In a state-of-the-art, purpose-designed building, the Christchurch Court Theatre has returned to the heart of the city. Video / Frank Film
In a state-of-the-art, purpose-designed building, the Christchurch Court Theatre has returned to the heart of the city.
“We stayed the course and, my God, we’re delighted with what we have.” Court Theatre actor and artistic adviser Ross Gumbley is not talking about the new Auckland apartment where curmudgeonly cow-cockie DickieHart, his character in the recently opened End of Summer Time by Roger Hall, now lives.
Rather, he is talking about the $56 million theatre building that has been wooing audiences since opening its doors in early May.
In helping to plan the new theatre, Gumbley and his team attended nearly 2500 meetings with designers, builders and architects to create a building that is intimate, operational and distinctly home-grown.
Taking a break from rehearsals, he points to the West Coast blackwood flooring, the laminated timber columns from Rotorua, and the steelwork made in nearby Bromley that dominate the expansive foyer.
The theatre features locally sourced materials and offers intimate spaces for audiences and performers. Photo / Frank Film
“This foyer is the finest Aotearoa has to offer,” he tells Frank Film.
Education and engagement manager Ben O’Brien-Limmer is similarly enthusiastic.
“We’re really pinching ourselves, just what a gift this is,” he says.
Back-of-house was cold and occasionally leaky and the stage was too big for most sets, but still, “our audience fell in love with Addington,” says Gumbley.
When the Christchurch City Council agreed to fund the new theatre building as an anchor for the arts in the post-earthquake rebuild, it was important to get it right.
“They wanted a building that you walked into and was warm and inviting, the antithesis of corporate,” says Athfield Architects’ Matthew Webby, who was employed to design the theatre alongside UK theatre specialists Haworth Tompkins.
Ross Gumbley and his team took part in nearly 2500 meetings to help shape a theatre that feels intimate, functional, and proudly home-grown. Photo / Frank Film
In a sea of large glass and aluminium buildings that have come to define the new CBD, that sense of intimacy and materiality was considered critical to the design of the building and the theatre spaces.
“At this scale of auditorium, you can get a really close connection between audience and actor,” says Webby.
From the front row seats of the Stewart Family Theatre, which can fit an audience of 379, the stage and its performers are within arm’s reach. In the Wakefield Family Front Room auditorium, artistic director Alison Walls says seating for 150 can be adapted for a traverse or round stage, allowing the audience to wrap around a performance completely.
The acoustics are just as immersive. Gumbley says that, from the back of the house, you can hear the pages of a script being turned backstage. In the control booth, technician Geoff Nunn says the theatre’s technical rig is “exactly the same” as you’d find in London’s West End theatres.
Technician Geoff Nunn says the theatre’s technical rig matches that of London’s West End, contributing to its remarkably immersive acoustics. Photo / Frank Film
It is not just experienced actors enjoying the new spaces. In one of the rehearsal rooms, associate artistic director Tom Bain takes a crew of young actors through the steps for The Spongebob Musical: Youth Edition, the first junior show in the new theatre, opening on July 1.
“It’s colourful, it’s joyous, it’s over the top,” he says.
With an already well-established patronage, many of whose names are engraved on the back of the theatre’s seats, the Court Theatre is focused on engaging Christchurch youth. The company runs three youth groups, offering acting classes for various age levels and culminating in youth-led productions.
“There’s always been a focus on bringing through that next generation of performer and live theatre-goer,” says O’Brien-Limmer. “However, it’s reached a whole new level coming into a space like this.”
The Court Theatre is Aotearoa’s only producing house with all its departments under the same roof. Looking through the windows from Colombo St, the public can see straight into the theatre workshop, where the company designs and constructs all sets, props and costumes for its shows.
Workshop manager Matthew Duffy says having direct access to the main stage makes his “dream job” even better, allowing more time and care per square metre. Photo / Frank Film
“It wouldn’t be the dream job if I had to carry this stuff from one location to here,” says workshop manager Matthew Duffy, who now has direct access to the main stage. He gestures to a prop he built recently for Spongebob – the front half of the Krusty Krab burger joint – which would be on stage for only a minute or so. “It’s a smaller stage [than Addington], so it’s better for us,” he says. “We can spend more time per square metre.”
Two months on from the theatre’s opening, says Gumbley, it is still very much early days, “but you know, we’re going to get this right”.
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