She is keen to provide Gisborne people with experiences in various aspects of theatre, not acting alone, and to grow the art here. Hence the name of her recent addition to Gisborne’s performance scene, the Evolution Theatre Company.
As a theatre arts graduate, professional producer, director, actor, instructor, a lighting designer for more than 30 years and co-founder of the Silicon Valley Shakespeare company, Dinna has a passion for all aspects of theatre and a love of Shakespeare particularly.
She is keen to bring that experience and passion not only to Gisborne audiences but to people who would like to experience everything theatrical, from acting to lighting, stage management to costuming, from script-writing to sound production.
“I want Evolution to be more than just a theatre company. I want to grow artists.
“Young people are inclined to move away. There’s nothing for them to come back for.
“I wanted to do things so they come back home and I want to grow new artists.”
A Gisborne resident for the past two-and-a-half-years, Dinna spent the first 18 months as a volunteer with Musical Theatre Gisborne (MTG) “to see what it was like to do theatre here”.
Ambitious programme scheduledAs an experienced lighting technician, Dinna was lighting designer for MTG’s pantomime Aladdin. She was also production manager for the company’s production of Beauty and the Beast. MTG brought in an outside director for the show but Dinna would like to see directors “grown” in Gisborne.
She launched Evolution Theatre Company (ETC) with an ambitious programme of classes, workshops and shows.
Having run a pilot programme of classes at her Disraeli Street theatre, Dinna plans to tweak them and relaunch an educational programme.
“Once we have done our first show, and we’ve had our first audience at our theatre, that would be a good time to launch an educational programme.”
She has cast actors for ETC’s first production, Thornton Wilder’s 1938 play Our Town. Set between 1901 and 1913, the play tells the story of the fictional small town in America of Grover’s Corners through the everyday lives of its citizens. Wilder’s Pulitzer prize-winning play calls for a big cast that Dinna will somehow fit her theatre around. The theatre is, in fact, a significant feature of the play.
Our Town is described as meta-theatrical work. The play is set in the actual theatre where it is performed. The main character is the stage manager of the theatre who addresses the audience, brings in guest lecturers, fields questions from the audience, and fills in playing some of the roles. The play is performed on a mostly bare stage.
Dinna also plans to stage Richard T. Orlando’s adaptation of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol shortly before the festive season.
The production will be an “immersive experience” for the audience, she says. She will follow that up with A.R. Gurney’s Sylvia, a popular comedy about a dog called Sylvia and the couple who adopt her.
At this stage, to coin a phrase, Dinna is testing the water to see what Gisborne audiences like.
For next year’s commemorations of first meetings between Maori and Europeans with the arrival of explorer James Cook and his crew, Dinna would like to stage one of Shakespeare’s last plays, The Tempest.
The work does not fit into the categories of tragedy, romance or history but is a kind of psycho-spiritual study in which ageing magus-scholar Prospero and his daughter are exiled on an island inhabited by abomination Caliban (a near anagram of Cannibal) and an aerial sprite called Ariel.
Prospero has wizardy powers and enslaves both of them on their island.
A natural order is restored as a result of the play’s resolution and the formerly bookish, isolated Prospero is restored to the mainland. Embedded in the play, albeit not overtly, is the question of colonisation.
“The Tempest is about the moment of colonisation,” says Dinna.
“I’d love to stage that play here next year.”
She is keen to invite kapa haka performers to be part of the production.
Originally from San Jose, California, Dinna’s first job on leaving school was as a theme park worker. She also worked in community theatre as a lighting designer.
She later took on a role as director of sales and marketing for a company that designs and sells equipment for lighting and sound, scenery and special effects for theatre, TV, film and worship. She returned to college 25 years later to study lighting.
“A professor pulled me into his office and said ‘What are you doing here?’ He said I didn’t need a degree in lighting to be a director.
“He changed my life.”
After directing a “horrible, terrible” play for young people, she was asked to direct a production of Shakespeare’s magical rom-com, A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“That was a turning point,” she says.
Dinna met her life partner-to-be, a Gisborne bloke who worked in the high technology industry in the US.
When he lost his job, he wanted to return to his hometown. Dinna had visited Gisborne with him several times, so was happy with the decision.
“I really love it here. It’s a beautiful town. People here are amazing.
“In Auckland, you notice the difference between Maori and European, but not here.”
After working with MTG to get a sense of Gisborne’s theatrical community, Dinna’s evolution from lighting designer to director was ready to take the next leap.
So she established the Evolution Theatre Company.
