Keys, Kenneth (Ken) Alfred Interview

Today is Friday 15th September 2023. I’m Maxine Rose, and today I’m with Ken Keys of Hastings. Ken comes originally from Ireland but he and his wife Annetta have lived in Hawke’s Bay since 1978. Ken’s name is widely known in theatre and drama circles as a teacher, a director and a performer, and he’s been involved in a wide range of theatre groups over the past forty-five years. Ken, before we talk about your theatre involvement, I’d like to know a little more about your early years in Ireland. When were you born and where was that?

I was born back in 1944 in Belfast from parents who were originally and quite archetypically, I suppose, country people. My mother was from a small farm across the border, Donegal; and my father was this side of the border in Fermanagh, from a bigger farm. So like so many people in those days in all parts of Ireland they had to move for a better life. Big families, both of them, so they both ended up in Belfast, my father, tall and strong, joined the police; my mother worked in a dress shop, and then eventually opened her own business, so my brother and I were both born in Belfast and lived there our whole lives really. Yeah.

Tell me about school …

School … you may well know this … school in the north of Ireland, being part of the United Kingdom, school was divided into grammar and secondary modern long before the days of comprehensive schools. So if you were bright enough at the age of eleven when you sat an exam called the 11+, you went to a grammar school which was highly academic, and if you didn’t pass that exam at the age of eleven you went to a secondary modern school which was not quite so academic. In my adulthood I suppose, I realised it wasn’t a very satisfactory educational set-up, and I appreciated the comprehensive structure of New Zealand schools when I came here eventually.

So where did the first experience of theatre come from? Was that at school?

Not really, no. I was very much into sport, and eventually played quite serious soccer. But after I went to university in Belfast again, Queen’s University, I then did a one year post-graduate course at Loughborough College in England in Phys Ed, [Physical Education] and then got a job back in the north of Ireland in a grammar school, teaching English. And I had very little interest in theatre at the time – none in fact, I would say – except I met a very, very attractive young woman who was in the local theatre group so I decided to join that and see if I could get to know this young lady much better. And that was my first venture. And the first part I played was in an Irish village play; there were lots of plays written about the Irish rural scene which was sort of archetypal again. And I was the village policeman who had about three lines, and the only thing I remember was I got the lines wrong – on the wrong page – and the guy I was playing opposite, it meant he had thee pages of his dialogue left out. So it wasn’t a very … it was a pretty ignominious introduction. And I didn’t have any success with the girl either, so … [Chuckles]

So what theatre training did you do?

None, none. After one year teaching there, that’s when I got a contract teaching in East Africa, in Kenya, and I think that’s when I first began to take a serious interest in theatre. The schools in Kenya were all boarding schools, because of course it was very much, again, a rural structured society there and the kids who were lucky enough to get into secondary schools had to move a long way from their particular ‘Pa’, if you like … their home. So they were miles from anywhere; and this was a place called Kakamega first of all, in Western Kenya, and they were desperate for activities. So they would come and ask you, “Could you run such and such a club?” Or “Could you coach us in soccer”, or something like that. And that was how the drama interest really began. Some of them had obviously experienced ‘theatre’, if you like, before and they asked me to take them and run a theatre club, which I began to do. And that carried on in that contract, and then when I moved to another school in another part of the country I carried on there as well. So it was quite a unique experience, me not knowing anything about drama, and actually beginning to teach.

Can I clarify – we’re talking English?

We’re talking English, that’s right, yeah. Their lingua franca [language used between people who do not share a common language] was Swahili of course, but we also had from colonial times the local Club where you had a bar, restaurant, tennis, golf, all that sort of thing. And they still operated but they were much more multi-ethnic, if you like in those days, so we had Indian members, African members, European members. And I think a bunch of us ex-patriots in our mid-twenties … somebody thought it’d be great fun to do theatre. We looked around, and said, “Who knows anything about it?” And nobody did; I think they thought because I was the biggest one I’d be the best one to run it. So I became the director, and we had tremendous fun doing English plays in the local Club and attracting this multi-ethnic audience. It was great fun; in fact a comedy which you may well know, called ‘Black Comedy’ – it’s a very popular English play – and we decided to do that because we thought comedy should be the genre we went for. And as it got closer to production time we put out little flyers and posters, and it dawned on us that maybe ‘Black Comedy’ wasn’t a good name. [Chuckle] And I spoke to the local MP, [Member of Parliament] I suppose you would call him – he was one of [Jomo] Kenyata’s men, shall we say, in Western Kenya; I said to him, “Bwana, ‘Black Comedy’ name of our play. Do you think …?” “Not a good idea, Bwana, not a good idea.” [Chuckle] So we changed unofficially, the name from ‘Black Comedy’ to ‘Light Comedy’; it went ahead and everybody enjoyed it, yeah. [Chuckle] That was actually my first direct venture into producing something, yeah.

