Two years after the project was first mooted, Whero's New Net is taking the stage, says Dionne Christian
KEY POINTS:
Hair pulled back, casually dressed and with a guitar slung over her back, Bree Peters disappears into a cool Auckland night looking like a young musician heading into the world to sing her way to success.
Comfortable as she may appear with the guitar, 25-year-old Peters has never played before.
She is taking it home to rehearse for Whero's New Net in which she plays a troubled young musician in London to chase a dream far from her New Zealand home.
The dream Peters is chasing is to make a name for herself as an actor. Whero's New Net may go some way to helping her achieve her dream as playing title character Whero Mahana is her biggest role since graduating from Toi Whakaari New Zealand Drama School at the end of 2006.
She had to quickly learn to relate to the complex young Whero, whose life may not be all it seems.
"With any play, things come together when you start to understand the character you are portraying," she says. "It's coming together for me but it has taken a while to explore and find ways of communicating Whero's inner world with the audience."
Whero's New Net has been adapted by Albert Belz from short stories in The New Net Goes Fishing, written by Witi Ihimaera in 1977.
Belz, an actor-turned-playwright, won the 2006 Bruce Mason Playwright Award and a slew of accolades at that year's Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards for his drama, Yours Truly.
He considers Whero's New Net as more of a revision than an adaptation of Ihimaera's work, saying it enlarges the themes of home, migration and memory.
As Belz was starting the adaptation process, Massive Theatre Company asked him to work with it on a play. Artistic director Sam Scott was enthusiastic about the adaptation.
Scott takes her time producing plays, commissioning a writer who pens a draft script for her and groups of actors to workshop for several months. The emphasis is on devising relevant, urban theatre.
It has taken nearly two years to stitch together Whero's New Net, partly because of commitments to other projects by those involved.
Belz describes himself as a playwright who likes to "go it alone". However, he says, he has enjoyed the chance to work in a new and more collaborative way.
Similarly, it has been a different way of working for Peters.
After seeing Peters in The Crucible last year, Scott asked her to attend a workshop.
"I was asked to keep coming back to the workshops but I didn't know if I would have a part in the finished version," says Peters.
"I was enjoying it more and more and kept thinking, `Please ask me to be in it' but I certainly didn't expect to get offered the role of Whero.
"When it happened, I screamed, I jumped around, I hugged my flatmate and I rang my mum."
Whero's New Net also features Wesley Dowdell, Kura Forrester, Jarod Rawiri, Madeleine Sami, Blair Strang and Tainui Tukiwaho.
LOWDOWN
What: Whero's New Net adapted from the Witi Ihimaera story by Albert Belz for the Massive Theatre Company.
Where & when: Opens this weekend at the Herald Theatre and runs to October 4.
