Geoffrey Clendon: My story as told to Elisabeth Easther

Writer and director Geoffrey Clendon.

Geoffrey Clendon graduated from Sydney’s National Institute of Dramatic Art in 1976 before working in theatre, film and television on both sides of the Tasman. Following 13 years teaching drama at Massey High School, Clendon now focuses on creating theatre. Rangitoto is the first play in his Hauraki Gulf Trilogy and it will play till March 5 at The Pumphouse Theatre in Takapuna before moving to Artworks Waiheke from March 9-12.

I grew up about 400 yards from Milford Beach, which meant that Rangitoto was always in my sights and in my dreams. I almost drowned there when I was 4, wading into a deep pool just around from Islington Bay, but luckily Grandad saw me and pulled me out.

My grandparents were Ngāpuhi and had come down from Hokianga in 1924. They owned Clendon’s Fruit Store in Takapuna, where their customers included Bruce Mason and Frank Sargeson. I was aware of Nana and Grandad being Ngāpuhi but, as there weren’t a lot of Māori in Takapuna, Dad was brought up more as a brown Pākehā, so Māoritanga wasn’t really explored in our household. As I’ve got older, I’ve felt a growing desire to connect with my heritage and that has become an ongoing quest.

My nana was a wonderful, elegant person who lived to be 98. I was incredibly close to nana and I loved hearing her stories from up north. Of being born in a little place called Ohuri, and how when her family moved to Rawene, a journey of about 10 miles, they went on horseback. Nana described how a sugar sack was slit on one side and sewed to make saddlebags, and that she and one of her sisters were the contents and that’s how she travelled to Rawene. Later, she went to school in Rangi Point. When the tide was in, she’d have to wade to class and sometimes she’d trap a flounder with her bare feet. She’d stand on it, grab it and take it to her teacher. It was only in my grandmother’s later years that I discovered she actually had a lot of reo, but she’d kept it tucked away because I think, in that era, it helped her survive in a very Pākehā environment.

In third form, I had a wonderful English teacher who did The Tempest with us, which is how I fell in love with Shakespeare. The idea of a 15-year-old girl living in a cave, albeit with her dad, was so exciting. Around that same time a chemistry teacher told us about the caves on Rangitoto, and whenever I looked out to the island, I’d feel its pull. By then I had a little wooden dinghy and I’d row over after school to explore or camp there. I’d walk around the baches, captivated by the idiosyncratic homes and their eccentric inhabitants.

As the Haruaki Gulf became part of me, I became part of it. At the same time, my love of literature and theatre was growing. After seeing Ian Mune in Under Milkwood and George Henare in The Country Wife, I decided to become an actor. Soon after, when I was about 20, I met a man who’d been to NIDA [National Institute of Dramatic Art] in Sydney and I started thinking about drama school . He said I stood a good chance of getting in, and because I was restless, and ready for something different, Australia seemed like a good idea

I wrote a letter to NIDA and they replied with a time, date and place to audition in Randwick. When I rang home from Sydney to Auckland, which was a big thing back then, to tell my parents I’d got in, dad said he was proud of me. That was a poignant moment, because dad didn’t often say that sort of thing.

NIDA’s head of acting was Alexander Hay, and when he went to drama school he was auditioned by George Bernard Shaw and Lord Alfred Douglas - or Bosie as he was known – who was Oscar Wilde’s partner. Alexander’s anecdotes about being a jobbing actor in London were priceless, as rich as a fruitcake, like being friends with Jean Genet. On the other side of the coin, John Clarke was NIDA’s director and he had a very matter-of-fact approach to acting. Two stops short of being an “ocker”, he insisted that there was no Acting with a capital A because to him, all an actor needed to do was tell the truth. If I had my time there again, I would definitely have asked more questions.

Geoffrey Clendon has Ngāpuhi ancestry.

After graduation, I did theatre-in-education. It was a two-hander called Man Friday with another New Zealand actor, Peter Tulloch, playing Robinson Crusoe. It was 1977 and we drove a van around Melbourne, touring high schools, doing two shows a day. That was a tough training, playing huge hot halls at all-boys schools, many of whom were pretty cynical, but we usually won them over.

I was determined in my career, and I loved what I was doing because I had a fascination with theatre and storytelling. I was also pretty single-minded about acting, although I certainly wasn’t in work all the time, so I also worked in hospitality and furniture removal. But I played some wonderful roles on TV and on stage, including a very good play with Judy Davis just before she became famous.

Australia was awfully good to me. I made lovely friends but I also felt a very strong pull from my tūrangawaewae which was partly due to my love for the Hauraki Gulf. This saw me head home at the very at the end of 1981, determined to take the first job I was offered. That offer came from Jan Prettejons at Centrepoint Theatre, which saw me leave Sydney for Palmerston North.

Coming back to New Zealand at the end of the Springbok Tour was like coming back to a different country. The last thing I did in Australia was a season of Lulu at The Sydney Opera House and one day, during the matinee, one of the actors came running into my dressing room to announce: “They’ve stopped the game in a place called Hamilton!”

Centrepoint was a great theatre with an appreciative audience. One day, I was talking to fellow actor Duncan Smith, about how I wanted a bit of dirt to feel like I’d come home. Back then, only one dairy in Palmerston North sold the New Zealand Herald and I bought it one Saturday and saw a bach for sale on Waiheke Island for $11,000. The owner was a fisherman in Whitianga and he told me how to find the place. Perchance it was Queen’s Birthday the next weekend which meant the theatre was shut for two nights and two of the cooks just happened to be huge Manawatū rugby fanatics, and they were headed up to Auckland to see a match that weekend, so I hitched a lift with them.

When they went to the rugby, I went to Waiheke. It was high tide, so I had to scramble around the rocks to find the place in Putiki Bay. I waded up the steps, to the concrete doorstep which had the words Wolves Lair etched in it. I thought that fairly propitious and slightly theatrical. Then a black cat greeted me, and because I was playing Dracula at that time, that felt like a good omen. It was a weatherboard bach overhung by pohutukawa trees with a shell path. As I’d dreamed of owning a bach on Rangitoto, this was the next best thing. Even though I had just $100 to my name, a dear schoolmate who was a sailing friend as well as a lawyer, somehow arranged a Post Office loan.

When I started acting, I never thought I was intelligent enough to be a director or literate enough to be a writer but by the 90s I was acting a bit, and moving more into directing. I was also teaching after-school classes which I enjoyed, but I never had much money so in 2004 I did the Masters in creative writing at Victoria University, then to Teachers’ Training College. In 2006 I became a teacher at Massey High School.

In that first year, I’m sure I learned more than I taught, but I enjoyed teaching enormously, because the more you give, the more you get back. Even though teenagers can be challenging, they also possess an enormous amount of positivity. I was there for 13 years. It was hard work, although it got easier and I knew I was doing good things.

Drama is an active subject. There are no tables or chairs and the writing is one stop short of minimal, which was a relief for many students who didn’t want to sit in front of a computer or a maths book. They wanted to be up on their feet, talking to people. In an age when so much of our time is spent on phones, drama gives us the self-assurance to stand up and look people in the eye and speak with some degree of confidence. Drama is a wonderful gift.

I eventually left teaching to return to my first love, to do this play. But I have a huge respect for classroom teachers. They are the backbone of this country, turning up year after year to do it, unsung. They work so hard and I take my hat off to them.

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