Theatre with a history
Victim-survivors of family and sexual violence are increasingly desperate for police help – but inadequate responses make them feel less safe, a new survey has found. Hanna McCallum reports.
On Boxing Day 1861, on the site in Gloucester St where The Press building now stands, a new theatre opened. The theatre was a simple barn-like structure, called the Canterbury Music Hall. If by chance any of your fardistant relatives were in the audience that night, they would have been treated to a gripping performance of Hunchback, presumably The Hunchback of Notre Dame.
Two years later, the Canterbury Music Hall moved upmarket when it was renamed The Royal Princess Theatre, in honour of Princess Alexandra of Denmark, who had recently married into the British royal family. One can only ponder which was more exciting for the princess, marrying into the House of Windsor or having a theatre in Gloucester St named after her?
The theatre was sold in 1873 and by 1876 a new theatre had been built on the same site. By 1881, Princess Alexandra had obviously blended so well into her new family that her theatre was now simply known as The Theatre Royal.
In 1903, after a tragic theatre fire in Chicago,where more than 600 people lost their lives due to inadequate fire escapes, the Christchurch City Council took a close look at all of the city’s theatres. It decreed that, despite its grand name, the Theatre Royal did not meet the new safety standards.
This prompted a grain merchant by the name of George Gatonby Stead to gather together a group of forwardthinking businessmen to oversee the construction of a new theatre. In time, the brothers Sydney and Arthur Luttrell were engaged to oversee the design and build of the current Theatre Royal.
The Luttrells had arrived from Tasmania in 1902 and were quickly putting in tenders for buildings all over Canterbury. Alfred was the designer and a particularly highly skilled engineer. Sydney oversaw the construction and worked closely with their clients.
Sydney had a burning passion for horse racing so the Luttrells were well known for designing and building horse-racing grandstands at Addington, Riccarton and Trentham. Flamboyant and big-betting Sydney also had part ownership in the horse that won the 1916 Melbourne Cup.
The grand new Theatre Royal was built on the opposite side of Gloucester St and featured a distinctive threestoreyed classical-style façade. Despite its grand street appearance, the sides of the building were built from plain unreinforced brick and the roof from corrugated iron.
The theatre opened with a sold-out performance of Blue Moon on February 25, 1908. The theatre was praised glowingly by The Press reviewer: “The theatre looked splendid last night when lighted up, the colour scheme of the decorations and furnishings blending beautifully … a magnificent spectacle.”
Well, this first night that got the tick of approval from The Press was only just the beginning of a fairytale story of decades hosting some of the biggest names of the entertainment world.
In the early 1920s, Anna Pavlova, a principal artist of the Imperial Russian Ballet and one of the most celebrated ballerinas of all time, danced on stage in our grand theatre.
I do wonder what Anna thought when she stepped out into Gloucester St after the show. Did she think she was at the end of the world or did she wonder where she might be able to find a legendary New Zealand meringue dessert at that time of night?
Over 14 weeks in 1928, the Theatre Royal underwent a makeover, with as many as 260 men working on site. This refit was largely motivated by the fact that the theatre was now able to show movies, which were proving popular with the people of Christchurch.
Despite this new fascination with movies, in May 1929 a touring company presented a season of Shakespeare. A reviewer, presumably from The Press, wrote after attending a particularly fine performance of Antony and Cleopatra, “one can almost smell the acrid smell of camels. Cleopatra is a woman with one consuming passion, the passion of the voluptuary for the admiration of men”. Gloucester St was obviously the place you would want to be in 1929.
From 1941 until 1956, the theatre was run by Christchurch Cinemas, but from the mid-1950s it hosted everything from opera to wrestling.
In 1962, only six years after the first performance of My Fair Lady and two years before the film was released, 200,000 people attended 171 performances of the show at the Theatre Royal.
