Reflections on Theatre and Performance in the (Post-)Earthquake Zone

transcript

Australasian Drama Studies 62 (April 2013)

R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E A T R E A N D P E R F O R M A N C E I N T H E ( P O S T - )

E A R T H Q U A K E Z O N ES H A R O N M A Z E R , V I C T O R R O D G E R , S I M O N T R O O N ,

R Y A N R E Y N O L D S , A D I F F E R E N T L I G H T , E M M A W I L L I S A N D G E O R G E P A R K E R

I N T R O D U C T I O N – S H A R O N M A Z E R

After the earthquake, I stood outside the cordon looking to the rubble

where my old nightclub had been, remembering all my first shows, and

my hair salon – all the gossip, the gay clubs, the lovers and friends –

gone . I lived here once, and now I’m locked out . I can’t even go near

where I used to go . My first dance studio in what is now the Cranmer

Centre … one of the first buildings down . My memories of a time gone,

also now will be gone forever . What can come after …?

The first earthquake shook Christchurch on 4 September 2010 . Because it was the

middle of the night, we experienced it as discrete events in the privacy of our own homes .

We stood in doorways or ran into the street, texted to say ‘we’re ok’ and to ask ‘u?’ – and

then most of us went back to sleep . In the bright sunshine of the Saturday that followed,

we picked up what had fallen, swept up the silt and marvelled at our escapes from true

disaster – most of us – as we replayed our stories for our families, friends and neighbours .

This earthquake, we thought, was a singular event – disruptive and destructive, dramatic

but finite .

As everyone now knows, the earthquake in Christchurch was, and continues to be,

THEATRE AND PERFORMANCE IN THE (POST)EARTHQUAKE ZONE 69

much more than that . More major earthquakes – notably the one that killed 182 people

on 22 February 20112 – and over 14,000 aftershocks, that only now are diminishing in

force and frequency, have fractured our city’s infrastructure and shaken us out of the

ordinary, it seems, forever . And more drama . Post-earthquake Christchurch is full of

performances – in theatres, in community halls and on the streets – and it has been made

to perform itself, vividly, especially on film: from cellphone captures uploaded to YouTube

to, already, a full-length documentary, When A City Falls .3 In fact, we saw the first inklings

of our city’s new performativity in the evening after the February quake; as the power

came on, for a fortunate few, our televisions showed us – and the rest of the country – the

catastrophe not only as news but as a music video, collaged images underscored by music

presented as a way of closing the broadcast . At the first memorial, outdoors at Hagley

Park one month later, the performance on the platform – among them, Prince William,

the Mayor, the Bishop, with singers Dame Malvina, Dave Dobbin and Hayley Westenra –

was projected simultaneously onto Jumbotrons and onto ‘live’ television broadcasts on

multiple stations . The climax of the performance was a lengthy film that silently mixed

close-ups of the people in the park with fresh images of the devastated ‘Red Zone’ and

the already familiar images of the catastrophe itself .

The earth’s rupture has broken into our usual complacencies . We have been

catapulted into a kind of consciousness that makes us see each other and ourselves as

actors and spectators, both watched and watching . The ephemerality of the embodied

experience at the moment of the earthquake provokes us in retrospect to construct

narratives, both personal and civic, as if setting ourselves within the tropes of history and

fiction can restore our sense of order, of place and time . In fact, we have been repeatedly

enjoined to ‘tell our stories’ both as a kind of cathartic exercise and for the record . This

certainly follows the conventional wisdom surrounding trauma . But it also propels us,

I believe, toward an idealisation of our ‘victimhood’ . In the end, it is possible that an

aesthetics of injury will subsume and supersede our felt experiences .4

At the same time, we have been flooded with images of our fortitude and our

community spirit . In keeping with Christchurch’s identity as a city more English than

England, the rallying cry ‘Keep Calm and Carry On’ – a slogan created by the British

during World War II – was repeated endlessly during the first few months and can still

be seen blazoned on t-shirts and other memorabilia, souvenirs from the earthquake

zone . The early images of men frantically moving concrete blocks and weeping women

comforting each other, quickly gave way to more sustained images of valour: especially

of the Student Volunteer Army and the Farmy Army, costumed in brightly coloured ‘vis-

vests’ (high-visibility vests) and gumboots, and armed with shovels and wheelbarrows,

marching into afflicted neighbourhoods .

Theatre buildings in Christchurch were almost all either severely damaged or

destroyed . Beyond the fundraising events and the scramble for alternative venues, the

SHARON MAZER ET AL70

theatrical response has been varied . On one side, we see a performance of ‘rising above

tragedy’ where audiences are invited to escape the hardships of the moment, to be

reassured that Christchurch will carry on as it did before the earthquakes because they

can continue to come to the theatre almost as before . The Court Theatre rapidly built a

replica of its Arts Centre home into a former grain store and was roundly applauded when

it re-opened with a new Roger Hall comedy, A Shortcut to Happiness on 10 December

2011: ‘Like the fortitude of the company itself, earns our gratitude for its uplifting and

optimistic outlook’ .5 We have also seen the earthquakes used as a backdrop – notably by

Lyttelton-based troupe the Loons, who were lauded for staging Macbeth in the rubble of

a vacant lot (August 2011) .6 Perhaps the most common theatrical response – following

along the continuum that has emerged worldwide in the wake of Anna Deavere Smith’s

documentary (or verbatim) theatre experiments twenty years ago, and the model

especially provided by The Laramie Project – has been to ‘tell our stories’ . This is the

approach taken by the intellectually disabled actors of A Different Light theatre in Still

Lives,7 among many others .

