Auckland Fringe Festival: As once was Ponsonby

Collaborators Tessa Mitchell and Dave Fane have created a theatrical adventure through Ponsonby.

A festival show has patrons pounding streets, finds Rebecca Barry-Hill.

If you're out and about on the streets of Ponsonby this month, you might notice groups of headphone-wearing walkers. It's not a bizarre tourist venture but an unconventional new performance in the Auckland Fringe festival.

Rather than being seen on stage, I Wanna Be Na Nah Na Nah Nah is performed as audiences pound the pavement. This walking tour of Ponsonby Rd, complete with 80s soundtrack, features performances from actors who emerge along the way.

The idea is to get a sense of the area before it became known for its rampant property market and trendy eateries. Back in those days it was grittier, and the living - although hard to believe now - was cheap.

"There's nostalgia without it being too twee," says Ponsonby-based co-writer and performer Tessa Mitchell, an actress who has worked in theatre for years.

"There's room for costumes and props but without it being a cliche of the 80s."

When Mitchell lived there as a teen, fruit shops outnumbered clothing stores, graffiti was rife and Pacific Island and Maori kids played in quiet streets.

The show is a collaboration between Mitchell and fellow theatre-makers and actors Stephen Bain and Naked Samoan Dave Fane, and will be performed by Mitchell, Troy Tu'ua and Italia Hunt. Twenty audience members, divided into two groups, take part in each 90-minute jaunt.

Part storytelling memoir, part play, part gentle stroll, it's a coming-of-age tale set against a city fringe suburb doing the same. Those wireless headphones aren't just to look the part, but to play a soundtrack featuring some of Mitchell's old favourites: Grace Jones and Blondie from her older brother's collection, plus some of the rock, punk and blues she heard at the Gluepot - the famous pub that dominated Three Lamps in the late 70s and early 80s.

"I couldn't really afford to go to the bands upstairs - occasionally I'd pay to see the Chills or Hello Sailor. But mostly we'd go and check out the locals in the public bar, the Vista bar. Dave talks about the Gluey from another perspective - his uncle being a bookie."

The idea emerged as a way to capture all those Ponsonby tales. Mitchell's parents had plenty. Her dad is architect David Mitchell (who recently designed Titirangi's Te Uru gallery and was creative director at the Venice Biennale) and her mum was an occupational therapist who worked in community mental health. They moved into the "slums" of Auckland, as the area was often referred to, in the 1960s.

After canvassing family and friends, Mitchell, Bain and Fane turned to their own memories of growing up in the area.

"One of my cuzzies was involved with one of the King Cobras so we'd often hang out with them," says Mitchell.

"Ponsonby was such a melting pot. We all went to the same bars and the Open Late Cafe, we went to the same parties."

Strangely, Mitchell and Fane never crossed paths, but in another coincidence, Bain, like Mitchell's father, studied architecture. Hence the desire to get out on the streets, says the actress, who also has an MA in spatial design. "I think there is an interest in spaces and changing communities," she says.

She hopes the show will also give younger people a glimpse of Ponsonby in a political era, marked by the 1981 Springbok tour and the Queen St riots.

Mitchell and her mates were used to seeing the riot squad around.

"I love living down the road and there are things that have stayed. It's not completely gentrified. It still has the interesting other elements, the artists who hang out near K Rd, and in Grey Lynn.

"But hopefully the show gives people a sense of what it used to be like. It really was another world."

The show runs from February 12-22. The audience meets at the Basement Theatre to catch a free bus to Ponsonby (wheelchair-friendly). Bookings from iTicket.