Have wrenched my ankle so instead of going for a walk on this beautiful Autumn afternoon I’m recording my March 2014 experience taking In Flagrante on tour Down South! This was actually the first tour I have set all myself – with the preliminary help of Megan Peacock-Coyle who lives and works in Oamaru at the Opera House! Thanks Megan. And thanks to CNZ for a $6000 grant to assist paying the dancers!
What a trip – 10 days on the road, 5 performances / one night stands!
We flew to Christchurch but only to pick up our rental vehicles (a station wagon and a van) and head South to Oamaru. This pic of a fire in the distance felt like a bit of a metaphor or symbolic of something !
Oamaru is a lovely old place with very cool op shops and old town area – we did our street theatre in the Marching Girls uniforms and created quite a stir – though not enough to fill the Opera House unfortunately! The people who came loved it – and its a lovely old theatre!
We stayed at a boarding house up the hill which was also very cool – the dude who owns and runs the place was inspired to do a performance for us afterwards!!! He donned a swagman outfit and did a song and dance – one of the dancers put it up on instagram!!
The first morning the view was gorgeous – the next day we departed in the pouring rain – the tail end of a cyclone hitting NZ – we travelled to Dunedin via the Moeraki Rocks. It was so wet….the others went to climb them – I stayed in the dry because I’d done it before – and we all then went to the next bay around at a pub which really does have the best Fish and Chips ever!!
Dunedin – I had decided we would stay at Port Chalmers at the Buffalo Lodge owned and run by Rona, Kilda Northcotts elder sister – brilliant place! I stayed with Kilda. The next day we did a publicity stunt in the Octagon – though it was full of tour buses unfortunately we did get a photo in the Otago Daily Times!!
The afternoon saw us travel to Wanaka. Beautiful drive!
We performed at the Lake Wanaka Centre the next day – and had a fab crowd!! They just kept arriving as door sales – yay!!
The dancers ran around the lake the next morning and then had a swim in the lake…brrrr….they are such great girls!
Then it was a huge drive way down to Invercargill! Why does Invers feel so like the end of the earth? I think its the wide streets – huge skies but strange wide streets that leave me feeling dislocated! We performed at SIT Centrestage and another great show – small but appreciative audience! I stayed with family friends ( Marg and I went to the beach…now that really felt like the end of the earth!) and the others were at a motel – the only time I accommodated them in standard accom!
The next day we went to Gore (roll your ‘rrs’ here please) and we actually liked it as a small town – again a lovely old theatre, the SBS St James but again a small house but very appreciative! Straight after the show we drove back to Dunedin and Port Chalmers to be there for our final show as part of the Dunedin Fringe Festival and get a sleep in in the morning!
The Mayfair is pretty amazing – another lovely old theatre! This photo is a bit out of focus – a reflection of how I was feeling by the end of this road trip and performance tour!!
This time the bookings were good, and good door sales, so it was an excited audience of nearly 400 we performed for! They were very vocal in their appreciation also!
We had a quite Sunday and left about mid afternoon to drive to the airport. Before we left Kilda asked if she could perform her Sally
Rodwell ( Red Mole) m
onlogue for us – which was quite wonderful, nuts but fab!
As we flew out the next day we heard we were nominated in the Best Music and Cabaret Awards – sadly the musician won. Phil Davison plays and improvises on an amazing bass saxophone so I didn’t mind losing to him – it was cool we were nominated! The review the next day was pretty drear – unfortunately she saw it all as just a show for titillating the males in the audience whereas I see it as exactly the opposite – a feminist satiric comment on how we are expected or forced to be in our society! I much preferred the review we got in Hamilton for that reason – it was a thoughtful review which I deeply appreciated.
After 4 days back in Auckland we went to Whangarei and performed in Forum North – nice theatre where Limbs performed the opening event – I was commissioned to make a bi – cultural work – so I made Warrior. featuring Alfred Williams….but thats another story…..
What have we gained from performing 8 shows in 7 centres? We are certainly an efficient troupe now – setting up is organised, the dancers are great – we even make time for a warmup! Jamie – the tech we took on tour this time was fantastic – the dancers really appreciated him and felt that he ‘had their backs’! I really like the order we performed this tour! The pieces are well set up for maximum effect – dark or comedic! The new dancer – Georgie Goater – fitted in brilliantly, they all worked professionally and in good cheer, nobody was injured
…thank you dancers!!!!
Next performance is Galatos on May 23rd….getting good bookings already…..excited to have Megan Hughes join us for these performances!!
MaryJane O'Reilly 