Storybox Petone

For the Petone Winter Carnival Storybox wove a story based on two periods of the area’s history – European settlement in the 1840’s and the industrialisation of the 1940’s. Storybox’s aim was to capture the significant changes Petone has undergone in terms of its population, culture and industry.

We worked closely with the Local Settlers Museum, Petone Library and the New Dowse to locate visual and audio material that would become part of the work. We also interviewed various Maori people that had moved to Petone in the 1940s for the work to inform our final story. The combination of these elements became the raw material for the live performance.

The final work was a combination of animated text, stats, filmed elements from the archives, and an original soundtrack. The opening night performance was to an audience of approximately 200 people.