Since 2009 EnsembleImpact has done invaluable work, touring high schools with compilations shows drawn from our rich resource of homegrown play writing.* Beyond the themes explored in each programme, they have proved to thousands of students that their world is full of material for creative play-making; that New Zealand stories are well worth telling.

Threatened with closure when funding was not forthcoming last year, EnsembleImpact has the Young and Hungry Arts Trust to thank for getting them back on the road. “It’s a natural fit with our mandate to mentor NZ’s young people to create, appreciate and participate in NZ Theatre,” says Diana Cable, Partnership and Programmes Manager for Young and Hungry. Kia ora to that.  

This year their Power Plays programme, subtitled everyday underdogs trying to win at life, comprises extracts from five plays by Arthur Meek – who went to Wellington College, so it’s fitting I should see it in that institution’s Brierley Theatre, in the traverse with boys from 14 to 18, all studying performing arts, seated seven-deep on the floor.

File boxes and piles of somewhat mangled paper define the acting space. The four performers – Katrina Wesseling, Calvin Petersen, Johanna Cosgrove and Shane Murphy – engage in a low-key way with the audience as they settle, then orientate themselves towards beginning. Their trying to work out where best to stand turns out to be a clever strategy for pulling focus and achieving silence.

Introductions done, they launch into a welter of jargon referencing the learning goals around life outcomes that inform the achievement standards for NCEA, not least the Drama Matrix Strands. I shudder – but hey, it’s a pisstake and the senior students clearly appreciate the satire. Maybe the younger students get it to …

Even so, to revert to such gobbledegook (devised by the cast and their director, Leo Gene Peters) between each play extract seems beside the point and counterproductive to me, although I suppose it does make the coherent and entertaining scenarios all the more welcome by comparison. And the piles of paper they metaphorically drown in do come in handy for manifesting props like beards and sheep’s wool. (You can get four credits for demonstrating “an understanding of the use of drama aspects within live performance”.)

The conversation about the sexuality spectrum, from The Cottage, is a good choice for drawing the teenage audience into the substantive content of the show. Here two university hostel inmates go clubbing; Shereen fantasises about Brendan declaring his love for her and has to face the reality of his being “a hundred percent gay.”  

The scene chosen from Collapsing Creation finds Charles Darwin having his extraordinary ideas scoffed at by The Royal Society in 1859. The business of holding up paper moustaches and beards detracts somewhat from the argument so it becomes more indicative than substantial.

We slip back even further to 1840 (to what we now know as Judge’s Bay in Auckland harbour) to share Lady Mary Ann Martin’s early experience on The Upside Down of the World. Although her monologue – embellished with the presence of other, mute, characters – is clearly articulated it, is totally devoid of the cultured English accent that should put her well-meaning but flawed maternalism in context.

Indeed her lines are delivered with a strong, and natural, contemporary Kiwi accent while her pronunciation of Māori is impeccable. For me this compromises the essential dimension of class-consciousness, cultural ignorance and assumed superiority that, in the full play, Lady Mary gradually loses (along with her whalebone corsets). Why this choice has been made escapes me.

The economic inequities inherent in owning land versus leasing it are explored in Mando the Goatherd(which I have never seen in full production). This too is brimming with potent socio-political themes. And by this time I am starting to feel quite strongly that naming them in the same breath as all the bureaucratic NCEA jargon is extremely counterproductive. It feels unfair to any teacher intending to initiate follow-up work.

The fifth and final piece is set in 1966 Masterton: the Golden Shears and fashion show scene, from Sheep. Having demonstrated clever staging techniques for the shearing, the focus turns to the lengths an unmarried, independent-minded young woman is obliged to go to in order to be prescribed the contraceptive pill. Implicit in this are questions of planned parenthood and gender inequity in the work place: excellent areas to end on.

Previous EnsembleImpact shows* have plundered twice, if not three times, the number of plays to make up their programme. Power Plays is to be commended for fielding longer extracts from fewer plays. Nevertheless at forty minutes it feels like a very short show. I expect the idea is to leave a good ten minutes for Q&A – which the team handles well.

The fluidly-directed quartet acquit themselves well, navigating the range of roles, settings and situations with an ease that belies the hard work and creative skills involved.

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*Previous EnsembleImpact shows have been: She’ll Be Write (2009); A Baker’s Dozen (2010); Womanz Work! (2011); In Spite of Himself (2012); She’ll Be Write 2013; Asian Invasion (2014) 

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When I recall visiting ‘theatre in education’ troupes that came to my high school, I cringe a bit. Often these fully-funded touring shows were heavy-handed in their use of drama as a tool for social change. Sex and drugs were prevalent themes and the messages were often preachy. Imperatives for ‘how to live a healthy adolescent life’ were tied in a neatly packaged bow by the time the lunchbell went: Make safe choices! No balloon – no party! DARE to say no to drugs! The over-the-top, all-too-earnest shows were the ones we laughed at, and not in a good way. The shows that managed to engage a hall-full of hormonal teenagers were those that kept it real.

Power Plays is a piece that engages its high school audience by mocking some of the ‘theatre in education’ tropes its cast experienced as teenagers.

The show begins with a piss-take of educators fumbling with the admin and jargon of NCEA. There’s the talk of course outlines, achievement objectives, the Drama Matrix and meeting the standard all too familiar to today’s youth [More]

Copyright © in the review belongs to the reviewer