Tragedy, drama and farce in three acts

Bangarra Dance Company's 'Bush'.

AK05 chief executive David Malacari has returned from Rome, where he joined the throngs gathered in St Peter's Square to pay tribute to the dying Pope John Paul II. Malacari was taking a much-needed break post-AK05, which ran for 17 days in March.

He may also have been saying a little prayer for healthy figures for the festival, which within the space of only a few years has acquired so much baggage you have to wonder why any sane person would want the job.

The figures, presented to the festival's board on Wednesday, look positive. Malacari reported a predicted loss of $60,000, in the context of an Auckland City Council funding package of $1.45 million - including a $700,000 "reducible guarantee", subject to actual income and expenditure results, which are still being added up.

A total of 269,000 people attended festival events, including free, ticketed and "umbrella" events staged by independent operators but programmed as part of AK05.

Malacari admits ticket sale targets were overly ambitious, falling 400,000 short. Events such as the Bangarra Dance Company's Bush, staged in the three tiers of the ASB Theatre, would have met the target if the upper two levels had been closed.

The most successful performances in terms of ticket sales were the New Zealand plays Vula, Niu Sila and Strata, the Japanese group the Tao Drummers and tabla master Zakir Hussain, who staged a scorcher in the Town Hall with Pacific Island group Te Vaka.

The disappointments? Opera New Zealand's Death of Klinghoffer "didn't quite make targeted sales". The Australian drama Three Furies "had disappointing sales", as did American rap poets Def Jam Poetry, and Michael Hurst's panto Jack and the Beanstalk. The timing was wrong for Jack, explains Malacari. It wasn't the school holidays.

"These are teething problems as we develop, which will inform how we set our targets for next time," he says, adding that he's looking forward to "putting my stamp on AK07".

That's a reference to the fact that Malacari came late into the job, just last October, replacing former director Simon Prast, who was ousted in a festival management restructure last July.

Having struggled against terrible odds to stage the inaugural AK03, Prast had also programmed much of AK05 by the time Malacari inherited the mantle.

It's been a rough ride so far, and to understand the festival's state of health, and the way forward, requires an understanding of its history, which has more than its share of acrimony, dysfunction, blame-laying and instability.

Given Prast's hard work and high visibility to get AK03 off the ground, his redundancy was made all the more unpleasant because he had stepped reluctantly into the job because his predecessor - another Australian, Renato Rispoli - was fired just six months before AK03 was supposed to happen.

Because of Rispoli's abrupt departure, AK03 had to be pushed back from January to September 2003. Although AK03 made a loss of just under $500,000, Prast was handicapped right from the start by the damage caused by Rispoli's performance and how his sacking was handled.

The impact of that fiasco seriously hobbled AK03, damaging its budget and sponsorship.

Despite that, there was an enormous amount of goodwill towards the inaugural festival, and towards Prast, who was named Aucklander of the Year - and AK03, Event of the Year - by Metro magazine.

But behind the scenes, the trust board set up to support the festival was becoming increasingly unstable. After AK03, Prast, supported by an independent board review commissioned by the council, and a recovery plan negotiated with council, asked the trust's chairman Lex Henry to quit.

Shortly afterwards, various members of the trust also vanished as their terms came up for renewal and the entire enterprise nearly folded when the trust lost its status as a legal entity because of lack of numbers. To the glee of outsiders, Auckland didn't look like it could organise its way out of a Portaloo, let alone successfully stage a festival.

Prast, who set up the Auckland Theatre Company and ran it successfully for 10 years, admits to some residual sourness over what he had to deal with when he took the festival job.

"I didn't want the job," he says in his first interview about the events. "I knew it was a hospital pass. However, I was moved by the fact that here was a politician [then-councillor Victoria Carter] who had pushed this thing from day one - she was left holding it and it would have seemed unchivalrous if nothing else. I had been 10 years at ATC, so I'd had a good term, so I said yes."

That was in November 2002, and Carter told Prast to expect an offer from chair Lex Henry.

