The juggling act of organising Wellington's arts festival for 2000 includes monitoring wars around the world. EUGENE BINGHAM finds out why.
Managing staff, critiquing performances, attracting sponsors: Carla Van Zon is the first to admit her job description is about as wide and varied as it comes.
Since scoring an arts-world coup by securing the Edinburgh Military Tattoo for next year's International Festival of the Arts, executive director Van Zon has had to scan the world for outbreaks of war.
A key clause in the festival's contract with the tattoo will see the show cancelled if the pipers and drummers are called upon by the Queen.
As well as being top international musicians, the performers are active members of the Armed Services. If the call to war comes, they have to answer.
"I was gladder than most that things settled down in Kosovo," says Van Zon.
Dealing with unusual demands is all part of the job of putting together the Wellington festival once every two years.
Since becoming involved in 1989, Van Zon has done everything from enduring the night trains of Europe to see acts, to juggling the $12 million budget needed to stage the month of dance, visual art, literature, music and theatre.
After years of seeing up to 28 shows a week, Van Zon admits she has become a harsh critic.
She can't watch a performance without analysing it, figuring out how much it would cost to bring to the festival and how well it would be received by an audience.
"A number of years ago, I was sitting with some producers from New York at a show. I laughed a lot and cried a lot and at the end, the man sitting next to me, who was an experienced producer, said to me, 'Oh, it's so nice to see somebody who is still affected by the theatre.'
"Sometimes, I think, 'Have I become like him?'
"That was the nice thing about the tattoo. I was sitting there and I thought, 'I'm going to cry.'"
That tearful experience on a cold Edinburgh night was one of the driving factors in her efforts to secure one of the world's greatest shows.
The idea was born during an August, 1997, trip to the Edinburgh Festival, when Van Zon was dealing with an American agent who was working on taking parts of the tattoo to the United States.
She returned to New Zealand, spoke to the artistic director of the festival, Joseph Seelig, and the pair considered the viability of such a bold invitation.
Festival staff spent a year preparing their pitch to the tattoo chief executive, Brigadier Melville Jameson.
"We walked in the door, having arranged a meeting with them, which took a long time to get, and said, 'We'd really like you to come.'
"They looked at us and said, 'We've never done anything like that before.'
"But I think we'd prepared quite well."
Van Zon says the timing was right. After 50 years, the tattoo was looking to do something different and was convinced that a show in Wellington was just the thing for a new millennium.
Then the really hard work began. As well as arranging the performers - the 300 pipers and drummers will be joined by drumming and dance groups from the Pacific Islands, New Zealand military bands, pipe bands and top Maori kapahaka groups - there was a venue to prepare.
The tattoo will be staged at the WestpacTrust Stadium which is due for completion in January. The enclosed structure near the capital's railway yards is set to become a prime venue for sporting and cultural events. It will be adorned with a mock castle for the tattoo.
Of course, the tattoo is just part of the festival.
"There are a number of pillars and that is one of them," says Van Zon. Various links tie the programme together. "There are things to do with war, there are a number of things to do with politics, oratory. They are linking threads rather than overriding themes. It does become an ever-moving jigsaw puzzle."
Thousands of artists have to be lined up, programmes finalised and venues booked.
Van Zon seems perfectly suited to the high-energy job, arms flailing in her office high above central Wellington. Her background is in dance, and one of her early jobs was as a physical education teacher at Green Bay College in Auckland.
Yes, she confirms, she is an Aucklander, from Titirangi.
"I'm a Westie," Van Zon says, without seeming to care what such a revelation will do for her credibility among the Wellington culture-vulture set.
What: International Festival of the Arts
When: March 3-26, 2000
Where: Various venues in Wellington
* The Edinburgh Military Tattoo will have three performances, on March 10, 11 and 12, at the WestpacTrust Stadium, Wellington. Tickets go on public sale on August 19.
Soldiers could drum up arts show to remember
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