Teen taking show to festival stage

A SUCCESS: Adrian Renor (on stage with Marlon Moala-Knox) was inspired to take his show Minds Like Ours to Fringe 2015 after receiving positive feedback from local audiences.

An "overwhelmingly" supportive response from the Wairarapa community has led a Featherston artist to taking his provocative show on the road.

Adrian Renor, 19, wrote and directed Minds Like Ours, a dramatic dance and drama performance showcasing the reality of mental illness, which premiered at Kuranui College early this month.

Encouraged by positive comments from audiences on the show's depictions of conditions such as depression, schizophrenia and anorexia, Renor is now pitching Minds Like Ours to the Fringe Festival in Wellington.

"The show went better than I ever hoped for," said Renor, a performing arts student at Whitireia Polytechnic.

"I had only positive feedback - people kept coming up to me and saying, 'I really want to see that show again'.

"It felt wrong to me to abandon the show so soon. I felt it deserved to be seen by more people, so I decided I'd take it to Wellington."

Renor said audiences were particularly touched by the portrayal of mental illness in the show - which he created to promote a better understanding of mental health in the community.

"People said to me things like, 'that's just what I needed to see', or 'that's exactly what it's like for me,"' said Renor, who has experience of mental illness.

"It's important to get things like this out there because, in my experience, people see mental illness in two ways: either that it's all in the person's head and therefore isn't important, or that mental illness completely defines you and you're just crazy.

"If you're brain is wired differently, it doesn't mean you're inhuman."

Renor hopes to show Minds Like Ours at BATS Theatre in Wellington as part of Fringe 2015, and is currently "pitching" the idea to festival organisers.

One of the challenges, he said, will be transporting the show's large cast from Wairarapa, and he hopes to raise funds for transport at a local level.

While he was thrilled with the Wairarapa performances of the show, he hopes to make "just a few tweaks" before it goes on the run.

"Just to polish it up a bit more," he said.

"People said the show did actually run very smoothly - but there's always room for improvement."