Sadly, due to my 7.30pm bedtime in 1963 and 1964, I missed out on both performances by the jazz great Louis Armstrong. I’m sure there are people reading this article today who remember fondly Louis’ soaring trumpet lines and his distinctive gravelly voice, while other readers will certainly remember the thrill of The Beach Boys concert in 1964.
The Press, never one to hold back, reviewed a 1965 Rolling Stones concert, writing: “A Little Red Rooster was nearly the downfall of the Theatre Royal last night. Hundreds of shouting, whistling, clapping teenagers screamed and stamped until the building vibrated.”
It wasn’t a good week for this reviewer because just a few days later he had this to say about a concert given by The Kinks and Manfred Mann at the Majestic Theatre: “On Tuesday evening young Christchurch people heard the Rolling Stones and their particular brand of Noise. In the Majestic Theatre last evening they heard more of the same, but with a subtle difference – there was a bit more polish in the presentation ...
“After hearing two such shows in the city in three days it can only be hoped that before very long someone may see fit to form a society for the protection of the eardrums.”
In 1972, just around the corner, the glamorous modern Town Hall had opened and the now-dated Theatre Royal had already fallen into the doldrums. It was threatened with demolition. In 1975 it was put up for auction but was passed in with no bids.
In 1980, some white knights in shining armour came along in the form of the Theatre Royal Charitable Foundation.
This group of local visionaries set up a trust that bought the theatre as they were determined to preserve its future.
Many great artists continued to visit and enjoy our special theatre but it didn’t all go to plan in 1997 for a production of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs.
As always, The Press was at the forefront of breaking the big news stories. On May 13, 1997, the headline was “Hi ho, hi ho it’s out of work we go”, and the story said: “A wayward dwarf found drunk in central Christchurch, and a lack of ticket sales, have prompted Snow White and her Seven Dwarfs to pack their bags. They head home to Australia, their remaining Christchurch shows cancelled.
“The wayward dwarf found drunk by police became somewhat grumpy when questioned, and kicked a police car. He spent the night at the central police station. ‘All we need is a lift to the airport, our departure tax, and we’ll be gone,’ Bashful said. ‘It has certainly been a no-frills, no-thrills tour. In fact it is so bad that Snow White and I sat in town with a packet of chips at lunchtime and wondered whether we should do a little busking’.”
Now many years have passed, but I’m certain that Bashful left Christchurch with a poor opinion of our beautiful city. Can I suggest that if this dejected Australian were ever to return, it would be a kindly gesture to present him with the keys to our city for a day as a sign of goodwill?
In 1998, the theatre trust chairperson announced that the theatre would temporarily close as it needed structural work costing $1.6 million. In June the following year, the Theatre Royal reopened, having been strengthened, its fire protection updated and a smart upstairs dress circle foyer added. How fortunate that the trust took these decisions when it did.
More major renovations were carried out in 2004 under the skilful eye of Sir Miles Warren, which saw the reconstruction of the fly tower, stage and extension of the foyer. These costly renovations were carried out with the financial assistance of Lady Diana Isaac.
In acknowledgement of this, the theatre was deservedly renamed the Isaac Theatre Royal, in her honour.
The Isaac Theatre did not fare well in the 2011 earthquakes and if it weren’t for the 1999-2000 strengthening, it’s thought the building would have been lost. The new stage and backstage area came through the rumbles reasonably well. However, the 1908 auditorium and 1928 foyer, because of the unreinforced masonry walls, were not considered repairable in their original form.
Fortunately, all the heritage material was retained and $40m later our theatre was restored and reinstated. The glorious ceiling dome was saved and rebuilt from carbon fibre, keeping the original 1908 painted mural depicting a scene from A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
The Isaac Theatre reopened its doors on November 17, 2014, and everyone agreed it had never looked so splendid.
As I write this, it’s so apparent how many great Cantabrians have contributed to the preservation of one of our much-loved landmarks. We must never forget their determination, expertise, dogged hard work and, of course, generosity of time and money.
