still s n e k c i h c life with by
D.F. Mamea
sociation Presented in as rt A s Festival with Auckland
PRODUCTION PARTNERS FUNDER
CORE FUNDER
PRINCIPAL PARTNER
PRINCIPAL FUNDERS
THANKS TO THE SUPPORTERS OF AUCKLAND THEATRE COMPANY
IN REHEARSAL
MĀNGERE ARTS CENTRE - NGĀ TOHU O UENUKU 8 – 14 MARCH ASB CUBE, ASB WATERFRONT THEATRE 17 – 24 MARCH
PERFORMERS Mama — Goretti Chadwick Puppeteer — Haanz Fa’avae-Jackson Papa — Ene Petaia CREATIVE Director — Fasitua Amosa Production Designer — John Parker Lighting Designer — Marcus McShane Sound Designer — Khalid Parkar Dramaturg — Philippa Campbell PRODUCTION Production Manager — Joel Crook Company Manager (Maternity Cover) — Eliza Josephson-Rutter Technical Manager — Andrew Furness Chicken Puppet Maker — Helen Fuller Set Builder — Frank Chekkets By arrangement with
Special thank you to ASB as the Community Outreach Partner for Still Life with Chickens. Still Life with Chickens received development assistance from Playmarket and Auckland Theatre Company. AUCKLAND THEATRE COMPANY WOULD LIKE TO THANK THE FOLLOWING FOR THEIR HELP WITH THIS PRODUCTION: Andrew Foster, ASB whānau: Mark Graham, Bernard Trevor, Cindy Wendt and the ASB North Wharf Concierge Team. The production is approximately an hour long with no interval. Please remember to switch off all mobile phones and noise-emitting devices.
Artistic Director Colin McColl
TALOFA LAVA, kia ora and welcome to the premiere season of Still Life with Chickens by D.F. Mamea. Nothing infuriates an avid gardener more than losing a hard-earned crop of greens or fruit to birds, possums, or other thieves! So, it’s a testament to David’s playwrighting skills that his Mama character moves from fury to a begrudging kind of friendship, despite the rogue chicken destroying her garden. This prize-winning work is a beautiful, beguiling and very funny story about families, loneliness and how some friendships are just clucking surprising! Goretti Chadwick has been a favourite with Auckland Theatre Company audiences for many years with stellar performances in Doubt, To Kill a Mockingbird, A Midsummer Night’s Dream and Where We Once Belonged, which she and the cast toured to festivals around New Zealand. I’m thrilled that she’s taken up the challenge of playing Mama. Her ability to be clownish one moment and deeply moving the next is perfect for this role. Huge thanks to director Fasitua Amosa, to Goretti and Haanz, to designers John Parker, Marcus McShane, Khalid Parkar and Helen Fuller, to Andrew our stage manager and tour manager, and of course to David Mamea for a delightful and moving evening in the theatre. Enjoy. Following its Auckland seasons, Still Life with Chickens will tour to Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North and Circa Theatre in Wellington.
Director Fasitua Amosa
I HOPE after you see this play you spare a thought for your mum. And if she’s at home alone with your dad, then you better give her a call. Or visit! Reminds me, I need to look into council regulations about keeping chickens in the city. Free range eggs are so expensive!
Artistic Director and Director’s Notes
Playwright D.F. Mamea
MY MOTHER didn’t keep chickens until us kids had long left home. It had been just her and my father for a couple of decades when we heard that she had been paying particular attention to a pumpkin, taking it into the house at night, and putting it outside during the day. “That woman needs something to love,” my lovely wife said, and prescribed three young chickens. And as we watched my mother feed and scold and coo at her brood, my wife suggested I write a play about it, and provided a title, gratis: Still Life with Chickens.
“That woman needs something to love,” my lovely wife said, and prescribed three young chickens. I was ambivalent: I couldn’t see any drama in it. Who wants to see an old woman talking to herself? How was I going to portray the chickens? And what about my predilection for one-word titles? The idea took seed, though. I made some notes. Emboldened, I tried my hand at some scenes. I wrote and discarded a number of opening scenes before realising that writing about my mother was well off my usual writing map: here be dragons with Sunday hats and jandals. So, I did something else for a little while and then the opening scene dropped into my head, and I wrote it all down in one breathless session. That scene is totally fictional yet it captures my mother’s spirit and character. It’s truthful but not actual. Most importantly, it gave me the beginning of a play that looked like it was going somewhere, generating places and names and events that weren’t familial hand grenades. And the rest of the play, as any writer tasked with writing a Playwright’s Note loves to brazenly lie, just wrote itself. Thanks are in order: to Creative New Zealand for its support in getting the first draft to the finish line; to Playmarket and the Adam Aiga for developing, supporting and hustling for New Zealand playwrights; to Auckland Theatre Company’s Philippa Campbell and Colin McColl who asked to read the script; and to my wife, Christina, with all my love.
