September 15, 2007

Bye bye!

Jonathan Hardy                 posted 15 Sep 2007, 09:17 PM / edited 15 Sep 2007, 09:22 PM

Dear Fellow Craftspeople,

Tonight is the last performance of Auckland Theatre Company’s The Pillowman at the Maidment Theatre. It has been a great honour to work on stage with Craig Parker and Michael Hurst in a fine production by a daring company.

On and off, I have been part of the struggle for our craft. I have been through the vilifications and beatifications as we are judged against both our potential and our capacity to fulfill the dreams of others. As Lorca puts it “we must not hold up out lilies because our job is to help our nation find lilies.” It is my pride that all of us have cohered to do this, and done so against our personal weakness – which may be our glory, as self-doubt is part of creativity. We have dug in – as with Pillowman, Hatch, and My Name is Gary Cooper – when corrective-ness is not synonymous with truth. As Richard Packer says, when we harvest mainly husks of failing, “we must be happy with a hundredth of our sewing”. But look at our success rate.

I am proud to be a kiwi actor, and am proud of my fellows because we have dared ‘the imposters of triumph and disaster’. We endure; we set thought – and forgive my sentimentality when I beg you to be proud – we are creatures of another set; we are needed; we frolic; and we serve a hard God. As individuals we are little, but as brief chroniclers of our time, we have served well.

In our perpetual becoming we can never truly ‘get there’, but as an ageing fellow, I command Melville’s words “What is a man that he should live out the lifetime of his God?” or Te Whiti’s “When I speak the words of the spirit, they say it is the ravings of a madman.”

Here is to our madness!

Jonathan Hardy