In particular, we need to reflect and feel so grateful to the vibrant, generous, and gracious Lady Isaac for all she has done for us and future generations of Cantabrians.
Three months after the September 2010 earthquake, Richard O’Brien, creator of The Rocky Horror Show, stood on the stage with mayor Bob Parker and said wistfully: “It’s a beautiful place, this theatre – I hope you all realise how special it is. You can feel the history.”
Former Cantabrian Mark Walton, an internationally recognised clarinettist and saxophonist, has an enduring fascination with New Zealand history.
She spent the equivalent of an entire working day in the reporting room, recounting her experience of violence. At one point, a police officer yells at her because she won’t stop crying, saying they can’t use the recording if she “kept blubbering through it”.
“I regretted going at all as it just added to my trauma and didn’t feel at all like they believed me.”
The woman, who is not identified other than as being Pākehā and sexuality diverse, is one of 599 participants of a survey detailing police responses experienced by victim-survivors of family and sexual violence.
Sometimes they’re not even afforded the privacy of a room. They will make reports about the violence they experienced, talking across a plastic barrier in a police foyer in front of everyone else waiting, as if it were a bank.
The report, Make it About Us: Victimsurvivors’ recommendations for building a safer police response to intimate partner violence, family violence and sexual violence in Aotearoa New Zealand, was published today.
The Backbone Collective and Hohou te Rongo Kahukura gathered responses from women, transgender and nonbinary people, examining shared experiences.
It highlights how victim-survivors are looking for urgent help from police to be safe, says co-author Sandra Dickson of Hohou te Rongo Kahukura – a charity preventing and responding to violence experienced by takatāpui and rainbow communities.
But one in four women in the Backbone sample, 29% of sexuality diverse women and 51% of trans and non-binary people say police involvement made them less safe.
The results “absolutely confirmed” what the charity is hearing on the ground, but it was still shocking to learn how often people were having “really poor and unsafe responses”, Dickson says.
Many reported police behaviours showed a lack of understanding about the different types of violence, trauma responses, minority communities, skills and specialisation in responding safely and appropriately to victim-survivors and their experiences.
It comes as police proposed a “managed withdrawal” from what they considered non-crime social problems – including family harm – in a recent briefing to incoming Police Minister Mark Mitchell.
The level of reporting of family harm continues to increase, with 177,452 investigations in the year ending June 2023 – a 49% increase since 2017.
The total time police spend attending and resolving family-harm incidents has tripled since 2013 and now accounts for almost 19% of all police attendance time.
But more than half of the police family-harm investigations do not involve an offence being recorded. They advocate for the response to incidents in the “social domain” to be filled by other agencies.
In the annual report, Police Commissioner Andrew Coster said as society had become more aware and willing to talk about family harm and mental health, police had increasingly been drawn into the “private domain”.
“Whilst we have an important role to play in making situations safe and bringing criminal justice responses where required, much of this demand is social in nature and does not necessarily need a police response.”
Resources were stretched and police were working hard to balance competing demands, he said.
But it is very clear most victimsurvivors do not want police to withdraw from family-harm incidences, says report co-author Deborah Mackenzie of The Backbone Collective – a group set up to give a voice to women who have experienced family violence.
“When victim-survivors call police ... it’s a last resort, they’ve tried everything else.
“And when you actually have the courage to contact police, and they do nothing or they do a bad job, the hopelessness and lack of any options at that point is really devastating for victimsurvivors and children.”
‘I was so under his control’
Just over a third of the report participants had not contacted police, fearing it would make them less safe, and so as to protect themselves and their children from the abuse escalating. More than half said they were ashamed or embarrassed about what happened to them.
There were additional barriers for victim-survivors in takatāpui and rainbow communities who feared, or had earlier experiences of, discrimination and stigma.
Many did not think they could get any help because they did not know that what happened to them was a crime, when for most of them the report found it was.
