Space transformer pushes theatre's limits
It's a beautiful sunny day. You know the sort, the end of winter and finally the grey turns to bright and people are notably upbeat. Massey University students have done the hard slog of a Palmy winter and today the dull concrete of the main concourse has a silver shimmer.
Jerseys are tied around waists and people are loitering and looking at a man under a blue tarpaulin – a moving creature. The man is Stephen Bain, the creature is also Stephen Bain. It is a performance, a contemplation of what is theatre and a reclamation and reinvention of a public space.
Bain, as creature, has stolen a rubbish bin, spat it out and is now hugging a tree.
People are looking sideways, questions are being asked, "what is he doing?", "is this the performance?", "why?", "who?", "art?". Some pretend not to see, some make a real effort not to look, others follow, intrigued, discussing in huddled groups.
A girl stage whispers behind a hand: "does it mean something?"
To Bain it does. He's the current Massey Universityartist in residence and, at the moment, the sky-bound flat at the top of Square Edge Community Arts is his home.
Generally, home is Auckland and Winning Productions is work. Well, more of a way of life.
He directs the theatre company, creating and taking original theatre off the stage and into unconventional spaces – art galleries, museums, shop fronts, places that people pass through, by or around. It's theatre, but not as we know it.
Bain has a way of thinking that is beyond out of the box; it's more out of this world, and it's exciting.
"A really motivating force for me is to try to reclaim what public is and allow people to be the public," he says. "I don't think there are many public spaces in New Zealand left, really. The way that we invigorate or create public spaces is we create commerce and that's supposed to be public, but it's not, it's actually owning places. You're owned by the place that's paying for it."
People are starting to take ownership of this makeshift theatre space right now. It's 10 minutes into the performance and a crowd is forming and ideas are formulating: "I wonder what he's thinking", "he's being expressive", "art people are crazy".
The way people respond is just as much a part of the performance as the blue plastic creature.
"I became [less] interested in the main stage, things were becoming more market-driven and I realised that I didn't need an actual building. I come from the entertainment world, that's the bus that I drive but I am naturally a conceptual thinker."
Out of that thinking has come productions that defy definition.
Sound used in different ways is a feature of Winning Productions' works.
Soundig is an interactive installation where the public are invited into a temporary structure to view recent archaeoacoustic findings beneath the city.
Bain creates places for people to gather, discover, wonder and smile. And to grieve as well.
The Wailing Chamber sees performers collect messages of grief from all around the city, then perform a ceremony to release the grief for good... cue rapturous wailing.
It's all a bit mad, a bit wonderful and mixed in with a lot of innovation and free thinking.
Bain collaborates with people he says are "as crazy and weird as I am". He says he gravitates to people that "feed" the mind.
"A few years ago I had my friends around and we were working on some stuff and I realised, 'man, all of you guys are loonies, you are really strange people'."
Bain studied architecture, which fits in with his spatial way of thinking.
Many of his projects use structures. On his last visit to Palmerston North he brought a little house with him that he would park up in public spaces and sit in, inviting people to chat.
A new project in development is an intimate theatre structure designed to float on water.
The spaces that Bain now creates are conceptual places designed to hold ideas, perceptions and meaning, a hook to hang thoughts.
Right now Bain is pursuing a bemused person down the university concourse.
Ideas are batted around and moments of quiet contemplation are interjected with furious banter.
A drama student has an epiphany.
"We always search for meaning in things and do you know what? You actually can just let it be."
The group falls silent, heads nod and the sun shines on.
Written by Carly Thomas. First appeared on Stuff.co.nz
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