How did you get hold of the script?

Well it’s nothing at all to do with black and white; it’s called ‘Black Comedy’ simply because the comedy depends on the fact that there is a lighting malfunction. And in the story they’re operating in the dark you see, and the young man is trying to impress the prospective father-in-law, so they’re waiting on the father-in-law to arrive. And of course they arrive in a blackout, so in the actual play when the lights are on for the audience to see, you’re pretending it’s dark; and vice versa, so that’s where the comedy arises. So he’s trying to impress him by bringing in nice furniture from his pal in the flat next door, because it’s a pretty scruffy flat he’s got. And of course this shuffling around of furniture is all happening supposedly in the dark, unknown to the innocent visiting father-in-law, you know; so that’s what it’s all based on. [Chuckles]

Sounds amazing!

Chaotic!

Where did you go from there in terms of theatre? Did you develop this group further?

Not really, I don’t think they were capable of development to be quite honest. [Chuckle] It was too much a side interest, but we did do a few other things which I can’t really remember. But I got a bit more serious with students in the school because they did have a national festival and each province – a bit like here in New Zealand – a school from each province would send down a representative group to perform in the National Theatre in Nairobi. And we did a play based on the Easter celebrations and took that down to Nairobi, and it had been pretty successful.

But we met a serious problem when we got to Nairobi because the guy in the main part disappeared. When the people from the provinces emigrated to the city as they did of course, unfortunately it became almost a little bit ghetto-like – it was the Abaluyia tribe I was working with in Western Kenya – and of course he caught up with I suppose cousins, second cousins and God knows what in that area of Nairobi and got quite heavily into the pombe; pombe being the locally made beer. So when he turned up [chuckle] for the performance he was not coping very well [chuckle] and he staggered around the stage. We couldn’t do anything about replacing him because it was just impossible, but I do remember he would totter towards the front of the stage, remember his lines and then remember that the people in the front of the audience might realise he was a little bit tipsy so he would stagger back again, and then when his line came up again he would stagger forward again. So it became a yo-yo sort of performance. And that was actually filmed on Kenyan television so people were seeing [it]; I don’t know who had television up in the Abaluyia country but somebody must’ve had. Yeah, so it was quite an experience.

A momentous start for your theatre career actually, wasn’t it? So just going back a little bit, had you done some performance yourself?

No, no. I didn’t really do anything until we came to New Zealand, and we came to Wanganui.

Well let’s go back … obviously you’re in Kenya; did you meet somebody? What happened?

Well what happened was the first contract finished; they were two year contracts. And I’d got to know Annetta in that period, her [she] being from the deep south of Ireland, from Cobh which is outside Cork, and myself from Belfast, and we went back after that contract. We got married back in Northern Ireland and after a year of filling in, if you like, teaching back there we got the chance to go back to Kenya, which we did, and picked up a contract in a different area in the Nandi country of south west [north east] of Lake Victoria. Different experience, different people altogether. So yeah, we did another two years’ contract there.

Tell me about marrying Annetta …

That was interesting as well and yeah … I suppose I probably did say to you already we got into Romeo and Juliet country because we were from opposite sides. And things were very bad in the north of Ireland at that stage as everybody sadly knows, And we were very keen to get married in the church – not that we were religious; we’d really shed the whole religious outer skin if you like, her [she] being a Catholic and me being a Protestant – but just for ceremonial reasons we thought marriage was quite important and had a ceremonial dignity to it, getting married in church. So we met a priest in England and naively thinking the English very liberal, very open minded, not like Northern Ireland … ‘We’ll get him to marry us.’ I remember when we met him he eyeballed me and said, “You do realise that you have to bring your children up as Catholics?” Well that didn’t appeal at all for obvious reasons, and I eyeballed him back and said, “Is it not sufficient to bring them up as Christians?” Well it obviously wasn’t, so we shed him.

And then we met a wonderful guy back in Belfast who was Church of Ireland … Church of Ireland in Ireland is actually Anglican, so you’ve got the Church of England, and then it changes to Church of Ireland … but they do have a reputation for being quite liberal and open-minded. And he was so sympathetic to us, and he said, “I can’t do it, Ken, or [and] Annetta, because you’re a Presbyterian and you’re a Catholic; but”, he said, “I can put you on to my friend, the priest up in Portrush. He and I do the … at the end of the day, what’s the word I’m looking for? The Epilogue, yeah, on the TV.” [Television] BBC [British Broadcasting Corporation] at that time closed down at half past ten, and they always had a clerical person doing the Epilogue. He said, “The two of us do it together so he would do it for you.” And we met him and he was great; he was very open-minded and said he would do the job for us.

