Upfront
Shane Bosher
by Tim Watkin
Impresario.
Actor, director, manager … Shane Bosher’s doing pretty well for a guy so “difficult” that he was told he’d never work in the business. He even looks a bit like Orson Welles. Fortunately for him, the Auckland theatre scene has matured since he took charge of the fringe Silo Theatre in 2002. Last year reviewers raved. Again. Fortunately for theatre-lovers, reports of his imminent departure for South-east Asia seem to have been premature. Over juice at Stark’s café on Queen St, the conversation has been about how the media eats its own.
Does the talent eat itself in your business? There are a lot of hot young things at the moment, people like Mia Blake and Antony Starr and David van Horn doing quite a range of things. But I think a lot of people have fallen through the cracks because, while they’re very good actors, because of the ever-increasing commercialisation of the industry, someone who is a bit overweight or doesn’t fit in a certain box doesn’t get the opportunity that other more commercial faces have. That’s one of the shames about where the industry’s at. I don’t think the commercialisation thing will ever go away. But I think we have a responsibility to look after those people and grab those people.
Why? Otherwise you get to the point where you have a whole lot of rail-thin actresses in their forties and – in the words of the film industry – “nobody to cast as the mother”. I’ve got a particular actor I look at and go “I’ve just got nothing for you right now. I want to find something for you, but if you could just hold on for 10 more years I’ll have a whole heap of roles.” And that’s frustrating.
I don’t mean to be rude, but you’re not 18 and pretty. How did you get through? (Laughs). I got out of drama school and worked for a bit as an actor and producer, and I got to a point where a lot of the stuff I was doing was strictly comedy. I was the guy who got hauled out to be the George Costanza guy and fill that archetype. But I suppose as my career progressed, the need to move on progressed as well. My need to direct and desire to run a company became very strong.
When did you fall in love with theatre? It all started in Hamilton. I was in everything from Oliver! to A Chorus Line. But alongside that, I also started working with a semi-professional company called Electra. I hung out with them when I was 15, 16, doing things like Richard III and Hamlet. It was your old “work for nine weeks and get $75 at the end”. Then I wander off to drama school, and that was an interesting time …
Word is you were a complete prima donna. No. I was in that early-twenties-not-putting-up-with-the-world stage, where I think my catch-phrase was “there is no such thing as neutrality”. Now that I’m 30, I can see what a fraudulent view that was. And my class was not a happy one. We had the highest attrition rate ever and didn’t really get on. At all. Ever.
Was it just an early-twenties thing, or do you need to be rebellious to make good theatre? I think my bad time at drama school strengthened my resolve within the industry. There were two people in my class who were marched into administration offices and told that we would never work in the industry because we had attitude problems, and we’re the only two people who have sustained careers. And I’ve never waited tables.
So how did you get to be running Silo so young? I worked in Wellington for years, at Downstage and Circa, and followed the route. You do play after play after play after play after play, and I felt I was on a treadmill. And I got to a point where I started becoming difficult again and started challenging why certain plays were being programmed. [I spent six months touring with the New Zealand Actors Company and three weeks on the dole and] the Silo was looking to employ a manager. It started incredibly well under Sharon Duncan but, after she left, the Silo went into the Dark Ages for a few years, where the infrastructure just fell apart.
And that’s where you came in? Yeah, I thought: “Cool, it’ll be a 30-hour-a-week contract” and suddenly I found myself doing 110 hours a week. There was a $20,000 deficit, people hadn’t been paid and it was incredibly stressful … We started a director development programme, and that was incredibly successful, so the next year we moved onto actor development programmes. We looked at specific graduates and started to push them into contemporary works that weren’t New Zealand works – things like Unidentified Human Remains, Shopping and F---ing and Closer. Plays that were finished and ready and offered huge challenges and people started coming in droves.
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