Creative Industries Head of School Dr Vanessa Byrnes outlines the history of PASA
Last year was a year of changes and farewells for many of our Unitec whānau and, as part of the realignment of the Mt Albert Unitec campus footprint, the School of Creative Industries moved from the buildings at the northern end of the campus to its new home in purpose-built facilities in Building 108 at the southern end. It was a bittersweet farewell and many people came together at a virtual and on-site Poroporoaki to share memories of their time at Unitec with past and present staff and students.
DANCE
From Ali East (Founding Director of Unitec Dance):
Thank you for your kind invitation to join the poroporoaki. It will indeed be devastatingly sad for many and especially for me because I was responsible for the programme moving to Unitec – and on the condition that they built us those studios.
I worked hard to get wooden flooring, tiered seating and a lighting box in the middle studio. We brought the mirrors from upper Queen St studios. They have travelled well. I think they were originally in the Limbs studios on Brown Street.
I remember the home that we created in those studios and the foyer etc. I remember collaborations with architecture, product design and the many beautiful student concerts. I remember graduation ceremonies, master classes with important international and national dance icons.
However, I also remember the beginnings of the Dance programme at the Performing Arts School and those early students who went on to make a name for themselves. I remember their humour, their misdemeanours, love life complications, tears, choreographic pieces, our end of year eco-camps. It was always important to bring the students into contact with professional artists and to provide part time employment for our top teachers and dancers along the way.
But the biggest thrill has been seeing so many former students continue to produce work, to build companies, foster younger dancers, teach , research, gain Phd’s, make music, work in production and generally build on their dance education gained from what became the Unitec programme. It seems unimaginable that Unitec would sacrifice the unique purpose-built dance studios and force a retraction of a programme that has run successfully for thirty years. I can only hope that they honour the legacy that numerous people have worked so hard to foster.
From Malia Johnston (Unitec Dance Alumni 1996-1998)
What an extremely sad day this will be – a massive end of an era. My life changed forever in an absolutely beautiful way on these grounds and in these buildings with the people that inhabited them, created in them and taught in them. Lifelong friendships and lifelong lessons were developed here. Love, losses, gains, pains, creating, learning and letting old thinking go was a daily ritual. My training was a profound and epic change in my life that set me towards the life I’m Living now. It’s a time in my life that I reflect on with huge Aroha.
From Jack Gray (Unitec Dance Alumni 1996-1998)
Today, the Unitec Dance Studios – a place of great creativity – will officially be closed as the program relocates to its new home. So many memories. I saw the foundations of that whare as it was being dug in the clay in 1995. We were the first “first years” at Unitec even though the then Performing Arts School was established in 1989. I did the first “third year” there in 1998. I started my dance teaching career there in 1999. I made a work with the second years in 2005. Taught many students over my time. To everyone who made that space such an important part of the NZ dance landscape I acknowledge you. Special shout-out to my mentors Ali East, Raewyn Whyte and Chris Jannides
ACTING
From Michele Hine (Co-founding director of the Acting Programme)
The Acting and Dance majors of PASA were, originally, The Performing Arts School (PAS) which was housed in studios on College Hill from 1991 until we moved to UNITEC for the 1994 intake of the Diploma. Murray Hutchinson, Linda Cartwright and I ran the Acting Department, and created the degree programme which began in 1996. We joined the Screen Arts major, the Dance programme and the newly created Technical and Directing departments to form PASA.
The brick buildings we inhabited, and which are now being vacated, had been part of Carrington Psychiatric Hospital. Initially we all felt the ghosts of the past in many of the individual ‘cells’ which eventually became our offices, and in the larger spaces that housed rehearsal and performance spaces. It took many Karakia in, and blessings of, these spaces before we felt the ghosts accepted us and left the building.
Somehow it seemed fitting that emotional expression through acting, design and performance was housed where troubled souls had once searched for clarity and acceptance. So many plays are inhabited by characters undergoing huge emotional journeys too. These beautiful spaces never felt clinical, they always felt characterful and hearty. I have many wonderful memories of classes, rehearsals and performances that took place all over the northern end of this building. I also have strong images in my head of Murray running from stage-floor, to costume department, to offices and back again always trailed by his wee dog Steffi. The memory of his legacy is strong in the building.
So many actors have been through these spaces (when I left in 2009 I had taught about 400) and will have stories to tell of self-discoveries made, epiphanies had, characters explored and productions mounted within them. The walls of these buildings are steeped in the sounds of words uttered, emotions inhabited and stories told. They have held hundreds of audience members who have enjoyed a plethora of shows over 27 years. I reflect fondly on what has been created here and hope these beautiful, earthy brick edifices enjoy a wonderful new life as they are, once again transformed to house new stories.
