Today in New Zealand International Arts Festival history: The Rehearsal / Playing The Dane (2012) and Festival Setup (2010)
I should probably point out that, in doing these 'history' blogs, I'm obviously skipping over huge swaths of material. Given that each of the five Festivals I photographed represents some 30,000 images (yes, EACH) it's hard to go back through and pick, say, 20 to represent a day in the life. So, sometimes I'm picking a show I liked, or one that photographed particularly well; or just one where I think the images weren't seen by many people at the time, for whatever reason.
In this case, it's possibly all three - The Rehearsal / Playing The Dane was the first Pan Pan Theatre show I'd seen, but I ended up seeing it three times. Once in Melbourne when I was there for their festival, once in Wellington when I photographed it, and again when I had a ticket to see it another night. Given that the show was based partly on an audience vote to decide who would play Hamlet in the second half, you'd think I'd have seen three different shows; in fact, I'm pretty sure it was the same actor all three times!
Still, I really like this company a lot - I've seen two more of their shows in Sydney now (Fight The Landlord and All That Fall), and I'm certainly keen to see more when I get a chance...much like Kneehigh Theatre, whose Wild Bride cast are in a couple of images from 2012 here. I've seen three or four of their shows now (including Brief Encounter twice, in London and Sydney) and I'd certainly love to see more!