So we got married in a place called Ahoghill. And that’s where the Romeo and Juliet thing really becomes quite comical, because a bit like the two parties in the play, Ahoghill is in mid Antrim which was Ian Paisley’s electorate, and was rabidly Protestant and rabidly Unionist and rabidly pro-British. And there’s a little island of Catholics stuck in the middle of that and that was the church that he was going to marry us in; and that’s what happened. It was almost as if it happened by divine providence.

We had eight or ten people of the family at the wedding, and there was a nearby two storey restaurant/hotel. We’d called in there the week before and said, “Look, could we have a lunch for ten or twelve people?” They said, “Yes.” We didn’t say we were getting married and when we turned up on the day – it was his first wedding at that church and of course the grapevine had talked and they knew what was going on. So they laid out this five course meal for about $5 that was absolutely glorious, just as a celebration of their new priest’s first occasion, if you like.

So slightly better outcome than Romeo and Juliet’s?

It was a bit better [chuckles] and nobody died, that’s right. [Chuckle]

So what led to the decision to come to New Zealand?

Well basically, people killing each other. Yeah, The Troubles … euphemistically called ‘Troubles’. The only tie we really still had was my father, because Annetta’s parents had died and my mother had died; and he then died and that was really the only tie that was left. We both wanted to go away and we certainly wanted to escape the environment.

I taught in an up-country school, lived in a small village, and the whole thing was encapsulated really with the lady in the local Post Office where Annetta did some part time work; one of her kids who was about six or seven came running in to our friend and said, “Mummy, Mummy! Am I a Catholic or a Proddy?” She said, “What?!” “Am I a Catholic or a Protestant?” “Who told you that? Who asked that?” “Oh, the little boy next door wants to know.” And it encapsulated really how the whole disease sets in quite early, and we didn’t need that; didn’t need to be told that. But it illustrates the point really, and we didn’t fancy the idea of raising children in that environment. Yeah, so it took us to New Zealand which we never regretted, you know, so … the the best thing we ever did. Yeah.

But I had to be appointed. I saw an advert for jobs in New Zealand, and they brought out ninety-six high school teachers to New Zealand at that time, and I was appointed to Wanganui Boys’ College … you had to go where they sent you because you were getting the whole thing paid for including your chattels. So we spent our first five years in Wanganui. Yeah, and I got involved with theatre there, and also – again in a bit of a cultural desert at the school – started off our drama group there as well. Yeah.

So you had family by now?

So by then Claire had been born in East Africa, she’d been born in Kenya; and then at the end of the first year here in ’78, Kevin was born in Wanganui.

So Wanganui to Hawke’s Bay – what led to that?

Well, we spent – as I say we had to do two years by contract; if we broke the contract within two years we had to pay all the expenses back again. So we stayed there for five years and it was a bit tricky to be honest, because the headmaster was, shall we say kindly, eccentric and it was quite difficult. It illustrates some of the challenges when you’re coming to a new country – you think, ‘New Zealand, English speaking, Pakeha’ if you like, ‘it’s no different.’ But that particular appointment accentuated the differences, and I was really puzzled; if this was the educational system here, what’s gone wrong? I wasn’t terribly impressed by the school. There were lots of nice guys, there were lots of good boys, but it was a battle … it was a real battle in many many of those … I was teaching English at the time, and my introduction of basic drama as a club was a big step forward for the school; it was quite old fashioned really.

So after five years I was thinking broadly about better educational systems, and that’s when the Steiner School in Hastings was looking for jobs [teachers] ,and we came over for that job, yeah.

So Annetta was teaching as well?

No, she wasn’t – she got into social welfare.

Tell me about her work.

Yeah … she was just working in the community under the auspices of the local social worker, who was a very, very impressive guy and she thoroughly enjoyed that and found it was a niche that suited her. She always taught history, but to be honest I don’t think she really felt that that was, you know, the place she wanted to be, whereas doing case work and social work under Social Welfare was right up her avenue. So that’s what she did and she carried that on when we came over here to Hawke’s Bay.

Okay, well we’ll talk a little bit more about Annetta in a moment; but the Steiner School … tell me about that.

Yeah. Well what appealed to me about Steiner was that it was holistic basically, and it was a challenge for me. Of course if you know anything about Steiner, the system was established in 1929 by Rudolph Steiner in Germany, and it was a reaction to a heavily academic, cerebral-based way of teaching. And it was also very strongly a reaction to the First World War; Steiner, to his credit, recognised that there was something more deeply rotten in society at that time that enable[d] the atrocities of the First World War to happen. So it was on that basis that he founded this, but it’s based on anthroposophy, so you really have to understand that side of things … the spiritual side of things. So for those different reasons I thought I would like to try it out – which I did, but … We stayed there for two years, and for me personally it was an eye-opener, and it wasn’t all positive by any means; still educationally for me it was a useful stage in my own growth.

