Tandi Wright's eventful return to the stage

Actress Tandi Wright, will lead the new Q theatre play, The Events. Photo / Michael Craig

Any hint of spring has been blown away by wind and showers which have left water-filled potholes in the driveway of the Westpoint Performing Arts Centre. Inside, Tandi Wright wears two puffer jackets, gloves, black jeans, woollen socks and a pair of comfortable-looking sneakers.

"I must look like the Michelin man," sighs Wright, "but it's colder inside than out so I'm staying rugged up."

No matter what she wore, Wright would never look like the Michelin man. Indeed, when she sits down to talk about her latest project, there's an engaging lightness of spirit about her. Wright has been on stage and screen for close on two decades, appearing in a raft of TV shows - Nothing Trivial, This is not my Life, Being Eve, Seven Periods with Mr Gormsby and Shortland Street - plus films including the international blockbuster Jack the Giant Slayer and dozens of theatre shows.

She appears more contented than ever and is self-assured, relaxed and good-humoured despite the cold and the subject matter of the play in which she returns to the Auckland stage after a five-year absence.

The play is The Events and Wright reckons it is every bit as powerful as her last play, 2010's When the Rain Stops Falling, also produced by Silo theatre. She portrays a young priest and choirmaster, Claire, who is driven to the brink of madness as she tries to understand why a member of her choir has shot and killed a number of his fellow singers.

Wright describes Claire as a good person brimming with compassion, kindness and an innate desire to see the good in everyone and ensure all are welcomed into her fold.

"Of all the people to have something like this happen, she is the one you expect to find a way through. But what is so interesting is that everything she believes - especially about forgiveness - is gone and it brings her to the edge.

"It's not a desire for revenge. She wants to understand why so she can fix things and make them better but there might not be a reason and she can't comprehend that."

The sneakers Wright wears belong to Claire. She likes to put on the shoes of her characters early because they influence the way she will walk and move around the stage. The earlier you walk in their shoes, the easier it is to become the person you're portraying.

But she doesn't always have the luxury of time. Wright spent four months last year in Canada filming her first American TV series, The Returned, based on the highly praised French show Les Revenants.

She played a mother, also called Claire, who gets the shock of her life when her 15-year-old daughter walks into the family home four years after her death in a horrific bus accident.

Wright had just two days' notice to fly to Vancouver and start filming on set in Squamish, 60km north of Vancouver, which doubled for the fictional town of Caldwell. The story went that the isolated community - with a dark past - suddenly found an assortment of former residents long believed to be dead and buried returning.

She laughs at the memory of how fast and intense the move from Auckland to Canada was but says it helped her work. While the situation seemed crazy, it was a crazy she could bring to Claire who was - obviously - struggling to comprehend a situation far more extreme.

Wright stayed in Vancouver with her husband, Michael Beran, and their 7-year-old daughter, Olive. Just as being a mother helped her tap into the emotions Claire might be experiencing, it also helped her unwind after long days filming.

"I was lucky because my schedule had me filming four days on - very long days - but four days off so we could get out and explore," she says. "I love coming home to my family because they keep me safe.

"When you're a mother, your children don't care about what you've been doing at work because they have needs that must be met. If I'd been going home to an empty house, I would have found a way to make it work but I think it would have been more difficult."

Returning to a glorious New Zealand summer, Wright took time out to be a mum, relax and unwind. She then busied herself sending off audition tapes for international roles as well as filming the Australian TV comedy, produced by South Pacific Pictures, 800 Words.

The series, which premieres in Australia next month, stars Erik Thomson as a widowed father of two teenagers who uproots his kids from Sydney to smalltown New Zealand.

When the script for The Events arrived, Wright thought it was an amazing piece of contemporary drama and figured stage roles this good don't come along often. Given there has been a lot of death in her recent work, she doubts she could have taken on The Events soon after her arrival home. It would have been too much, she says.

As well as gritty subject matter, Wright liked that this Claire is different from other roles she has tackled as her journey is more intense and substantial. Now in the throes of rehearsals, Wright is revelling in the fact it pushes her to tap into "deeper stuff emotionally" and be braver in the performance.

"I find the more work I do, the less careful I want to be in terms of the choices I'm making," she explains. "I want to go deeper and explore more complex and involved themes. I guess I'm removing the censorship, the beauty and the 'nice stuff' and choosing to be more willing to go deeper, darker and uglier.

"The more I can do that, the more interesting the work will be and it's also how I'll get better. I suppose one of the nice things about getting older and gaining more experience is that you have the confidence to do that."

Scottish playwright Dave Greig wrote The Events to try to understand the terrifying phenomenon of mass shootings around the world.

Wright believes there's a strong strand of hope through the piece, which is very much fostered by its most unusual element.

Each night, Wright and fellow performer Beulah Koale are joined on stage by a different choir who have been rehearsing the music, which runs the gamut from hymns like How Great Thou Art to Dizzee Rascal's Bonkers, away from the actors.

It adds a touch of unpredictability to the show and heightens the major theme of community.

Wright says voices are raised in song re-affirm one's faith in humanity and cannot help but be uplifting. She has joined a choir, set up specifically for the show by musical director Robin Kelly, and has been singing weekly with it, as well as learning to conduct.

"Robin has been a fantastic teacher and the choir has been extremely generous letting me use them as very lovely and talented guinea pigs," she says. "I was in a choir when I was about 5 and the choirmaster told me I was going to grow up and be a fat opera singer, probably because I was so bossy. I didn't mind at all. I think I rather liked the idea of travelling the world as an opera singer."

When The Events ends, Wright starts filming The Rehearsal, an adaptation of Man Booker-prizewinner Eleanor Catton's debut novel. Wright has read and enjoyed The Rehearsal and The Luminaries, which won Catton the Man Booker. Most of all, though, she likes Catton's politics.

"I loved what she said about [the function of] the arts. That's the kind of debate we should be having.

"If our artists are not holding the frontline and holding those in authority - the Government - to account, who else is? It's part of our job to rark things up."