Amas breathed life into her characters
Michele Louise Amas, actor, poet, playwright: b October 8, 1961, Dunedin; p (1) Danny Mulheron, 1d; p (2) Ken Duncum; d December 26, 2016, Wellington, aged 55.
Actor Michele Amas brought a rare authenticity to her characters, inhabiting them from the inside out, from the get go.
She had that invisible and mysterious thing one can’t train for or learn – a presence that fellow actors recalled would change the pressure in the room.
Over a 30-year career Amas breathed life into characters on television, radio and in the theatre. In the latter part of her career she turned her hand to directing, playwriting and poetry.
Amas, who graduated from drama school Toi Whakaari in 1984, made numerous TV appearances, playing pathologist Jennifer Collins in Duggan, mother of the teen hero in the series Holly’s Heroes, and, in the hugely successful comedy Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby, the longsuffering assistant to the school principal. She also directed short film Redial, which competed at the 2002 Venice Film Festival.
She was an accomplished poet. In 2005, she completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Victoria University. That year she received the Adam Prize in Creative Writing for her collection of poems, The Angle of Clouds. The prize is awarded annually to the best portfolio.
Her first collection of poetry, After the Dance (VUP), was published in 2006 and nominated as best first book of poetry in the Montana New Zealand Book Awards.
Bill Manhire, Victoria University Institute of Modern Letters founding director, said he counted himself lucky to have taught Amas.
‘‘Her poems have a domestic focus, and are full of wit and thoughtfulness and tenderness, and – as you’d expect from someone with her theatre background – they have perfect pitch and perfect timing.’’
Paula Green, from The New Zealand Poetry Shelf, said of Amas’s poetry: ‘‘There is a tenderness, a maternal cord that feeds the poems and ignites every mother cell in your body as you read.’’
Amas also read plays and stories on radio but it was the theatre, and in particular, Circa Theatre in Wellington, where she performed the most.
Wellington actor Ray Henwood said Amas had a very clear style. She was able to pick up a character immediately and absorb it from the very first rehearsal. ‘‘People remembered Michele simply because of her force on stage.’’
Amas had joined the ‘Circa family’ straight out of Toi Whakaari and performed in dozens of plays over the past three decades.
Henwood recalled a two-hander they were in together where Amas had to cook a meal on stage while reciting her lines.
‘‘The director was very specific; she had to make a bolognese, cooking the garlic and onions in oil first. She had to make this while in character delivering her lines. It was quite a feat.’’
His fondest memories of Amas were in Robert Lord’s Joyful and Triumphant, a play that bracketed her career at Circa Theatre. She first starred as the young Raewyn Bishop, and 25 years later as the older Rose. ‘‘As the younger one she was so convincing, and as the older – so convincing.’’
Her performance in Circa’s production of August: Osage County in 2011 earned her a Chapman Tripp Theatre Award for her role as Barbara.
Amas later turned her talents to playwriting. Her 2014 play, The Pink Hammer, a comedy-drama, was premiered at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North and also staged at the PumpHouse Theatre in Auckland in October last year.
She had previously penned Circa’s 2013 panto Mother Goose, which was something of a departure for the actress and poet.
‘‘I’m some sort of an artist who isn’t settled but they are all words and words are the palette that you’re working in,’’ she said in an interview at the time. ‘‘Writing for the theatre is a lot more robust. Poetry is a lot quieter.’’
The experience fuelled her ambition to write, while still continuing with her acting career. ’’I wish I was one of those artists who just painted or something. But the words are kind of the paint [for me],’’ she said in a Dominion Post interview in 2013.
‘‘I use it in different forms. I have never quite settled on one. But I think that’s just the way I am.’’
Born in Dunedin, she, her older brother Jeff and mother Beth moved around in her early years, first to Malaysia and then to Waiouru because of her father Bruce’s role in the New Zealand Army.
She went to Queen’s High School on their return to Dunedin and it was here that drama teacher Terry McTavish inspired her to study acting as a profession.
She moved to Wellington in 1982 and graduated from Toi Whakaari in 1984.
It was while studying there that she met writer and director Danny Mulheron. The couple went on to have her only child, daughter Florence.
‘‘She was really known as the school barometer,’’ Mulheron said. ‘‘She made the pressure of the room change when she walked in.’’
Amas was an observant actor. She was no show-off, just a person who had ‘‘the chops’’, he said. ’’She never wanted to be a star, she just loved the work.’’
Years after their relationship ended she ran into screenwriter and playwright Ken Duncum, to whom she had been introduced by Mulheron.
It was at a matinee at Circa Theatre in 1998 where the pair had been sat side by side, Duncum recalls.
‘‘I asked her, ‘How are you?’ and she said, ‘I don’t know you well enough to say.’ I took that as a sort of challenge and determined to get to know her from there.’’
Amas had a talent for making a character completely authentic, he said. ‘‘She could inhabit a character, which is what people imagine all actors can do but a lot of actors actually channel themselves. She could become that person and be authentic from the inside out.’’
She had great discipline, having been taught by the older guard at Circa, a role she later took on to guide the younger actors coming through the ranks.
Professionally, Amas achieved great heights but her most important role in life was as mother to Florence, the greatest love of her life, Duncum concedes.
‘‘Being a mother to Florence was at the heart of her life.’’
This could be seen most clearly in her poetry, he said. ‘‘If you read [her] book you see into her soul and see what was most important to her. It covers a wide range of subjects, but a lot of them were about Florence.’’
Her poem The txt may just sum this up: Mum come upstairz my throats 2 sore 2 call out 2 u. In firemother red I take the stairs two at a time.
Amas, the actor, the poet, the mother.
By Bess Manson Sources: Ken Duncum, Bill Manhire, Danny Mulheron, The Dominion Post, NZ On Screen, New Zealand Book Council, The New Zealand Poetry Shelf.