It was very difficult for Annetta though, because she wasn’t really into it and struggled with a lot of the fundamentals of it, you know? As I did eventually. And again, the factor of the children came into it because our son, Kevin, was coming up through the kindergarten, and the effect of what was eventually going to happen with him and the system they had there … One little example is, the primary system has a teacher for seven years … you stay with the same teacher for seven years, so there’s [there’re] some theoretical attractions about that but there’s also a lot of drawbacks. So we had to take into account [that] he was going to graduate, if you like, or move on from the kindergarten to the actual primary system, and at that stage we realised it wasn’t really the place for us.

And that’s when the job came up at Havelock North High School, and I moved back into the state system … moved to Havelock North High School and spent eighteen years there very, very happily. I’d carried on the drama at Steiner, and then really it was in Havelock North High School in the early nineties when I got the opportunity to really take that seriously and develop my own particular … 20.11

Ken, what opportunities were there when you first came to Hastings for drama, for your directing or your performance?

Well I’ll go back a stage in answer to that question. When I was still in Wanganui and my first interest was beginning to grow in theatre and I was taking the kids and doing some local stuff, that’s when I came to a summer workshop with Raymond Hawthorne. And they [New Zealand Players] were touring the country at that time doing these very … heavy, shall we say, very intense workshops to raise the standard of amateur theatre, which was great. And I went to that and that had a big influence on me – not totally positive, the whole thing, because it was so intense – they believed in breaking people down during the intensity so that they could open themselves to whatever characterisation they were doing. And while I learnt a lot I also didn’t agree with their fundamental approach, and got to know a few people who became well known in the theatrical circles who also disagreed; one particularly well known guy who’s a film director. So while it had its negative side it was also influential, because it made me start getting serious about theatre and thinking about it and how the process works.

So I had that in the background when I came over to Hawke’s Bay, and I did some fairly enterprising work at Steiner where again, you had a strong culture, if you like … moral, spiritual culture … which could be quite narrow-minded as to what’s good for the soul and what’s not good for the soul. So I did stuff there with the young people and found it very satisfactory; I found that need was there to express themselves. So when I finally came after the two years at Steiner to Havelock North High School, Beth Allardyce – she was my friend – she had started drama at the beginning of the nineties … sort of the first drama class in Havelock North High School. She left after a year; I took over and after that everything just flowered, and that’s when drama was first introduced as a subject. So I was so lucky to get to Havelock North High School; I was so lucky to have the personnel there and the managerial, or the … you know, the Principal and Deputy Principal, who were enlightened people; to be there at the beginning stages of drama as a subject. And I never looked back for the next eighteen years really.

And your own involvement – what was there for you to be involved in in Hastings?

The Group Theatre [now Theatre Hawke’s Bay] was very active and doing very good stuff in Hastings but I never really got into it because I wasn’t very confident in my skills as an actor or as a director. And they seemed quite a high powered group to me in my naiveté at the time. But there were various things going on round the Bay – you had Hastings Operatic; you had Napier Operatic; you had the Little Theatre in Napier; and you had a man up here in Havelock who was a Gilbert & Sullivan enthusiast, and I got into that and performed in two or three Gilbert & Sullivans, and that was tremendous fun; I would guess looking back, probably pretty amateurish – maybe that’s unkind, I’m not sure. But anyway it got me onto the stage, and I had done a little bit in Wanganui at the local theatre there as well. And the Gilbert & Sullivan was such fun of course. So that’s where I did my first, and then Hawke’s Bay Opera was established in the nineties, and that was a tremendous development.

Who ran that?

That was Naomi Baker, whom I respected tremendously, and still do; and still very close to her. She eventually got a Queen’s Medal or something last year, I forget what it was; long overdue, because it was a one-woman band setting that Hawke’s Bay Opera up, and it ran for ten years. She brought in professional leads, professional musical director, professional acting director, and then the chorus were locals, the minor parts were locals, and we used, by and large, the local orchestra which was supplemented. So it was a lovely combination, and it was very, very successful; ran for ten years, and I did about three of those I think it was … three or four. Richard Campion was the first director and he did two or three, and then Raymond Hawthorne was brought in later on.

Tell me about Richard Campion?

Richard was a wonderful gentleman, and as most theatre people know, called the ‘Father of New Zealand Theatre’. And he it was who promoted New Zealand creations as much as he possibly could and that was another watershed certainly for me to have him there and to work with him. He was a gentleman of the first order, but he knew his theatre very, very well.

And it was on the strength of that when I had the rush of blood to the head to start what became the National Youth Drama School, at that stage knowing very few people in the professional theatre world. I got to know Richard over those first couple of operas, and asked him humbly and [chuckle] beseechingly, “Richard, how would you like to run a youth Drama School?”

We’ll come back to the Drama School ‘cause I want to talk about that. Before we do, I know Shakespeare is a big part of your life, so tell me about the Sheilah Winn Festival.

