Programme – Theatre Corporate

Hastings City
Cultural Centre

presents

THEATRE
CORPORATE

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RAYMOND HAWTHORNE
Born Hastings 1936. Attended Hastings High School. Joined the New Zealand Players in 1955 and in 1957 was granted a New Zealand Government Bursary to study at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London. After leaving R.A.D.A. worked as a freelance actor, director, singer in England for 14 years. During this period returned to R.A.D.A. as a director-tutor and taught there intermittently until his return to New Zealand in March 1971. After two months in Hastings, he joined the Mercury Theatre, Auckland as actor-director for a period of one year, and continued working throughout New Zealand in a freelance capacity until instigating the formation of Theatre Corporate in 1973. Is now fully involved in working with and training the actors of Theatre Corporate. This year directed “Tartuffe” for the Christchurch Arts Festival, “La Traviata” for the Symphonia (his first opera), and a programme of Noel Coward’s music for the Mercury Theatre. Returns to Auckland after this Hastings season to direct a new play, “The Mouse Man” by James McNeish for the Mercury Theatre.

CHRIS SHEIL
After finishing school, went straight to the U.K. to study at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art. Performed in Black and White Minstrels, Robert and Elizabeth, Half a Sixpence, Oliver, Fiddler on the Roof, Mame, Your Own Thing, Oh! Calcutta!, Godspell. Also involved in Music Hall and television.
Came to New Zealand with Godspell, playing Judas. Stayed at the Central Theatre to act and direct. Productions he has taken part in since at the Central – Boys in the Band, The Foursome, The Tempest, See How They Run, The Winslow Boy, Salad Days, The Importance of Being Earnest, Collaborators, Hamlet on Ice and Kennedy’s Children.

IAN MUNE
Started in the theatre with Victoria University, then exchanged Teacher Training to become one of the first professional actors working with Downstage Theatre in Wellington.
An Arts Council Grant in 1968 made it possible to take up an offer to join the Welsh Theatre Company, which provided two years of valuable experience in Britain.
Production was a natural development on returning to New Zealand and the Mercury Theatre provided this opportunity. From acting, teaching and producing at the Mercury, it was a natural step to writing plays for radio and TV, and Ian Mune is now producing, in partnership with Ardvark Films of Auckland, six dramas for TV.
In 1974 he won the Feltex Award for Best TV Actor, and the film “Derek” was judged best Drama in the same year.

Theatre Corporate was formed in September ’73 by Raymond Hawthorne. We drew together the cream of Auckland’s amateur actors, directors, playwrights and technical personnel. Our primary aim was to enable these creative people to work together and explore all aspects of the various crafts relating to the Theatre and the performing arts. Our further aim is to encourage and promote artistic expression that is relevant to our environment.
From these beginnings our growth has been spectacular. We have two full-time professional touring companies employing 13 actors and 8 administrative and technical personnel. Theatre Corporate receives no grant or subsidy. We are a “Community Theatre”, our quality, our integrity, our growth have been made possible by exceptional people. We are happy you have joined us in this “Family Festival of Theatre”.

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THE LADY WITH THE LAP DOG
By Anton Chekhov
(adapted by Raymond Hawthorne.)

Cast
Gurov – Raymond Hawthorne
Anna – Maureen Harvey
with
Paul Sayers and Alistair Topham

DIRECTED BY – CHRIS SHEIL
Production Assistant – Richard Barker
Stage Manager – Peter Camp
Sound Operator – Timothy Bartlett
Assistant Stage Manager – Julia Colgan
Costumes – Rohanna Hawthorne