Even the Free Theatre,8 known for its perpetual pushing of the boundaries of the avant

garde for more than thirty years here, has engaged the wider community with renewed

conviction, staging its version of Kleist’s The Earthquake in Chile at St Mary’s Church in

the Christchurch suburb of Addington . Co-directed by Peter Falkenberg (University of

Canterbury) and Richard Gough (Centre for Performance Research), The Earthquake

in Chile involved over forty performers – including members of A Different Light, of

Tablo9 and celebrity chef, Richard Till – in embracing the idealism of the moment as it

questioned the sustainability of our still-fresh sense of communality .

This Free Theatre performance could only have happened in the earthquake zone .

So, too, the diverse performance experiments that emerged almost immediately after

the first quake and are carrying on now through the long transition from pre- to post-

earthquake Christchurch . For many artists and activists (and artist-activists) – notably

Gap Filler10 and Arts Voice11 – the collapse of the city’s buildings has opened up a liminal

space for ongoing experimentation with and debate about the potential of theatre and

performance to create new ideas about community and citizenship . What might it mean

to make theatre and performance in Christchurch’s earthquake zone – or any disaster

zone? Is this a disabled city, or one provoked to action? What is the difference between

rebuilding/restoring and making ourselves anew, denying versus engaging the rough-

and-tumble of the rubble, making a commotion that meets the roar of destruction with

commemorations of the past, as well as confrontations in the present and celebrations in

anticipation of the future?

This special section of Australasian Drama Studies 62 presents preliminary

perspectives on the question of theatre and performance in post-earthquake

Christchurch . We hope that these essays and play excerpts will be received as the

beginning of a conversation – multiple conversations, really – provoking further

discussions, investigations and theatrical experimentation . Victor Rodger presents the

opening scene of his new play, Aftershocks: Struggle and Dust in C-Town – a scabrous

meditation on life in the wake of the earthquake . In ‘What Can The Wizard Do To Save Our

Souls?’, Simon Troon comments on the striking confluence of nostalgia and radicalism

emerging in the Christchurch Wizard’s resurgence as leader of civic protests against

the aggressive destruction of our city’s iconic buildings, especially the Cathedral . The

vacant lots that provoke such rage and despair can also provide a unique platform for

performative experimentation, as has been demonstrated by Ryan Reynolds and his Gap

Filler collaborators . Here Reynolds re-presents the empty space as an opportunity to

create ‘Performative Invitations’ – thinking theatrically to open our social thinking in new

ways . Emma Willis reflects on her experience of encountering the earthquake through Still

Lives, a performance by A Different Light, as seen on the other side of the world, at the

Ludus Festival in Leeds . Finally, in ‘Embracing Impermanence’, George Parker argues for

the Transitional City as a creative commons, seeing in the destruction of Christchurch’s

social edifices an opportunity to engage as artists and citizens in imagining our city anew .

A F T E R S H O C K S : S T R U G G L E A N D D U S T I N C -T O W N – V I C T O R R O D G E R

CHARACTERS:

DANTE: Samoan, 18

MAX: Palagi, 20s

GAVIN: Palagi, 50s

BECCA: Palagi, 20s

SIAN: Palagi, 50s

MADONNA: (To be played by the actress playing SIAN)

LOSA: Samoan, 30s

HONOR: Samoan, 30s

PAULIE: Maori, 30s

DOCTOR: (To be played by the actor playing PAULIE)

(Five actors sit on stage: the west side and east side actors divided by

DANTE . DANTE stands. A title appears: Dante. Bower Ave. February

2012. DANTE takes a swig from the beer in his hand then turns and slowly

revolves as he looks around the city .)

DANTE: C-Town . Christ-church . The Gar-den City . Rubble and dust, dust

and struggle, struggle and dust, dust and rubble . Crackers getting

their panties in a bunch about a cathedral when some people still

can’t shit in their own houses? Damn, son . Bet Bob Parker shits

in his own house . Bet Gerry Brownlee shits in his own house . Bet

Gerry Brownlee’s got a big fat toilet cos Gerry Brownlee’s got a big

fat ass . That Jabba the Hutt motherfucker couldn’t fit on a chemi-

cal toilet even if he was on Survivor going for immunity . ‘They’ say

the quakes have brought us all together but ‘they’ don’t know what

the hell they’re talking about . It’s all a West Side Story, yo . People

need to open their eyes: rubble and dust, dust and struggle, strug-

gle and dust, dust and rubble .

(DANTE pulls out a spray can and a stencil, graffitis on the side of a

portaloo. It’s a stencil of Gerry Brownlee having a shit .)

DANTE: Yeah-ya . East-Side, rep-re-SENT!

(MAX stands, drops a heavy backpack at his feet . DANTE sits. A title

appears: Max and Honor. Brighton Pier. February 2012. MAX stares out

at the sea in front of him for a beat, then – with great effort – puts the

backpack on. He stands up on the chair, looks down at the ocean. His

cellphone rings. He looks at the caller ID, kisses the cellphone, then holds

it out in front of him and drops it into the ocean. He closes his eyes. Takes

a deep breath. Appears to be getting ready to jump when … HONOR

stands. She looks at MAX, startled .)

HONOR: What the hell are you doing?

MAX: Shit!

