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Lyndon Hood - Hobohemian, Lower Hutt

Sunday, August 06, 2006

IRL, I am an imaginary person

As I said, I'm rehearsing for a play, whence the bloggage blockage.

Stuart Hoar's Squatter is based, like The Da Vinci Code, on historical events. Time was in New Zealand where huge tracts of farmland were owned by the handful of families that got in first - 'squatters' - until the 1890s when the incoming liberal government effectively unbundled them.

Google teaches me Australia has a Squatter board game - presumably inspired by the same sort of people (pictures here). Now available in an electronic version.

The play is a rip-snorting epic comedy set as the break-up is happening. In one estate, Carnegie, everyone to get more than their share of the spoils, all at once.

I'm playing Quincy Bracken, an effusive Victorian vagrant photographer.

If you've always wanted to see me in a show, but couldn't be assed leaving Wellington City, now's your chance.

It's shaping up alright, although I am letting my fellow actors carry me a bit.

Ahahahahaha.

Sorry - in joke.

Anyhow, Squatter is a rarely preformed New Zealand classic (with a big cast, it's a big undertaking) and you would do well to see it. Which means you would do well to book - seats are preposterously limited.

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Squatter, by Stuart Hoar

Madness, murder and mayhem on the Canterbury Plains in 1894. Bilstrode, the wealthy landowner, is trying to find ways of holding on to his estate after the new land and income taxes have been introduced by the Liberals. But with his scheming son, unruly workers, murmerings of social revolution and a pair of wandering vagrants thrown in to the mix, holding on to his power is going to be a tenacious occupation.

Fires, intrigue, deaths and dead reckonings abound in this comical historical epic with moments of tragedy. Squatter is the great New Zealand play about who gets the land.

Directed by Master of Theatre Arts student Andrew McKenzie.

What: Squatter, by Stuart Hoar (NZ, 1987)
When: Wed 16 - Sat 19 [not Sun 19 - updated] August, 7.30pm
Where: SEEyD space, NZ School of Drama & Dance, 11 Hutchinson Rd, Newtown
Admission: 10 bucks
Bookings: 04 381 9253 (automated line)