About – “The Lady with the Lap Dog”
Chekhov wrote “Lady with Lapdog” in Yalta between August and October 1899.
It is a story of a great love arising out of a pick-up of a young married woman by a middle-aged roue when both are alone and bored in the seaside resort of Yalta. To the actor. Chekov [Chekhov] is perhaps the most challenging playwright in the repertoire of all the classics. He demands truth of interpretation. Profoundly Russian in nature, his characters are deeply routed in life itself. To create them, the actor must live them, have his being in them and follow the deeply buried arteries through which their emotions flow, as blood flows from the heart.
Chekhov’s plays are full of action, not in the external but in the inner development. In the very inactivity of his characters, a complex inner activity is concealed.
Maxim Gorky wrote to Chekhov that after reading “Lady with Lapdog” everything he himself wrote seemed “coarse and written not with a pen but with a log!” Gorky went on … You are doing a great thing with your stories, arousing in people a feeling of disgust with their sleepy, half-dead existence … Your stories are like exquisite cut-glass bottles with all the different scents of life in them, and, believe me, a sensitive nose will always find in them the delicate, pungent, and healthy scent of what is genuine and really valuable and necessary, which is to be found in every cut-glass bottle of yours.”
It was the exquisite delicacy of “Lady with Lapdog”, coupled with the deeply poignant, human frailty of Gurov’s and Anna Sergeyevna’s love, that determined me to adapt this story for the theatre. In its adaptation a great endeavour has been made to keep intact the intrinsic delicacy of Chekhov’s “perfumes of life” contained in the story.

Photo caption-
Curov (Raymond Hawthorne) and Anna (Maureen Harvey) in rehearsal.

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THE APPLE TREE
book, lyrics and music by Jerry Bock and Sheldon Harnick
(adapted from Mark Twain’s “The Dairy [Diary] of Adam and Eve”).

Cast
Adam – Selwyn Crockett
Eve – Andrea Kelland
Serpent – John Givins
(understudy to Eve – Jacky Eagle).

DIRECTED BY – RAYMOND HAWTHORNE
Musical Director – Ian Laird
Production Assistant – Richard Barker
Stage Manager – Peter Camp
Assistant Stage Manager – Jacky Eagle

About – “The Apple Tree”
From the creators of “Fiddler on the Roof” comes this delightfully witty musical of Adam and Eve’s fall from the Garden of Eden. The synopsis is simple and straight forward. God creates Adam – God creates Eve – then Adam’s trials and tribulations begin.
The simplicity is what makes this musical so very enchanting. That and the originality of Mark Twain’s witty and droll observation of “how it might have been”. The lyrics forward the action, the music captures the changing moods of Adam’s and Eve’s discovery of the world in which they find themselves, and in one brief hour we are made to consider that “Woman is responsible for the Fall of Man, she is also responsible for his redemption”. It is an Eternal theme and this musical handled with great delicacy, sensitivity and humour enhances that theme.

From left Selwyn Crockett, John Givins, Ian Laird (musical director) and Andrea Kelland in rehearsal.

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LUNCHTIME PRODUCTIONS
“UNDER MILK WOOD, A PLAY FOR VOICES”
by Dylan Thomas

About – “Under Milk Wood”
On the 25th January 1954, the B.B.C. London broadcast on radio “Under Milk Wood, a Play for Voices” by Dylan Thomas. It is now a legendary piece of literature of the twentieth century.
Through Dylan Thomas’s evocative and poetic language, the lives and secret dreams and aspirations of the inhabitants of Llaregyb (a Welsh seaside village) are revealed to us with humour and tenderness.

DIRECTED FOR “THEATRE IN EDUCATION”
by Ian Mune

CAST – from left John Givins, Selwyn Crockett, David Mahon, Andrea Kelland, Linda Cartwright.

“BEHIND THE TATTOOED FACE’
A New Zealand Anthology.

About – “Behind the Tattooed Face”
This New Zealand Anthology has been devised to include as wide a representation of indigenous literature as possible. But more than this we have endeavoured to capture the atmosphere, in chronological order, of the founding and colonising of New Zealand. Authors reprensented [represented] – Richard Taylor, Cook’s and Tasman’s Diaries, Keith Sinclair, Lady Barker, Mary Ursula Bethall, Wiramu [Winremu] Kingi, Alistair Campbell, Katherine Mansfield, John Mulgan, Bruce Mason, Frank Sargeson, Fairburn, Allen Curnow, M.K. Joseph, Lewis Johnson, Brasch, Norman Kirk, Blerta.

DIRECTED FOR “THEATRE IN EDUCATION”
By Raymond Hawthorne.

CAST – from left David Mahon, Andrea Kelland, Selwyn Crockett, Linda Cartwright, John Givins (centre front).

