From the archives: Annie Goldson’s new feature documentary explores the origins, performances, personalities and fate of performance group Red Mole, who burst onto the scene at the height of the counterculture in Aotearoa NZ in the early 1970s. An indefinable genre of poetry, dance, mask, fire-eating and rock music, Red Mole took young NZ by storm, then departed for NYC in the 1980s where they reached some acclaim until the demands of the city fragmented its core. With Red Mole: A Romance now screening in cinemas around New Zealand, the Listener.co.nz revisits Annie Goldson’s 2023 story about her memories of Red Mole.
As I write, I anticipate being in three places, dashing between a picture grade, a sound mix and graphic design on the way to finishing Red Mole: A Romance. The feature documentary is screening at Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival. Thank goodness it is, as I’m not sure what I would do with it otherwise.
It is not a film that fits easily into our media-sphere. I doubted our broadcasters and funding agencies, as much as I love them, would be keen to support a long documentary on a pre-internet avant-garde theatrical sensation that few people remember. So I pretty much went it alone (more on that later).
Red Mole: A Romance captures the life and times of the experimental theatre troupe that emerged in the early 1970s from the University of Auckland, then a hotspot in countercultural activity. The idea of a theatre troupe was forged a few years later, seemingly during an opium-laced OE trip through Asia. Red Mole’s founders were inspired by the street performances and puppet shows they saw.
Later that decade, Red Mole would have a tremendous influence on the “leftist cognoscenti” of their era, of which, I guess, I was one. Being on the younger side, I would not have identified myself as such. But full disclosure: I still recall first seeing Red Mole as a teenager from the North Shore and was I enamoured. In 1981, I was living in Wellington, a city that liked Red Mole and where they hit their peak. They sold out show after show of Capital Strut, a satirical cabaret staged at Carmen’s Balcony nightclub, and successfully performed their first big written show, the apocalyptic Ghost Rite, at the Opera House. A blend of poetry, performance, mask, music, dance, political satire, comedy and more, Red Mole defied genre. They were unlike anything I had seen.
Shortly after Ghost Rite, Red Mole headed to New York, and I left my job as a cub journalist at Radio New Zealand to tag along. NYC was exciting but tough, and for a while, Red Mole flourished. In time, our paths diverged. But I still recall the power of the triumvirate at Red Mole’s centre – founders Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell and their comrade Deborah Hunt. They were the “gang of three” as Martin Edmond, a former Mole, recalls, forming a kind of nucleus. Around this core floated a series of electron-like shells.
Some circled close, such as John Davies, Ian Prior, Martin himself and musicians Jan Preston, Jean McAllister and Tony McMaster. Others – looser shells of “casuals” – revolved at a greater distance and were quite easily pried off or left when the time was right. I was probably one of them. But then I was the only one who could have made this film, given my dogged determination as a documentary maker and my momentary proximity to Red Mole. But as a “casual”, my degree of detachment was a useful quality in the process.
If asked, I describe Red Mole: A Romance as a social and cultural history threaded through with a poignant personal story. I began filming in early 2020 in New York, where I was in production for an earlier film, A Mild Touch of Cancer. I interviewed Nance Shatzkin, a wholly generous New Yorker who became Red Mole’s manager, at once a lifeline and a life-long friend, and filmed at some sites significant to Red Mole – the East Village, Times Square, Central Park. I squeezed in a week in Mexico City, where Ruby, Alan and Sally’s daughter, now lives, a talented poet and writer herself. Then Covid hit and I had to hot-foot it back to Aotearoa as borders slammed shut. The documentary was temporarily shelved as Mild Touch had sensible things like a budget and deadlines that took priority.
But once that was delivered, I fired up again, and began interviewing former Moles and associates. They have all had interesting lives subsequently but still recall their past involvement with Red Mole with affection, humour – and some degree of amazement.
The film, however, is not a reunion tour. Too many key players have died. Hopefully, it will generate wider recognition for the bright flame of politics, talent, idealism and energy Red Mole represented.
On one level, the documentary is a history of technology. In the 1970s, black and white photography was big and Red Mole was always photogenic, op-shop cool. Although available, 16mm and 35mm film was expensive.
Thankfully, Sam Neill, then a young director with the National Film Unit, managed to produce the invaluable Red Mole on the Road, following the troupe as they performed everywhere from camping grounds to His Majesty’s Theatre.
Kodak slides had their moment, and then video trudged through all its manifestations – Video8, Betamax, Betacam, VHS, MiniDV, etc. What stunned me, however, was the Red Mole archive in the University of Auckland library special collections, the bequest organised by Michele Leggott, the poet and a close friend of Alan and Sally.
Given money was short, and Red Mole were peripatetic, it is astonishing an archive of this magnitude survived – not just photos, but scripts, posters, ephemera, audio recordings, videos, even receipts dating back to the fateful OE in Asia. A standout in all these riches are the photos of Joe Bleakley, Red Mole’s stage manager, not only the inventor of fabulous theatrical machines but a prolific photographer who captures the NYC years comprehensively, with intimacy and grace.
There is freedom in making a mostly self-funded film, although I’m lucky to have had some support (and an income) from the University of Auckland, my employer. But it has been a mammoth task.
I was blessed in the end by a team of youthful supporters, paid for by a thicket of small research grants. They were hardworking and talented, but also interested, bringing new perspectives that strengthened the film.
They liked the materiality of Red Mole’s theatre – the buttons, the hand-drawn and Letraset posters, the beautiful masks, the elaborate costumes, the extraordinary music tracks semi-preserved on cassettes – which counters the shiny online world they exist within.
And I think the practice and politics of Red Mole resonated with them, too, as the issues the performances grappled with – exploitation and war, political corruption, class deprivation, environmental disaster – may have been ignored in the interim decades but are hardly resolved.
Documentary-makers are always on the hunt for titles. Initially, I settled on Red Mole: Mood of the Times from Deb Hunt’s comment that Red Mole responded to the “mood of the times”, a concise summary that I liked. But after discussion, we settled on Red Mole: A Romance. “To keep (the) romance alive” proclaims the first clause of the Red Mole manifesto alluding to the romance of theatre.
But “romance” also encompasses the nexus of relationships within the group. It can be a double-edged sword, exciting – but that can leave emotional suffering in its aftermath even decades later, as the documentary reveals.
Annie Goldson’s previous films include Punitive Damage, Georgie Girl, Sheilas: 28 Years On, Pacific Solution: From Afghanistan to Aotearoa, Elgar’s Enigma, An Island Calling, Brother Number One.
Red Mole: A Romance has screenings in selected cinemas in Auckland and Wellington from February 14 with Christchurch, Dunedin and other centres to follow.
