New theatre should be a ‘house of story-telling’
5th April 2008
One of the things that makes us human is the desire to hear and tell stories. From the raconteur in the local pub to Hollywood movie moguls, story telling takes and holds our attention. “Tell me a story” was one of the first complete sentences my children learned to say. And, like all parents, we told them stories: about our childhood, about our family, about heroes and villains, about adventures real and imagined.
Stories populate the imagination. They help us make sense of our world. They teach language and the codes of behaviour of our community. They provide comfort in defeat and give us words to celebrate victories.
In our lifetime technology has allowed story telling to flourish in ways we could never have imagined. Television, movies, music and internet expand the story teller’s art in glorious, digital techno-wizardry. Story telling has become industrialised, with vast fortunes earned and spent to fuel this most simple and fundamental human need.
On Thursday evening I had the pleasure of being entertained by story tellers at Ashburton College’s Festival of the Spoken Word. For 15 years the Festival has showcased the talented, the eager and the just plain hopeful among our young poets and performers. Sly, shy or swashbuckling they step into the lights to make us laugh or cry, to make us sit up and take notice, to make us think.
I have attended the Festival of the Spoken Word many times in recent years. I have observed young performers grow from timid 13 year olds to highly accomplished and, occasionally, brilliant actors and orators. I am always entertained and often awed by the apparent ease with which they tackle the most daring subjects, from Shakespeare to The Flight of the Conchords.
As Ashburton’s new theatre nears completion it is exciting to think we may finally have a venue to match the talent in our district. Shakespeare told us “all the world’s a stage” but these days actors and singers can no longer expect to attract audiences to street corners or draughty church halls. Audiences expect to sit comfortably in a theatre that has a few bells and whistles.
But bells and whistles come at a price and I notice that sometime in the past few months the new theatre has become the Ashburton Trust Events Centre. I am sure the new name reflects the Trust’s financial commitment to the project, both in funding the construction of the building and supporting its future operations. I believe the Trust will be a major user of the facility.
All this is good. The Trust does an excellent job in Ashburton. It is probably the only organisation in the district with the management expertise and financial muscle to make the theatre commercially viable.
My concern, which is shared by others, is that the move from a theatre to an ‘events centre’ will place the new facility beyond the reach of many local performers. Will the venue’s programme be filled with ‘events’ (conferences, trade shows and promotions) to the exclusion of theatre?
Already some local groups have become concerned that even if they can find a slot in the centre’s timetable they may not be able to afford the charges. A subsidised rate for local groups has been discussed but, as far as I am aware, no assurances have been made that the centre will be affordable to local groups.
In my view the new theatre should remain, first and foremost, a theatre – a house of storytelling. Yes, we have many ways of feeding our human desire for stories, but books, movies, DVDs and the internet fall short on two counts: they generally tell other people’s stories and they are essentially private.
Nothing matches live theatre as a shared experience of story-telling and as an opportunity for our stories to be performed by our people. I hope the Ashburton Trust Events Centre will become a place that excites us, that we become fond of for the store of memories it builds over the years. I hope we can balance commerce with community.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Chinese Actions in Tibet are Wrong
22nd March 2008
Twenty years ago as a young broadcaster I toured China with a polyglot group of kiwis. We were guests of a Chinese government that was just getting the hang of managing the outside world. Our party included a couple of MPs (both of whom, by the way, were seeking re-election), some trade unionists, businessmen, radical Maori, lesbian feminists and a boy scout.
Our chaperone was Mr Hu. Mr Hu had a gold tooth and chain-smoked – to the delight of the trade unionists. Mr Hu smoothed our passage through the Great Hall of the People, Mao Tse Tung’s mausoleum, dark satanic mills, the terracotta army and an apartment block exclusively for one-child families.
Mr Hu was a good party man in every sense. He drank us under the table each night while never forgetting his duty to communism. He was courteous and professional, but one thing baffled him. He could not understand multi-culturalism. At official functions he became visibly agitated while we mihi-ed, chanted and laboured through a litany of introductions. Why didn’t we unite and speak with one voice, he asked. Why did we show so little respect to our leaders - the politicians?
There is a luxury in totalitarian states of seeing the world in black and white. Power that resides in the barrel of a gun and not a ballot box makes absolute sense to the person holding the gun. When that power has been hard-won the rightness of it assumes a moral authority. In the West this was called the Divine Right of Kings. The Chinese were more prosaic: they called it the Mandate of Heaven. Traditionally in China this mandate resided in the emperor and his family. When that family lost its grip on power the Chinese believed the gods passed the mandate to whoever was strong enough to take over. It’s a familiar tale – to the victor go the spoils.