Prast waited, and waited. Time was ticking. As nothing seemed to be happening with the festival offer, he went off to direct The Graduate for ATC.

He eventually got the letter of offer in February 2003 - signed by Carter and board member Angus Fletcher. He had exactly 119 days to publicly launch the programme.

Prast alleges that Henry was so focused on negotiating Rispoli's lawsuit against the trust, "he had taken his eye off the ball".

"Everything comes back to this figure [119 days]. You can only make something with the resources you have, financial and time. Two major sponsors had evaporated. The festival looked shonky and any opportunity to get out of it - well, they [the board] gave them every opportunity."

By the time AK03 opened on September 20, Prast still had a 12 per cent shortfall in sponsorship and says he was able to achieve what he did only because he had a "world-class team of marketing, operations, and people who get things on. We got it on".

Henry denies he "took his eye off the ball" while trying to deal with the Rispoli affair, saying, "It's not just taking your eye off the ball if you've got six balls in the air. You've got other things you have to do."

He insists that "when you compared all the candidates, Renato stacked up as the best".

He adds: "I still to this day find difficulty understanding why there was such a big difference between what he'd done in Australia ... there was a gap there, without question. As chair, it was up to me - we had to take decisive action to sort it out. The biggest concern was making sure we moved on from Renato without it becoming an exercise which destroyed confidence in the festival ... it was sleepless nights territory."

Prast says that after AK03, with a loss of $486,000, the council commissioned an independent report on the board's functionality by BoardWorks International. Known as the Nahkies Report, it criticised the trust's governance and made 26 "best practice" recommendations to improve competence and stability. Prast, too, had delivered a highly critical report to the council.

Then he realised a witch hunt focusing on the loss had started. "Should the management team that had been brought in to get the festival going be held responsible for the loss at this point when the circumstances were not of their creation and were so highly irregular?

"The incredible thing I discovered was that all of a sudden, it was my fault. I had to write a report as the director and I had extreme difficulty writing it.

"I kept coming back to the same thing - the root cause was the governance of the festival and the quality of the governance. How could I, in a report to my employers, tell them that they were the cause?"

Prast battled on, but by July he walked away, redundant, after being offered a newly created, lower-paid position as artistic director under another new position, the chief executive. (The position of artistic director has not been advertised since, having been incorporated into Malacari's job.)

Prast says after months of "slaving his arse off" for AK03 and trying to plan AK05 in an increasingly tense environment, by June 2004 "I had no more fight in me".

It wasn't a happy experience for Lex Henry either. "I'm quite happy to accept responsibility for what I did ... but it wasn't an experience I will ever repeat. It's a shame. There is a lot of unfinished business with this festival. I personally hope that, say, by AK09 I can look back and say the business is finished.

"For reasons associated with people and their politics and gameplaying, it was a very unpleasant experience."

Unlike his unfortunate predecessors, Malacari has a full run-up to the next festival, in March 2007.

"If you look at the history of this festival so far, it is a rocky path for new organisations," he says. "There are teething problems. You try to work out your identity, your funding partners. It takes time for all that to settle down. AK07 is not going to be everything I would want in a festival but it will be the next step."

Auckland Festival Trust chair Richard Waddel, who said the trust board is now "very stable", also paid tribute to Prast's efforts. "We decided we needed to restructure the management ... we did a review of the management structure and decided we needed a chief executive, a job description that was different from the festival director.

"That was no criticism of Simon - he had done an excellent job."

A troubled birth: turbulence at the top makes whole structure unstable

Mid-1999: Then-Mayor Christine Fletcher convenes establishment committee to initiate resurrection of an Auckland Festival.
Dec 1999: Auckland City Council releases feasibility report, which specifically recommends that it not be branded an arts festival.

2001

Jan: Foundation board convened as independent charitable trust. Lex Henry chairs, with Chris Alpe (deputy), Victoria Carter, Gray Bartlett, Angus Fletcher, Mike Hutcheson, Sir Hugh Kawharu and Albert Wendt.
March: Festival launch event, with Aotea Square artificially flooded.
Nov: Local body elections. Christine Fletcher loses mayoralty to John Banks.
Dec: Trust appoints Australian Renato Rispoli executive director.