HONOR: You’re not going to …?

MAX: Don’t come any closer . I mean it . Just – leave me alone . Please .

HONOR: You better not jump while I’m here because that would be really stink .

MAX: Go, then .

HONOR: Look: whatever it is – trust me – it can’t be that bad .

MAX: You don’t know what you’re talking about .

HONOR: You want to bet?

MAX: Please – just – will you leave? Please?

HONOR: And what? Go home, put my feet up and watch the telly? ‘How was

your walk, mum?’ ‘Great, thanks, son . I saw someone about to jump

off the pier and then I left him to it . Make us a milo, will you?’

(MAX looks back down at the water .)

HONOR: You’re not the only one with problems . I’ve got stuff going on too, you

know . I came here for a walk to think things through but what do I

find? You about to throw your sorry white ass off the pier .

MAX: There’s no need to be rude .

HONOR: Rude? You’re about to kill yourself and you’re worried about man-

ners? Are you even from this side of town?

(Silence .)

HONOR: Typical . Bring your mess out East .

MAX: Just go away .

HONOR: Loser .

MAX: What?

HONOR: You heard me . Just tell me one thing and then I’ll go .

MAX: What?

HONOR: Do you have any kids? Well?

MAX: A daughter .

HONOR: You’re a fucking arsehole, you know that?

MAX: She’ll be better off without me . Her and my wife . I’m only bringing

them down .

HONOR: Uh, what do you think this is going to do?

MAX: Of course I know this’ll be hard for them . Don’t you think I know that?

But it’s easier this way . I know it is .

HONOR: Oh . Okay . Well, see you, then . Have a nice trip .

(HONOR sits . MAX looks back down at the waves, is about to jump again

when HONOR stands up .)

HONOR: One more question .

MAX: Bloody hell .

HONOR: I mean it this time .

MAX: What’s the fucking question?

HONOR: Why?

MAX: Why what?

HONOR: Come on . I’m the last person you’re ever going to see, apparently . So

tell me – why?

MAX: Because everything – my whole life – it’s all – it’s all gone to shit .

HONOR: Like how?

MAX: We lost our house .

HONOR: Okay?

MAX: I lost my job .

HONOR: Uh huh?

MAX: I’m getting sued for this building I helped build .

HONOR: Right?

MAX: And I think I’ve lost my mind .

HONOR: And?

MAX: What do you mean ‘And?’

HONOR: That’s it? You’re going to kill yourself and leave your wife and your

kid to deal with all that shit because you’re having a bit of a bad

patch?

MAX: You wouldn’t understand .

(HONOR bursts out laughing .)

MAX: You think this is funny?

HONOR: Oh, man: I wish I had your problems!

MAX: This isn’t funny .

HONOR: Listen here, cracker: you wouldn’t know a real problem if it shat on

your balls and called you Nancy . Sayonara, motherfucker . ‘I think

I’ve lost my mind’? HA!

(HONOR sits .)

HONOR: ‘I think I’ve lost my mind’? BOO FUCKING HOO!

(MAX hesitates for a beat then takes off his backpack, drops it, climbs

back down .)

MAX: Hey . Wait . Come back here . Wait!

(MAX sits .)

W H A T C A N T H E W I Z A R D D O T O S A V E O U R S O U L S ? – S I M O N T R O O N

Opening the newspaper in Christchurch, one is confronted with a selection of often

striking images: familiar buildings in ruins, armies of men in hi-vis vests, an empty plinth

on Rolleston Avenue where a statue formerly pointed the way toward Cathedral Square .

The Wizard is a recurring character in this mediascape . In one photograph he stands atop

a stepladder looking out over a crowd, his face framed by a black hat and a white beard .

Finger pointed skyward as if to invoke some magic, he is marshalling a mass of protestors .

They hold placards: ‘Stop Demolishing Our Icons’, ‘Stop Heritage Destruction’ . In the

background, behind a wire fence, is the facade of Christchurch’s namesake Cathedral .

Shattered in the earthquakes, its collapsing Neo-Gothic masonry is supported by a steel

lattice . Protesting against the demolition of this iconic building, The Wizard looks back in

time to the origins of Christchurch as a Victorian English settlement rather than forward

to the city that will emerge from the rubble . His own history is inextricably linked with the

broken icon, having performed on its steps for decades prior to the earthquakes .

In his performances, The Wizard enacts a particular contradiction that may be

essential to life in Christchurch . He reaches back toward colonial heritage, toward a

problematic idea of Englishness, and uses this idea as a means to imagine a way of life in

the contemporary world . In the aftermath of the earthquakes, The Wizard has undergone

a public resurgence . Having lost his regular backdrop – Cathedral Square is off-limits

in the Red Zone – he has asserted himself into civic life via other channels, primarily

by leading protests in which he articulates his vision for a neo-Neo-Gothic city . He has

published a manifesto titled ‘Save Our Soul’ that extols colonial Canterbury as a model

for a rebuilt Christchurch, describing it as a ‘beautiful Gothic Paradise’ in contrast with

‘ugly modern monotony’ .12 As a Merlin-esque character, The Wizard locates himself as

a key figure in such a rebuild . Such a city would re-imagine architectural conventions of

the Victorian and Gothic periods, but might also provide explicit recourse to concurrent

social conventions and attitudes that are already implicit in Christchurch, which is known

colloquially to be ‘more English than England’ .