Mr Hu’s frustrations with our group’s messy multi-culturalism were the product of the black and white world in which he lived. I enjoyed Mr Hu and greatly admired what I saw in China, but I found his discomfort satisfying. In our stumbling way we were demonstrating to Mr Hu our commitment to human rights, particularly minority rights.
I’ve been thinking about Mr Hu this week as the stories of violent protest rolled out of Tibet. I’m sure these stories don’t air in China but I feel confident that if he saw them Mr Hu would absolutely approve of the actions of the Chinese government. It would seem perfectly natural to him that China asserts its authority over the Tibetans. He may even be puzzled that the Tibetans would challenge that authority. Can’t they appreciate the benefits of being part of China? Why do they cling to their feudal beliefs and out-moded practices?
Tibet suffers the same arrogance and destructiveness from China that colonised populations have endured for centuries. It’s the story of Native Americans in the Wild West, of Maori in colonial New Zealand, of Africans down through the ages.
The Chinese cloak their theft of Tibet in a bogus historical legitimacy, claiming it has traditionally been part of China. Their invasion of Tibet in the early 1950s was largely ignored by the international community. Tibet was a backward and useless little corner of a world that was preoccupied with the Cold War.
While China remained poor it had only limited power to realise its ambitions in Tibet. Tibet’s leaders were driven out of the country, replaced by Chinese administrators and soldiers, but daily life for most Tibetans was endurable and the country remained cut off.
China’s recent prosperity has changed things dramatically. Massive road and rail projects have connected Tibet to China and the world. China has flooded Tibet with settlers, bulldozed Tibetan villages and replaced them with factories and high-rise apartments. The intention is to edge out Tibetan culture and language, break up its institutions and gradually erase its identity.
Perhaps China has been emboldened by the Tibetans’ Buddhist pacifism. The events of the past week will have done little to shake that conviction. A few hundred protesting monks can do little damage to Chinese authority. Unless, that is, they find support from more powerful friends.
New Zealand has only a small voice but we’ve proved that when we lay aside our fears of standing up to bullies, when we act from our deepest convictions, we can make a big noise.
In my view this is one of those times. I think we should, politely but firmly, tell China that its actions in Tibet are wrong. To publicly demonstrate our beliefs is as vital to maintaining our own dignity and freedom as it is to defending the dignity and freedom of the people of Tibet.
22nd March 2008
Twenty years ago as a young broadcaster I toured China with a polyglot group of kiwis. We were guests of a Chinese government that was just getting the hang of managing the outside world. Our party included a couple of MPs (both of whom, by the way, were seeking re-election), some trade unionists, businessmen, radical Maori, lesbian feminists and a boy scout.
Our chaperone was Mr Hu. Mr Hu had a gold tooth and chain-smoked – to the delight of the trade unionists. Mr Hu smoothed our passage through the Great Hall of the People, Mao Tse Tung’s mausoleum, dark satanic mills, the terracotta army and an apartment block exclusively for one-child families.
Mr Hu was a good party man in every sense. He drank us under the table each night while never forgetting his duty to communism. He was courteous and professional, but one thing baffled him. He could not understand multi-culturalism. At official functions he became visibly agitated while we mihi-ed, chanted and laboured through a litany of introductions. Why didn’t we unite and speak with one voice, he asked. Why did we show so little respect to our leaders - the politicians?
There is a luxury in totalitarian states of seeing the world in black and white. Power that resides in the barrel of a gun and not a ballot box makes absolute sense to the person holding the gun. When that power has been hard-won the rightness of it assumes a moral authority. In the West this was called the Divine Right of Kings. The Chinese were more prosaic: they called it the Mandate of Heaven. Traditionally in China this mandate resided in the emperor and his family. When that family lost its grip on power the Chinese believed the gods passed the mandate to whoever was strong enough to take over. It’s a familiar tale – to the victor go the spoils.
Mr Hu’s frustrations with our group’s messy multi-culturalism were the product of the black and white world in which he lived. I enjoyed Mr Hu and greatly admired what I saw in China, but I found his discomfort satisfying. In our stumbling way we were demonstrating to Mr Hu our commitment to human rights, particularly minority rights.
