The director of the Christchurch Arts Festival explains how it was reinvented after the February 22 earthquake.
Philip Tremewan is director of the 2011 Christchurch Arts Festival, which last night launched its programme of events across eight weekends from August 12-October 2. Tremewan was appointed to the role in March last year, in the wake of a reported $500,000 loss for the previous festival in 2009. Then the September 4 earthquake struck, followed by the February 22 earthquake. Despite the devastation wrought on the city’s arts infrastructure, Tremewan and his team have produced a festival with many highlights, offering opportunities for a much-needed escape from the city’s problems, as well as events that touch on them in one way or another. These include the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra’s performance of Shostakovich’s 7th Symphony (invoking the survival instincts of a city under siege from the Germans rather than seismic shifts); choreographer Fleur de Thier’s Tilt (with dancers performing on a moving floor within a moveable set); the Loons theatre company’s production of Macbeth (“played out in the rubble of a crumbling state”); Christchurch Sings, featuring more than 500 members of secondary school and adult choirs on the anniversary of the September 4 earthquake; and Christchurch Memorial, a brass band and percussion concert that includes a specially commissioned new work by composer Gareth Farr that “draws on the resilience of the people of this city”.
Philip Tremewan/photo Michael Thomas
I’d imagine it’s been a bit of a baptism by fire for you as the new director of what was already a troubled festival. That wasn’t the real difficulty. What happened more was that before the February earthquake we had devised a festival that followed a very traditional format. You had, you know, 18 jam-packed days of events. Using all the central city venues and bringing in some big shows. We planned at the heart of the festival having our Crystal Palace venue in the Arts Centre and making use of the Arts Centre and the bars and creating a really nice vibe and a really nice focus for the festival. And, of course, the earthquake, as well as pulling apart the whole city, pulled apart the whole festival. So we spent several weeks just sitting there initially, somewhat stunned. But then we thought, “How can we still make this festival work having lost all the venues that we expected to use? How can we reimagine the festival?” In some ways, that was quite an exhilarating challenge. I wouldn’t want to do it again. We’ve come up with a festival that spreads over eight weekends and we’re quite interested in this as a model. We’ve had to do it this time but we’re going to be looking and seeing if it’s maybe something we do again.
What was the thinking with doing it over eight weekends rather than in one burst? There were a number of things behind our thinking. Along with the timing, we’ve of course had to look at a whole range of venues. And again that’s been a good thing. We’re part of the council’s Events Village in Hagley Park and we’re going to be relating quite closely to the Rugby World Cup stuff, which normally a festival would never do. We are programming shows where you can come and, say, hear the Phoenix Foundation before you go off to the rugby a few hundred metres away on the big screen. So we’re actually consciously programming around games in that way. As well as that, we’ve now got a festival that’s scattered around the city. We think it will reach out really nicely to people right across. We’ve got Nga Hau e Wha Marae and Aranui High School Theatre and we’ve got the Rudolph Steiner School Hall. We’re gong to be all around the city. Again, it’s going to be really interesting to see how people respond to that and to put the festival far more out there.
Did you have to do a recce of the entire city to find suitable venues? A lot of arts organisations were obviously out there looking at other venues. For all sorts of things. And we joined that and did a lot of mapping of different venues and we looked at what was going to work for our different shows. Going back to your original question [about the eight weekends]: it made it easier on our use of venues, it made it easier on our staff, and it also makes it easier on our audiences to spread it over eight weekends. Everyone we’ve spoken to is greatly relieved we’ve abandoned the traditional model. It’s really difficult in Christchurch, [as you know] if you’ve spent any time here at all, to travel, it’s a real effort to get places, and by making it weekend focused over the eight weekends we think people will be able to say, “Look, I’ll go to a theatre show this weekend, a music show next weekend.” There’s no longer the need to feel, “Okay, I’ve got show after show after show piling up on me. It’s too hard.”
So this is something you could see continuing beyond the more immediate problems? Yeah, we may well look at it as another model. Because, as you know, most festivals work on the jam-packed two- or three- week format. But maybe this is another way of doing it. We’ll just have a look at that.
Venues were one problem you had to surmount. Another one – and it’s an ongoing problem for all festivals anyway, but you would have had specific difficulties – would have been sponsorship. In Christchurch at the moment, the reverse has happened. People have been generous towards Christchurch. So, in fact, people wanted to help. I must say we’ve been really gratified at that sort of response. I don’t know whether in two years’ time itll be the same. People may be sick of Christchurch by then. But this time around it’s worked okay.
That wanting to help – did that extend to the artists you’ve got in the festival? Several groups wrote to us and said, “We’d love to come, and we’d love to perform if you can fit us into the programme.” And we did that with one or two performers. Everybody has been wanting to lend some sort of helping hand to Christchurch.
How was that when it comes to international performers? Did you have international performers lined up for the original festival who you had to let go? We had to let go some. There’s a big show going around the country at the moment called Soap. That was initially an initiative from the Christchurch Arts Festival and the Taranaki Arts Festival. But we no longer have a venue for a show like that, so we just had to reluctantly sign out of that one. Which is a pity, because it was going to be a really popular show and a lot of fun. But we just had to cut our cloth to what we can fit into the venues we have available. We can’t take a big one like that. We are bringing the Royal New Zealand Ballet; they are going into a big school auditorium, but they’re bringing their touring show. The only big venue in town that’s working is the CBS Canterbury Arena and that’s simply gigantic, of course. The New Zealand Symphony Orchestra are using that for a couple of gigs that are collaborations with the festival, but it’s too big at the other extreme [for most events].
There’s a distinctively New Zealand focus to the festival. Was that partly a result of it being difficult to attract some of the overseas people you might have wanted? We’ve been planning this festival since after that very first earthquake last September and we’ve been planning it thinking, “The city is coming together, we ought to celebrate Christchurch talent, we ought to celebrate New Zealand talent.” We also were very consciously saying, “What would set the Christchurch festival apart?” We’ve got two major festivals in this country, in Wellington and Auckland, that are decidedly big international festivals, and we’re not on a scale to rival or want to rival those. So we said, “What are we doing that’s going to make us a little different?” And we thought we wanted something that was particularly Christchurch and have a reason for people to come here.
The other thing about the festival is that there’s a strand of works that reflect the situation in the city at the moment post-earthquake. Is that something you sought or something that emerged from the artists themselves? Well, there was one dance work, for instance, Tilt, that we’d already commissioned and we were already working on, that had been a response to the first earthquake, and of course when the second big one came along it deepened and darkened somewhat. But it was already in the pipeline. We’d already been working with a number of Christchurch musicians. Around the whole Christchurch focus. So what happened was it just took on a new emphasis. We also have got our Thursday Sessions you’ll see in the programme. There are very few venues left for local performers, so we said, “Let’s have our festival club open every Thursday night and we’ll have a different local band.” Just to provide a home and good sound gear, nice lighting, a nice bar, a place for Christchurch musicians where they can enjoy the venue and audiences can enjoy them.
What do you think this festival will mean to the people of Christchurch? People are just delighted that’s something going to be on. There’s been very little to go to in the city and people are starved for some really good shows. And I also think it’s a symbol, it’s a symbol that, hey, you can get ahead, you can do something out of this, you can move on, you can rethink, you can work in some new and some different ways. There’s still a lot of heart and soul and light and warmth out there. For me, the arts are very much about bringing that heart and soul back to a really damaged city.
CHRISTCHURCH ARTS FESTIVAL, August 12-October 2.
See also “Christchurch needs a festival”, our April 9, 2011, profile of Philip Tremewan.