"When I was 4 years old I was watching my father rehearse for Salad Days and on the way home I was telling him off for not following the script, the director or standing stage centre, where he was supposed to be. And I also taught him the box step, because he was hopeless at it," she said.
Her own career as a performer began as a child, after pleading with her mother for ballet lessons after seeing Sleeping Beauty. By the time Brodie (now 40) was 13 years old, she was writing and directing plays for a children's theatre company in Christchurch, which at one stage had about 100 members.
It was her dream to work in the world of theatre, music and dance and when she was 18, Brodie was living the dream in London as an actress and dancer, as well as working backstage and as a casting director. About seven and a-half years later, she returned to New Zealand and is now one of the country's foremost professional theatre directors. With creative producer Sarah Hutchings, she runs an interdisciplinary production company called Stage Left.
"I've been lucky since I left school. I have worked in theatre my whole life and been lucky to have been on the dole for only one month," she said.
What mattered more than a drama school education was attitude, she said.
"It's a combination of talent, staying power and self-discipline. But mostly it is bloody-mindedness and staying power." Brodie has been full-time freelance directing for 10 years now and relishes not being at anyone else's mercy.
It's a travelling job, one she sometimes shares with her technical director partner Danny Hones, and they are frequently away from their Kapiti Coast home.
Last year, she was at the Erupt festival in Taupo, stage directing jazz musician Karen Hunter's performances.
She just finished Hear to See, for the National Theatre of Children, in association with Maori music specialist Richard Nunns. In August, she directs the New Zealand School of Music's opera premiere of Benjamin Britten's A Midsummer Night's Dream in Wellington.
By the time the Festival of Colour opens on Tuesday, Brodie will have been in Wanaka for more than a month, directing rehearsals of the late Graeme Tetley's Riverside Drive. The play was first workshopped with Mt Aspiring College pupils in January 2010.
Brodie had been toying with hiring professional actors for the lead roles but was impressed by the talent of local teenagers Jordaine Wilson and Mattias Inwood, who have the lead roles of Rosa and David.
The fun in being a director was figuring out the key to unlocking the creative performers in people, she said.
To hook the teenagers in, she turned to the case studies behind the Government-commissioned Mazengarb Report of 1954 and stories of bodgies and widgies. The Mazengarb inquiry, formally titled the Report of the Special Committee on Moral Delinquency in Children and Adolescents, was sparked by the infamous 1954 Parker-Hulme murder and the "Petone incident", when police rounded up members of "milk-bar gangs" suspected of indecent sexual activity.
Moral panic ensued and the commission fielded all sorts of complaints about corrupting influences on youth. Some allegations were just plain funny, Brodie said.
"Someone had gone to the effort of cutting out corsetry advertisements and sent it in, saying this is corrupting our young people."
Rosa's story is particularly tragic and Brodie says the material is probably not suitable for children aged under 13.
"It is challenging material. But it is also important to be shown and talked about. Graeme also said of it, that it was his way of writing the teenager's revenge in the face of the report ... Graeme would have been a young boy at the time, so I think there's a bit of Graeme written into it," Brodie said.
People would enjoy the play because there were lots of things to love about it, she said.
"It is a fantastic story, first and foremost. There's a lot of music in it - Revivalist Church songs, along with a touch of rock'n'roll. So there's something to hark back to. It's quite nostalgic for people of that era ... Also people know the actors. And it's a wonderful thing when a community has taken up something so challenging ... And it is funny," she said.
Riverside Drive was commissioned as a new work by festival director Philip Tremewan. He was a close friend of Tetley, a leading New Zealand scriptwriter, who died last month aged 69. Tetley was scheduled to share the stage with Brodie during the festival's Aspiring Conversations programme at the Crystal Palace from 2.30pm on Thursday April 14.
That event will still go ahead, with Mr Tremewan and cast members joining Brodie to explore the insights the play offers into the 1950s.
The actors
Plays: Rosa
Background: Year 13 pupil Mt Aspiring College
Studies: English, drama, cafe culture, history and geography
Other interests: netball, dance, basketball, acting, touch rugby
Acting history: school productions
Tell me about your character
"Rosa is 14. She's a mature 14-year-old. She's got quite a lot of issues. She's grown up before her time because she's experienced things that an 18-year-old might experience.
She is inspired by the Wrens, the bodgie and widgie culture. She's really emotionally damaged, in a way. She acts like she is a really tough girl and she is outspoken."
What do you like about her?
"We are not similar at all. I find we are completely different people but I find that fun, playing someone different to me. I do like her.
She's a really strong character and she has that maturity. I think I could learn something from her. I have learned something from playing her.
Why will people enjoy Riverside Drive?
"I think it is a really big step outside of everyone's comfort zone in Wanaka. It's not an average play. It will open people's eyes and make them aware of what happened in Lower Hutt (in the 1950s). And it will be good to see young people playing such strong characters."
What is it like working with director Sara Brodie and will you keep acting?
"It is amazing. I love her. She makes the process so much easier. She gives a lot of directions. I get to do a lot of things that are a big step outside my comfort zone. She understands that and will make it as easy as possible. Drama school - I came to the thought of doing that last year. I don't want acting to be a hobby. I want it to be legit."
Plays: David
Background: Year 13 pupil Mt Aspiring College
Studies: English, drama, food technology, outdoor pursuits, geography
Other interests: football, acting, playing guitar
Acting history: member of Aspiring Children's Theatre School, school productions
Tell me about your character
"David is a 14-year-old boy who grew up with a mother who is hysterically Christian. She is a really strong Christian and really stuck in her Christian ways. The mother of David is really full-on. And I've got a dad who's been completely destroyed by war. It destroyed his brain. There is nothing left of what he used to be.
As well as that, I have two sisters. And David is incredibly sexually curious."
What do you like about him?
"I do like him ... I don't know that I was that full-on when I was 14. He's really full-on wanting to have sex with everyone. It's not just Rosa, it's older girls as well who he has sexual attractions to. But he is honest and incredibly smart. He has a lot of brains."
Why will people enjoy Riverside Drive?
"I think they will enjoy the clumsy cuteness of it. I think that's a good way of putting it. Although Rosa has a lot of experience, she doesn't really know anything. And David doesn't know anything, so that brings a clumsy cuteness into it."
What is it like working with director Sara Brodie and will you keep acting?
"It has been good. I thought it would be really full-on and it has been. Although she is a lovely lady, I do find her intimidating at times.
But she makes me feel comfortable. I am learning more about theatrical productions and I am going to apply to Toi Whakaari (New Zealand Drama School) next year.
See it
Riverside Drive, by Graeme Tetley (Out of the Blue, Ruby and Rata, Vigil), will be on at the Hawea Flat Hall from Tuesday, April 12 until Saturday, April 16, at 6.30pm.
