Take a bow Chris Hudson

BIRTHDAY BOY: Prop-maker extraordinaire and all round helping hand for community theatre companies such as Musical Theatre Gisborne (MTG) and Unity Theatre, Chris Hudson takes a break in MTG’s workshop. Picture by Liam Clayton

Gisborne man Chris Hudson is a legend in local theatrical circles for his skills in prop-making and set-building. Chris turned 90 on Thursday and this weekend celebrates his birthday with his extended family — Gisborne Theatre Arts. He talks to Mark Peters . . .

The motorcyclist leaning against the rail of a South Island bridge could have stopped to enjoy the view as far as passers-by were concerned.

In fact, Ulysses Club member Chris Hudson’s left leg was badly smashed and the weight of his motorcycle had trapped him against the bridge.

A 12-year-old passenger in a passing car noticed something was wrong and before long emergency services raced him to Balclutha for treatment.

Ironically, Chris had recently retired from Gisborne Hospital’s orthotics department, a department that dealt with splints and braces. He knew through professional experience how attempts to save his leg could play out. He had lost much skin and muscle in the accident, the bones in his leg were badly broken, the likelihood of infection was high and he faced years of rehabilitation.

He opted for amputation.

Meanwhile, Gisborne Theatre Arts, the company he had become involved with as a props maker and set builder a few years earlier, prepared to launch a production of Sweet Charity.

Chris sent a card to wish the cast well on opening night. True to theatrical tradition, the inscription read: “Break a leg”.

Through various transmutations the company is now known as Musical Theatre Gisborne (MTG). This weekend, MTG members and supporters will celebrate Chris’s 90th birthday.

Since arriving, emigrating from Britain to New Zealand in 1965, Chris has been involved in local theatre. He has always worked with his hands so prop-making and set-building are valuable skills he has developed a reputation for over the decades.

One of his most challenging constructions was a harness that was needed to fly in the character EmCee in MTG’s 1988 production of Cabaret. Chris made the harness from parts of old safety belts. For the company’s production of Gilbert and

Sullivan’s Iolanthe he built wings for the entire cast which included fairies, and peers such as dukes, marquises, earls, viscounts and barons.

The fairies’ wings were straightforward enough but the peers were fitted with wings that remained concealed until the final scene when they joined the fairy ranks and “away they go to fairyland”.

Mousetraps held the folded wings in place until required for take-off.

“The actors had strings in their costumes,” says Chris.

“When they pulled the string it set off the mousetraps, the wings unfolded and the fairies and peers flew out — to fairyland.”

Chris made the fairies’ diaphanous wings from salvaged bubble wrap (it wasn’t available in rolls or sheets back then) and wire. The mousetraps were screwed to a felt pad.

“I had a fantastic job there, I told someone,” says Chris. “Screwing all the fairies.”

For MTG’s 2012 production of Dad’s Army, Chris put his military experience (we’ll come to that) to good use when he carved a set of .303 Lee–Enfield rifles complete with magazines and slings.

Having spent his childhood in England in an era when television was unheard of, he was no stranger to theatre.

“Better days, I sometimes think. It made people use their imaginations.”

Entertainment came via radio and live performance. Pantomime is an enduring British tradition Chris saw much of.

Chris was born in Coleshill, on the outskirts of Birmingham, on August 23, 1928 (his 90th birthday was on Thursday). During the World War 2 bombing of cities in Britain Chris was evacuated.

“I was in the Scouts. We’d been to Devon and Bournemouth. We came back and were trained off to Leicestershire.”

He remembers standing on a hilltop and watching the glow over Birmingham as it burned from the bombing. Chris’s younger sister was with him but his parents and elder sister were still in Birmingham.

“You waited to hear if they were still there.”

People in Hudsons’ neighbourhood had taken shelter in their Anderson bomb shelters — government-supplied structures made from thick, curved steel fastened with nickel bolts — during the bombing that destroyed the Hudson family home.

