A selections of quotes from our archives held at Taranaki Museum

Local By-laws

We always had trouble with building inspectors. Someone said, If you have a bit of. spare time go down and tidy things up a little. We think the Council Building Inspector is due. They seem to have a key and would just go in and have a look around.

I went down in the middle of one morning to check to see if everything was reasonably ok and there was a guy there. I didn’t recognise him but he didn’t look to be an official. So I said Gidday and he said Gidday and I said that I had just come down to check some things because the Building Inspector was coming in… I gave a push to the door [fire exit at the rear of the auditorium] and one of the doors came completely off… The guy looked and grinned. I said I would go and get a hammer and nails and said that I hoped like hell that the bloody Building Inspector doesn’t cheek the door… The guy was very helpful and [helped me] nail it up with four inch nails.

About a week later someone told me that the guy had been the inspector.

~ Lester Earl

Prompting

A good prompt will always know… usually you can tell by their eyes, because if someone really needs a prompt, the eyes go absolutely glazed and you can tell the stress…

If you prompt when they don’t want it – you are wrong. If you don’t prompt when they do want it – you are wrong. And if you do the job perfectly no one takes any notice of you and no one knows you are there, at all.

~ Sylvia May

Evie Atkinson

Evie Atkinson should be given a lot of credit for this [the Aubrey St Theatre], because she was a tremendous driving force… we all had to work like mad and she kept us going. We grizzled but we did it.

~ Sylvia May

The driving force behind [Little Theatre] was Evie Atkinson. A lot of people were loathed to admit it but she really was. She would get on the phone and chase you around. Everyone said “Yes Evie” and you did [what you had been asked]. She had a great sense of theatre.

~ Noel Baty

Primitive Lighting

We had men who were most ingenious. They made spotlights out of kerosene tins. They even made a primitive form of dimmer.

~ Cydie Strang

Lighting! You just wouldn’t believe how the dimmers worked. The dimmers in those days were large glass jars full of saline solution and they had metal plates… Evie Atkinson used to work them on strings. And they used to raise these out of the jars and the lights would dim.

~ Noel Baty

Local Plays

The [locally written] plays were read at an ordinary club night… when the one act season was coming up and they wanted a night of three one act plays they would say ‘well, what about one of the home grown ones’. And they would ask if you wanted to polish it up and produce it… It was good fun.

~ Noel Baty

The Theatre Curtain

An attractive part of the theatre was the curtain and all the early members had a square of material given to them… and they sewed their name on one, piece… and the huge curtains were made up of all these people’s names… a patchwork curtain.

~ Noel Baty

The Social Scene

We were always going down there – the backstage boys and drinking Steinlager and doing a fair bit of work. It was a good social scene. We always helped each other out.

~ Lester Earl

Set Building

In the early 70′s we were really building traditional sets. We were mixing our own paints for instance – with size and colouring. The flats were old roped canvas flats. There was none of the stuff we use these days – no ready mixed paint. We painted the scenery using size paint which was horrible to use.

~ Lester Earl

Dressing Rooms

We were meeting in the Rolland Hall. It was very primitive, only one dressing room and it was “Turn your back boys, I’m taking off my bra!” It was all elbowing in together to get to the mirror. The theatre itself was just an old hall. Every night before the performance we had to get all the chairs out and after the show was over, stack them away again…

~ Noel Baty

Fundraising

Little Theatre used to sell raffle tickets around the pubs… raffling meat. They used to meet at the end bar at the White Hart . Ted Collie was the treasurer, Ken [Mells], Brian [Smith], Jim Green were there and a few other hangmen would sell the tickets. They had the raffle scene sewn up in the pubs.

~ Lester Earl