By SUSAN BUDD
Simon Bennett is a tall, softly spoken man whose quiet manner hides an acid wit and a fiery passion for his work in theatre and television.
From the blue-painted villa he shares with his wife Helen and two Siamese cats, Bennett is planning a vigorous assault on live theatre in New Zealand with his forthcoming production of A Midsummer Night's Dream, which opens in Hamilton on July 25, followed by a tour through the country's main cities.
After almost six years away from the stage, Bennett has established the New Zealand Actors Company with friends Tim Balme, Katie Wolfe and Robyn Malcolm.
"We have been talking for a year," says Bennett. "We feel that ensembles create the best theatre because there are no barriers, no blocks, no taking the easy options and that touring is the only way to make theatre sustainable, although it ups the costs hugely. The potential audience in any big centre is not enough to pay back the costs.
"We also feel that a large portion of the New Zealand public is not being served by professional theatre and we want to take our theatre out on the road. This is a pilot production, to see if it can work."
His aim is to establish a national theatre company. "We want to get away from parochial, regional rivalries, to develop a company that produces the very best work," he maintains. "We want to do exciting, innovative versions of classics and new New Zealand work."
Bennett acknowledges learning, and earning, a huge amount in television so that he can subsidise the project. "My home and roots have always been in theatre. I have worked in television and saved money, but I am taking a big risk in leaving for a year."
Though born into a theatrical family - his father Robert runs a mime troupe in Wellington - he resisted its lures throughout his childhood. Bennett remembers his acute embarrassment as a shy adolescent when his father turned up in full makeup at his all-male school, Scots College.
He studied law for two years at Victoria University, Wellington, but found drama studies more interesting by far and was bitten by the directing bug.
He studied acting at Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School and loathed it, recalling "creative writhing at nine in the morning," but admits it gave him a valuable understanding of actors.
Bennett became a successful director, producing several shows, some Shakespeare and Sondheim musicals, at the Watershed Theatre, but by 1995 he had had enough. "I was working fulltime as a theatre director, doing four or five productions a year, but I just couldn't make ends meet. I felt there was nowhere further to go in this country. It was time to get real and get a proper job."
He was thinking of retraining, either going to medical school or back to his law studies, but fell into a television directing course. He directed Shortland Street for 18 months and was then offered the job of producer.
"I was in two minds, because I love hands-on work, but in television the producer has creative control," Bennett says. "Directors have no input into casting, costume, set, story or script. Their job is to deliver pictures to the producer.
"My challenge was to see if I could have an impact on the programme and bring out the things I loved about it and lose the things I didn't. Shortland Street can be terrible, but it can also be very good.
"It's at its best when it is touching on critical issues, topical and touching on the community at large. To be bogged down in too much serial romance becomes boring."
He laughs that life imitates art: "We used to call it the Shortland Street curse. We wrote a story about neo-Nazis when I first started, which I thought an outrageous fantasy, and the week it went to air there was a whole neo-Nazi thing in Christchurch." Although it takes 14 weeks for a show to go to air, investigative stories are too often published at the same time for it to be mere coincidence, he feels. Bennett's explanation is that journalists watch Shortland Street and are inspired.
He brought actors from the theatre into television. "I'm pleased I did, because it has given them livelihoods and brought in-depth understanding of performance and story into what is a technical medium."
When he started, there were a few experienced actors and "a lot of young people with no formal training, snatched straight from school, who learned about life in an incredibly artificial environment. Some, like Angela Dotchin, who is now a director on the show, became very strong as a result."
He values the experienced cast members and raves about Geraldine Brophy's skills, her ability not only to "wring every drop out of a scene but also help younger actors and instil a sense of professionalism." But she and Greg Johnson are almost the only actors over 35. Is no one allowed to be over 40? Bennett laughs, "I can neither confirm nor deny." He agrees that it is a shame, but shrugs, "because television is so commercial now, the demographics of the advertisers control what goes on." He concedes that "there are more opportunities for characters and stories than are currently being explored. "
Older actors tend to leave the profession, anyway, he says. It is telling that Bennett and his ex-Shortland Street actors are approaching their middle years, the very years that are an abomination to television programmers.
Bennett's ambition is to attract to theatre those 600,000 to 700,000 people who watch Shortland Street every night. "If they like those characters [Balme and Malcolm], I hope they will take a punt and come.
"I am very much against the kind of precious, elitist image that theatre can have," he declares. "I want people to learn that they can go out in the same way as they can go to a rock concert or sports game, have a great time without getting dressed up and come back excited. There has been no consistency of standard over the last eight years, so if you are an unconvinced theatregoer it takes only one bad show to stop."
He says audiences have dwindled.
"The Auckland Theatre Company has a very solid, loyal audience and they are successful in targeting that audience. But I am not interested in that audience, though if they come it's great. I think that if theatre is to survive, it has to attract young people. It has to be cool, funky and fun.
"I have almost stopped going to the theatre because I have seen so many things that have made me angry - furious at the destruction they are doing to a future audience. There seems to be the notion that the point of going to the theatre is to be slightly bored. I care passionately about the future of theatre and it has got to appeal at a gut, visceral level, to engage people so they don't get bored for a minute. I think boring an audience is the worst crime, it is completely unforgivable."
If the closing of the Watershed signalled the end of what he describes as "unpredictable, adventurous, exciting, spectacular, off-the wall, different theatre" in Auckland, Bennett is determined to bring it back with A Midsummer Night's Dream.
From Street to the open road
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