After 18 years of "feeding the beast" of annual theatre programmes, Colin McColl is loving having the freedom to do what he fancies — even taking to the stage for the first time in 40 years.
"I can pick and choose my projects."
He is also auditioning for television roles and will this year return to the stage in King Lear, playing a few small parts alongside Michael Hurst.
"I said yes as it feels like all care and no responsibility — just acting in a play would be wonderful. So I was all for it."
Another of the projects he fancies is playwright Roger Hall’s latest work Winding Up, a follow-up from his successful Conjugal Rites featuring the two characters from that work. Now in their 70s, Barry and Gen are coping with failing health, the deaths of friends, estranged family, the need to downsize, and planning their funerals.
McColl took the play to the stage during breaks in Covid restrictions.
"We’ve done lots of Roger’s plays — as have most theatres in country. Let’s face it, he’s kept theatres in the country going for years and years.
"[Winding Up] is quite strange for Roger as it’s very funny but very, very moving. I’d always thought Conjugal Rights was one of his best and this is certainly up there with those ones.
"When he really gets inside a relationship, it’s so true. It’s what makes it funny — we can all recognise our own relationships in that."
"They are both supreme comics but they can also go there with the pathos when it’s needed. There was no question in my mind," McColl said.
“Alison and Mark are great friends and have known each other since their drama school days. They are each superb actors in their own right but put them together and it’s comic dynamite.
"They have years of experience with Roger Hall’s work and an innate understanding of how his characters are comical but honest. I’m looking forward to bringing the production to the South Island.”
Winding Up toured the North Island during breaks in Covid restrictions so this is its chance to complete its national tour.
"It’s great to bring it to Dunedin. Of course Roger lived there for many years and was involved in the Fortune. He’ll be very pleased one of his plays is going on there."
While McColl has left his role as artistic director of Auckland Theatre Company, which he held for 18 years, he still works with them, directing a new Emily Perkins play — The Made — last year.
But things change, McColl admits, explaining his background in text-based theatre and his love of the classics is not in favour these days.
"It’s all about diversity in the theatre in Auckland at the moment. It’s great — there is a whole range of young interesting theatre makers coming through that are doing really vibrant work. It’s exciting to see. But it’s pretty fragmented at the moment because of Covid."
Covid has made challenges for theatres even greater as they seek to get audiences back, a problem being experienced worldwide. He had recently read of 10 shows on Broadway in New York closing due small audiences.
"Theatre people are resilient. They have to make theatre; it’s in their DNA. Things are popping up all over the place in strange wee venues."
"The range and diversity of work that people can see has expanded an incredible amount. In my last few years at Auckland Theatre Company we worked hard to encourage that, giving young theatre makers the muscle to work on the big stage."
The Waterfront Theatre, home to the company, is a huge stage with 650 seats. Most of the time the opportunity paid off and the makers stepped up to the challenge, he says.
"It’s like taking someone from the Dunedin Fringe to doing it on stage at the Regent Theatre."
McColl describes himself as a "technophobe" and finds the younger generation much more savvy in that area and are bringing that into their work.
"It gives a whole other texture to the work. As a career path I don’t think they are making much money from it but at least they are doing stuff."
It is very different from when McColl, who grew up in Lower Hutt, started out. He began as an actor, studying at New Zealand’s first drama school in Christchurch, which ran alongside a professional theatre company in the days before the Court Theatre.
Based on the old repertory theatre model, it brought out actors from England and America to perform and tutor the group of six to eight students.
"They didn’t like the imposition of this professional theatre company and there was a lot of antagonism from the amateur scene in Christchurch at the time and the whole thing folded within a year. But the interesting thing for us was that we had exposure to actors who trained the American method thing or old English rep actors, who had wonderful voices. We got a whole range of tutelage, which was cool."
McColl went to England a few years later and was there he became interested in directing.
"You’d see four productions of Hamlet in one week and think how interesting it is that they interpreted it in different ways."
He applied for funding to study directing at the British Drama School but it was suggested he return to New Zealand to work at Wellington’s Downstage Theatre as a trainee director for two years.
"It was wonderful training. The sort of thing I wish could still happen. Learning on the job is the way to do it."
He became associate director of Downstage and created the Theatre and Education Company before moving to Australia where he ran various companies.
When he returned to New Zealand he was asked to be artistic director of the Wellington Arts Centre, and then co-founded Taki Rua Theatre in 1983. His next role was as artistic director of Downstage.
"Then I’d had enough. I was getting offers of work from overseas so I decided to freelance. So I spent the next 12 years freelancing, working a lot in Europe and in Australia and here."
He worked with the Norwegian and the Dutch national theatres and is the only New Zealand director to be invited to present his work at the official Edinburgh Festival. His production of Hedda Gabler played there to great acclaim in 1990 and it was also presented at the Ibsen Festival, Oslo, the Covent Garden Festival, London and the 1991 Sydney Festival.
When he returned to New Zealand he was "lucky enough" to become artistic director at the Auckland Theatre Company. His productions included Anne Boleyn, Awatea, Calendar Girls, Mary Stuart, Equus, Serial Killers and Uncle Vanya.
"I thought I’d stay for three or five years but 18 years later I was still there and I thought it was time to move on."
These days he is looking forward to directing little shows, working in smaller spaces and touring them to theatres around the country rather than "feeding the beast" of the big stage at Waterfront Theatre.
"It’s really cool. It’s freed me up a lot. ATC is a subscription theatre so every year you’re having to come up with a programme working 18 months in advance all the time. You become a slave to the subscription model and it gets exhausting at times ."
Especially as subscribers can be very particular about what they like and do not.
"I found you had to challenge them a little bit. We encouraged them to be vocal about what they liked and didn’t like but sometimes it could be a bit stymieing creatively."
His work over the years has been recognised with an Arts Foundation of New Zealand Laureate Award in 2007 and he was made an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit in 2010.
He is now working on project for a friend that is being staged in a tiny 55-seater space in Q-Theatre.
"It is quite fun for me to work in a very intimate space after being used to working in such a big space," he says.
"You work with it, you strip back and it allows the actor to play in a much more intimate way with the audience."
Having three or four projects on the go for the year suits him nicely and enables him to have a better work-life balance.
"The other day I was reading about [the movie] Tar and thought ‘I can go to that’.
"If I ever went to a film in the daytime at ATC, God help me, I’d feel really guilty, so it’s lovely to be able to do that. Just slow down a bit."