2002

Feb: Rispoli arrives. First festival shuffled back from March 2003, to Jan 2003, to sandwich between Louis Vuitton Challenger series and America's Cup. Rispoli promises to unveil $8 million programme launch in Sept 02.
June: Rispoli returns to Australia. No explanation given. He commences proceedings for wrongful dismissal. Artistic directors Michael Mizrahi and Marie Adams assume directorship.
Oct: Mizrahi and Adams quit. Trustee Victoria Carter steps in as acting director. First festival cancelled; Carter negotiates slot Sept-Oct 2003. Dismantles existing admin structure to skeleton staff. Twice asks Auckland Theatre Company director Simon Prast to take director's job.

2003

Feb: Prast gets formal offer from Carter and Fletcher. He joins Feb 24 just 119 days before public launch date for programme.
Sept 20-Oct 5: AK03 is staged; 66 events; 185,233 people attend. Loses $486,000.
Voted event of the year by Metro magazine, which also names Prast Aucklander of the Year.
Nov 19: Prast delivers to trust post-AK03 report outlining difficult history of AK03, including "legal wrangle" over Rispoli departure. He also criticises board for offering "neither assistance nor participation in any further procurement or generation of sponsorship revenue". Prast asks Henry to resign "and allow enactment of recovery plan" he has negotiated with council. Henry departs. Deputy chair Chris Alpe in absentia voted acting chair.
Nov 24: Council business analyst Leigh Redshaw and arts planner Liz Civil present review of AK03 noting strong performance by Prast and management team despite "a very turbulent history" and "an urgent need to stabilise the current situation" at the trust.
Dec 31: Prast's contract expires; contract rolls over on a fortnightly basis while he continues planning for AK05 until trust situation stabilised.

2004

Jan: Original trustees' first term comes up for renewal; Henry has already gone; Wendt, Kawharu and Fletcher depart. Surprise revelation of Mike Hutcheson's resignation some months earlier.
Feb: Independent reviewers BoardWorks International reports to council. Advises eight principle steps needed to improve board functionality. Trust no longer has the numbers (seven members) to function as a legal entity. No contracts with staff, sponsors, funders or performers can be signed.
March 31: Implosion of trust. Prast communicates concern in email to Redshaw, Civil, Carter, McPherson (director of planning).
April: Council appoints Redshaw acting GM, begins to second new trustees. Prast presents draft AK05 programme to Scott Milne. Milne advises Prast can "kiss goodbye to his funding" if Hero is included in festival programming.
May 10: New trustees found: board is now Richard Waddel (chair), Chris Alpe (deputy), Victoria Carter, Gray Bartlett, Greg Innes, Alex Reedijk, Ilona Rodgers, Sheryl McKelvie. Memo sent to staff: trust has decided to create new position of general manager. Prast to continue in role, retaining responsibility for programming AK05.
June : Prast requests urgent need for new employment contract. Carter says employment status will be discussed at June 19 board meeting; "probable need to restructure entire organisation". Prast meets Innes and Redshaw, who make offer of artistic directorship, with $50,000 paycut. Prast declines.
June 25: Still without a contract for AK05, Prast presents draft programme for first full meeting of new trust. McKelvie later departs trust; Penny Sefuiva and Pauline Winter join board. Innes phones Prast to tell him board has decided to make him redundant. 
July 7: Prast accepts redundancy. A press release bearing AK05 logo is sent out quoting trust chair Richard Waddel announcing that as a result of the BoardWorks review, there will be complete restructure of the board and management of the festival.
Sept 4: Australian David Malacari appointed chief executive. In the interim, Carter has again been acting as director.
Nov 23: AK05 launched at Auckland Museum.

2005

Feb 25-March 13 2005: AK05 is delivered. 269,000 total attendance for free, ticketed and umbrella festival events; 31,599 ticket sales for festival-produced events; total loss, $60,000.