Theatre stalwart was diligent and creative
A LONGSERVING artistic director of Dunedin’s former Fortune Theatre, Campbell Thomas was a passionate advocate for local theatre.
He died in Oamaru on December 22, aged 84.
John Campbell Thomas was born in Hamilton and educated at Auckland Grammar.
A bacteriologist by day, he was actively involved in amateur theatre, meeting his actress wife, Jacque, in an Auckland Repertory Theatre production of The Crucible.
In 1964, the pair left to train at and later join Paul Baker’s then fledgling (now famous) US regional company, the Dallas Theatre Centre. With the exception of a brief return to New Zealand to join the shortlived Canterbury Theatre Company in Christchurch in 1967, the pair worked for 20 years in Dallas and later in Arkansas and Florida.
This was an unusual path for New Zealand thespians to follow at the time — most headed to the United Kingdom to train and seek work — and getting the requisite green cards required the intervention of an influential member of the theatre centre’s board.
Baker encouraged Thomas in a range of theatrical pursuits — as actor, designer, lighting designer and director. This array of skills, along with his management experience (he also headed a scenic design firm in America), made him an ideal candidate for the Fortune position, to which he was appointed in 1985.
He held the role for 14 years; the longest serving of any of the company’s artistic leaders.
The first half of the 1980s had featured some striking productions but it also included strikes by actors and production workers, and three artistic directors and a general manager had endeavoured to run the company in that time. By contrast, Thomas’ era was largely characterised by stability (indeed, predictability was a charge levelled at him by his critics towards the end of his time at the theatre). Dunedin audiences came to expect a consistent and reliable standard of work from the Fortune and responded to it in a way not matched by any of his successors.
He surrounded himself with a small management team (Lindsay Shaw and later Lynette Gernhoefer as managers, Bruce Appleton and later Jon Waite as production managers, Peter Brown and Claire Dorking as marketing managers, Richard Finn as associate director and Alister McDonald as dramaturg) and proceeded to present seasons averaging 10 mainbill productions a year. He directed 57 mainbill productions (50% more than the next most prolific director during the company’s 44year history) and designed 80, working wonders with budgets minuscule in comparison with those of the theatre companies in the larger northern cities.
His productions were craftsmanlike, always showed a respect for the text and were marked by the balanced composition of his stage pictures.
In an industry noted for its temperament, Campbell was a downtoearth, practical individual who rolled up his sleeves. As a manager, he was not deskbound but worked with his staff towards a common goal of quality productions. He could be found with the stage carpenters constructing and finishing his sets and with the members’ society and board engaged in fundraising activities. He often reminded board members of the US adage that it was not their job to pick the plays for the theatre but rather to ‘‘give, get or go’’.
During his years at the helm, the company aimed to bring to Dunedin audiences the best of contemporary English language drama from throughout the world. In 44 instances, these were the first productions in New Zealand of these plays. In addition to British, Australian and Canadian works he put particular emphasis on US drama, frequently presenting offBroadway and regional successes.
His one pre20th century production was of the 1606 Jacobean satire, The Revenger’s Tragedy, which received its New Zealand professional premiere at the Fortune in 1995 with the aid of a special grant from Creative New Zealand. This enabled a full incidental score to be composed by Anthony Ritchie and sumptuous costumes to be designed by the then doyenne in the field, Pamela Maling from the Court Theatre in Christchurch.
For more than a decade, Thomas enjoyed a close working relationship with Roger Hall and directed the world premieres of 11 of his plays, among them some of his greatest hits such as Love off the Shelf, The Share Club and its sequel After the Crash, By Degrees, Social Climbers and Dirty Weekends. There were also his pieces for one performer, Mr Punch, C’mon Black and The Book Club.
Other New Zealand dramatists had a further 11 works premiered at the Fortune in Thomas’ time, among them Renee (who completed her working class historical trilogy with Jeannie Once), Stephen Sinclair (whose early musical satire, Big Bikkies, Thomas spotted at the 1986 Playwrights’ Workshop), Joe Musaphia (The New Zealander) and local writers John Broughton (1981, Anzac) and Mark Casson (The Brooding Sin, Stretch).
As a mark of his commitment to the work of younger practitioners he staged a musical (Flowers at Breakfast) by two Otago University students as the company’s 20th anniversary production in 1994.
Two of Thomas’ productions were seen by the greatest number of Fortune spectators. Just under 9000 people saw the two seasons in 19867 of the premiere of Love off the Shelf and just over 7000 spectators in Dunedin and Invercargill saw the 1990 production of Conjugal Rites.
Of the 54 hits in the Fortune’s lifetime (productions seen by more than 3000 spectators), 21 were staged during Thomas’ term as artistic director.
In 1989, he invited the famous English theatre scholar and National Theatre dramaturg, John Russell Brown, to direct at the Fortune. Two productions resulted: Burn This and On the Verge. Other guests included David Pursley and Cliff Baker, who he had worked with in the US, and the English playwright and television star Gavin Richards.
During the 1990s, the Fortune took the lease on the former Manhattan dance hall and ran it as an occasional third performance venue. In the main
Trinity auditorium, Thomas had a revolving stage installed, still the only one in the city, to aid quick set changes by the company’s skeleton backstage crew.
He directed three productions at the Manhattan for the Southern Performing Arts Centre, a tertiary level theatre training institution established in Dunedin in the mid1990s.
He was also invited to work for the Dunedin Opera Company when it endeavoured to increase the professional elements in its productions, and directed and designed The
Daughter of the Regiment (1987) and Madame Butterfly (1988).
In 1998, he directed the world premiere in the Regent Theatre, Dunedin, of Rush!, a musical about the Central Otago goldfields.
He was made a member of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2000.
After retiring from the Fortune at the end of 1999, he lived in several North Otago towns. A talented artist (he designed a number of Fortune posters), he focused on wood sculptures and held two exhibitions of his work at the Moray Gallery in Dunedin. He was anticipating a third at the time of his death.
His wife, Jacque, died in 2008. They had no children. — Supplied by Alister McDonald, who was the dramaturg at the Fortune Theatre from 1985 until its closure in 2018. Portions of this article have been adapted from his essay Thirty Years of Drama, Comedy and Tragedy at
Fortune published in the theatre’s 30th anniversary publication in 1994.