Whanganui choir to perform at Centrepoint

COMPASSION: Claire Dougan stars in The Event.

Compassionate, masterful and incredibly relevant, The Events was the surprise hit of the 2013 Edinburgh Festival.

Acclaimed stage actress Claire Dougan leads this production in her Centrepoint debut, joined by Jatinder Singh and a host of community choirs from throughout the lower North Island in a mesmerising fusion of theatre and music.

The Events will be performed at Centrepoint Theatre between July 29 and August 20. The Wanganui Community Choir will be part of the performance on August 18.

Scottish playwright David Greig will be best known to audiences for Midsummer (A Plays with Songs), which was staged at Centrepoint in 2015. For The Events, he explores darker themes with a similar focus on music, asking how far forgiveness will stretch in the wake of evil.

Award-winning director Lara Macgregor, a PNGHS alumni and the former artistic director of Dunedin's Fortune Theatre, heads the creative team.

Claire, a liberal priest and choir director, regularly meets with her group of singers at the local town hall. But when a troubled young man, armed with a gun, crashes their rehearsal, this community - and the ideals that formed it - are instantly torn apart. The Events explores the aftermath of this atrocity, with Claire embarking on a journey to answer the most difficult question of all: 'Why?'

Each night, a different community choir performs, providing a soaring soundtrack ranging from traditional hymns to John Browne and Dizzee Rascal. These choirs discover The Events at the same time as the audience, highlighting the importance of community and our responsibility for one another when confronted by tragedy.

"The Events is an important addition to the current, world-wide conversation surrounding national identity and multiculturalism," said Centrepoint's artistic director Jeff Kingsford-Brown.

"But it also goes a lot deeper than that. In response to what seems like an increasing number of barbaric events around the world, it asks 'how do we make sense of the senseless?'"

For more information, see www.centrepoint.co.nz.