Three entertaining weeks over for Christchurch

Press, 19 March 1984, Page 1

Three entertaining weeks over for Christchurch

Today may seem flat to some because the entertainment smorgasbord provided by the 1984 Christchurch Festival is over.

It ended last evening when the curtain fell on The Comets, an Australian absurdist theatre group and the last show on the programme. The Mayor of Christchurch, Sir Hamish Hay, said yesterday that the festival had enriched the city for the three weeks that it ran and that it would be “a bad day for Christchurch” if it did not become a twoyear event. The fringe activities in Cathedral Square and the City Mall had been a good feature, as had the floral parade, he said. Both had shown people that it was “not just highbrow.”

However Sir Hamish said that some “high spots” were needed on the programme

and that he had found the Actors Touring Company performance of Shakespeare’s “Twelfth Night” “quite outstanding.” He said he hoped that the success of this year’s festival would persuade businesses, local bodies, and the general public to support future festivals.

The organisers are unanimous that the festival was an artistic success with some shows selling out and most others attracting good crowds. Whether it succeeded financially is not yet known.

The events manager, Mr John Page, said yesterday that it would be at least six weeks until the final accounting had been done. . Asked how he felt now that it was over, he said that it was like “getting off a roller coaster.” At its height the festival had employed 12 people and had enlisted the help of “hun-

dreds of volunteers.” Mr Page was “keen that the festival happen again” in 1986 but said that it would need to be more securely funded.

The success of this one had been “too much a combination of good luck, the right people being there, Labour Department staffing, hard work, and sheer nerves,” he said. The festival director, Mr Ray Sleeman, took up the theme.

“Two things went against us — time and money,” he said.

The organisers were given less than 12 months to find acts and raise finance, but top international performers such as Kiri Te Kanawa were booked years in advance.

This meant that they had not had as much control over the programme as they would have liked, Mr Sleeman said.

“We could not go out and say, ‘Let’s bring out the Royal Shakespeare Company.’ We were very lucky that some good acts were available through the Adelaide and Perth festivals.”

He said that planning should begin now for the 1988 festival as well as the 1986 one. Mr Sleeman felt that the success of this year’s venture might ease the path for future organisers. “We had something to prove and we have done that,” he said. “We have proved that Christchurch is capable of putting on a festival of national significance.”

Financial support should be more forthcoming next time, particularly if due notice was given so that companies could be approached before they had set their budgets for the year, he said.