Playwright’s Note
GORETTI CHADWICK
HAANZ FA’AVAE-JACKSON
D.F. MAMEA
CAST GORETTI CHADWICK Mama Still Life with Chickens will be Goretti Chadwick’s thirteenth production with Auckland Theatre Company. Performance highlights with ATC include To Kill a Mockingbird, The Good Soul of Szechuan, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Stepping Out, My Name is Gary Cooper, Where We Once Belonged, Doubt, The Rocky Horror Show, A Streetcar Named Desire and Wit. Goretti’s directing credits for ATC include Sinarella and Polly Hood in Mumuland. Goretti has performed in various film and TV roles including Vermillion – she is however more well known for her work as an actor, writer and script editor for Fresh (TVNZ). When Goretti isn’t acting, you can find her making cold process soap and body oils – highlighting ingredients sourced from around the Pacific. Goretti’s company, Le Masina, will be launching this year. HAANZ FA’AVAE-JACKSON Puppeteer Since graduating from PIPA (Pacific Institute of Performing Arts) in 2014, Haanz Fa’avae-Jackson has had an explosive introduction into both the screen and theatre scene. The young actor has been working alongside many well established creatives such as Victor Rodger, Fasitua Amosa and Rachel House. Over the years, Haanz has performed with Fresh (TVNZ), as well as a few community shows such as Meet the Fakas and The Girl from Niue Island. For Auckland Theatre Company, he has performed in The Eel & Sina and Inky Pinky Ponky. Over the past year, Haanz has found his feet in the world of film and screen, featuring in commercials, short films, and a yet to be released tele-feature In Dark Places based on the book about Teina Pora. His biggest role to date is the recently released feature film Hibiscus and Ruthless, in which he plays the pseudo intellectual Stephen Kalahi. Haanz continues to find and reach for new heights with his recently found passion for acting, hoping to inspire other young fathers who wish to pursue their dreams.
PLAYWRIGHT DAVID FA’AULIULI MAMEA Playwright David Fa’auliuli Mamea has worked on theatre, radio, television and film projects - some of which have been produced and broadcast. He has won the Adam Award for Best New Zealand Play (Still Life with Chickens, 2017), the New Zealand Writers Guild SWANZ Award for Best Play (Goodbye My Feleni, 2013), and the New Zealand Radio Award for Best Dramatic Production (Skyblue, 2013). Born and raised in Wellington, he now lives in rural Northland with his lovely wife, son, cat, dogs, ponies, kunekune pigs, and innumerable chickens, including a rooster called Ghost Dog. www.dfmamea.com
Cast & Playwright
FASITUA AMOSA
JOHN PARKER
MARCUS McSHANE
KHALID PARKAR
CREATIVE FASITUA AMOSA Director Fasitua Amosa has been an actor for 17 years. He graduated from the School of Performing and Screen Arts, UNITEC in 2002. Since then, having worked frequently for all the major theatre companies on mainbill shows and workshops, Fasitua has become a regular face in Auckland’s theatre scene, and has appeared in numerous television shows. He is a very busy voice over guy so if you haven't seen him, you've probably heard him on radio advertisements or on Auckland’s train network. In 2017 he directed a hugely successful season of Katori Hall’s Olivier Award winning play The Mountaintop. Still Life with Chickens is the second show he has directed for Auckland Theatre Company. JOHN PARKER Production Design John Parker is an award-winning set designer with a long history of designing for Auckland Theatre Company. His set designs include Red Speedo, Peer Gynt [recycled], Polo, A Shortcut to Happiness, Red, Mary Stuart, Stepping Out, The Importance of Being Earnest, The Wife Who Spoke Japanese in Her Sleep, The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee, End of The Rainbow, Sweet Charity, Doubt, Mum’s Choir, Taking Off, Equus, Caligula, The Bach, Middle Age Spread, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, Noises Off, Waiting For Godot, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, Into The Woods and The Glass Menagerie. John has also designed for The Louis Vuitton Ball and The America’s Cup Ball, Bendon’s Next to Nothing, Bellsouth Pharaohs, Precious Legacy and Peru: Gold and Sacrifice for the Auckland Museum. John was awarded a Waitakere City Millennium Medal for Services to the Community, and in 2010 he was made an Arts Laureate by the New Zealand Arts Foundation. MARCUS McSHANE Lighting Design Marcus McShane is one of New Zealand’s most prolific designers, having produced over 300 design and installation works. Still Life with Chickens is his first design for Auckland Theatre Company. In 2010, he designed Heat, a theatre piece lit by custom-built LEDs and was the world’s first emissionneutral professional theatre piece. He has won five fringe awards for visual art, two DINZ awards, and five Chapmann Tripp awards, including lighting designer of the year for 2011, 2013 and 2017. In 2015, four of his works were installed as a part of the NZ New Performance Festival in New York. In 2016, he created Four Nests for the New Zealand Festival. In 2017, he completed a permanent installation, Wash, for the Tauranga City Council. Marcus has a master’s degree in philosophy which he’s philosophical about. His interests include growing vegetables, building bicycles, and reading things worth reading. KHALID PARKAR Sound Design Born and raised in Auckland, Khalid’s first involvement with Auckland Theatre Company was as a student operator in Youth Development Program, Young & Hungry (2010). Since then he has been involved in various roles with other ATC productions and tours. Khalid is very passionate about the arts and is looking forward to working with ATC again for Still Life with Chickens. His recent credits include multi-operator for ATC’s My Own Darling, head of sound/vision and sound designer for NanoGirl Live!, an internationally touring production, assistant to the head of sound for Auckland Arts Festival 2018, and sound designer for Judge, Jury & Cookie Monster.
Creative
ASB IS PROUD TO BE THE COMMUNITY OUTREACH PARTNER FOR STILL LIFE WITH CHICKENS.