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STORY THEATRE
Devised and Directed by Raymond Hawthorne

CAST OF STORY THEATRE
Jacky Eagle
Judy Gibson
Marion Parry
Jenni Ward
Timothy Bartlett
Tony Forster
Paul Sayers
Alastair Topham
Stage Manager:   Sandy Plimmer
David Mahon

WHAT IS STORY THEATRE?

Story Theatre is an organic experience for those who watch it. That is its primary aim – “To be organic.” The Concise Oxford Dictionary defines “organic” as “vital, constitutional, inherent, fundamental, structural, involving the whole.”
In preparing “Story Theatre” all these aspects have been given consideration, but the “involving of the whole” has been our major aim. The stories should happen and unfold before, and for the children. The demands made on performer and audience are great if the organic life of Story Theatre is to be experienced. The result is rewarding. The productions have been geared to take the children on a journey into worlds that they dream about, the world of the imagination, that in fact exists within them already, that are within the realms of their ability to express, but that conventional 20th Century existence often smothers and causes to lie dormant.
Story Theatre is geared to awaken the feelings, the imagination, widen the emotional understanding of the child and allay fear of experiencing these organic components.
Story Theatre has been devised with great throught [thought] and care for our young audiences. If for a moment there is fear, it is quickly allayed with humour or love, or joy; if a beast is ugly, he is soon shown to have a kind heart; if there is sorrow, happiness results; if there is dishonesty or greed, honesty and generosity are shown to be more profitable; all this without underestimating the children’s fundamental, inherent ability to grasp and comprehend with heart, mind and feelings, the whole organic being.
We hope your children enjoy Story Theatre. We hope also, that you will enjoy the simplicity, tenacity and sincerity with which this young and talented company shoulder the considerable responsibility of playing to our young audiences, whom we feel, cannot and must not be cheated.

RAYMOND HAWTHORNE
For Story Theatre

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STORY THEATRE

PROGRAMME I – 10-30 a.m.

1.   The Pied Piper of Hamelin   Old English Robert Browning
2.   Pania of the Reef   Maori Legend
3.   Master of all Masters   Old English
4.   Tom Tit Tot   American Traditional
5.   The Nightingale and the Rose   Oscar Wilde
INTERVAL
6.   What a Piece of Work is Man   Aesop’s Fable
7.   The Gentle Art of Persuasion   Aesop’s Fable
8.   The Sweet Violet and the Fern   Fathunah Gulliver
9.   A Victor Vanquished   Aesop’s Fable
10.   The Laidly Worm of Spindleston Hugh  Old English
11.   Henny Penny   Old English

PROGRAMME II – 3.00 p.m.

1.   The Cat’s Elopement   Japanese Fairy Tale
2.   Child of the Rainbow God   Maori Legend
3.   Every Man to his own Trade   Aesop’s Fable
4.   The Little Milkmaid and her Pail   Aesop’s Fable
5.   Jew in the Bush   Grimm
6.   The Children of Lir   Irish Myth
INTERVAL
7.   The Tailor who went to Heaven   Grimm
8.   Briar Rose (The Sleeping Beauty)   Grimm
9.   A Friend in Need   Aesop’s Fable
10.   La Forze del Destino   Aesop’s Fable
11.   The Emperor’s New Clothes   Hans Christian Anderson

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theatre corporate actors

TIMOTHY BARTLETT
LINDA CARTWRIGHT
SELWYN CROCKETT
JACKY EAGLE
TONY FORSTER
JUDY GIBSON
JOHN GIVINS
MAUREEN HARVEY
ANDREA KELLAND
DAVID MAHON
MARION PARRY
PAUL SAYERS
ALISTAIR TOPHAM
JENNI WARD

THEATRE CORPORATE STAFF
Artistic Director: Raymond Hawhorne [Hawthorne], Production Manager: Peter Camp, Theatre in Education Administrator: Gill Sutton, Secretary: Julia Colgan, Administrator: Alan Freeman, Assistant to Director: Richard Barker, Story Theatre Administrator: Carol Tuck, Road Manager Story Theatre: Sandy Plimmer.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The free distribution of this programme is made possible by the generosity of the advertisers Mercury Theatre, Levi Strauss.

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