“I was so under his control, contacting the police didn’t even occur to me,” one participant said.
“While they might be able to help, I think they’re more likely to help cis white men like my abuser rather than a queer trans person like me,” another said.
Many felt police would not understand their needs and that they were illequipped to deal with sexual violence.
‘Detective told me my rapist was a good guy’
Stigma, shame and a sense of responsibility stopped *Megan from contacting police for seven years after she was raped by Wellington poet Lewis Scott.
It was only when she read a Stuff story about another victim of her rapist, that she decided to report it.
But after she called police, “two huge big men” showed up at her door at night and she had to make her statement to them.
“That was just awful on so many levels,” she says. With no support person, no option to go in to the police station, she felt stupid and disempowered.
“They took my statement and then spent the time saying most likely nothing would happen.”
In Aotearoa, just over 30% of family violence is reported, but on average police attend a family-violence episode every four minutes.
Meanwhile, Ministry of Justice data shows only 6% of sexual assaults are reported to police.
Over a third of trans and non-binary people (37%), over a quarter of sexuality diverse women (28%) and 15% of women in the Backbone sample rated their first contact with police as very poor.
Some described feeling they were “wasting police time” or being a “nuisance to police”.
One woman was told that police were “not a forum to complain about your ex”.
A quarter of the Backbone participants, a third of sexuality diverse women (32%) and 40% of trans and non-binary participants reported that their first experience with police had stopped them from contacting them again.
One of the overarching reasons was because the police enabled the abuser to continue their abuse.
“SA [sexual assault] detective told me my rapist was a good guy,” a Māori lesbian woman reported.
Meanwhile, a Pākehā woman said police did not believe her and her child’s story. “They told me and the abuser that we seemed like a nice family in a nice area and that they knew we were ‘good people’.
“Both my [child] and I realised that the police would not ever believe us because we don’t look like the kind of people they assume to be victims and we don’t live in areas they assume victims live in.”
The report also found police had a lack of cultural awareness and understanding of neurodiversity, queer relationships, intergenerational trauma and trauma responses.
Participants said police did not understand that abusers could present to police as friendly and “nice” but were “monsters behind closed doors”.
Indigenous psychotherapist Donny Riki says violence is almost always “deliberate, strategic and targeted”.
People often used language around violence that shielded the magnitude of it, which obscured the perpetrator’s responsibility, minimising what actually happened, she says.
Not acknowledging the history of violence and pre-existing power dynamics was part of the problem.
“Ongoing colonial violence is reinscribed by people who uphold and collude with structural and systematic oppression against Māori or against any other targeted group, whether it’s takatāpui people or queer people, disabled people.”
Riki worked with victim-survivors for 25 years and says it is important to bring more attention to their resistance to violence. Although it might not stop the violence, it preserved their mana. “You’re fierce, you resisted, you survived.”
Consequences of police involvement
Almost half of all participants said they contacted police because they were scared.
While many hoped it would mean the abuser would be kept away from them or the violence would stop, for many, police took little action.
Roughly a quarter said police arrived much later than called and just over a quarter said police took their statement and took no other further action.
Nearly a quarter of participants in the Backbone sample, and half of those in the Hohou te Rongo Kahukura sample, said the abuser was arrested.
When victim-survivors or their children were not believed, it made them less safe, leading to being ridiculed by their abuser or physically abused as punishment for contacting police.
“He now believes he can and will get away with anything he wants without fear of consequence or punishment and this has meant his abuse has escalated and continued for the [number of ] years since our separation,” one participant said.
A Pākehā trans woman reported being laughed at by police for trying to make a report. “[They] deliberately refused to file my report. Deliberately used male pronouns even when corrected. Told me it was my fault I got raped because it’s what trans freaks like me deserve.”
A very small number reported police giving them information or referring them or their abuser to social services.