I’ve been thinking about Mr Hu this week as the stories of violent protest rolled out of Tibet. I’m sure these stories don’t air in China but I feel confident that if he saw them Mr Hu would absolutely approve of the actions of the Chinese government. It would seem perfectly natural to him that China asserts its authority over the Tibetans. He may even be puzzled that the Tibetans would challenge that authority. Can’t they appreciate the benefits of being part of China? Why do they cling to their feudal beliefs and out-moded practices?
Tibet suffers the same arrogance and destructiveness from China that colonised populations have endured for centuries. It’s the story of Native Americans in the Wild West, of Maori in colonial New Zealand, of Africans down through the ages.
The Chinese cloak their theft of Tibet in a bogus historical legitimacy, claiming it has traditionally been part of China. Their invasion of Tibet in the early 1950s was largely ignored by the international community. Tibet was a backward and useless little corner of a world that was preoccupied with the Cold War.
While China remained poor it had only limited power to realise its ambitions in Tibet. Tibet’s leaders were driven out of the country, replaced by Chinese administrators and soldiers, but daily life for most Tibetans was endurable and the country remained cut off.
China’s recent prosperity has changed things dramatically. Massive road and rail projects have connected Tibet to China and the world. China has flooded Tibet with settlers, bulldozed Tibetan villages and replaced them with factories and high-rise apartments. The intention is to edge out Tibetan culture and language, break up its institutions and gradually erase its identity.
Perhaps China has been emboldened by the Tibetans’ Buddhist pacifism. The events of the past week will have done little to shake that conviction. A few hundred protesting monks can do little damage to Chinese authority. Unless, that is, they find support from more powerful friends.
New Zealand has only a small voice but we’ve proved that when we lay aside our fears of standing up to bullies, when we act from our deepest convictions, we can make a big noise.
In my view this is one of those times. I think we should, politely but firmly, tell China that its actions in Tibet are wrong. To publicly demonstrate our beliefs is as vital to maintaining our own dignity and freedom as it is to defending the dignity and freedom of the people of Tibet.
The (Narrow) Window of Opportunity
8th March 2008
I have good news: we can save the world and ourselves. This is the message from a group of Very Brainy People at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They recently put their pointy heads together and considered all the major problems facing humanity and the globe: energy supply, terrorist threats, natural disasters, pandemic diseases. Voila! They came up with answers.
Take energy, for example. How do we secure a supply of clean, renewable energy for all? Simple: all we need to do is capture one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the planet and we’ll have all the energy we could hope for. Solution: “this will become feasible with nanoengineered solar panels and and nanoengineered fuel cells.” To think we’ve been angsting about peak oil and nuclear waste and these guys solve the entire problem with one slick move off the back of the scrum.
But that’s only the entrée. The idea that really made me sit up and take notice was their forecast for personal health. They claim advances in genetic technology mean that “within one or two decades, we will be in a position to stop and reverse the progression of disease and ageing, resulting in dramatic gains in health and longevity.”
Now there’s a thought to conjure with. If I was ten years older I’d be trying to pin them down on whether it would be one decade or two – that would be uppermost in my mind. But I’m 50 - only 50 - so I figure even at the conservative end of the projection, two decades, I’m in the zone. Like the boy racer aiming for the gap in the traffic I just have to stay straight, keep my foot down, hold my nerve and I’ll be through and into the wide blue yonder. If I can keep ahead of cancer and coronaries until I’m 70 I can look forward to, what? another 50 years? another 100?
It’s a dizzying prospect. Imagine what I could do with another 50 years of healthy living. I could travel endlessly, write and read books, be entertained with movies and TV programmes made by people not even born yet. I could enjoy the company of several generations of descendants, becoming a great-great-great-grandad. The window of opportunity opens wide.
But wait, there’s a downside to a world peopled with millions of modern-day Methuselahs. For a start, who’s going to support us? Like the man who is assured by his doctor he has 30 more years only to be told by his accountant he has just 20 there is a gap between vision and reality.
I have a beautiful financial plan, as finely balanced as a trimble. I accumulate capital for another 10 to 15 years then use it up over a similar period. That takes me to 80 – beyond that is blue sky. So, if technology is going to allow me to live until 120 do I plan to remain in the work force until, say, 90 or 100? Do I have to keep getting up early and going to the office for another 40-50 years?
And what about all the stuff we haul through life with us? Do I have to maintain a home and garden for another half century or more? That’s a lot of painting and lawn-mowing. Do I have to get used to the idea of working my way through another 10 or 12 motor vehicles?
