"Even under level 2 you can't put on a show for professional theatre, whereas in Waihi 100 people in an audience is a good house."
Wright is among actors making the most of a revival in community theatre, available to host workshops that are often funded with help from the Creative Communities and other grants.
In Whitianga, Jennifer Ward-Lealand will be hosting a workshop with the Offbeat Theatre Company as soon as Auckland's Covid levels allow her through.
Amateur actors are benefiting from the return home of some of New Zealand's biggest actors who may find themselves with time on their hands.
Julie Thomas writes with Di Logan and Francis Young for the Katikati Theatre, so far producing seven plays telling the stories of local characters.
Among them, tales of rugby player Dave Gallaher, the captain of the "Original All Blacks" who was killed at Passchendaele, and his Northern Irish ancestors who founded the town as a planned settlement.
They also wrote about Austrian Jew doctor Dr Joe Burstein, one of Katikati's first doctors, an eccentric and multi-talented musician and medicine man who spent time in a concentration camp in World War II.
For this they interviewed more than 40 people and searched archives, bringing to life a man remembered and loved by many.
"For weeks afterwards we had people stopping us on the street to talk about the show," said Julie.
"Theatre is such an amazing vehicle to bring to life stories.
"For those of us like me that have grown up with theatre we know how amazing it is but audiences can be taken aback by how it brings characters to life."
The trio always write about real people and there's no reason to look to the imagination for fascinating tales.
"One of our stories was Tales from Lock Up, about people locked up for various misdemeanours including one who'd stolen 44 teapots."
Julie says in the trio's latest play Overload - which outlines a perilous ride from Katikati to Waihi in 1925 - the group had to use artistic licence to invent a reason why people are travelling in the car that day.
"But where we can, we stick to the facts as we know them."
Tairua has two local drama groups, the Troubadours under scriptwriting by Jennie Turner, and the Tairua Heritage Players whose scripts by Auriol Farquhar are based on local history.
Passionate about sharing heritage, Auriol's latest play in mid-October is based on the book Jewel by the Sea by Phyllis Cory-Wright, who arrived in 1918 by sea to an isolated harbour settlement with the last floating kauri logs and a rough new road from Coroglen in the north to Thames.
Her previous scripts focused on Captain James Cook's encounters with Ngati Hei and she also wrote of the sailor buried at Te Karo Bay.
Any money raised from ticket sales are donated to the Tairua Heritage Society's goal to create a town museum.
Wright says shows by professional actors too, when they're about a local place or even slightly amended to include known landmarks - like the makeout spot in Palmerston North - always get more laughs.
"We're telling their story."
Community theatre does not have the costs and risks of paying professionals to rehearse for five weeks only to be faced with canning a production because of lockdown, and he says it is still a great night out locally.
"It's that sense of togetherness and community. People go to local theatre to be part of something."
Theatre required a range of skills and not just actors and a director, with opportunities for people of all ages and with disabilities.
In Katikati a role is always written for Kelvin Willis whose disability has never prevented him from participating in 12 years.
"You need people to run the bar, make cakes to sell, builders for the set and seamstresses for costumes," says Wright. "The whole thing about community theatre is community."
- Jewel By the Sea, Tairua Hall, October 14, 15 at 7pm and October 16 at 2pm and 7pm and Overload by Katikati Theatre October 19-24 in the Junction Theatre, Katikati Arts Junction.
