Look around Arts Centre

Press, 18 June 1980, Page 23

Look around Arts Centre

The ghost of Ernest Rutherford, Canterbury University’s most distinguished alumnus, will walk the quadrangles of the old university site on television next Monday, having a look at activities in what is now the Arts Centre.

John Currie, the actor, will wander among the spinners, and weavers, the rehearsing actors and the dancers, in the guise of the leading nuclear physicist during a 25-minute segment in the arts programme, “Kaleidoscope” (TV2). The piece will go over the history of the Arts Centre, and will include interviews with Russell Kerr, director of the Southern Ballet, and Elric Hooper, director of the Court Theatre.

With Rutherford, viewers will drop in on a rehearsal of Alan Ayckbourn’s “Bedroom Farce” at the Court, watch a rehearsal by six-year-old dancers, and generally nose among the creative pursuits of the Art Centre’s tenants.

Mr Riley, who last year . travelled with an Arts Council grant to look at cultural centres in other countries, said that the Arts Centre was unique for a town the size of Christchurch, and certainly to be envied by cities many times its size. At any one time a thousand people or more might be using the Arts Centre, which has about 60 tenants, about half of those being organisations. Its space at the old university site is now all taken, and it is beginning to use rooms in the nearby old Teachers’ College. The general manager of the Arts Centre, Brett Riley, is delighted with the “Kaleidoscope” effort and hopes it will bring the Art Centre’s work more to the attention of the people of Christchurch. He feels that the Arts Centre is more appreciated in Auckland and Wellington than it is in Christchurch. “Whenever I travel to other centres, people talk in terms of admiration and envy about the Arts Centre,” he said. “But. in Christchurch so many people just don’t seem to take any notice of its existence.”

Also in. next Monday’s “Kaleidoscope” will be a profile of Tom Stoppard, the young English playwright whose play, “Professional Foul” is this week’s “Friday Play.”