Maybe not. Perhaps the scientific wonderland of the future will include self-painting houses and cars that never wear out.
And then there’s the simple human need for company. Will my spouse and my friends also make it through the window of opportunity? Or will my long twilight see me shuffling around Tinwald as a lonely remnant of a lost age, the butt of jokes from middle aged octogenarians.
I don’t blame the scientists for the flaws in their plan. The job of scientists is to conjure visions of perfection. Where my window of opportunity narrows is at that point where perfect science rubs up against human nature.
Individuals and societies are a tangle of half-grasped opportunities, of false starts and blind alleys. We’ve had 35 years since the oil crises of the 70s to solve the problem of clean energy, yet the world’s major economies continue to be run by a self-serving oilocracy. We could have solved world poverty a hundred times over but we made the mistaken of relying on the market to do it. Gene therapy could be a reality today except the medical research companies are competing instead of co-operating.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll finish reading The Guardian, then step out into my day and simply enjoy myself. Why don’t you do the same.
8th March 2008
I have good news: we can save the world and ourselves. This is the message from a group of Very Brainy People at the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They recently put their pointy heads together and considered all the major problems facing humanity and the globe: energy supply, terrorist threats, natural disasters, pandemic diseases. Voila! They came up with answers.
Take energy, for example. How do we secure a supply of clean, renewable energy for all? Simple: all we need to do is capture one part in 10,000 of the sunlight that falls on the planet and we’ll have all the energy we could hope for. Solution: “this will become feasible with nanoengineered solar panels and and nanoengineered fuel cells.” To think we’ve been angsting about peak oil and nuclear waste and these guys solve the entire problem with one slick move off the back of the scrum.
But that’s only the entrée. The idea that really made me sit up and take notice was their forecast for personal health. They claim advances in genetic technology mean that “within one or two decades, we will be in a position to stop and reverse the progression of disease and ageing, resulting in dramatic gains in health and longevity.”
Now there’s a thought to conjure with. If I was ten years older I’d be trying to pin them down on whether it would be one decade or two – that would be uppermost in my mind. But I’m 50 - only 50 - so I figure even at the conservative end of the projection, two decades, I’m in the zone. Like the boy racer aiming for the gap in the traffic I just have to stay straight, keep my foot down, hold my nerve and I’ll be through and into the wide blue yonder. If I can keep ahead of cancer and coronaries until I’m 70 I can look forward to, what? another 50 years? another 100?
It’s a dizzying prospect. Imagine what I could do with another 50 years of healthy living. I could travel endlessly, write and read books, be entertained with movies and TV programmes made by people not even born yet. I could enjoy the company of several generations of descendants, becoming a great-great-great-grandad. The window of opportunity opens wide.
But wait, there’s a downside to a world peopled with millions of modern-day Methuselahs. For a start, who’s going to support us? Like the man who is assured by his doctor he has 30 more years only to be told by his accountant he has just 20 there is a gap between vision and reality.
I have a beautiful financial plan, as finely balanced as a trimble. I accumulate capital for another 10 to 15 years then use it up over a similar period. That takes me to 80 – beyond that is blue sky. So, if technology is going to allow me to live until 120 do I plan to remain in the work force until, say, 90 or 100? Do I have to keep getting up early and going to the office for another 40-50 years?
And what about all the stuff we haul through life with us? Do I have to maintain a home and garden for another half century or more? That’s a lot of painting and lawn-mowing. Do I have to get used to the idea of working my way through another 10 or 12 motor vehicles?
Maybe not. Perhaps the scientific wonderland of the future will include self-painting houses and cars that never wear out.
And then there’s the simple human need for company. Will my spouse and my friends also make it through the window of opportunity? Or will my long twilight see me shuffling around Tinwald as a lonely remnant of a lost age, the butt of jokes from middle aged octogenarians.
I don’t blame the scientists for the flaws in their plan. The job of scientists is to conjure visions of perfection. Where my window of opportunity narrows is at that point where perfect science rubs up against human nature.
Individuals and societies are a tangle of half-grasped opportunities, of false starts and blind alleys. We’ve had 35 years since the oil crises of the 70s to solve the problem of clean energy, yet the world’s major economies continue to be run by a self-serving oilocracy. We could have solved world poverty a hundred times over but we made the mistaken of relying on the market to do it. Gene therapy could be a reality today except the medical research companies are competing instead of co-operating.
So here’s what I’m going to do. I’ll finish reading The Guardian, then step out into my day and simply enjoy myself. Why don’t you do the same.
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