Similarly, a very small number of women – but no trans and non-binary people – said police stayed with them until they felt safe or until other services arrived.
“They questioned my actions, my mental health and left me feeling unsafe ... I was shaking and incoherent by the end. I asked for help but they just left,” one participant said.
‘Opportunity for change’
Police Minister Mark Mitchell says police always have primary responsibility for responding to violence.
But because frontline police were the only 24-hour agency, they responded to a wide range of callouts, including mental health and historic family-harm incidents.
By supporting other agencies to address mental health and social issues, officers will be better able to “refocus on core policing” and address family violence and sexual harm when these occur, Mitchell says.
“To be clear, in any case where there is immediate threat to a victim, I expect police to respond, and will continue to back them to best provide that response.”
When asked whether he thought there were cultural issues that prevented police from responding adequately, he said “no”.
He would consider a specialist response team, but it was an operational matter for police.
Natasha Allan, police family harm prevention manager, says they are trialling co-response teams for mental health to ensure victims receive both the long and short-term support they need.
Processes are in place to support different whānau needs, including the Integrated Safety Response (ISR) and AWHI (a tikanga-based voluntary referral) models, she says.
Police conducted a six-month triage service for non-emergency family- harm calls and had positive results. Victims received a “timelier response and engagement from police”. Police are looking to roll it out nationwide.
Meanwhile, training for recruits has been extended from 16 weeks to 20 weeks, with two weeks dedicated to family-harm training.
Allan acknowledges biases may exist within police policies, processes and practices and says they are committed to being fair and equitable for everyone.
Rachel Kain, a senior educator and family violence adviser at Shine, says it is important to recognise the expertise of people in their own lives.
Police are often the first responders and when their response is helpful, it can increase safety. The more experienced they are, the greater respect, patience and understanding of the complexity of sexual violence and family violence, they show.
“This is not a ‘social issue’, this is not a ‘private issue’ ... we all have a responsibility to make sure that family violence is not acceptable,” Kain says.
Karen Chhour, Minister for Children and for the Prevention of Family and Sexual Violence, says her work with Te Puna Aonui, the joint venture responsible for implementing Te Aorerekura, the National Strategy to Eliminate Family Violence and Sexual Violence, is important.
“It’s not just the police’s issue, this is a multi-agency issue.”
She has been speaking with agencies across the motu to identify gaps, what can be improved and how the Government can help.
It is an opportunity to get an allgovernment approach right, Chhour says, and she is determined to shed light on the issue.
Mackenzie says the report was hopeful and aspirational, even though it told a sad story.
The co-authors hope police and government agencies will put victimsurvivors at the centre of their approaches.
Recommendations include establishing a specialist family violence police unit, specialist training for police and having alternate reporting options other than police.
Police detective, a lifeline
In an unusual case compared to what victim-survivors reported, Megan had one female police detective in charge of her case over the seven years, during which she took Scott to trial twice.
It allowed her to build a relationship with the detective rather than being passed from officer to officer.
The process to get justice was “absolutely horrific”, she says. “The entire justice system was as, if not more, traumatic than the actual rape itself.”
The system is not set up or safe for victims, she says. Multiple points of contact, meaning constant calls and recounting her experience time and time again, was triggering.
“Rape culture is weaved through the system ... it’s an absolutely horrific process to go through.”
Six women had enough evidence to go to trial with her, but five had dropped out by the trial date.
But the detective became her lifeline through the process.
When Megan tried to minimise the rape as sexual assault, the detective stopped her mid-interview to tell her “this is rape”.
“She was just really patient and explained things really well, which was really empowering.”
After seven years of silence and blocking out the rape from her head, Megan found it hard to recount the series of events. Recognising the trauma but determined to help her gather the evidence, the detective decided questioning in a room was not getting anywhere and they got in a car.
The pair drove around until Megan was comfortable and could pinpoint where the rape happened. “Small things like that make a huge difference.”
* Name changed for legal reasons.