The Wizard arrived in Christchurch in 1974 . He describes the city then as ‘a sleepy

English-style cathedral town’ in which ‘church fêtes, rugby football, garden shows, choral

singing and the Anglican religion were the pervasive cultural ambience’, noting that ‘the

citizens could be roused to political action only by infringements in the parks or plans for

demolishing old and respected buildings’ .13 The Wizard is an orator . In his performances,

he stands atop a stepladder and talks loudly at passersby, holding forth on a collection

of ideas that he calls his ‘cosmology’, advocating for the British Monarchy and railing

against feminism .

Richard Schechner observes the socio-aesthetic influence of protest and

demonstrations, suggesting that after the 1963 March on Washington: ‘The streets were

no longer places which one used to get from here to there . They were public arenas,

testing grounds, stages for morality plays .’14 The Wizard has consistently engaged with

the city in this way, contesting the meanings of public spaces by developing performative

responses to particular social events . In 1988, for example, when New Zealand’s major

telecommunications company painted all of Christchurch’s public telephone booths blue

so that they would align with a branding strategy, The Wizard appeared with buckets of

paint to restore them to their former red . He was pictured in news media standing atop a

booth, dripping paintbrush raised defiantly above his head .

In later years, however, he has faded from controversy to become like a mascot for

the city . Rather than challenging established orders, he has found a place among them,

becoming popular as a street performer and successful as a tourist attraction . For me in

the early 1990s, the eccentric bearded man yelling at people in the street was an antidote

to an intensely private, apolitical, housebound childhood in the suburbs . He offered a

challenge to privateness and propriety and indicated a way to wake from Christchurch’s

particular sleepy conservatism . I watch him protest now with nostalgic enthusiasm . In the

post-earthquake city, plans to demolish the Cathedral and other old buildings have roused

him to overt political action . Amidst the civic upheaval that has followed the earthquakes,

the values of Christchurch’s public spaces and social hierarchies are being aggressively

debated . The Wizard has taken a unique position in this debate . His post-quake manifesto

is a consolidation of his ‘cosmology’ in that it identifies colonial Canterbury and, in turn,

medieval England as ideals for us in the here and now to aspire to .

This recourse to other eras is highly problematic . The Wizard conjures colonial

imperialism without acknowledging its many cruelties, but his capacity to imagine an

alternative Christchurch and then enact it demonstrates the power of performance post-

disaster and against established hierarchies . Through his performative actions, he has

shown people in Christchurch that the streets are indeed more than passages from one

place to another . They are places themselves, to be filled with desire and debate .

P E R F O R M A T I V E I N V I TA T I O N S – R Y A N R E Y N O L D S

We live in a society of permits, where we assume, and generally accept, that anything a

bit unusual is forbidden unless we get special permission . We internalise this so much

that we give rise to Cops in Our Heads, enforcing our surplus repression and adherence

to the status quo .15 The earthquakes in Christchurch have highlighted and intensified this

state of affairs . Half the population, it seems, is tied up in some bureaucratic process that

requires them to wait: for insurance payments; home or building assessments from the

Earthquake Commission; potential re-zoning, Red-zoning or compulsory acquisition of

their land; government consent to rebuild, and so on . Even those lucky enough to escape

all of the above cannot evade all of the road closures, detours, military cordons and other

ever-changing restrictive measures . To survive, we must programme ourselves to accept

this unstable terrain of rules and regulations .

A disparate group of us – artists, architects, urban planners, performers and

more – have consciously been pushing the boundaries of all the regulations, both real

and imagined, in a public and performative way . The opposite of requiring a permit is

presenting an invitation . We have been creating and facilitating performative invitations

to provoke unconventional behaviours and responses that liberate the public, at least in a

small way, from our many daily constraints .

Central to this group has been Gap Filler, an organisation co-founded by architects

and performers that seeks to ‘activate’ vacant sites around the city where buildings have

been demolished . We turn fallow private land into creative community projects, inviting

the public to (temporarily) occupy, use and re-create these otherwise inaccessible

spaces . Many of our projects are rather simple, such as turning a vacant site into a kitschy

public garden of fake grass and potted plants, inviting people to come and picnic there,

play live music or read poetry . What was previously a fenced-off patch of bare dirt, a

restriction, a prohibition, becomes an enticement to enter and perhaps to participate .

Some of our projects are quite obvious, such as the construction of our sub-consent

office . Spurred on by, and with great help from, Sustainable Habitat Challenge (SHAC)

from Dunedin, we undertook to build ourselves a sustainable off-grid office that did not

require any permits or consents . Poring through the building regulations, we made an

office just marginally under all of the size, height, utilisation and other restrictions that

would have necessitated approval from the Council . The office sits proudly on a prominent

vacant corner site, to which we have temporary access, with a large sign explaining

our motivations . The subsequent project – still under construction as I write – is a bit

cheekier, strictly adhering to the ten square-metre floor space, for instance, but adding

a window seat that juts out, cantilevered over the ground . Technically, it adheres to the

sub-consent rules, but it literally, and performatively, pushes the boundaries .

For our seventh project, we salvaged a large commercial refrigerator from our local

takeaway shop and placed it at the back of a large corner site, with a bench next to it and

a pathway of paving stones leading from the footpath . At the launch, we invited people

to donate books that had changed the way they think . We stocked the fridge, and left it

there, unlocked, twenty-four hours a day, with a little sign inside: ‘take a book, leave a

book’ . We did not place a sign on the footpath, reading ‘Community Book Exchange –

come swap a book’ . Rather, we constructed the path and put a tiny sign inside the fridge

that can only be seen from up close . From a distance, it’s strange but clearly deliberate .

