An interactive environment reminiscent of the gold-rush era in downtown Dunedin, ''a la Deadwood'', complete with amusements, oddities and mud will be re-created in the Athenaeum to celebrate the city's 150th anniversary. Rebecca Fox discovers why.
It is theatre but not as we know it.
The ''audience'' will be expected to not only sit and absorb but move through different spaces.
''You'll sit, you'll watch and you'll interact,'' artistic director Richard Huber says.
Site-specific and promenade theatre is popular overseas but rarely seen in New Zealand.
Wow! Productions' plans to re-create Dunedin's Farley's Arcade provided the perfect opportunity to try out the different theatre experience, he said.
The idea came from producer Gareth McMillan, who had always wanted to do something on the arcade and Henry Farley, so the city's anniversary provided the perfect opportunity.
In Farley's Arcade: The Wildest Place in Town, there would be six ''spaces'' for people to ''walk'' their way through.
''The audience will promenade through the historic and cavernous Athenaeum Building in the Octagon, through literal and metaphorical layers of the city. Their journey includes an exploration of early Dunedin features such as Bell Hill, Farley's Royal Arcade and the Toitu stream,'' Mr McMillan said.
The arcade, like today's malls, was a place to meet, eat and shop, but there the similarities ended.
It was described in 1865 - the same year Dunedin became a city - as a wooden, muddy, chaotic place that had been built in the area around High and Maclaggan Sts and over Toitu Stream, which had been turned into a sewer and pushed underground.
''So we looked at the history of the Toitu Stream and made that part of the show.''
That particular part of the landscape was explored through the memory of an old Maori woman in 1865 as the world was changing for her, Mr Huber said.
Over time, people had forgotten the arcade ever existed.
''We're interested in using theatre as a way to open up the remembrance process.''
The core of the show tells the story of Henry Farley, an early entrepreneur and businessman in Dunedin, and re-creates, as a theatrical experience, his arcade - the 1865 version - then weaves into that an acknowledgement that in 1865 Dunedin was officially designated a city.
''As we were developing those ideas, we realised that a lot of the story was about layers, layers of time, things people remember and things people had forgotten. That idea that we live in layers of time and memory and forgetting became quite important.''
To re-create that feeling of the time, the team had done a lot of research into the 1860s, Henry Farley and the arcade itself.
They discovered a descriptive piece written in the Otago Daily Times in 1862 that gave them a real picture of what the place was like on a Saturday night.
''From reading that you get the impression that shopping was a very interactive theatrical experience, because the arcade itself was a very primitive affair. It was just a wooden shanty.
''On a Saturday night you would meet lots of interesting people and have interesting experiences.
''We've given people fictional money they can spend on fictional experiences.''
Using promenade theatre was a very good way to re-create that experience, as it was so theatrical, he said.
''As I've been doing my research, now, when I do my shopping, I wish it was a bit more like that.''
He had done several productions based on historical sites over the years and discovered it made him look at the city in a different way.
''Theatre is a very good way of entering that world. Not just showing it but our appreciation of what it is, what we are and what is still here.''
The team had tapped into research from the University of Otago that had enabled them to re-create the Royal Princess Theatre in the arcade.
Actors would not only re-create a mini-melodrama, The Golden Handkerchief, from the time but would also play the actors involved.
''It adds into that an extra layer acknowledging there were actors, dancers, musicians working at that time.''
Threaded through it all, contemporary singer/songwriter Abby Knudson would perform sacred music of the time and traditional Maori music would also be played.
Prof John Drummond, who had a love of music from that period, helped by researching musicians of the time and re-creating accompanist Alexander Livingston and the songs of satirist Charles Thatcher, including one on the arcade itself.
''We're going to use it. Thatcher was the colonial version of something like [television programme] Seven Days.''
Dance teacher Sofia Kalogeropoulou, of the School of Physical Education at the University of Otago, had choreographed a series of dance pieces to also be threaded through the performance.
Making it all a reality was a cast of 35 ranging in age from teenagers to those in their 70s: actors, dancers, singers and musicians.
Martin Roberts and Steven Kilroy were helping with the production and design.
Dunedin's steampunk community was on board and bringing their costumes and objects to help decorate the arcade.
''We're not just re-creating the colonial world; we are re-imagining it and the steampunk idea is wonderful for that.''
Pulling the production together had been a challenge but also ''wonderful'', Mr Huber said.
''It is so interesting to be able to deal with dancers, musicians and actors in many different forms and delve into a great part of Dunedin's history which is getting more and more understood and acknowledged, particularly in this year [1865] of gaining cityhood.''
The production had been funded by Creative New Zealand and the Dunedin City Council.
