KEY POINTS:
A few months ago, actors and performing artists so passionately behind the Q Theatre project in Auckland heaved a collective sigh of relief and cracked open the champagne.
After 10 years, eight reports and much lobbying and fundraising by dedicated volunteers, Auckland City councillors had unanimously fallen in
behind plans to build a 350- to 460-seat "flexi-form" theatre.
The theatre would fill a vital gap in a serious shortage of appropriate theatre venues in the country's biggest city, giving a home to dozens of small independent theatre and dance companies and delighting supporters who include some of our big-name actors and playwrights - Michael Hurst, Jennifer Ward-Lealand, Roger Hall and many more.
The Q Theatre, so named for its Queen Street location tucked in behind the Town Hall, would be in a building donated by the council. There would be rehearsal rooms and a cafe/bar bringing life and drama, ideas and inspiration and a buzz to the Aotea Square end of the city centre.
But then the people voted John Banks in as mayor on a promise to contain the rates bill and all bets are off.
Last month, the new council granted money to cover the resource consent application for Q Theatre and thus a lifeline, but delayed previous commitments of capital and operational funding.
The theatre is again in limbo, the champagne packed away, the actors' spirits dampened - but the fight continues.
Instead of full steam ahead, councillors have called for another report.
This time they want to look not just at what theatre venues are needed in the city but also create a strategic action plan to guide and prioritise future provision and investment for such venues.
And there's another twist. The study should look specifically at the currently derelict St James Theatre block in Queen St "and the prospect the council may, within the next five years, be invited to purchase the St James".
The St James is not owned by the council but by a man who wants to build apartments.
Not everyone is upset at the latest turn of events. While the people behind Q Theatre are nail-bitingly frustrated, down in temporary offices at the waterfront end of town, the city's biggest and most successful professional theatre company - the Auckland Theatre Company - is pleased.
The council has done the right thing, they say. Don't get them wrong, the company is all for the building of a smaller, flexi-form theatre - the city most definitely needs one.
It's just that the Auckland Theatre Company needs a bigger, 550-seat theatre of its own. Without such a venue, the future is murky.
The Auckland Theatre Company was rocked last year when the University of Auckland placed a question mark over future use of the Maidment Theatre, the company's main venue.
All this talk of venues. Surely we already have enough and why can't the various performing arts companies all use the same one?
It's not that simple. There are questions of comfort and intimacy, of economics and viability.
IAN HUGHES (you might remember him as "Sticky" from Shortland Street, though he comments "that was so yesterday" when I remind him) arrives at the proposed Q Theatre location wearing a Superman T-shirt.
Actor Peter Elliott is here, along with Q Theatre general manager Suzanne Ritzenhoff. Hughes brings out a newspaper report that another Q supporter has dug up.
The report dates back to 1946 and describes how the then mayor, Mr J. A. C. Allum, was inspired by a night at the theatre.
"Plans are now in train for substantial development work in the city. In those plans I am sure will be a fine repertory theatre.
"Young Aucklanders who can put on so brilliant and polished a show as I have seen here tonight [in the Town Hall] have earned the right to appropriate accommodation."
Hughes says he thinks the actors have been very patient and Elliott roars with laughter.
"Everyone's dead," says Elliott. Hughes says, "how many more theatre practitioners must die?"
The laughter belies the frustration these actors feel at the stalling of Q Theatre.
Later, Hughes explains he wore his Superman T-shirt for a reason.
"I do believe we are saving the city. It's not just about us and a clubhouse for us. We're passionate Aucklanders, we want Auckland to be better and this is the way we can do it."
The theatre is about giving something back, he says.
On a basic level actors and performers entertain and that alone enhances the city and the lives of its people. "But if you want to be deep and meaningful about it, we give people a chance to hear and tell their stories and hear their own voice."
Shortland Street is the classic example, he says. "In the last 15 years, New Zealand has gone from a country which would quite literally sit and cringe in their lounges, to kids now expecting to hear New Zealand voices on stage."
On the face of it, you might think, the quibbling about theatres comes down to the difference of only a few hundred seats. But theatre size is very important, says Hughes.
"You can rehearse like crazy and be very talented, but if people's bums are getting sore or they're too cold or you've got 500 seats and only 200 people turn up and everyone feels a bit lonely, it doesn't matter how good the show was on stage, it was just the wrong place to do it in."
