There's more to theatre than acting and putting on plays. To make a living as a theatre practitioner in Dunedin you have to turn your hand to many things, Cindy Diver tells Charmian Smith.
Making a living working in theatre in Dunedin means you need many different strings to your bow, Cindy Diver says.
She is celebrating 21 years of her company TheatreWorks Ltd, which does everything from teaching, casting, producing and supporting theatre and film-making, to event management and corporate training.
''It's a matter of evolving and expanding and retracting. When things are good, expand and when things are not, retract to the core business. I think that's one of the reasons TheatreWorks has survived whereas some of the other smaller arts industries haven't,'' Ms Diver said.
Earlier this month she celebrated the company's 21st birthday, an occasion that attracted people from around the country who have been associated with TheatreWorks over the past 21 years. Many of them got their start in the profession with the company, she said.
Ms Diver and her former husband, Martin Phelan, established TheatreWorks Ltd in 1992 when she was 21 and straight out of university.
''We were both actors and a lot of things [such as films and commercials] were coming through but they weren't casting local actors because there was no agency or place for them to find actors, so they would cast before they came.
''We had this idea we could provide a conduit for actors to get some of this work because we both wanted to stay here. Until that time the majority of actors had to leave to get work and there wasn't an ongoing stable of actors to create work here.''
There was some television work in children's programmes, documentaries and ''small stuff'', and the Fortune Theatre, she said.
She and Phelan set up an actors' agency and for the first few years focused on getting work for their clients, co-operative ventures such as improvised theatre, stand-up comedy and theatresports, and teaching drama classes.
They helped establish the SPDU (Simulated Patient Development Unit) with the University of Otago Medical School, of which Diver is particularly proud. It employs actors to play patients with particular problems so medical students can practise medicine and empathy without the fear of hurting real patients.
''That became an important branch of our business because it was ongoing local paid professional work, but also had the by-product of making our actors better actors, because intimate acting in a scenario with your doctor makes you work really hard at being truthful.
''Part of the difference between someone just coming in and pretending to be a patient and using an actor is that the actor is at all times analysing why they are feeling what they are feeling, what you've just said that makes them react - it's like they've got this computer in their brain that goes tick tick tick, and after the consultation they can give feedback that can help make the doctor a better doctor.
''As an actor it's an incredibly difficult task to learn but once you've got it, it makes you a better actor,'' Ms Diver said.
''I've bumped into a few of the doctors I worked with back when they were students and they said how valuable that process was to them, being able to practise without fear of harm and explore the way they consult.''
Hilary Norris, a long-time Dunedin theatre practitioner who has worked with TheatreWorks, especially in SPDU and teaching, says Ms Diver has been influential in finding different ways actors can use their skills in the city, and has given many local actors a firm start, even if they had to leave Dunedin to further their careers.
''She's constantly looked for new things to do, new things to be involved in and has kept a huge number of contacts and given her actors a huge number of skills,'' Norris said.
TheatreWorks expanded into corporate training workshops, using actor training to teach better communication skills and facilitate workplace cohesion. They have also run workshops for Winz, helping long-term unemployed people develop interview and self-presentation skills.
Ms Norris said it was not often realised actors were a good resource for all sorts of human interaction work, including the basic skill of listening.
''We've also got a very good idea of things like the status game - in other words how human beings communicate with each other by raising or lowering their status, as we did with Winz - making yourself feel better, presenting yourself in a certain way so you look confident even if you don't feel confident, training your voice better so you are not whispering when you are talking to a big group of people, how to command attention and get people on side.
''All those areas tap into the skills we learn as an actor - how humans interact with each other and what might be going on underneath although you don't need to show it on top, and how to control all that stuff,'' Ms Norris said.
Ms Diver has also worked as a television production manager, casting director and casting wrangler for film and television. She gave up the actors' agency some years ago.
''We had about 120 on our books at the height but there just wasn't enough work. Every time you got a really good one you'd have to say 'go away now to Wellington or Auckland or London', so it was quite heartbreaking,'' she said.
''I love casting because in some ways it goes back to the roots of why we started this - giving people the opportunity to work in film and television. As much as I love theatre, the thing I love about casting is giving people the opportunity to show what they've got - I love that facilitation process now I'm not an actors' agent.''
It is difficult for professional actors to earn a full-time living in Dunedin. They needed a patron such as a partner with a steady income or a job that let them take a couple of months off to do acting work here and there, Ms Diver said.
To earn a good living as an actor in New Zealand, people had to be willing to travel to work in the country's professional theatres or to film or television sets or wherever commercials are being made, and once you have a family that is difficult, says Diver who has a 17-year old daughter as well as a 2-year old son.
''I look at some of the professionals who come down to work at the Fortune and I couldn't spend eight months a year away from my son.
''Part of me is relieved by that thought because I know it's a choice I've made. That helps make me content with the stuff I'm doing. I love watching children light up when that first spark of getting it comes to them on stage.''
Interact drama classes are a big part of TheatreWorks. They grew out of drama classes Norris taught at the Fortune Theatre.
''Cindy, Martin and I had a long conversation about wouldn't it be great to run the classes as a business,'' Ms Norris said.
Now, with a staff of 10, Ms Diver offers seven classes a week, catering for children as young as 5 up to adults. They teach acting skills - things they don't learn at school, she said.
''I have kids who've gone from being very young right through to university then coming back as assistant teachers. The most frightening time was when one of the parents turned up and said I used to be in your class - here's my 5-year-old. Please teach him.''
It has not all been easy. Since Mr Phelan left in 2003 to set up The T Shop, now based in Christchurch, Ms Diver has managed TheatreWorks by herself, working with other local theatre practitioners, including Hilary Norris, Clare Adams and Janine Knowles.
In 2009, when she returned to university to do a postgraduate diploma in theatre studies, she sold SPDU to Ms Knowles, who now runs it under the name Outstanding Performance.
''I got really jaded because we'd had so many great people through our books I started getting quite cynical that we were always going to have great people who had to leave. The best thing you could do was throw them out of Dunedin.
''I remember thinking 'do I just want to be a nursemaid for the rest of my life and lose all the good ones?'.
''That's when I went back to university to remember why I was doing this. It was great, because I got an opportunity to direct a Chekhov - to get back into the guts of theatre - and realised I loved it again.
''As an artist I don't mind paperwork and administration, but when it gets too big, it's all you do. I think I got jaded with the idea of being an administrator instead of a creator of art. It's now back in balance since handing on SPDU.''
At the moment she is working with Talking House on a verbatim theatre project about people who live with dementia and those around them.
It is based on interviews which are then turned into a script in which actors use the interviewee's own words and gestures - a really challenging style of acting, she says.
• For more information go to www.theatreworks.co.nz.
