Award-winning show HART comes to NZ

Award-winning show, HART, brings stories from Australia’s Stolen Generations to New Zealand.

After a critically acclaimed sell-out season at Melbourne Fringe 2015, She Said Theatre is touring for the very first time to bring HART, a new performance based on the testimonies of Indigenous Australia’s ‘Stolen Generation’ survivors, to Auckland and Wellington in February 2016.

Between the years 1910-1970 an unknown number of Indigenous Australian children were forcibly removed from their families. HART examines this difficult and harrowing part of Indigenous Australia’s history from the perspectives of four men spanning three generations.

Featuring proud Noongar man Ian Michael, HART won two Melbourne Fringe Tour Ready Awards to present the work in New Zealand and Adelaide, as well as Best Emerging Indigenous Artist for Ian Michael.

She Said Theatre’s co-Artistic Directors Penny Harpham and Seanna van Helten worked closely with performer Michael as HART’s director and co-writer respectively. They explain that HART represents the company’s aims to open up space on Australian and international stages for new perspectives on contemporary society.

“We founded our company in response to a perceived lack of women in creative leadership roles in Australian theatre,” say Harpham and van Helten. “But we also wanted to present stories that activate or unearth histories not often seen on stage.”

Michael says, “As a young Indigenous person and performer, it’s vital to be able to tell the stories and the truth from my people. Especially stories of survival and resilience.”

Director Harpham shares Michael’s passion for the project, explaining, “Making HART has been a way for us to educate each other, to keep informed, and to create a considered and highly personal shared experience. I am a white Australian woman with no Indigenous heritage, but our company, She Said, is committed to creating a space for all voices – not just the dominant or the popular – to be heard.”

She Said Theatre and Ian Michael are excited to share HART with New Zealand audiences, opening up discussions around Australia and New Zealand’s shared but disparate histories of colonisation and its effects on the Indigenous people of our nations.

“A brave and quietly devastating performance… Moving theatre that handles some emotionally harrowing material with dignity and grace…” Cameron Woodhead, The Age

“In simple prose, it tracks the doleful story of dispossession… [but] the play itself is warm, big-hearted and often very funny…”

Ben Eltham, Arts Hub

“Beautiful, heartbreaking and liberating storytelling… Once told, stories cannot be lost and we have to keep telling them until everyone listens.”

Anne-Marie Peard, AussieTheatre.com

“Deeply moving, simply and powerfully told.” Richard Watts, critic for Triple R Smart Arts

HART
Created and performed by Ian Michael
Text by Ian Michael and Seanna van Helten
Directed by Penny Harpham
Produced by Anna Kennedy
Lighting design and technical management by Shannah McDonald
Composition and sound design by Raya Slavin
Set and costume design by Chloe Greaves
Photography and graphic design by Gabi Briggs

AUCKLAND | February 2-6
Tue-Sat 6:30pm | 60 minutes
The Studio, Basement Theatre |
$20 Full; $17 Concession;
$15 Cheap Wednesday
Tickets available from www.basementtheatre.co.nz
or call 09 361 1000

WELLINGTON | February 20-24
Sat-Wed 8:30pm | 60 minutes
The Propeller Stage, BATS Theatre | $20 Full; $15 Concession;
$12 Fringe Addict
Tickets available from www.bats.co.nz or call 04 802 4175

For more information on the Stolen Generations please visit www.stolengenerationstestimonies.com

ENDS

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