GO SOLO 2014 Group C
Te Whaea - SEEyD Space, 11 Hutchison Rd, Newtown, Wellington
02/10/2014 - 11/10/2014
Production Details
Grab your chance to see the next generation of performers from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in action as the fifteen final year Acting students strut their stuff.
Go Solo is the annual showcase of new work – monologues – all devised, written, directed, designed and performed by the third year students, with production support by the second year Technical and Management students. It’s an absolute highlight for all involved.
‘We all get to show what we can do,’ says production manager and Bachelor of Performing Arts Management student, Nicole Arrow. ‘Plus it gives everyone a really rich and memorable experience. Audiences will find it quite bold, I think.’
The 2014 Go Solo season runs from 1-11 October. Audiences can choose between the four groups of performances, or to see them all back-to-back on ‘Marathon Saturday’.
Group C: Michelle Ny, Sara Stone, Sonny Tupu, Adam Brown
Michelle Ny: This Spring is Full of Rain
This story is inspired by Banana Yoshimoto, Haruki Murakami, Studio Ghibli, my family, our grief and old men with pot bellies because they remind me of my dad.
Dedicated to my father, Seng Hong Ny.
Thanks to: Anya, Nicole, Te Aihe, Jonty, Chris, Jon, Johanna, my class, Ana, John, Orion, my mum, Navy and the rest of my family.
Sara Stone: R U N N I N G G I R L
“… I love running. I actually really love it. It’s great for my mind and my body. Well it’s obviously good for my body, don’t need to explain that one. But it’s great for my mind too, because I can just let my thoughts run wild…”
Sonny Tupu: TODAY IS THE DAY
Welcome to Viv’s Salon, I’m greater than great, thank you… Today we’re all booked out.
Join Viv and her quest to finding a restful release from the one year anniversary of her late husband Douggie’s death. Her appointment book is always full, her phone line is always busy. And her ‘release’ will be one to remember.
Adam Brown: Vernon McGroom: At Earth’s End
CL65432 is a large celestial body spotted 6 months ago. Its trajectory spans the entire length of our solar system, bypassing larger planets and narrowly avoiding a swift demise by the hands of the Sun. Unfortunately for us, however, Planet Earth’s orbit directly interferes with the aforementioned trajectory, and in exactly 26 hours CL65432 will collide with our planet and spell the greatest catastrophe Earth will never witness (because we will be dead).
The process started with the exploration of character and story. I found myself becoming influenced by the Avatar anime series, most significantly the idea of having ‘past lives’ that you can communicate with and receive wisdom from. On top of the avatar influence, I also am very interested in the historical figures who are responsible for the progression of mankind, like Tesla and Edison. I would like to thank Brynley, whose own solo inspired me heaps and whose love has kept me pressing forward, Anya, Jonty, Jane Yonge (for your wisdom), and my tutors, classmates, flatmates and close friends.
Go Solo 2014
Where: SEEyD Space, Te Whaea: National Dance & Drama Centre, 11 Hutchison Road, Newtown
When: Wednesday 1st – Saturday 11th of October (no show Sunday). See the website for times.
Price: $50 Season ticket (all four groups),$15 (full), $10 (concessions & Toi Whakaari graduates), $5 (student standby/school group, if available).
Book: www.toiwhakaari.ac.nz or phone (04) 381 9250
1hr 20mins (no interval)
Contrasting textures
Review by Lena Fransham 03rd Oct 2014
The third instalment of the Go Solo season, Group C are good for some real belly laughs but also take us to some unexpected and ethereal places. It is an evening of contrasting textures.
Sara Stone runs on the spot almost non-stop over the twenty minutes of Running Girl. Oddly, this doesn’t get boring. Her footfalls are a rhythmic soundtrack, the repetitive movement hypnotic in a way that sustains attention as Stone’s stream-of-consciousness narrative unfolds. Naming Wellington landmarks as she goes, she gives convincing voice to the thought processes sparking off her encounters enroute.
There isn’t much room for drama to flesh this woman out; there’s a feeling of flitting over the surface inherent in both form and substance. But this is, I think, kind of the point, and the monotonous effect is tempered by the spotlighted female figures (mother, grandmother, smugly married acquaintance) who interrupt her monologue in an approximation of the way a deeper anxiety is triggered in the associative processes of the mind. This surprisingly accessible performance demonstrates a gift for incisive storytelling.
The endearingly goofy title character in Adam Brown’s Vernon McGroom: At Earth’s End speaks to an assembly of world leaders and great minds in the last 24 hours before the impact of a comet that will destroy the earth. He enlists the expertise of great scientific minds from history to help outline his plan to avert the catastrophe, but these illustrious personalities hardly inspire confidence in the flesh.
Brown transitions seamlessly between these figures – Tesla, Rutherford, Edison and da Vinci – who flit, slouch and stumble by turns through his plot, which is a sketchy thing, like a childish game, just serviceable enough to allow these characters their cheeky existence. Very entertaining.
Michelle Ny has some hallucinatory adventures with an armchair that are mostly bewildering but hang well together in a dreamlike montage that appears to allude to the mourning of lost family members. I guess the first interminable minutes, in which she miserably watches an infomercial, are meant to be just that – interminable, miserable; but does it have to go on quite that long at the beginning?
There’s a strong, surreal sequence of metaphors involving the chair that remind me of Hayao Miyazaki (I notice she mentions Studio Ghibli as an inspiration) and a briefly stirring reminiscence on Pol Pot’s Cambodia and a catastrophic loss. The montage begins to make a nebulous, instinctive sense. Great imagery, understated almost to a fault, but beautiful, playful and poetic.
Sonny Tupuconcludes the evening with the hysterically funny Viv, a hairdresser at work on the anniversary of her husband Douggie’s death. Constantly shushing the audience for laughing – “Be quiet please thank you! So rude!” – she talks to her friend on the phone about the scattering of Douggie’s ashes, which sit in a ceramic urn on the counter.
Viv is exaggeratedly gossipy and naughty but of course has a heart of gold – a stereotypical hairdresser type, in other words, and so relentlessly funny that it is only after the performance ends that I realise it is actually a story about trying to cope with grief and loss. It’s a high impact end to the evening.
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