Mark Wright's 90-minute one-act play explores the origins of the Anzac spirit.
Kiwi actor Mark Wright shares with Jodi Bryant what audiences can expect from his Voices from Gallipoli play coming to Whangārei this week.
A veteran actor is bringing the voices of the ill-fated 1915 Gallipoli campaign to life, and it will likely induce Whangārei audiences to both laughter and tears.
Kiwi actor Mark Wright is bringing his acclaimed play Voices from Gallipoli to OneOneSix to perform over two nights as part of a North Island tour.
Written and performed by Wright, the 90-minute one-act play explores the origins of the Anzac spirit.
Wright portrays nine diverse characters from that disastrous campaign, including an 18-year-old soldier, a wounded Aussie on a hospital ship, a pompous British general and an 80-year-old returned serviceman.
The self-confessed “amateur historian” grew up listening to stories of his two great-uncles who left their hometown of Waihī to serve in Gallipoli. They returned but later died because of wound complications.
“My great-grandfather was the proprietor of the Rob Roy Hotel and my two great uncles, Tom and Jack Kelly, left from the Rob Roy to serve in Gallipoli. They were wounded and repatriated back but died due to their wounds. I grew up listening to stories from my grandmother [their sister] and they were two very young men taken too soon,” he says.
“They were the inspiration for my play and one of them makes an appearance in the play.
“He was a stretcher bearer in the medical corps – their job was to get the wounded back to a dressing station as quickly as possible and, in Gallipoli, they used a lot of donkeys because of the terrain.
“But when I searched his records, I discovered it was a bayonet wound so he was in the front line, right in the middle of the action.”
In the play, Wright wears a wristwatch watch one of his uncles wore during the war, and incorporates other family heirlooms as props.
When not on the road performing, Wright spends a lot of time at the family bach at Waihī Beach but grew up in Auckland where he attended the same boys’ college as his great-uncles.
On the eve of the 100th Gallipoli anniversary in 2014, he was asked to narrate a documentary where a group of students from his former school travelled to Anzac Cove where the tragedy played out.
“I’d always wanted to go and it was a very moving and life-changing experience. You don’t really know what you’re up against until you stand on the beach and look up at the terrain.”
His interest was rekindled, followed by an incident in 2021 hosting an acting workshop where he demonstrated some improvised monologue. He cast himself as a returned serviceman and began talking about his experiences of war.
It was well-received with the students asking him what play the monologue had come from and he told them he had just made it up. But it got him thinking, and writing.
“The play is about how the origins of the Anzac spirit were forged in the fires of war on the shores of the Gallipoli Peninsula. Aussies and Kiwis are fierce rivals on the sporting fields, but in times of adversity, we stand shoulder to shoulder.”
Voices from Gallipoli has been described as “putting the humanity back into the history book” and, as well as keeping the story alive, Wright was keen to dispel the myths about Gallipoli.
“A lot of New Zealanders, for example, think that we landed at dawn and that’s why there’s a dawn service. We actually landed at 4am, long before light.
“A lot of New Zealanders also don’t know that Kiwi women died at Gallipoli and I bring that out in my play.
“A lot of people don’t understand we had no high command, we had no generals.
“In the Second World War, we had our own high command. Some people don’t think that Māori fought at Gallipoli, they think they were digging in the trenches and labouring but that’s actually not true – they had their own battalion called the Pioneer Battalion and they fought very well.”
Wright takes the audience into the trenches and on to a hospital ship as he brings to life various characters in scenes described as both amusing and gut-wrenching. He deftly navigates each individual, such as the toffee-nosed commanding officer, the larrikin Aussie, the homesick Kiwi who is someone’s beloved son, the Army doctor and war veteran, through different tones, accents, emotion and stance.
Wright switches character simply by changing hats which hang on a hat stand making up the stage centrepiece. “Once I change hats once, the audience click on, ‘Oh right, new hat, new character’,” he explains.
Although he goes to great lengths to bring a woman’s voice into the narrative, he decided against doing a full nurse costume and make-up as it would look like “a very bad drag act”.
Wright’s long professional career does include comedy, though. A Toi Whakaari NZ Drama School graduate, he has appeared for every professional theatre company in New Zealand and toured extensively throughout Australasia.
He has featured in 40 different television series, programmes and specials, including Shortland Street, The Billy T James Show, McPhail and Gadsby, What Now, That Comedy Show, Comedy Central, Power Rangers, Nothing Trivial, Terry Teo and Go Girls, and won two New Zealand Film and Television awards for best performance.
Wright first performed his play in 2022 on Anzac weekend in Waihī. Since then, he has performed in 15 towns leading up to and around Anzac Day and says the content has remained the same.
“It seems to have struck a chord with the audience from the get-go, so I’ve been loath to change anything.
“I find that, unlike any other play I’ve been in in my 35 year-plus career, the audience stay on and linger in the foyer because they all have stories and questions.
“They all have a family connection they want to share with me or tell me something. So, rather than heading to the dressing room, I go straight out to the foyer and I’ve received some of the best quotes.
“One woman said, ‘You made me laugh, you made me cry, you b**tard’. Another woman came up to me on opening night in Waihī and said to me, ‘I didn’t want to be here, my husband dragged me along but I’m going to book tickets for my mother and sister.’
“In this country, it’s women who buy tickets to the theatre and drag their husbands along, and I think a lot of women don’t think this play’s for them.”
Wright usually visits the town two weeks’ prior to the show where he gives talks at the local RSA and high schools to spark interest. As a result, he sees a wide range in his audience, which he finds encouraging.
“On Saturday night, there was a group of teenage girls in the audience in the middle of the holidays so I hadn’t been able to visit their school beforehand.
“I talked to them afterwards and was chuffed that what I’d written does have an appeal to teenage girls and they said they would definitely recommend it to their friends.
“I’ve been getting a real mix of amateur historians, but also a lot of people who know very little or nothing about it. They do tend to laugh and cry, which, as a performer, you can’t ask for more than that.”
One of his first performances of Voices from Gallipoli was at his former college, where his two great-uncles boarded. “In the foyer of the theatre they had the original honours board and my two great-uncles’ names are on that honours board so that was quite an emotional performance for me.”
He adds, “OneOneSix in Whangārei is a professional theatre venue and I’m looking forward to bringing the play to town.”
# Voices from Gallipoli will be performed at OneOneSix on Friday May 2 and Saturday May 3 from 7pm. A matinee show may be added. Tickets from $20, plus booking fee, from Eventfinda.
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