Finding your Feet - pt II
with Leah Thomas and Ben Ashby
Leah: What have you made that you are most proud of and what do you hope to make in the future?
Ben: Have you got answers to these?
Leah: Yeah I think so. The thing I am probably most proud of making is Running Into the Sun. Not necessarily for the play itself, which I still think is great and lots of fun and not what we expected, but because it brought so many different types of people together who wouldn’t have otherwise met. I feel like everyone learnt so much from it. I saw musicians go through such a character arch, some were so uncomfortable at the beginning of the project but by the end they were writing and performing poetry. Yeah, that’s probably what I am most proud of. Something I want to make in the future.. I want to make something that has a way greater risk of failing.
Ben: I constantly talk about making things that have a risk of failure, but when push comes to shove, it's really hard to avoid following the thing you know will work and to continue to remind yourself that what you are making is an experiment and you should be pushing the other way. Especially when you are at the pointy end of a project, like a week to go from the show opening and suddenly all the decisions you are making are how to put the thing on stage.
Leah: Do you have something you have made that you are most proud of?
Ben: As a director it also is probably Running Into the Sun. It was the biggest challenge in terms of getting the process to work. It was a big group, I was pleased with the result. I think we have started to develop a way of working that is different which is exciting. As a performer it was a show called What do you Reckon? It was the first show I made out of drama school with Albert and Ngamako. Albert is Samoan-Tongan, Ngamako is Māori and I am Pākeha. The show was about the conversation between young people of these backgrounds - immigrant, tangata whenua, and coloniser. We were talking about our families, our own stories and then we put it on stage. It landed well as a piece of art, and I thought it continued an interesting conversation.
Ben: I think the thing I want to make is experiential theatre that is really big. Most of the work I make is for audiences of 50-60 people and I want to make something for an audience of 500 people, and create a whole world for it. I don’t know what the show is content wise, but form wise I want it to be a mass audience experience. The same feeling you get at a massive gig, in a room of people shouting and cheering. I want to make the theatre version of that.
Leah: So for you, the audience experience does actually impact how you make something. You are thinking about the size of the audience and who is sitting there when you are coming up with a show?
Ben: Yes I think so, I think it's important to think about the audience. If you don’t think about the audience then you end up making a show for whoever is going to come, the theatre crowd, the music crowd, the art crowd. That isn’t a sustainable model. That part of my brain is not the creative part, it's the logical business part. I want to make a show that will access a market of people who go to music gigs but not theatre. They are one step removed. How do I get them to take that step?
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Leah: I like to think about space a lot because so many of my problems with classical music is with the spaces it's performed in. I was just wondering what you think are the most exciting spaces to make art in?
Ben: The space I want to make a show in is a beautiful studio which is a big space but importantly is not a perfect box, which has some weird shit in it and random objects lying around that you can get inspiration from. That’s where I want to make art. For me I am super interested in not-theatres. Stuff in abandoned buildings. I really want to make a show in an abandoned building! But it's hard because all the abandoned buildings in Wellington are earthquake damaged.
Leah: Hahah yeah it is not safe.
Ben: I really want to make a show in a bus. I don’t know, thats my answer. Where do you want to make art?
Leah: I love art galleries because since I was young I have found them quite calming. Something happens to my heart rate when I am in an art gallery and I like the idea of making things that make people feel quite calm. It's not a feeling that a lot of people have at the moment. I agree with you about being in a space where there is something moving or something happening that you can draw inspiration from. I think it's so weird that the spaces we do the process bit in, the rehearsal spaces, are so boring and so dry. We are super limited in where we make art at the moment and then we have to take the performance somewhere exciting? That’s kind of weird.
Leah: I would love to do something in a planetarium or an aquarium, because the lighting is weird. Those spaces explore things that are at the brink of what humans actually understand. And it loops back to what you said at the beginning of this conversation, about making art that is an experience. Places like the deep ocean and infinite space, we don’t really understand them, when you go to these places you don’t understand everything about them, you just get a feeling from them. How cool would it be to put art on there.
Ben: That’s a much better answer than a bus.
