Decade of struggle and progress has given Court top billing

Press, 27 March 1981, Page 11

Decade of struggle and progress has given Court top billing

By

KARREN BEANLAND

, com THEHTffi

! Spending time in theatres produces fornication, intemperance, and every kind of impurity, St John Chrysostom wrote in about 388. If that is true, Christchurch must have gone through a remarkable moral degeneration in the last 10 years. Nearly 70,000 people risked their purity by attending the 22 plays presented at the Court Theatre last year.

Before the Court was established in April, 1971, a very moral Christchurch had no professional theatre.- Pos-. sibly one reason Why people have flocked to the Court since then is the change in attitudes since the fourth century. More likely, it is because the Court has shown Christchurch audiences the joy and excitement of good, professional theatre. The Court probably owes one of its greatest debts to Yvette Bromley, who undertook most of the work, and expense, in the “pioneer days.” She was the theatre's director until 1976 when she retired; fittingly she returned to direct one of the plays in the tenth birthday season, “The First Night of Pygmalion” by Richard Huggart. Yvette Bromley recalls that the idea for the theatre germinated over cups of cof-

3 fee with Mervyn Thompson in August, 1970. Thompson’s inspiration was the need for a place to put on “really good professional plays,’’ while hers was the thought that Christchurch should have a professional theatre. The first battle — one that punctuated the history of the Court for its first five years until it moved to the Arts Centre in 1976 — was to find a venue. Left to fight alone when Thompson went to Britain, Yvette Bromley spent several months trying

1 to get permission to use the Provincial Chambers. The next step was to “go public” with the idea, which she did during a television interview. The response was swift, resulting in a small group of people determined to make the theatre work. Mrs Bromley says that the response was about 50:50. Half were “terribly enthusiastic” and the other half were quite definite it would never work. Fortunately, she was too busy doing the nuts-

and-bolis jobs to listen to the pessimists. “The only way I could do it was to not think it was going to be difficult. I always did — I made up my mind to do something and then worked out how it was to be done,” she says. “It was really so much a day-to-day thing. There were so many little problems that one simply didn’t have time to worry about the really large problems — like what was going to happen if we ran out of money.” The problems she encountered were far from the high-flown artistic dilemmas popularly associated with theatre. “It seemed quite simple at first: just a question of enthusiasm, dedication, patience, and luck,” she wrote in a brochure to mark the move to the Arts Centre.

“But actually none of these qualities is worth a tin of beans against one’s knowledge and understanding of local by-laws.” . *.?

She adds a formidable list of details to be attended to before the opening night of that first production, on April 21, 1971: insurance cover, tax demands, equity payments, fire board requirements, egress officers, health inspectors, Ministry of Works investigations, earthquake risks, the signing of . leases, and obtaining a telephone and box number.

Nevertheless, “The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie,” with a cast of about seven actors and a. dozen school children, was finally presented to a welcoming Christchurch public.

Mrs Bromley says that the Provincial Chambers proved “too precious” to be a theatre — “like trying to run a pop festival at Buckingham Palace.” So in May the fledging . theatre shifted to the' Durham Street Art Gallery.

“There were too-many officials breathing down one’s neck and too much valuable property that might be damaged. One moved about with bated breath, feeling the ghost of Christchurch’s past looking over one’s shoulder and frowning at what it saw."

Not only that, but fees for the custodian and fireman required under the regulations cost $450 for four weeks. That sum represented a large chunk of the theatre’s budget. ? The young company encountered many other difficulties during its stay at the Provincial Chambers. Three times a month at the end of the performance, the entire “theatre” had to be cleare’d and heavy rostra brought back-in fOr another . user during the day. The process was repeated in reverse the next evening, Toilets presented another problem. Patrons used cloakrooms across the 1 road. The actors, who did not have

eludes many successful plays by New Zealand authors. Some of them, such as Roger Hall’s “Glide Time” and “Middle Age Spread,” Mervyn Thompson’s “O Temperance,” Joseph Musaphia’s “Mothers and Fathers,” and, of course, Bruce Mason’s “Blood of the Lamb,” rank among the theatre’s most successful productions. Plays have also been com-

time for the journey across the street, made use of bushes outside. With no facilities to make coffee at half-time, the theatre got hold of one of the first coffee-vending machines to be seen in Christchurch. Obtaining the machine was the first job that Yvette Bromley’s daughter, Elizabeth Moody, who is now one of the theatre’s leading actresses, did for the Court. However, life in the Durham Street Art Gallery, where the theatre resided for nearly a year, was not much better.

