September 9, 2015

LARA MACGREGOR BIDS FAREWELL AS FORTUNE THEATRE’S ARTISTIC DIRECTOR   

After five years as Artistic Director at Fortune Theatre, Lara Macgregor has announced her departure, completing her tenure in October, 2015.

“Running Fortune Theatre has been a most rewarding experience. The decision to move on is a difficult, but necessary, one to make. As is the case with running a theatre company, you give over a huge part of yourself and your life. So now is the time for me to re-group, re-balance, and re-invest in my future as an artist and practitioner. This is an exciting opportunity for a new visionary to take the reins and lead Fortune into the next phase of its future,”says Macgregor.

Macgregor intends to remain living in Dunedin, and to continue working in the sector as an independent director, actor and photographer.

Fortune Theatre Board of Trustees Chair Ray Tobin acknowledges Macgregor’s achievements over the last five years: “We are very sad to be losing Lara as Artistic Director at the Fortune and have been very fortunate to have had someone of Lara’s calibre and talent in the Artistic Directors role for the past five years. Lara can look back on her time with the Fortune Theatre with great pride at the seasons which reflected her earlier career in the United States as an actress. Lara introduced a number of leading contemporary American dramatists to Dunedin audiences along with two hit off-Broadway musicals. She also revisited the Theatre of the Absurd and gave the first professional productions in Dunedin for many years of works by Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter. Lara has also been actively involved with new play development, and staged world premieres of plays by local writers Simon Cunliffe and Philip Braithwaite, Christchurch writer Patrick Evans, and two new works by Roger Hall. Four of these plays have gone on to have further professional productions elsewhere in the country. In addition she supervised workshops of a number of other playwrights’ draft scripts. 

“The Fortune has actively looked to the next generation of theatre-makers during Lara’s tenure and she has encouraged young playwrights (with the 4X4 Young Playwrights Initiative) and young performers (hosting the local improvisers, Improsaurus, and this year arranging a co-production with students from the University of Otago’s Theatre Studies Department). This year she also organised a challenging and popular endeavour with the local theatre community ­­­- a weekend in which Shakespeare’s complete plays were read. It has been an extreme pleasure working with Lara and I hope we will see her talents in the theatre again in the future, directing and acting.” Ray Tobin also said that the Trust will reflect on its options for a creative leader to replace Macgregor and expects to make an appointment later this year.

“A great many of us in the local theatre community have been refreshed and re-invigorated by Lara Macgregor’s presence as Artistic Director at Fortune Theatre,” says actor, director and Dramaturg Simon O’Connor. “She has given local audiences the opportunity to look at theatre in a new and fresh light. Her mana has been instrumental in drawing some of New Zealand’s best and brightest actors and directors to the Fortune, and local theatre practitioners and audiences have been the great benefactors of that. We will all miss her energy, her knowledge and skill as a director and her supportiveness of local artists. Above all, we will miss her boundless enthusiasm for great theatre. Lara will be a hard act to follow.”

Macgregor has also significantly influenced the increased amount of investment and recognition received from Creative New Zealand, and stabilised and maintained key contributions from Dunedin City Council, Otago Community Trust and other philanthropic donors. 

Enquiries to:
Lucy Summers
Marketing Manager
Fortune Theatre
marketing@fortunetheatre.co.nz
03 477 1292 ext 2