It performatively invites the public to investigate . The café owner across the street loves

watching newcomers: they become a bit vulnerable, worry perhaps about looking foolish,

about its being a trick . Some seem curious but leave without venturing onto the site . The

book exchange arguably becomes more than a simple material service or amenity, though

it is that . One has to, at least upon first encounter, think differently even to make use of

the book exchange . We suppose that thinking differently leads to experiencing differently,

since it requires of people some curiosity and agency to undertake the experience at all .

Our fifteenth project, the Dance-O-Mat, is essentially an open space and a jukebox .

We reclaimed a coin-operated washing machine from a laundromat and rigged it so that

when you plug in your music player (iPod, iPhone, etc) and drop in a coin, the sound and

lights activate for thirty minutes . This has become a haven for impromptu interactions

like birthday celebrations, dance classes, superhero costume parties and more . All the

Dance-O-Mat is, is a framed empty space and an invitation: ‘play music and dance here’ .

These interactions could happen at any time on any street corner, with a boom box and

some batteries . But they don’t . The Dance-O-Mat, however, gets used on average six and

a half hours per day – suggesting that people just need an invitation . A literal invitation,

a sign on a street corner asking people to dance or swap a book, is in our view far less

effective than a performative invitation, a re-framing of space that encourages, and

makes comfortable, otherwise aberrant behaviours .

One could theorise that, in a (hypothetical) city full of such performative invitations,

the cops in our heads would diminish . The earthquakes in Christchurch have both

intensified our restrictive and repressive society, and invited the possibility and desire to

change that radically .

S T I L L L I V E S A D I F F E R E N T L I G H T S C R I P T – T O N Y M C C A F F R E Y,

G L E N B U R R O W S , B E N M O R R I S A N D I S A A C TA I T

(BEN, GLEN and ISAAC sit facing the audience . GLEN is in a wheelchair,

BEN and ISAAC are strapped into chairs .)

COMPUTERISED MALE VOICE (US): The stage shows three young men . Ben has

blond hair . Isaac has black hair . Glen is in a wheelchair . He has cer-

ebral palsy . (The three turn to the left .) The stage shows three young

men . Ben has blue eyes . Isaac has grey eyes . Glen is in a wheelchair .

He has cerebral palsy . (The three turn to the right .) The stage shows

three young men . Ben is 5 foot 5 inches tall . Isaac is 6 foot 3 inches

tall . Glen is in a wheelchair . He has cerebral palsy .

GLEN’S INTRO: Isaac is intellectually disabled . He doesn’t look it . But he is . This

confuses people .

ISAAC: Stillness / Silence / In the silence / Try to reach you / Try to touch

you / My words / Your breathing / My face / Your face / Breathe in /

Breathe out / Nose to nose / Hongi / Like the Maori / Touch / Some of

us are paralysed / Some of us / Find it difficult to reach out / Touch /

Still living / Still alive / Still lives / Touch .

(Video projection of Christchurch earthquake aftermath footage .)

RECORDED VOICE: Isaac and Ben and Glen go in and out and in and out and in

and out and it’s beautiful . And something happens . Glen and Isaac

and Ben start to go up and they keep going up . They go up above

the bullies and the rednecks and the skinheads and the fucked-

up buildings and the alarms and McDonalds and the stink of the

earthquake and the churned-up roads and they float on high, high

up above mixed-up, munted, mangled Christchurch on the back

of Glen’s wheelchair . They fly out over the disabled city with all its

faultlines exposed . The rich, comfortable in the west, and the poor,

in the shit and the silt that won’t shift in the east, and the so-called

able and disabled and the invisible disabled, and the poppymakers

in Kilmarnock Street and John and Theresa at Hohepa, and Jaime

and Andrew that were killed trying to save others and Kirsten who

had red hair, and the Church people and the sex-texters, and the

caregivers and the support workers and the form-fillers, and the

newsmen and the bullies and the bullshitters and the bureaucrats,

and they float free .

BEN: They float .

ISAAC: Free .

BEN: And where are we heading to?

ISAAC: Glen?

GLEN: Dunno .

BEN: Dunno .

ISAAC: Dunno .

BEN: But somewhere we choose .

ISAAC: Choice .

BEN: Sweet .

GLEN: Fuck, yeah .

BEN: So what do we do now?

(Earthquake sequence)

BEN: Ben is still not working making poppies in Kilmarnock Street .

ISAAC: Isaac is still working part-time at McDonalds .

GLEN: Glen is still in a wheelchair, he still has cerebral palsy .

BEN: They are all still living in Christchurch .

ISAAC: Christchurch is still experiencing aftershocks .

VOICEOVER: This is nothing new for Glen, who ‘sparks’ regularly and has fits

frequently . This is nothing new for Isaac, who crashes if he does not

monitor his blood sugar levels and gets in scrapes because people

expect normal from him . This is nothing new for Ben, who gets

knocked back if he steps over the line and who still beats himself up

if he can’t get everything right .

BEN: And Glen and Ben and Isaac step and wheel out into

ISAAC: Christchurch after the quakes .

BEN: New normal

ISAAC: Quake brain

GLEN: PTSD

BEN: Cuts to education

ISAAC: cuts to social services

GLEN: in the name of the quakes .

BEN: They look around and see a lot of things .