Well the Sheilah Winn coincided virtually with the National Youth Drama School, Sheilah Winn was established by Dawn Sanders before that, and her committee of course. We leapt on board at Havelock North High School as so many high schools did, to join in the fun. That was a massive influence on me because the whole spread of Globe Theatre-based approaches stemmed from that era, after the Globe Theatre was built in London. And that was part of the whole policy to spread the word about doing practical Shakespeare, let’s put it like that, as opposed to academic Shakespeare. And the Sheilah Winn Festival was the New Zealand development that came from that whole movement, if you like, and that’s what made Shakespeare really live for so many students all over New Zealand; and very few areas were left out. It was a tremendous experience.

So going back to when I interrupted you, the establishment of the Hawke’s Bay Youth Theatre; you were instrumental in that, I gather?

Well everything overlapped of course; I was so lucky to find myself in Havelock North High School; I was so lucky to be moving from part-time drama teaching to full-time drama teaching, and building the department. The need for something above and beyond the high school courses in drama was self-evident, and so I was thinking, as [were] the other people around me who joined in … there were now three or four schools in Hawke’s Bay doing drama. And we established – another little milestone I’d forgotten about – we established the Hawke’s Bay Drama Teachers’ Association, and that fed the whole hunger, if you like, because what we would do, we’d have … I think it may’ve been once a month … workshops on a Friday afternoon for kids from Year[s] 9 and 10, 11 maybe. And it got us together to share ideas, and that’s when the whole idea of doing something for the students who stayed in Hawke’s Bay – that was the main purpose; we thought, ‘Well these other students are moving on to university, but there’s a certain proportion of kids picking up drama and there’s nothing for them in the local repertory theatres, so why don’t we start a youth theatre?’ And so … I’m mixing things up here a bit; my apologies for that because I’m mixing up two different things here. I’m mixing up the Hawke’s Bay Youth Theatre which was a different entity; I’m mixing it up with the Hawke’s Bay Youth Drama School, which was the one-off one week series of workshops, which we’ll come to. So to go back to the first concept, the Hawke’s Bay Youth Theatre, that’s what that was set up for, and I ran that for ten years, and it did exactly what we hoped it would – it gave so many graduates from Year 13 the chance to carry on their theatre. And we took a production to the Edinburgh Festival …

Tell me about that?

Oh, [chuckle] … that was absolutely marvellous! And it’s wheels within wheels, so I’m now getting my sequence right I think, because we must’ve started the National Theatre … NYDS, National Youth Theatre [Drama School] … must’ve started up before the Hawke’s Bay Youth Theatre, which is what we’re talking about now. Because a friend of mine, or a man who became a close friend, John Lonsdale – he was teaching marvellous things in Cheshire in England, in theatre. And he was recommended to me by people in the National Theatre of all things, and he actually won some sort of a medal for being the best drama teacher in England – I think that’s the right title – anyway, John was an absolute enthusiast and he would take his students up to the Edinburgh Festival every year. And when this opportunity came for us to do the same – I think it was his inspiration that caused us to pick it up – he said, “I’ll look after the accommodation, I’ll look after this, I’ll look …” That was great! All we had to do was get our acting troupe there, and he’d arrange the accommodation and the venues in Edinburgh and so that was it. [Chuckle] I said, “What am I going to do?” And we had about twelve young people coming and I wanted a play that covered them all. What’s the term we use?

All encompassing?

All encompassing, we’ll use that, yeah; all encompassing play rather than two or three leads and that sort of thing. And Kevin, my son, who’d got into drama as well and was tremendously good with words … I said to him, “Kevin, would you write a play for us? Twelve people; they’ve all got to have equal parts.” And he said, “Oh, I’ll give it a go”, and he did and it was a tremendously successful production. Everybody had a lead, and it was a satire on modern consumerism. It’s been done now, been in one of the hireage places …

Playmarket?

Playmarket yeah, I think Playmarket have it. So it’s been done by various schools around the country.

Do you remember the name of it?

[Chuckle] Ooooh … No, I’m afraid it’s slipped my mind. But that was a big stage in the Hawke’s Bay Youth Theatre. Yeah.

So Ken, what was the catalyst for setting up the National Youth Drama School, known as Nids. [NYDS]

[Chuckle] Yeah, that’s what everybody knows it as, ‘specially the kids, they know it as ‘Nids’. I think I mentioned before that I felt this need to provide something for those students in the senior stages at high school that would take them to another level; if you like, pre-tertiary level. And so I and people like Alan Powdrell and other drama teachers around the Bay who were tremendously supportive, set up the Hawke’s Bay Youth Drama School as a one week holiday programme. And as I’ve just said recently to you, we planned … well Richard Campion and I … to maybe get to seventy, eighty kids, to pay our way. And we got a hundred and fifty-six in the first year. I’m not very good on figures but that figure I will always remember – it just exploded. And a high proportion of those were from Hawke’s Bay including a sub-group from Havelock North High School where I was teaching; but they were coming from all parts of the country. And that carried on as the Hawke’s Bay entity for two years, and then we realised it had become a national thing – it just developed organically, if you like, and so we changed the name to National Youth Drama School. And we’d registered as a charitable entity, and we had to just re-register the name; and that’s the way it just grew.

