Setting The Stage For Everyone
This new series sees Viva and Dilmah celebrate the change-makers throughout New Zealand, chatting to each over a humble cup of tea
When Sarah Graham talks about reflecting Auckland’s diversity on stage, it comes across not as a choice, but a modus operandi.
“We live in an incredibly multi-cultured city,” says the programme director at Auckland’s Q Theatre. “You have to respond and rejoice in that.”
Aucklanders certainly are. At a time when the theatre is competing with arguably more entertainment options than ever, the purpose-built Queen Street venue is quietly revelling in another bumper year. While the Comedy Festival gears up again to put bums on seats next month with up to 10 shows a night, recent Q productions that had people talking, dancing and in some cases frantically emailing for tickets, put a contemporary spin on your classic stand-ups, Shakespeares and musicals.
In August it was Burn Her, the political thriller by young playwright Sam Brooks that had people fizzing. So much so, people queued at the box office on soldout nights, or messaged Sarah directly for tickets. A year ago it was Mangere Arts Centre’s The Wizard of Otahuhu, in which Dorothy escaped Cyclone Tita and followed the Great South Road, alongside 50 artists from South Auckland performing hip-hop and gospel. Rather than serving up the Bard as we know him, as part of the Auckland Arts Festival, Q presented By Heart, a deconstructed sonnet from the National Theatre of Portugal, in which audience members were invited on stage to learn a poem.
Since 2013 when Sarah first started at Q as an assistant producer, then co-ordinator and eventually her current role, the 34-year-old has committed to ensuring a wide range of voices and faces are represented on the stage. Not that this modest former actor who grew up in the theatre is willing to shout it from the boards. Ask her about the impact she’s made and she’s more likely to talk about the values Q holds that she strives to meet. Or the many theatre-makers she works with — among them the Auckland Theatre Company, Prayas Theatre and Red Leap. The perfect Q show, she says, pushes boundaries but is accessible. It gives audiences the stories they crave, but challenges and surprises. And it does so without begin stuffy.
“It has to speak to where we live in some way, shape or form. We’re in the business of storytelling, and we get to do that in a live format,” she says of the job she loves. The challenge is to make it contemporary, relevant. “That gets me really jazzed, pushing it forward.”
What could be more prescient in the age of MeToo but Medusa, performed in November? The story of women’s rage, from feminist theatre-makers Julia Croft, Virginia Frankovich and Nisha Madhan “literally smashed the patriarchy,” she says. Or Other, a 2017 play by Alice Canton about what it means to be Chinese. Both were part of Q’s Matchbox Development Programme, an initiative to support emerging talent. This year saw Silo Theatre’s stage adaptation of Samoan-New Zealand poet Tusiata Avia’s Wild Dogs Under My Skirt take the Q stage; in June the Auckland Theatre Company and Prayas Theatre present A Fine Balance, based on the Robinson Mistry novel set during India’s State of Emergency in 1975.
Sarah’s mum, Alison Quigan has had an unmistakable influence on her programming philosophy. Before she played Yvonne the receptionist on Shortland Street, Alison spent 18 years as artistic director at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North; (she is now performing arts manager at Mangere Arts Centre). Her daughter grew up seeing theatre being made, for and by the community.
“I saw and felt what it meant to people to see their own stories on the stage,” says Sarah. “It really affirms who you are and what that means to people. That particular experience stuck with me and to see people make work they’re proud of and the audience gets or is challenged or excited by keeps me going.”
Later Sarah acted and produced her own theatre, where she loved making people laugh on stage. She also worked for three years as theatre manager for the Duffy Books in Homes programme. Although she misses making work “on the floor”, she relishes the challenge to find new stories, or tales told in a new way. “‘Who’s telling the story?’ is a useful question to ask.” Naturally as programme director, her job entails countless evenings at the theatre, not just at Q but regionally. This week she’ll take in Orpheus, (from the Adelaide Fringe Festival), and at the upcoming Comedy Fest, she’s looking forward to local sketch group Fricken Dangerous Bro. Then there’s The Wolves, the Silo Theatre’s next show, set in a high school soccer team.
As for the attributes that make a good programme director, the ability to see viewpoints that aren’t necessarily your own is essential.
“For a venue like Q that tells so many different stories, many of which I have little personal relationship to, it doesn’t mean they’re not for me,” Sarah explains. “So it’s about understanding my own beliefs and knowing I need to challenge them, being compassionate and seeing from the perspective of someone who isn’t yourself… I’m passionate about it because theatre should be something for everyone.”