ISAAC: People living in cars and garages and sheds .

BEN: Children fighting for scraps of food in schools .

VOICEOVER: And Glen and Ben and Isaac step and wheel out into a land far, far

away from compassion and understanding .

(Movement sequence during the following, reminiscent of ‘magic chair’

sequence earlier on .)

BEN: And grey tilt slab ugly buildings are going UP

ISAAC: And unemployment and prices are going UP

BEN: And lots of homes and buildings we need are coming DOWN

ISAAC: And employment and wages are going DOWN

BEN: And emergency powers are being brought IN

ISAAC: And shit loads of road cones are being brought IN

BEN: And people who’ve lived here all their lives are being driven OUT

ISAAC: And democracy and consultation is being driven OUT

BEN: And the Government is getting more bullying and psychotic and

moving to the RIGHT

ISAAC: And there’s no meaningful opposition from the LEFT

BEN: Yeah, RIGHT

ISAAC: Nothing LEFT

BEN: And Ben

GLEN: and Glen

ISAAC: and Isaac

BEN/ISAAC: step and wheel

ALL: IN and OUT and IN and OUT and IN and OUT and IN and OUT and

IN and OUT .

(They move frenetically until soundtrack sequence abruptly stops .)

BEN: Still

ISAAC: Still

GLEN: Still

BEN: Lives

ISAAC: Lives

GLEN: Lives .

S T I L L L I V E S : R E F L E C T I O N S O N T H E D I S A B L E D C I T Y – E M M A W I L L I S

I encountered Still Lives,16 performed by Christchurch-based, mixed-ability theatre

company A Different Light, in a rather round-a-bout way – at an academic conference

in Leeds . I had travelled halfway around the world – from my home in Wellington, New

Zealand – to see a work made in response to the Christchurch earthquakes . The warm

reception of the work in Leeds attested to its effective weaving together of the highly

localised with broader questions concerning civic responsibility . The performance

was underpinned by the ethos of giving voice to those not usually heard within public

discourse, asking: Whose voices are heard? Who speaks for whom? In reconstructing a

city that had become broken, whether by earthquakes or by cultures that disable, Still

Lives asked how a polyphony of voices might be incorporated in the process of transition .

The highly energised physical theatre work was based on personal experiences of

three performers who each identify as disabled: Glen Burrows, who has cerebral palsy,

Ben Morris and Isaac Tait, who describe themselves as having unspecified intellectual

disabilities . The performance playfully combined personal anecdote, from the

confessional to the poetic to the humorous, movement sequences, audio-visual elements

including computerised voices and clips of the quake-damaged city, and even excerpts

of Shakespeare’s Hamlet to explore the performers’ social realities, particularly those

concerned with intimate relationships . The dramaturgy of the collage-based approach

was shored up by an unfolding of each of the men’s stories and by a before-and-after

evocation of the city of Christchurch .

Throughout the performance, the personal and the social were woven together

through images of desire grounded in the theme of intimacy . This was explored

through the men’s autobiographical stories, through staging, and significantly through

the relationship that the work built with its audience . The actors’ sensitive and skilled

performances built a strong sense of affinity and communitas, something strongly evident

in the Q & A that followed both performances I saw . Similarly to Jill Dolan’s description of

a utopian performative,17 the performance drew the audience into a space of discourse

very much concerned with a future-to-come to which both city and audience were asked

to make a commitment .

To enact its politics, Still Lives drew on the metaphor of Christchurch as a broken city .

It first asserted that the ‘old normal’ for the disabled performers was an alienated one

within which they had to contend with intolerance and misunderstanding on a daily basis .

When first introduced, the city was characterised through an ironic use of fairytale tropes

that usefully exploited the language of ‘far, far away’ . In doing so, it depicted a city whose

social contours pushed Ben, Glen and Isaac to its margins . The men were characterised

as ‘heroes’ pitted against an antagonist city that was pathological and disabling: the

misunderstanding and intolerance of schoolboys, co-workers, caregivers and church-

goers created an environment fraught with social dangers .

Second, post-quake Christchurch, the ‘new normal’, was described as disabled,

suggesting that the city’s citizens now have to contend with the kinds of scenarios that

faced the disabled characters before the quakes . Within this schema, the earthquake is

tentatively suggested as a potential corrective . That is, if the city experiences the reality

of disability then it may be able to rebuild itself with an expanded sense of identity better

able to incorporate difference . Still Lives’ use of metaphor drew from the social model

of disability, which proposes that individuals are not inherently disabled, but rather find

themselves disabled by the attitudes, allocation of resources and so on of prevailing

cultures . The performance situated the city of Christchurch within the cultural experience

of disability, particularly highlighting either discrimination or misunderstanding . The

performers built an image of the city that exposed its social faultlines, from psychotic

bullyboys at Christ’s College to impersonal carers . In this sense, the work was ambivalent

in its attitude to the quake’s rupturing of the city’s old normal .

When the post-quake city is evoked, it is ‘munted, mangled Christchurch’, scarred by

‘fucked-up buildings’ and ‘churned-up roads’ . The force of the language expresses both the

scale of the destruction and the emotional tension built through the men’s prior stories of

their pre-quake experiences, particularly those to do with intimate encounter . Bold passages

near both the opening and the closing of the work conflated sexual desire and shifting

ground: Glen’s chair is described as being ‘magical’: it goes ‘in and out,’ ‘in and out’ . The

image of displaced desire suggested shifting ground, making a subtle connection between

sexual and tectonic forces . It drew attention to the ways in which the non-normativity of the

men’s expressions of sexuality excluded them from the city’s flows of desire and how new

terrain might enable a new freedom of expression . In this sense, the metaphor of disabled

city was used both to critique old social norms and to make claims for new ones .

