LOCKDOWN LA RONDE
BATS Theatre, The Dome, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
15/08/2020 - 26/08/2020
Production Details
TOI WHAKAARI DOUBLE BILL SEASON REOPENS BATS THEATRE
Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School reopens BATS Theatre in August with a sensational Double Bill season that will leave you wondering what went on during lockdown.
Working collaboratively with industry rangatira, Jarod Rawiri, Victor Rodger, Hone Kouka, Kia Mau Festival and BATS Theatre, Toi Whakaari students proudly present new works, Pre Lockdown Post and Lockdown La Ronde.
Toi Whakaari Director, Tanea Heke says, 2020 was always going to be a significant year for the school, which is celebrating its50th Birthday Golden Jubilee.
“What a significant year it’s turned out to be. COVID-19 has seen our industry and students be more innovative and agile than ever before. Toi Whakaari has a dual role, to ensure our students have the discipline specific training for their crafts and to support our students to be independent and carve their own pathways.
“Hone, Jarod and Victor have collaborated with our students to bring these works to the stage. They are the first new works in Aotearoa that mark the influence of COVID-19. To have these Rangatira walk alongside our students in every role, this is what makes Toi Whakaari unique”, says Tanea.
Double Bill is the final performance for Toi Whakaari Third Year Acting students, while work by students from First and Second Year Arts Management are producing the season, Third Year Design and Second Year Costume round out the creative team.
Lockdown La Ronde written by Victor Rodger, directed by Jarod Rawiri, brings a distinctly contemporary tale of ten interrelated LGBTQIA+ twenty somethings as they connect, or at least try to connect, during lockdown. From a fitness instructor in Brazil and a wannabe Lizzo impersonator in Berhampore to a gay chat room hustler and a chronic masturbator stuck in his parent’s tiny apartment. Lockdown La Ronde features ten characters connecting to – or disconnecting from – each other during Lockdown.
Who better to direct this unique production than Jarod Rawiri best known as Mo Hannah on Shortland Street, this star of screen and stage has returned to Wellington and his Toi Whakaari roots to stylishly shape this neon monster Lockdown La Ronde.
“For me, Level 4 meant looking inward. This searching lit a creative fire. I was hungry to be an artist. To serve my communities. To support my whānau and my mates. Lockdown La Ronde is a response to this new normal. A loud, gay, fist raised, neon drenched response. It’s a lil bit extra. Welcome to the new normal.” – Jarod Rawiri
Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School Double Bill Season
BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
Pre Lockdown Post
Lockdown La Ronde
15 – 26 August 2020
6pm & 7.30pm
TICKETS: $25 Adult / $22 Concession / $20 Group 6+ / both shows $40
book@bats.co.nz / www.bats.co.nz
See also:
Pre Lockdown Post
Theatre ,
1 hr
Raunchy shock comedy with pathos and socio-political punch
Review by John Smythe 19th Aug 2020
Victor Rodger’s Lockdown La Ronde is the second NZ play we have seen performed in BATS Theatre’s Dome space that is inspired by Austrian playwright Arthur Schnitzler’s once-banned Reigen (Hands Around, better known as La Ronde). The first was Nathan Joe’s Like Sex, produced as part of the YOUNG & HUNGRY Festival of New Theatre 2016.
This time, however, the social distancing imperatives of COVID-19 impede the urgent action, which plays out as a physically distanced and dysfunctional virtual daisy-chain. Director Jarod Rawiri describes it as, “A fucking loud, gay, fist raised, neon drenched response” to the ‘new normal’ called Lockdown.
It opens with a vigorous dance-off, choreographed by Tupe Lualua, on a traverse strip book-ended with door-sized panels, under strip lights that brightly illuminate the otherwise neutral gel, daubed on the 10 actors’ faces (design by Cody Derbyshire).
In the first encounter a woman Lawyer confronts a lipstick-wearing man from a well-to-do family who has enraged her by contacting her “after all this time”. As they literally talk past each other, their adolescent history is sketched in and current circumstances are revealed. While first loves may be hard to get over, it’s clear they could never be together even if Lockdown allowed it.
The man then pays for a PornHub Chat Room encounter with sinuous ‘Vladimir’ – and it turns our they have history too. While their bitter-sweet repartee gets very explicit, what emerges is ultimately poignant.
‘Vladimir’s next client, a suited Samoan, is a newbie to this sort of thing but he is alert to subterfuge. His fantasy requests and actual vocation are revelations. We are asked to ponder the possibility of his ambitions ever being realised.
His exchange with a randy Samoan road worker wanting phone sex threatens to derail his career. As for the essential worker’s other proposition – the suited one pronounces that “off brand”.
Having to engage with his negligee-clad female fiancée online gives the road worker the space to dilute her ardour and question where they are headed.
Given to Zooming into Club Sexy Dance workouts, the spurned fiancée now has to contend with the sexual and political frustrations of her fitness instructor in Brazil.
The fitness instructor’s next client is a wāhine whose “peaches” inflame her desire to come to New Zealand. Again the raunchy comedy is tinged with pathos.
The wāhine (a TV comedy scriptwriter in recess) is supermarket shopping when she encounters a privileged female acquaintance who blurts her secret desires before going on to reveal her all-too-credible racism, which she of course denies.
Back home in her under-renovation home, the privileged woman gets a phone call from her husband which provokes more tit-for-tat exposure of her racism before he throws her life into turmoil.
The revelation of the husband’s relationship with the woman Lawyer brings the play full circle – and the binding theme is revealed: that no-one is who others think they are. He leads the ensemble into a rendition of John Grant’s ‘Greatest Mother Fucker’ which, among other things, issues the challenge to “go ahead and love me while it’s still a crime”.
The fact that it can still be a ‘crime’ to be a less-than-perfect black man in the USA is recalled by a recording of the Police comms exchanges leading up to the arrest and death of George Floyd – as the ubiquitous mask-wearing ensemble chants: “I can’t breathe”.
‘I Wish I Knew How It Would Feel to Be Free’ (by Nina Simone) brings Lockdown La Ronde to a resounding conclusion.
All 10 actors – Alipate Latailakepa, Cassandra Sutherland, Elisabeth Marschall, Flynn Mehlhopt, Kaisa Faʼatui, Lahleina Feaunati, Rama Buisson, Shania Bailey-Edmonds, Te Awarangi Puna and Tyrone Elia –do great justice to Victor Rodger’s trademark blend of raunchy shock comedy with pathos and socio-political punch, impeccably directed by Jarod Rawiri.
Pre Lockdown Post is the other Toi Whakaari 3rd Year production (playing downstairs on The Random Stage).
Lockdown La Ronde may be seen live or on BATS’ Livestream platform from 7:30pm Thursday 20th August; Koha entry.
Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer
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