missioned from Ken Hudson, the theatre’s writer-in-resi-dence. He has done much work for the theatre-in-edu-cation programme, which aims to educate future theatre-goers. The company sees education as a very important facet of its work, and it has met an enthusiastic response from schools. , “It means that all these & ■

One actress was heard to comment that she would never have believed she would have to remove a dead cat from the toilets before going on stage. On another occasion a set of stairs collapsed as the audience was moving to the seats, and Mrs Bromley remembers the “wonderful” response of members of the audience who put the stairs back together. . Notes written on the performance sheets at the time include comments that could turn a director's hair white: “Remember to speak up oh Friday nights because of the traffic”; “Fix the cistern ih the toilet”; and “Nobody is to

children have gone into a •theatre.” Yvette Bromley says. “What staggers me is the number of people who feel slightly nervous when they go into a theatre — they are not quite sure what is going to happen to them.” The theatre has achieved much in its 10-year history, but there are still battles to be fought. Improvements planned for this year, which will cost about $30,000; include rebuilding the stage, removing more pillars from the auditorium, shifting the lighting box, and adding 50 seats to the main theatre. Among the long-term aims

walk across stage during the performance.’’ Despite the traumas, the Court kept the shows on the stage and managed to add a drama school and a theatre-in-education programme, which continues today, to its activities. ’

Complicated arrangements were also made to allow the theatre-goers to dine before the performance. Health regulations prevented, — “and quite rightly” — food being

prepared or even a dish being washed on the premises, Mrs Bromley says. So the late Leon Langley, the Christchurch restauranteur, prepared food to be taken there. With the aid of candles and dim lights, a paintspattered art studio by day was turned into a romantic dining room by night. A great day catiie in April, 1972, when the Queen Elizabeth II Arts Council an-

nounced it would give the theatre a grant. i “We had members’support all along. That was instigated at the start,” Mrs Bromley says. “But the grant brought us respectability arid sponsorship. It. was a very big step forward. The first grant was between $6OOO and $BOOO. which in those days seemed an enormous 4 amount.” f With official support came ' the setting up of the Court Theatre Trust Board to administer the theatre and its finances. Mrs Bromley says its first priority was to pay back the money she-had put in to start the theatrA “I never thought to see it back,” she adds.

are the establishment of a separate company for theatre-in-education, instead of using the actors “left over” from the main bill productions, and an actors’ training school. Finance is a bogy that will probably never go away. Compared to the first Arts Council. grant of nearly $BOOO, the $125,000 grant last year sounds generous. However, costs have risen in equal, if not higher, proportions. The budget for “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf” in 1972 was $lOOO. The theatre’s publicity Officer, Gerry

With the good news came the bad news. On the same day the Q.E.11 grant was announced, the theatre was told the Justice Department wanted its building back. The search for yet another home led the theatre to inhabit “for a brief and horrific term” what was then known as the Beggs theatrette ih Colombo Street.

“I remember rehearsing ‘A Doll’s House’ by Ibsen and I arrived one night to find four men painting all the walls black,” she says’. They, were the next tenants, members of a rock band.

Only two months passed before the company moved to. iti next site, tfie Orange Hall in Worcester Street, which has now been demolished. It was to be home to the theatre for the next three years. The theatre’s rapid growth justified the work of its

Lawrenson, says that each production last year cost about $12,000. The costs of everything that can be held have been kept at the same levels for the last two years. These include such items as setbuilding and advertising. However, the major cost, wages, is one that cannot be held. Last year the grim fact emerged that the theatre would run into deficit for the first' time. That means it will rely even more heavily on the fund-raising work of the Court Theatre Supporters Club, which now has about

determined band of supporters. The 3000 strong audience in the first year had grown to 29,000 by 1974, when 13 plays were produced.

Yet the Orange Hall was still not a real. home. Yvette Bromley says':, the . lodge, whose itiertibets W6r<s triaihly elderly people, detained the use of the upstairs area. Tuesday evening performances’ were punctuated by mysterious bumps, thumps, and hymn-singing from above: ’ . “They thought that what Was ’ going on down below was sin personified, and they used to peep in at the doors,” she says. • In January, 1976, the search for a home was over j when the Court ; Theatre• moved into its present complex at the Arts Centre. It i was the beginning of.a new era.

1000 members. The tenth birthday celebrations have been' marked this week by a frenetic programme of lunch-time productions, plays in both theatres, and an exhibition on “The Courtly Decade” iii the Centre Gallery. On April 21, the day the theatre reaches double figures, a gala performance combining drama, music, and ballet will be given. Perhaps the success of the Court can best be measured by the fact that professional theatre in Christchurch seemed an outlandish idea 10 years ago. Today, its absence would be even stranger.

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