Near the end of the performance, the three men rise above the city, ‘with its faultlines

exposed’, hovering in the air and surveying the ruins, both human and architectural .

The implication of the metaphor shifts once again . Now it is the government who is

described as bullying and psychotic, and the citizens who suffer at its hands . As the

work draws to a close, this becomes a point of solidarity which unites both the abled

and disabled experience underlying the work’s desire to invite a re-imagination of the

city’s social fabric . This drawing-together also includes the audience, most pointedly at

the Q & A sessions .

But is the designation of the pre-quake city as pathological too easy a narrative? The

dramaturgical move presents an interesting problem if we are to follow the distinction

between impairment and cultures that disable . Theorisations of the experience of disability

resist both the medical model of disease and cure to which pathology attaches, and the

reduction of disability to the status of metaphor . Johnson Cheu writes, ‘Medical cure, the

possibility of a “normal” body, is a perspective that is assigned by the able-bodied viewer

to the disabled body . From its hegemonic position, cure stands at the very centre of the

corporeal impaired body and the disabled body as identity .’18 Is it problematic, then, to

designate the city as requiring a cure? It may be slightly unfair to critique Still Lives on this

point, for the performance is centrally concerned with the complexities and paradoxes of

the men’s relationship with their city . However, I highlight the contradiction as it finally

draws us to the broader question raised by the work: If the normalising discourse of ‘cure

for impairment’ is resisted, then what culture is required to re-able the city in such a way

that recognises its social complexities?

E M B R A C I N G I M P E R M A N E N C E – G E O R G E PA R K E R 1 9

Recently, 350 architectural students from around the New Zealand descended on

inner-city Christchurch . They occupied empty lots in and around Gloucester Street,

between Colombo and Manchester, and together created a ‘city made of light’ for one

night only . This was the opening to the inaugural Festival of Transitional Architecture

(FESTA), a nine-day event that promoted the potential of this extraordinary experimental

and creative period in Christchurch’s existence – the transitional city . Christchurch

has a unique opportunity to be a global epicentre for creative urban renewal through

experimental architecture, art and performance . FESTA’s aim is to build on the creative

ethos of collaboration that has emerged post-earthquakes between architects, artists,

business, developers and the wider community .

The opening event, LUXCITY, has also pointed the way to new inter-city collaboration

between students, architects, artists and business with their local counterparts in other

cities . For more than four months, students from Auckland University, Unitec, AUT,

Victoria University and CPIT worked with local groups, organisations and businesses at

the vanguard of Christchurch’s revitalisation – including Black Betty, The Darkroom,

C4, Cassels, Volstead, Fledge, P .O .D ., The Beach Bar, White Elephant, Gap Filler, Free

Theatre, Infinite Definite, Pure Pulp and The Twisted Hop – to create a vibrant and

exciting urban environment in Christchurch .

There are multiple potential benefits to projects such as this that engage with the

transitional city . First and foremost, these projects are aimed at building community . They

can provide another important step back into the city for a community that is craving

a creative re-engagement with their place . They are a way of dealing with the ongoing

trauma of loss on an enormous scale and, at the same time, embracing the creative

possibilities that come through the new light that falls on the still-present buildings,

streets and intersections within the inner city . Projects such as FESTA allow students the

opportunity to actively engage with the process of community-building within cities . For

this project, students are collaborating with people whose business it is to seek out and

create a sense of place and excitement about the city that we now inhabit: salvaging what

was great before, and combining it with a search for a stimulating sense of place now .

FESTA was the first of an annual series of events that allow us to maximise the

potential of the transitional city for the betterment of Christchurch . Transitional projects

have continued to position Christchurch as an exciting destination in publications such

as the Lonely Planet Guide and as one of the top sixteen ‘century-shaping cities’ in

influential US journal Foreign Policy . To maintain this attention and encourage investment

in Christchurch, it makes sense to be innovative and creative during this transitional

period – to see it not just as gap filler on the way to a ‘permanent’ city, but as the origins

for the emergence of a unique place that people want to be in, stay in, visit and help to

build . By seeing New Zealand more in terms of interconnected creative centres, we have

the opportunity to share and develop together rather than in competition . The ultimate

outcome of making this a more connected nation that encourages innovation and inter-

disciplinary collaboration will be the improved wellbeing of its citizens, and an added

bonus will be the attraction of this place as a destination for business and tourism .

On a small scale, events such as this one can provide benefits for the wider global

community . FESTA will look to help maintain and develop an international network for

temporary urban projects through international engagement and residency programmes .

The FESTA team plans to bring to Christchurch experts in experimental architecture and

artists in fields such as scenography, where the visual arts, performance and architecture

meet . FESTA can develop projects that are informed by the very latest international

conversation, and in turn inform that discussion .

This is all very ambitious . But why shouldn’t we be?

Given the unprecedented opportunity we have to create an engaging, and engaged,

city of this century, we should look to address some of the most significant challenges

facing global communities . The fact is that one of the most important conversations in

contemporary urban design and architecture relates to the temporary . Here the onus is on

developing pragmatic and flexible interventions to adapt to the significant environmental

and economic challenges ahead, moving beyond the models of the past to find new ways

to live together .