And you can't expect innovative young performers to go from a performance at a small theatre of 100 or 200 seats and then take their next project to a 1000-seater.
The current council is concerned that costs for Q Theatre have spiralled from $9.3 million to $23 million over the past 10 years, but Hughes says this is partly because some past councils had been so encouraging, wanting to help and expand the project.
And he adds that doing up the St James would not only cost an enormous amount of money but would be years away.
Q Theatre, on the other hand, could potentially start building in December and at least one of the theatres Auckland needs would be on its way.
"This is what's driving us crazy ... there are people saying 'oh, well, let's have another think'. How much more thinking do we need to do?"
Ritzenhoff points out Wellington has five theatres of 200 to 700 seats and Brisbane, a similar size city to Auckland, has seven. She understands the council needs to look at its financial commitments. But she says there are so many studies already and each endorses this size theatre.
Peter Elliott has talked about Auckland's tradition of closing down theatres. There's a string of them - the Mercury, His Majesty's, St James, the beloved Watershed, and now Auckland Theatre Company is in danger of losing the Maidment.
The trouble is, bean counters have made decisions about theatres, yet the cultural life of a city can't be measured by dollars and cents. It is nonsensical to try, he says.
Q Theatre was in the bag. It was signed off. They'd had the party.
"Yet again the money changers have taken over the temple and they throw everyone out. Well, it's stupendously short-sighted, it's narrow minded and it's mean."
The squabble is not with the Auckland Theatre Company, he says.
"What happens when you've got starving people and one bowl of rice is that starving people tend to squabble ... "
Auckland needs a cultural and arts hub and it needs more than one choice of venue. It needs venues where actors, dancers, music works, Pasifika, all manner of disparate theatre companies who currently struggle to find venues, can congregate.
"I mean, how the hell can we have Auckland'09 (the Auckland festival) or whatever it's going to be called, with no theatres? Are we all going to be doing it in tents in Aotea Square?"
A FEW blocks away, Colin McColl has another dream. The director is prone to gazing out the windows of Auckland Theatre Company's temporary lodgings in Quay Street and pining for Shed 10 across the road.
Shed 10 is owned by Ports of Auckland and the view from the office (the lease runs out next April and the company will have to move again) looks out over the container wharfs.
"Don't you think this city needs some bold vision?" he says.
He keeps thinking about the Sydney Theatre Company which has a theatre in a shed on Walsh Bay "and it's so fantastic, oh, it's just wonderful".
Theatre often works well in spaces that were not necessarily designed for theatre but have been adapted into theatre spaces, he says.
"I think, 'oh, wouldn't it be wonderful if it [Shed 10] was converted into a national centre for the performing arts'. It's just a tin shed at the moment but it will be made of beautiful wood probably, it's got the right dimensions to put a theatre in there."
I say you would have to first kick out Ports of Auckland and he laughs and talks about the problems of insurmountable, bureaucratic red tape.
One day Auckland will discover its waterfront, he thinks. He just doesn't know when.
In the meantime, the future for the Auckland Theatre Company is serious, not just for the company but for Auckland theatre-goers.
"There's talk of venues closing down when they do the carparks in Aotea Square so there'll be a huge venue crisis in Auckland."
He's not gloomy about the future, he says, but he does get frustrated with the city.
"In a way the performing arts are the bastard art and money will be poured into libraries and galleries and museums and the performing arts is kind of down the food chain."
As for the St James, it is up to the city that this beautiful old theatre be saved as a working theatre.
Whether it would suit the Auckland Theatre Company's needs, he's not sure, but he thinks it could be fabulous too.
"Wouldn't it be wonderful if there was a flow through from the art gallery right through that St James foyer to Aotea Square and to Q theatre, it would be lovely."
Greg Innes from the Edge, which manages the Aotea Centre, The Civic and Auckland Town Hall, won't be drawn on his preferences.
But he thinks the arts community should get behind this latest council report.
"We do need to get our own house in order as the arts community and establish a consensus which then allows politicians and funders to move forward, confident in the knowledge that they're actually going to get all of us saying 'great, well done, that's exactly what you should be doing' rather than half of us saying 'what a great job you've done' and the other half of us saying 'what a mistake'."