I presume you had a Board of Trustees too?

Yeah.

So how did you fund it?

Well it’s funded primarily of course by the fees that the students pay. But we were totally dependent on grants from the very beginning, and as the costs have increased out of proportion over the years, so the amount of grants money has had to increase. Maybe ten years ago when I was doing the funding side of things and we were averaging maybe $23-$25,000, that has now leapt to probably now close to $60,000 that we need from other sources to try and keep the fees at an achievable reasonable level. Our previous artistic director actually did some analysis by comparing holiday programmes in various areas and their cost … comparing them right across the country; and discovered and revealed to us that we were ‘pro rata’ one of the cheapest things for the kids. I think the cost now is something like $500 for the eight days, but in the scheme of things that actually is very reasonable.

Great value for money, really.

Great value for money, yeah.

What were you aiming to achieve in that first school?

We just wanted to extend the experience of all these drama students who were a new phenomenon over those fifteen, twenty years, whatever it was – not even that much – whose burning interest in theatre was being whetted really; and the impulse was just to take them to another level and to share their experiences with their compatriots, if you like, their peers, as well as with the professional tutors.

What’s the basic formula? How does it pan out over those eight days?

The basic idea is to give them a specialist area if that’s what they really want; but also give them options so they can broaden the range of experiences. So they apply for a Home group – something like ‘Technical’, for example – they will do that and nothing else – the lighting, the sound and so on. But you can also do a Home group and a Taster group, so you get two days when you do the Taster group and the rest of the week you’re doing your specialist area; so you might be a specialist student in Shakespeare, and you might do song writing or something like that as a Taster. That’s probably not accurate ‘cause I’m not sure off the top of my head which are the Tasters and which are the Home groups.

What does a student have to do to qualify?

They have to be enthusiastic. [Chuckle] There’s no specific criteria except they do have to get a recommendation from their drama teacher or drama tutor or drama coach, or it could be, I suppose, even a musical coach as well. So they have to have some marginal proof of their enthusiasm and their potential, yeah.

Obviously the community has become very supportive and very involved in this festival over the years, and I know Annetta has a large role … tell me about her involvement.

Given that I was I suppose, in a way the major driver of this whole thing, it could not have happened without her support. Her support has been absolutely fantastic; so whatever is needed for the fundamental success of the thing she will be there, and is there to supply that. So she has organised the out of the spotlight areas which were so crucial; it could be the transport, it could be the accommodation for students and accommodation for tutors. But she’s got her finger in the pie somewhere every Drama School, never mind the hosting of the tutors’ night down at our house which is very important as well; so she has been absolutely wonderful in her role in all those areas. And those areas are more than peripheral, and that’s what I think we all appreciate and we all like to emphasise. It’s not just walking into a classroom, doing your work and going home, it goes way, way beyond that. And whether it’s the students being billeted in local families, and relationships which have built up over years … “Oh yeah, we had little Sarah last year – can we have little Sarah again?” Or whatever they might say; and the students saying, “I was with so and so – can I go back with them?” So you’ve got those relationships. And then you’ve got the hostel at Hereworth; and that’s a different experience in itself ‘cause Dave and Meredith who run the hostel are tremendous characters and they run a very good ship there. And that’s another whole communal experience for the students.

I would assume that for some students this might be a first time away from home?

Absolutely. Absolutely, ‘cause it was always from the age of thirteen to the age of eighteen, and then it was changed a few years ago and it’s now fourteen plus; but we get quite a lot of fourteen-, fifteen-year-olds who are, you know, branching out on their own if you like, for the first time; and this back up is essential. Same thing with the health factor; so whoever is the Administrator or whoever is the Artistic Director, those elements have to be in place. So we keep tabs … between them and the tutors … on, you know, the mental state of the young people who are experiencing this, maybe for the first time. And that’s vitally important.

The all important question – how do you feed them?

[Laughter] No, they go without food … don’t need food as long as they’ve got theatre. [Chuckles] Well the Havelock North High School which has been the fantastic host for all these thirty years for the thing – no not thirty years actually, twenty-eight or twenty-nine years – that’s another story. Havelock North High School has a canteen or a shop in the middle of the quadrangle which sells whatever you need – pies and hot food and so on and so forth; and that’s one source for the lunches. Then the students may bring packed lunches with them if they’re being billeted; that can happen. The ones in the hostel of course, get their dinner at Hereworth hostel in the evening, so I think food-wise they’re all catered for. The Top Shop, which is where the Filling Station is just above Havelock North High School, they do great business during the Drama School. [Chuckle] And at some point when Claire, who’s just retired as Artistic Director … I think it was her idea to bring in some food carts. And that’s the new invention that she invented in the last couple of years, to have an open day on the final day of the Drama School; and so on that Saturday these food carts are there and available as the audiences wander round the school moving from one performance to another performance. So yeah, they’re okay for food.

