10th Anniversary Press

From Urban Press

This article was first published in the Waikato Times.

In on the Act

Ten years ago, as David Foote was being driven through an industrial Auckland suburb, storage facilities and warehouses raced past his eyes. He blinked and stared, blinked and stared.

Out of the doldrums sprang a vineyard and, just like that, it disappeared, the greyness returned and the monotony continued.

"I was like, 'Ah! It's an urban vineyard.' And I sort of thought it carried with it connotations of vitality amidst a grey landscape."

From that drive came a name for the burgeoning theatre company and Foote returned to Hamilton to try to stamp it on the local theatre scene.

Foote is an anthropologist, a playwright, a self-described "esoterist".

His eyes close when he speaks, he trails off mid-sentence, he repeats questions back before he answers them.

"Am I weird? I don't think I'm statistically normal by any stretch of the imagination, but I have no desire to be. I think there are things about me that are odd. It's odd for a man to be interested in theatre in this culture, it's aah, umm, it's ... " And he's gone.The cast of Unbearable Things.

Foote moved to Hamilton from Auckland in 1996 to study computer science and get rich. But joining the uni theatre group changed all that and he enrolled in a theatre studies major.

"I wasn't really enjoying computer studies at all. It was driving me crazy and I came close to having a mini breakdown I had to change my perception of success from something based on money to something based on happiness and creative fulfilment."

Having rubbed shoulders with top theatre practitioners during the three-year theatre degree and with a head full of grandiose ideas, Foote was confident he had all the tools necessary to make a career out of his passion.

In 2001, he wrote and directed his first full-length play, Skin Game, which was also the first play under the Urban Vineyard banner.

"It was an exploration of myth," he says and can laugh about the fact that none of the audience had the foggiest idea what it was about.

"My first plays were quite obscure and they were difficult for people to get. Skin Game was widely touted as being very well written but incredibly hard to understand."

Foote took the play to Wellington and stayed there for 18 months.

He returned to Hamilton in 2003 and his next play, Bone China Staircase, was performed at the Meteor Theatre.

Waikato Times reviewer Gail Pittaway wrote that the play was "both clever and disturbing" and Foote says that was apt. But it is not her comments that have Foote flustered still, eight years later.

"One of the worst experiences, one of the things that makes me the most angry," he says as he begins to tap his fingers on the table in front of him, "a beloved figure in Hamilton was invited to come to the final night and afterwards he came to the cast party and told the cast that it was the worst thing that he'd ever seen. Ad Feedback

"That made me really angry because this is a person who is involved in theatre himself and should know better than to piss on people's efforts like that, especially on the last night."

It was Richard O'Brien, of Rocky Horror Show fame.

The man is entitled to his opinion, Foote says. "But I just wish he'd had a little more tact, that's all. It's certainly a memory that has stuck with me."

Striking a balance

Foote soon realised he needed to "strike a balance between artistically fulfilling work and work that would bring in the punters".

Since this revelation, his work became more accessible and audience numbers reflected the change.

It took him a lot longer to concede that he needed a "support career" because his plays, though earning him praises, were not filling his pockets with cash and he had had enough working for peanuts as a restaurant kitchen cleaner.

In 2009, Foote decided to return to university and work toward a PhD in anthropology.

He was working part-time as a tutor and came across materials about the 1971 Stanford Prison experiment, which gave him the idea for Fractur the play he says may be his best yet.

"You'd be hard pressed to find another play like that one. Plus, it caused some controversy and we got really good reviews."

The controversy stemmed from the fact that Foote had set out to "create a world for the play to sit in that blurred with the real world".

In other words, he wanted to alienate the audience and leave them wondering if what they had witnessed was real or fake. The wool was pulled over the eyes of "a certain media figure who shall remain nameless", who did a radio interview with cast members and reviewed the play, presuming the whole thing was true.

"She completely bought into the whole thing, hook, line and sinker, and she got quite shirty because we had lied to her. She said: 'I'm not upset for me we have an obligation to our audience and you should have told us and let us decide if we would cover it.' "

The journalist had a point.

But so does Foote, who has the finger out, tapping again as he defends his stance. "I emailed her back and was very conciliatory, but my feeling was that if we'd have told her, she either would not have covered it, or she would've covered it in such a way it would've been obvious to the audience it would've been nudge, nudge, wink, wink." There is no mistaking the fact Foote enjoyed the drama that played out as a result of his experimental play the frosty reception he received showed his work had succeeded in challenging moral frameworks that audiences have been engaging with since the introduction of reality television or, as Foote puts it, "atrocity entertainment".

After 10 years, the writer/director has moved on from his early methods of "bashing the audience over the head with a stick", but he still has things to say and lately he's been making some noise on the political front.

He is one of the driving forces behind a campaign to make the Meteor Theatre cheaper and more accessible to theatre groups from Hamilton and beyond, with hopes it will one day become the city's creative centre. "I want it to be a place where people can reliably go on a Thursday, Friday or Saturday night and know there will be something on."

At the moment, few groups can afford the full-day hire rate of $800 and he says there is a risk "we will end up with a monoculture in Hamilton" as amateur groups are pushed into smaller and more remote locations, or stop performing altogether.

He has joined other members of the theatre community, made a submission to Hamilton City Council and has created a Facebook group dedicated to the issue, but admits the actions may be futile.

"I have doubts about whether anything we have said will make an impact, or if the council is listening, but I think it's worthwhile making that noise."

Soon that noise will be minus his voice. He has received a scholarship to travel to China next month to spend a year there as part of his doctoral studies. He'll be taking Urban Vineyard with him.

But he's not planning to slip away quietly. He has just wrapped up his 10th play, "Unbearable Things", "the tragic love story of two New Zealand women in the 1930s", where his lead female stripped to her underwear in the opening act. He doesn't think the content shocked, saying audiences would have been titillated, at most, by some of the risque content.

Any decisions regarding the Meteor Theatre will find their way to him while he studies in China. "It will be difficult not to stick my beak into a number of pies and that's one of them."

He fully intends returning to the city he calls home after the year abroad.

"It's not so much the city I feel I fit in, it's the creative community that underlies the city," Foote says.

"And most people in Hamilton are not aware it even exists. People complain there's nothing to do in Hamilton, but they just scratch the surface."

And just like that, he's gone.

(Aimie Cronin 2010)