Karen Ellett has been accepted into the Actor's Program in Auckland. Photo/ Bevan Conley
Karen Ellett talks to Zaryd Wilson about her love for Whanganui, acting and following dreams.
NEXT YEAR will see a new Karen Ellett.
The Whanganui woman is packing up and heading for Auckland. Ellett is following a long-held desire to become professional actor.
It means leaving the city she loves to virtually start over again. She's done that before.
Ellett can slice her life in half. Her childhood and teenage years in Wellington City suburbs of Karori, Kelburn and Brooklyn: "I swore black and blue 'I'll never leave this city', I love Wellington"; and her adult life in Whanganui.
"I moved up here just before I had my daughter, almost 21 years ago," Ellett said.
"I had this big idea of becoming a teacher and travelling around and teaching Jade.
"But I loved Whanganui because the purpose was to come and raise a family and it was great because it's a smaller town. Jade's dad's got a really big family so there was something that I hadn't grown up with."
Soon after moving she enrolled in a year-long foundation arts course at the old polytech.
"I'm never one to kind of sit around and just let things happen," Ellett said.
"I had a determination, always been creative, always did arts and performance and stuff through school or in my social life."
It was on that course that she found the art of glass blowing.
"I just fell in love with that and that's what I wanted to do for a long while."
So she did.
By then a solo mother, she enrolled in the work-intensive glass diploma.
"That was tough but you do it," Ellett said. "Luckily she was a great kid. She was a polytech baby, really."
I really feel that I've grown up here. Twenty to 41. That's a lot of growing up to do. There's been a lot of different Karens that, you know, I've been through and sorted out.
Glass blowing became Ellett's life for the next 15 or so years.
"(I love) the mechanics of it. The magic show," she said. "You know, you can turn something which is like this liquid, hot, dangerous material and you learn these quite beautiful moves that seem like a dance and turn them into something that you can use or a really beautiful object. I was just mesmerised."
But she almost left it all behind. Ellett thought she wanted to go home to the capital when the relationship with her daughter's father ended, packing everything up and heading back to Wellington.
"I cried the whole way down following the truck," Ellett said. "Got to Wellington, unpacked everything at my dad's, burst into tears and said 'I've made the biggest mistake ever'. I felt liked I had left home."
She made a phone call to her Whanganui landlord and within a week was back.
"It was such a strong feeling that Whanganui was where I was meant to be," Ellett said.
"Just a feeling of absolute connection to a place. I really felt so drawn and compelled to be here."
Since then she has helped set up Chronicle Glass, taught glass blowing, acted in plays, learned how to make coffee and reached her forties.
"I really feel that I've grown up here. Twenty to 41. That's a lot of growing up to do. There's been a lot of different Karens that, you know, I've been through and sorted out."
At the beginning of this year the most recent version of Karen was born when she decided to become a professional actor.
"It's always been there. Imagining what it would be like to do this as a job," Ellett said.
For 15 or so years Ellett had been doing three or four amateur stage shows a year.
"I love the varied people that you get to meet from all walks of life that you'd just pass in the supermarket without even knowing they have the same passion for entertaining and telling stories as you do."
Acting isn't part of Ellett's family history but culture is. Her dad lectured in Italian at Victoria University for a number of decades. He taught Spanish and French, too.
"We lived in Italy when I was young. I went to school over there so I was always exposed to different cultures and food and entertainment so it could have been nurtured from that.
"But this whole year I've been able to set things in place to be able to actually do it."
Wellington drama school Toi Whakaari was Ellett's first port of call. She went to its weekend workshop, open week and an audition.
It culminated in a call from the school's head of acting.
"He just wanted to let me know that they weren't going to put me through to Toi because of the age bracket I'd be involved in which is 18, 19, 20-year-olds, for three years. He didn't think that's where I was at."
But he thought there was a place for her and arranged a late audition through the Actors' Program in Auckland.
"I was just really grateful that he had done that for me."
The Program is privately run and so there is no access to funding, scholarships and student loans. This makes funding the year-long course a tough but worthwhile process.
"I'd be seen sooner, I'll be working with people in the industry," Ellett said.
It will be the fifth year the Actors' Program has run and Ellett is encouraged by its success.
Not enough people get to follow their true dreams.
"It's quite an innovative new programme because it's run by professionals who are practising in their fields and they come in and hold workshops and get you in contact with everyone who you need to be in contact with," she said.
"The percentage rate of getting picked up is 100 per cent. That's huge, that's why I'm doing this.
"It was all a bit surreal but also very right. I had this really good feeling from the moment that Jonty had called me from Toi ... I kind of had this feeling that this was the right direction."
But it also means a move away from the place that is now her home to Auckland. "It's just welcomed me with open arms."
Without access to student loans, Ellett has had to raise $14,000 for the course fees. "I'm really lucky that my family have supported me in that."
Ellett has also set up a Givealittle page "just to see if there's a little bit of support out there for me".
She still plans to work part time but "it will mean that I can put more into the programme".
"It's intense, like it's full on," Ellett said.
"I don't want anything to get in the way of me not being able to put everything into it."
She trusts herself.
"I've had a huge year of transition just in myself and staying really steadfast to what I believe in and where I want to go," she said.
"I think if the opportunity is out there, be brave. And trust that if this is your dream you can't turn it down. You owe it to yourself to follow that dream and it will happen.
"I feel like I've lived quite a few lives with all the things that I've done and I definitely want this to be a part of the next half of my life."
Ellett has also been in touch with her birth father who lives in Auckland and who she first met 10 years ago. "So that's exciting ... to nurture that part of my culture, that Niuean culture, that again for me is the right time to be doing that."
Ellett may be off chasing dreams but her time in the city she loves is certainly not over.
"Even the bigger dream would be to have some kind of base here, to be successful enough to have a base in Whanganui and to able to go where work takes me."
But for now she has other business to attend to.
"Not enough people get to follow their true dreams."
¦To donate to Karen's Givealittle page visit: givealittle.co.nz/cause/karen4acting