Roughly how many students are we talking about, and what sort of gender mix? And do they come from all over the country?

Really good question. In the early stages as I said before, I think we planned for about eighty; we got a hundred and fifty-six, so it exploded from the start. But when it was at its height if you like, we were catering for two hundred and sixty students. Now that is a lot to cater for in the course of eight days successfully, and to get the ratio right within the classes – Musical Theatre class can have fifteen, twenty, twenty-five people; the Shakespeare class might be happy with eight or something like that – depends on the particular discipline. But two hundred and sixty is I would say, the max, [maximum] the system could not cope with more than that. So when we came back after COVID – which I thought was a tremendously courageous thing for the current Board to do – I know they talked of postponing it this year to later in the year, and then they decided no, they were going to go ahead in April as planned. And I thought to myself, ‘Well, if they get a hundred people there that would be fantastic’; and we ended up with a hundred and thirty plus, which I thought was amazing. And what was even more delightful, in answer to your other question, was [that] Ena, who’s the Chairperson of the Board, produced a map with a little dot for every kid from whatever areas. And to our delight they were from every part of New Zealand, including the West Coast, including Southland, and omitting the only area that didn’t respond, Taranaki. I don’t know why, but it was so good – even though it wasn’t two hundred and sixty, it was a hundred and thirty – it was so good. But they were still getting the message right across the country. Yeah.

Well, I read somewhere that you know, many students describe it as the best week of their lives … a life changing experience; so it’s obviously word of mouth, you know, and students coming back over and over.

Yeah, that’s absolutely the case. There are very few students who come once and never again. That’s my impression anyway, and certainly we’ve had students who’ve been four and five times – they’ve been every year of their high school lives, you know? And you can see how that would happen, you can see the value of that, because as we all know, the teenage years are when things evolve very, very quickly biologically if you like, and psychologically. I can see a student coming at the age of fourteen and being wide-eyed and getting good experience, and coming back again as a seventeen year old who’s now really in his or her adulthood, and getting so much more from it, you know?

I started listing some of the disciplines, from the many types of acting, to directing, technical, sound and lighting, set design, voice, mime, comedy, circus skills and of course Shakespeare. How do you decide each year what aspects you’ll focus on?

I’ve no idea. [Laughter] It depends on the whim of the artistic director. I’m being slightly facetious of course, but it does evolve over time. I was thinking myself … we’ve got drag as a recent invention and that’s been very successful. Street art … another, for me, recent invention as well – that’s been very successful.

Theatre of the Disturbance?

Theatre of the Disturbance [chuckle] – which disturbs me greatly ‘cause I don’t fully understand it. I think it’s mainly [chuckle] improvised theatre. Theatre itself is constantly throwing up new inventions as we know, and it’s good that the tutors, the artistic directors, want to try different things. You know, there’s [there’re] things I think should be there that maybe were there at one point; so you can make a case for so many things. I would say there’s space now for a serious – shall we say, operatic – class, but then you might argue as people in the system often do argue, that, “Well the Singing School in Hawke’s Bay caters for that.” Which is true, so we don’t really need to do that.

But certainly a tremendous variety – do the tutors have a role in this? Talk to me about where they come from …

They’re from all over, and I think that versatility and that variety of experience and passion feeds itself through to the Artistic Directors’ decision making room if you like, because they’re the ones on the ground, they’re the practitioners all around the country and it’s inevitable and very healthy that their ideas are listened to and promoted or whatever, you know. I think that’s very, very important. That network thing – we’ve talked about the network within Hawke’s Bay for the students, the billeting and all that sort of thing, and the classroom inter-relationships – and obviously the same thing applies at the tutor level. I think NYDS manages to bring in fresh blood on occasion, which is what everybody needs especially with people being unavailable; but there is also a set of tutors who’ve been coming for many, many years and that network is a very vibrant one, if a network can be vibrant – can it? Yeah … so we’ve got tutors from the professional scene in Auckland, Wellington, Christchurch … all over the place; up the East Coast and Bay of Plenty.

Do you ever have anybody from overseas?

Well John Lonsdale whom I mentioned to you before, he for some twelve, thirteen years, he brought out maybe a dozen, fifteen, sixteen students from Cheshire to participate in the Drama School and John himself would be a tutor. And that was an incredible experience for us and for them. One of his students who came as a teenager, Jamie Sharp, still comes out every year and takes a Theatre of Disturbance and also helps out very much on the musical side as he’s a professional pianist and musician. So that’s a whole dimension to the school which has been exceptional, and the connection with John Lonsdale back in Soundbytes School in England, that’s been there for all those years. Yeah.

