PO Box 2 Blackball

I’ve just had an intense week of theatre. I’ve always liked the European’s concept of ‘encounter’, different from ‘meeting’ or ‘festival’ – it involves contamination, moving outside one’s safe space, no matter how complex that space may be, in order to have a dialogue with ‘another’ at a deep level. So I had thought to spend a summer holiday week in Blackball having an encounter: with other practitioners, with a classic text as the focus, and to use the old miners’ bathhouse as a venue. The actors would need to start ‘off script’ and we’d go from there.  The bathhouse is both a bleak concrete-walled space (and is semi derelict, having lost its roof, windows etc), yet is surrounded by beech forest and evocative light and cloud. It was also the place of relaxation, banter and after-work dialogue. The initial idea of Hamlet failed to get funding but Beckett’s Endgame seemed do-able. Free theatre’s Peter Falkenberg and Marian McCurdy were keen, as was a great niece, Emily, recently graduated from NASDA, plus three of us Kiwi/Possum elders.

We assembled at the Brian Wood cottage on a beautiful summer day and then it began to rain, and rain, and rain. We rehearsed in the garage and then when that became overcome by thunderstorms, in the Working Men’s Club. Beckett’s a strange one. Freud discussed the similarity between the artist and the schizophrenic. The play is absurd, a series of inkblots in a way (those random patterns used by analysts to begin clients free associating), so the text was both very difficult to learn by rote and it began to generate personal associations: adopted family, invalids I have known, retirement… and the text is constructed with transition pieces of pure psychosis- or is it simply fine art trickery – make a proposition, negate it, negate the negation. The mysteries grew- with suddenly a child abuse reading possible. And then the biblical allusions. The plot is remote but one can piece some things together: a decrepit gentry family on some Russian steppe presumably took in a peasant boy and groomed him for higher things, but when the master becomes a cranky invalid, the boy is abused. Master and servant now play out a daily sado-masochistic game. When will it end? Toss in a post nuclear holocaust environment, remove any logic and it is a bleak yet comic piece.

An intense week’s rehearsal tested memory and resolve. Thunderstorms and lightning struck the house, but there was finally a lightening in the weather and a dress rehearsal in the bathhouse was possible, accompanied by a setting sun and rising moon. For the first performance the rain returned more gently, but we had tarps for a brave audience and a special encounter took place. A second more normal night and then to a theatre in Hokitika. I got out the lighting gear to find the old cat had been shitting in the corner – I had been wondering what the smell was. Playing inside was easy. It was like a marathon runner being given a mile to run. We were tired but that can lead to a greater focus. It was a smart audience and we had the satisfaction of achieving the whole art object.

And Emily, the graduate, had flowered as a performer- from song and dance to this. From timid to certain. She has learned the most important acting lesson, to have a through line and to tell her story as a performer.

We drove back through the night, feeling that moment of plenitude that real encounter brings.

A poignant moment as my daughter and her partner walk through the airport departure gate on their way to Sydney, after living down the road for a decade so that we were a part of the characteristic Blackball extended family. Even more poignant as she is hapu with the baby due in May. At the same time it’s absolutely right for them to explore some change – she’s established herself professionally and needs time to herself; he has family and work in Aussie; it is only three hours away and as I helped them pack and organise things we felt closer than ever… nevertheless.

Meanwhile grandchildren from another part of the family have been staying with the insistent energy of children, the dog’s got a buggered knee, we went to the last Tui Folk Festival where the nostalgia of folk music could be given full reign; the Zapatistas issue an extraordinary manifesto for the world to sign up to; the US is as politically crazy as ever; viruses rule and I learn a part in Beckett’s Endgame, Beckett being a writer who does absurdity remarkably well. We will, with suitable absurdity, be performing the piece in the old Blackball bathhouse.

At a loose end reading wise I picked up from the bookshelves Knight’s Drama and Society in the Age of Jonson (a relic from student days), to find myself immersed in the story of early capitalism: of land becoming commodified, of the riches brought to England by early colonising ventures, of sheep farming leading to enclosure and the wool trade which in turn led to the industrial revolution, of early entrepreneurs with crazy schemes, of the breaking down of the manor house subsistence where an estate could provide for a thousand people and where money was irrelevant.

My daughter’s shift has involved the selling of house and cars. I had an ugly experience getting an assessment at Turners: ‘Scruffy and over capitalised’ was the verdict – it’s carried dogs around a bit and to keep it going involved the spending of four grand a couple of years ago – but it carries a lot of memories. Their house had a couple of dogs buried there… you can’t sell a life, but that is what we have to do.

In Europe there is a movement to take land and houses and culture out of the marketplace. A land trust buys up land with the promise that it will never be sold. People may build upon it and ownership of built property can change hands but the land is sacrosanct. Another trust is buying houses and apartments with the same promise – these properties will never be sold.

Meanwhile my daughter and partner have their worldly possessions in a storage container – goods extracted from the market. So we enter and leave the market place, some people stay there all the time, buying and selling as a life purpose. Perhaps the market and the virus are one and the same paradigm.

So, one strange year has run its course, another begins and one day Beckett’s prophecy will be fulfilled: ‘Time was never, time is over, reckoning finished, story ended.’