Chris says the house was not bombed as much as mined.

“The Germans were cunning. They sent back our naval mines — on parachutes.”

As a 15-year-old, Chris left school and began work as a saddler. Theatre was a prime source of entertainment.

“Birmingham at the time had a population the size of the whole of New Zealand. The city had two amateur theatres. Both were attached to churches.”

Not far from Birmingham was Stratford-Upon-Avon, birthplace of William Shakespeare.

“We used to cycle down there for the night and stay at the youth hostel. We wandered around in the morning then queued up at the theatre in Stratford.”

Chris was a keen cyclist and was a member of the Cyclists’ Touring Club of Great Britain, an organisation that is older than the Automobile Association. He and other members cycled around Europe and Scandinavia. Shortly before he turned 18,

Chris was conscripted into the army for two years for compulsory training. He was stationed in Oldenburg, Germany with the Royal Horse Artillery.

“Our colonel was captain of the British show-jumping team. We ran the stables where we kept his horses. We had patrol horses in case of riots. We looked after 10 horses. They were used to give riding lessons to the officers’ wives.”

Chris was made batman to the major of D-battery and housed in a big barn with concrete walls that had been designed to look like they were made of logs. The location was Adolph Hitler’s nursery, as it were, for the Aryan race. Nazi ideology was based on the notion of the ancient Aryan race as a superior breed and that Germanic people were the most racially-pure people of Aryan stock.

By the early 1960s, a severe nasal condition that constricted his breathing motivated Chris and his wife to emigrate. They saw an advertisement in the newspaper and applied for passage to New Zealand. Numerous physical and psychological hoops had to be jumped through before that could happen. The tests took a full year to complete.

New Zealand immigration requirements were that Chris find a job before he got here. The employee would be bonded with that employer for two years. The employer was required to find his immigrant worker a house.

Chris found work with a saddler and later was employed by a tile business. Chris’s job was to build fireplaces for Gisborne homeowners and the recently- built state and Maori Affairs houses.

In 1977, before the Lawson Field Theatre was built, Chris saw the newly-formed Gisborne Theatre Arts’ productions of Noel Coward’s Private Lives, and another show, Sandy Wilson’s musical The Boy Friend, at the museum. In the following year he saw a production of the musical Salad Days performed in the Makaraka Racecourse bar.

He first became involved with Gisborne community theatre in 1985 when he made props for a Gisborne Theatre Arts production of Westside Story then The Canterbury Tales in the same year.

“We used to do three shows a year back then.”

The 1980s don’t seem that long ago to Chris.

“But when you talk about shows we did in the 80s a lot of people say ‘I wasn’t even born then’. Then you think ‘Oh, God.

It’s been 30 years since then’.”

He resigned from Gisborne Hospital’s orthotics department in 1989 and not long after that motorcycled around the South Island with a Ulysses Club mate. They parted company along the way. Chris wanted to take a more scenic route he could photograph. His mate wanted the long straight stretches of road on the east coast. The weather was terrible as Chris made a long ride through a beech forest in the Catlins. As he was about to cross a small bridge his footrest, he believes, snagged an iron plate at the foot of the bridge. The weight of the motorcycle trapped his leg and broke both bones in several places. He stayed awake in case anyone stopped while he was unconscious and tried to lift the motorbike off him.

He suspected that would cause more damage. Spotted by the 12-year-old child in a passing car, the girl’s parent called emergency services and Chris was taken to Balclutha. Given the seriousness of his injuries he was transferred to Dunedin Hospital where he made the decision to have his leg amputated — but only if he could have an artificial limb made at the hospital.

He sent the card with it’s ironic inscription to the cast and crew of Gisborne Theatre Arts’ production of Sweet Charity.

Six weeks later members of the company waited at Gisborne airport for his return.

“They expected me to be in a wheelchair but I walked down the gangplank.”

The Musical Theatre Gisborne family celebrate Chris’s 90th birthday in the company’s clubrooms this weekend.