Sister act does well in local one act play festival

Lydia Curtis, Jess Riley, Teagan Curtis.

Student directed and acted play ‘I Know This For Sure’ has won through from the first round of Theatre New Zealand’s annual TheatreFest competition and will now compete at a regional competition.

The production directed by Teagan Curtis and starring fellow Tauhara College students Rosie Johnson, Kaylen Botha, Amber Newell and Teagan’s younger sister, Lydia will join a Hamilton play following Saturday’s (August 9) TheatreFest Local Festival at Centre Stage Playhouse.

The annual TheatreFest competition, formerly known as the One Act Play Festival, has been run by Theatre New Zealand for more than 80 years.

From the local festivals all over the country selected plays move forward to four regional festivals – Upper North, Lower North, Upper South, Lower South before a few make the national final.

The two selected from Taupō will now compete in Rotorua on August 23 and 24 aiming to get through to the National Showcase, featuring the top four or five plays nationwide, at Hamilton’s Riverlea Theatre on September 20-21. 

‘I Know This For Sure’, set in a school dormitory at the start of the Christmas holidays, follows a girl coping with mental struggles who is visited by a “hippie ghost” who manages to help her.

Another Tauhara College play in the competition, ‘We Three’, directed by Jessica Riley and featuring Holly Constable, Zoe Somerville and Sofia Baker involves two women arriving for a rendezvous but an expected third person doesn’t appear. All is finally revealed in this twist on the witches from Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’.

On the night both Riley and Curtis were handed Merit in Directing awards by adjudicator Julie Taylor while Lydia Curtis was the sole actor to win a Merit in Acting award.

The two Tauhara College plays won Merit in Ensemble Playing awards while the visiting play – the all mimed ‘One L of a Robbery’ – won Distinction in Overall Design and Distinction in Use of Music.

This year’s Theatrefest at Centre Stage was the fourth consecutive year of hosting at the Matai Street Playhouse, said Centre Stage’s Toni Sullivan.

She was excited for the new youth directors making their debuts and thought the actors, many new to the stage, did particularly well.

Nationwide the competition usually features between 50 and 60 plays.