sat and packaged up Taika’s Two Cars, One Night videos to send off to the Oscars. Cliff Curtis used to come and sleep there. It was a really buzzy artistic hub for artists.’’
A bit like the Vogelmorn Bowling Club. There’s a buzz there right now with plenty of projects making their way down the metaphorical river. Plenty of them have Randerson’s name and photo attached to the sails.
There’s nothing for it but to keep doing the mahi, one Barbarian boat at a time.
‘‘I like being in and out of a lot of different conversations and worlds.’’
Another Mammal, Circa Theatre, Wellington, May 8-29.