From Jennifer Ward-Lealand (Guest Director/Tutor)
In 2001, Murray Hutchinson sat next to me in the Unitec Theatre at PASA and said “what would you like to do next” and I said, “I’d really like to direct something here”. Well, he took me up on that and gave me my first proper directing jobs, Let Yourself Go for the 3rd Years and the following year, Big River with a cast of thousands – well, maybe 25, including Fasitua Amosa, David Van Horn, Siobhan Marshall, John Tui, Michael Koloi and others. I have so many happy memories of teaching workshops, rehearsing, taking classes and holding auditions in the big upstairs room. What extraordinary creativity took place there.
From Linda Cartwright (Founding co-director and ex-Voice Tutor)
I worked with the wonderful Murray Hutchinson who headed the Acting Programme when it began as a two-year diploma course. I remember going with him (accompanied by Stephan, the adorable King Charles Cavalier Spaniel who was a sort of mascot for us), to see the buildings and looking at the long, forbidding corridor with cell doors opening all the way along. He saw my face – I must have looked horrified, as I was thinking, “How are we going to run a drama course here?” – and he said, “Well, we can always put on ‘Alice in Wonderland’. The idea of all those characters popping in and out of all those doors, appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire Cat, amused me greatly and I started to laugh. So did Murray and we stood there laughing so much we were clinging on to each other. The alterations meant that two big studios, as well as offices, eventually took shape.
I look back on that time with great affection – for Murray and the wonderful team he created: Michele Hine, John Davies, Ros Gardener, Louise Britzman (nee Haywood), Maria Stanisich, and others who joined a little later, and for our students, many of whom have gone on to be well-known names in the industry, or associated industries, as writers, film-makers, teachers, directors, etc. The people who gave up those dreams – and who can blame them? – remained in our hearts, too. Murray’s too-early death was a great blow to us all. We still take great pleasure in speaking of him amongst ourselves. He will never be forgotten by us.
PASA HISTORY
HEADS OF SCHOOL
Wendy Preston 1989-1991
Bridget Marsh 1992-2004
Dr Christina Hong 2004-2008
Athina Tsoulis 2009-2013
Alex Lee 2013-2016
Dr Vanessa Byrnes 2016-current
TIMELINE
1989: The (Auckland) Performing Arts School was established as a PTE in 1989 at the dilapidated Orange Ballroom on Newton Road and the Newton Lodge on Upper Queen Street. It ran alongside a range of evening and weekend community classes in dance and acting for stage and screen catering to 600 students. Wendy Preston and Maggie Eyre were the artistic directors of the School and ran the community classes, and they co-managed the full-time dance programme with its director, Ali East and her deputy Raewyn Thorburn. The Performing Arts School had been established to meet a gap left by the closing of the Limbs dance company’s community classes and the cessation of acting classes offered by the Performing Arts Centre following Theatre Corporate’s closure.
1990: PAS moves to a three-storey building on Hargreaves Street in Ponsonby.
1991: The National Diploma of Contemporary Dance gets NZQA approval
1992: First year of the Diploma of Acting for Stage and Screen.
1994: In October 1994, UNITEC acquires the Performing Arts School winning a bidding war between them and AUT. The acting and dance programmes are merged with Unitec’s existing Film & Television programme to form the Unitec School of Performing and Screen Arts.
1995: Due to ongoing delays in the building of the new dance studios, classes did not move to UNITEC until May 1995.
1998: The Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts (BPSA) is introduced with majors in Contemporary Dance, Acting for Stage and Screen, Screen Arts, and Directing & Writing. The first graduates attend their capping ceremony in June 1999.
1999: The Diploma in Performance Technology is introduced with specialisations in Production, Scenic and Costume Technologies.
2007: Four new programmes introduced: Graduate Diploma in Creative Practice; Diploma in Contemporary Music (located at Unitec’s Waitakere campus); Certificate in Applied Technology; and Certificate in Communication and Media Arts (CCMA).
2008: Memorandum of understanding signed between PASA and the Beijing Dance Academy.
2012: First graduates from the new major of the BPSA in Production Design and Management. Music programme in Waitakere integrated into PASA.
2013: The Master of Creative Practice approved by NZQA.
2015: In May, 2015, the music programme officially relocated from Waitakere to Unitec’s Mt Albert campus to join the rest of PASA on the northern end.
2019: The music programme closes down as part of Unitec’s restructuring. Production Design and Management is also paused the following year.