A recent New York Times article by Allison Arieff on the temporary argued:

‘Architectural billings are at an all-time low . Major commissions are few and far between .

The architecture that’s been making news is fast and fleeting: pop-up shops, food carts,

marketplaces, performance spaces . And while many manifestations of the genre have

jumped the shark there is undeniable opportunity in the temporary: it is an apt response

to a civilisation in flux .’20

While discussions, negotiations and debate circle around the long-term plans for

Christchurch, relatively inexpensive and innovative solutions should be encouraged to

not only allow life and vitality to return to the city in the short term, but they can respond

positively to the inevitable changes that will affect what the city becomes . The reality is

that a city is always ‘in transition’, a work-in-progress that is always changing . In many

ways, there is only a ‘transitional city’ . But this principle needs to be embraced if we are to

excite the community, developers and investors about the future of Christchurch . There

is every possibility that Christchurch can become known as a creative and intellectual

capital of the transitional . It could even become a permanent way of operating: not just

an empty marketing gimmick but a very pragmatic and progressive response to global

challenges as well as the particular, immediate challenges faced by a city where the

ground continues to move .

The diverse group of collaborators behind FESTA believes that there is the possibility

of creating something together that is unique and exciting . The aim should be to maintain

the collaborative ethos and imagination that emerged in the immediate aftermath of the

earthquakes, and embrace the transitional for the extraordinary opportunity it provides .

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T

We want to thank Geoffrey Milne for his generous invitation and kind assistance in

developing this special section of ADS, which was curated and edited by Sharon Mazer

during the latter half of 2012.

N O T E S1 Personal correspondence, 29

October 2012 .

2 Major earthquakes also struck in December 2010, June 2011 and December 2011, but none was as damaging or deadly as that of February 2011 . For images, statistics and stories, see The Press’s February Earthquake Anniversary page, online: http://file .stuff .co .nz/stuff/12-51/ .

3 Directed by Gerard Smith (Frank Films, 2011), When A City Falls presents a mosaic of images and interviews, including eerily ordinary footage of the city taken just before the first earthquake, a collation of moving and still images of the earthquakes themselves, and interviews and responses in the months following . See: http://www .frankfilm .co .nz/when-a-city-falls .html .

4 Here I am following the lead of Emma Cox, whose discussion of the ‘trouble with victimhood’ is itself built on Julie Salverson’s formulation of the ‘erotics of injury’ (122) . See Emma Cox, ‘Victimhood Hope and the Refugee Narrative: Affective Dialectics in Magnet Theatre’s Every Year, Every Day, I Am Walking’, International Theatre Research 37:2 (July 2012): 118–33 . Also: Julie Salverson, ‘Change on Whose Terms? Testimony and an Erotics of Injury’, Theater 31:3 (2001): 119–25 .

5 From ‘Uplifting and Optimistic Humour’, by Tony Ryan, in Theatreview (11 December 2011), quoted in the Court Theatre’s Annual Report for 2011 . See also Felicity Price and Philip Aldridge, ‘A Tumultuous Year’ in that same report . Online: http://www .courttheatre .org .nz/download/42/annualreport2011lores .pdf (viewed 25 November 2012) .

6 See ‘Hacked Script, Hacking

Action, Unique Production’, reviewed by Elizabeth O’Connor, in Theatreview (24 August 2011) . Online: http://www .theatreview .org .nz/reviews/review .php?id=4137 (viewed 25 November 2012) .

7 See: http://www .differentlight .co .nz/ .

8 See: http://www .freetheatre .org .nz/ .

9 See: http://www .tablo .co .nz/abouttablo .htm .

10 See: http://www .gapfiller .org .nz/ .

11 See: http://artsvoicechch .com/ .

12 The Wizard, ‘Save Our Soul: A Manifesto from The Wizard’ . Online: http://www .wizard .gen .nz/save%20our%20soul%20new .htm .

13 The Wizard, ‘A Post Modern Prophet Comes to Christchurch’ Online: http://www .wizard .gen .nz/prophet .html .

14 Richard Schechner, ‘6 Axioms for an Environmental Theatre’, TDR: The Drama Review 12 .3 (1968): 55 .

15 I am here combining ideas from Boal and Marcuse . See Augusto Boal, ‘The Cop in the Head: Three Hypotheses’, TDR 34 .3 (1990): 35–42; and Herbert Marcuse, Eros and Civilization (Boston: Beacon Press, 1974) .

16 Still Lives, directed by Tony McCaffrey for A Different Light . Leeds University 29–30 June 2012 .

17 Jill Dolan, ‘Performance, Utopia, and the “Utopian Performative”’, Theatre Journal 53 .3 (2001) .

18 Johnson Cheu, ‘Performing Disability, Problematizing Cure’ in Carrie Sandahl and Philip Auslander (eds), Bodies in Commotion (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2005) 138 .

19 First published in the Christchurch Press: http://www .stuff .co .nz/the-press/opinion/perspective/7831007/

Christchurch-should-be-transition-capital (viewed 18 October 2012) .

20 Allison Arieff, ‘It’s Time to Rethink “Temporary”’, The New York Times (19 December 2011) (viewed: 16 October 2012) . Online: http://opinionator .blogs .nytimes .com/2011/12/19/its-time-to-rethink-temporary/?emc=eta1 .

Reflections on Theatre and Performance in the (Post-)Earthquake Zone

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