Artist Insight: Happy Home Road

An insight into artists and their works, courtesy of Christchurch Arts Festival, interviews by Natasha Hay.  The festival of arts, culture and entertainment is on from July 23 to August 9.

* * *

Director Mike Friend and writer Joe Bennett talk about Happy Road Home, which premieres on August 6 at the James Hay Theatre. The Lyttelton theatre-circus troupe the Loons’ show is a mix of circus, dance, music and drama.  Bennett describes it as a show that “giggles while it bleeds”.

“Comedy is cruel. And our sufferings are comic. Comedy and suffering are inseparable bedfellows. They're the stuff of being alive.”

Happy Home Road – so what's the inspiration for this?

MF: I was invited by Godfrey at Circo Arts to create a show with the second-year students in 2007. While searching for an idea I was at an art exhibition in Christchurch to see Lorelei Jenner's new work and saw this painting of a lady in a red dress with a long train crossing a forest with long thin trees. I was struck by the simplicity and theatricality of the painting, and also by the movement potential. It brought back a memory of an old unpublished 20-minute play called Epping Forest by Paul Sellar where the central character, Turner, is looking out of a window at the forest. The piece itself was absurdist, abstract and somewhat unfinished, but I liked the emptiness of the language where image could work. I guess the connections sprang from there and Whirinaki Forest was created with the Circo students.
Last year when [Festival Director] Guy Boyce asked if I had another show in mind to follow The Butler I showed him the potential of Whirinaki Forest.

The Loons have been up and running a couple of years now, based at the entertainment club you both have created in Lyttelton. Playing at the James Hay must mean things are getting bigger and better?

MF: The public seem to like what we're doing so it's great that we've been given the opportunity to create a new work at The James Hay.

From the blurb in the programme, it appears that a narrative thread isn't important.

JB: With its ingredients of dance and circus and music, Happy Home Road isn't just a play, and it certainly isn't realist theatre. But I still want it to cohere, to move as any story does from disparate elements to a satisfying resolution. I've rewritten it about a dozen times, and it will get reworked again in rehearsal. I think the narrative thread is there by now. I want it to tell a story that engages and moves the audience. But no, it isn't Coronation Street.

Joe, you have described this as a show that "giggles while it bleeds". Is this a good thing?

JB: Comedy is cruel. And our sufferings are comic. Comedy and suffering are inseparable bedfellows. They're the stuff of being alive.

Who is the show for and what's its point of difference?

JB: There is no specific audience in mind. What we hope is that people will be touched by its beauty, tickled by its absurdity, and moved by its story. As for its point of difference, well, I'm not sure that anyone has ever tried to unite dance, drama and circus within a narrative play before. It's a step into the unknown, a step off a cliff. We hope to land on a trampoline of dramatic success and bounce. 

Joe, you are viewed as a local treasure. Will Bennettophiles be surprised at this play and see another side of Joe Bennett?

JB: This show will surprise anyone who's expecting to see a newspaper column onstage. It's an entirely different medium so it calls for entirely different writing. Moreover, it's not the sort of subject that I would ever normally tackle.  Also, the show is as much visual as verbal. Yes there's a text but there's also one hell of a lot of other stuff. Mike the director and Neil Fisher the choreographer are brilliant. It's their show. I’ve just helped to provide a verbal canvas for them to paint on. They'll paint it beautifully.

Joe, is this foray into playwrighting a new trend for you?

JB: I wrote the script for the last Loon Circus theatre Company's show, The Butler. That went very nicely, but I have no ambitions to be a playwright. At the moment, at least.

You've developed here a particular niche genre – circus theatre. How have audiences responded?

MF: I worked at Circo in 2006, had a great time and invited four of the original Butler cast - Sophie, the Twins and Pascale to create a theatre/circus company to develop The Butler. We invited Tom, David, Skye and Danny on board all with differing skills to offer. We based ourselves at The Loons in Lyttelton and started to create and perform mostly cabaret/burlesque shows at this new venue to fund ourselves. I had never worked with circus performers before coming to New Zealand and my theatrical background seemed to gel with their sense of openness and danger.

The Butler has played at The Loons and The Nelson Arts Festival in 2008. It tours to Nelson, Tauranga and Auckland in October 2009. We then perform a new installation performance work at The Sculpture on the Peninsula in October. And we’ve been offered a four-week season of The Butler at The Pleasance in London in April/May next year.

JB: Everyone who came to see The Butler loved it.

Mike, tell us about your theatre vision. What spins your theatrical wheels?

MF: I guess, like any artist, you just follow your instinct with where you're at and for me at the moment its circus/theatre and now dance. How you put it all together as one coherent form and will it work? We'll know on August 6, opening night.

I've got a circus/theatre/contemporary dance concept of Macbeth floating around in my head for next year and I wish the idea would go away!  Meanwhile it's Happy Home Road and into rehearsal with the new company on July 6.

Happy Home Road
James Hay Theatre
6 & 7 August, 7.30pm
8 August, 1.00pm & 7.30pm