WINTER the final show

Photo by Tommaso Barsali

Melissa Billington & Nigel Edgecombe.

Winter closed at BATS Theatre on 9th August. Directed by Sally Richards, it enjoyed a very powerful run with audience members praising the production as one of the most poetic dramas ever. Despite some critics who just didn't get it, and failed to mention it's humour and dark story, -- (as well as the original music, set design, direction, lighting and other elements that are relevant to a live theatre work) -- the BATS audience loved it. Winter was about being the other in a foreign land; how we see others different from ourselves. It asks the universal question, 'how can we expect our world leaders to represent us in peace if we can't find peace in our own homes, in our own hearts?'

In addition to the work of the actors and director, I am grateful to the contributions and work of others who made WINTER a success, including: David Phillips as the lighting designer and operator, Kazz Funky Blue and Anjelica Singer as Co-Stage Managers and Tommaso Barsali as photographer and set helper. They gave their time and input into this production, making the story come to the audience, completing the circle of the first words of the play written in the winter of 2005: "...How was your walk?"

For the record, (since this seemed to be a contention with one critic), the first draft was written in 2005 but many drafts and workshops followed over three years. In 2005 I wrote the first words during the winter while living in Pukerua Bay, on the Kapiti Coast, with my partner. What is fictional and what is autobiographical is deliberately blurred; it's not anyone's business, and more important not relevant to the play, in particular not to critics who speculate about my life which they know nothing about.

Most critics depend on the creativity of artists to write their opinions because they don't have the guts to make art themselves or they make bad art. The late Robert Pincus Witten and (the very much alive) Lucy Lippard are two New York critics I have known personally who in their writing knew how to look at artists' work; they knew that the important thing is to report on what they actually saw, not on what they wish they saw.