Are there one or two students that you’d like to talk about?

Well, as I said to you before, that’s the question everybody asks me, and I have never really done the specific research on it. But they’re everywhere. I know that because everywhere I go I meet them; if I go to a production in Auckland at the ATC, [Auckland Theatre Company] or if I go to Circa [Theatre] in Wellington, or I got to the theatre in Palmerston [North], I know I’m going to meet somebody. Or they will see me and say, “Hi Ken, d’you remember me?” And I say, “No, I’ve no idea who you are.” [Chuckle] “Yeah, I was at NYDS – I was at NYDS for four years”, or something like that. It does; it happens all the time. And even as we were talking earlier on in this interview, I was thinking of the people still directly involved with the Drama School … you know, Glen Pickering, who’s now working at Toitoi; Ben Fagan, who’s now the Artistic Director and came as a fifteen year old to the Drama School; Rachel Blampied, who came as a kid as well who’s now a professional up in Auckland; Alan Dingley, who’s doing improv classes still in Palmerston. He actually went to Havelock North High School and we did Theatre Sports; Allan Henry, who’s done big time combat in the movie scenes, he’s still doing stage combat. So that’s just five or six names.

And those people have gone on to have a career in theatre in the widest sense of the word. But even if they don’t have a career in theatre it’s still something that they have achieved. So what skills do you think they gain from this?

Well you know, we talked about this earlier today and you mentioned Mikel O’Connell who’s a classic example of that and the way things feed through. Now Mikel is now working professionally at the theatre in Palmerston, and performing as well as being on the management side. And I had to have a replacement for a character in the recent Indian dance drama, and I got hold of Mikel who came up and was terrific and helped us out. And during that rehearsal period some of the skills that he’d learned … as he told me, from Allan Henry I think it was, at NYDS all those years ago … skills of stage combat which we needed in this particular play, he was able to cope with that and actually lead it at times; as he did in various ways as an experienced now performer. He was a great help to me as a director in this local production.

Any specific skills you feel that they gain?

Well as I said, the actual technical skills, be it vocal production or be it stage combat skills, be it something in music or whatever. As well as those there’s the personal elements; there’s the confidence … above all the confidence. They’re stepping out of their own area, their own school, their own local group, and they’re meeting somebody at a national event. And the collaborative element that’s so essential in theatre or any artistic project, that’s very strong at NYDS. And it’s not a digression but it’s actually reinforcing that point, we set out with a certain profound philosophy from the very beginning – I’m not just talking about myself, I’m talking about all the other Board members, all the other people who started at the very beginning – that it was non-competitive; there were no awards; that it was essentially a collaborative thing. And that’s where the fringe elements like the hostel, the billeting and so on, they all come into that, and how creative and positive a project can be if you’ve got that inbuilt mentality, you know? And the other thing that the feedback produces all the time from the students is the opportunity to be themselves, and to find others with similar traits. At the very beginning that hit home to me; I remember watching a student in the first couple of years who was from a remote part of the North Island, a country school, and he stood literally wide-eyed at one stage looking around him. And I thought, ‘What … are you okay?’ There was a dramatic pause, and he stared at me and he said, “I can’t believe this!” I said, “What do you mean?” “I can’t believe this … where I come from they just play rugby.” [Chuckle] And you know, that was what I mean … the finding themselves, and being with other people who think the same way and think creatively; and then for some it’s independence. And then there’s the personal friendships and the possibility ultimately, of a career.

So to sum up, Ken, why do you feel it so strongly that young people today need drama and theatre in their lives?

Well I’m glad you asked me that, and I wish you were from the government or [were] a National Party spokesman, because we’ve been subjected in the last while to comments and theories about education spouted by people with I think, not a first idea about what education is. The theme has been literacy and numeracy. Now without ignoring the fact that they’re very, very important; not ignoring the fact that they have to be on the … education goes beyond that. And I think that’s what drama taught me, ‘cause I had to make that mental transition from being an academic English teacher myself to dealing with kids of all sorts of different abilities in drama. And that was a much more holistic experience – I’ve used the word ‘holistic’ before and that’s something we must never forget.

The development of the Performing Arts in England was slashed from two decades ago, which was a shockingly negative thing. And there are people in New Zealand in power – there’s one in charge of Auckland at the moment – who does not understand the value of the Arts. And that’s a dangerous thing; to me the Arts open up vistas for everybody, and they go beyond just the cerebral activity of maths and physics, if you like. We have to have that holistic … And I think that’s what’s been wonderful in my time about New Zealand – the growth in drama. Music has always been strong, it still is strong; dance should be stronger, and I think the benefits are enormous and essential.

[Ends]