By James Hadley in London

Shaky Isles is the only New Zealand theatre company in London. Recently they held their first arts festival - impressive, considering they've only been running for around a year! The Shaky Isles Festival of Aotearoa, ran from mid July to early August, and aimed to be a 'feast of New Zealand and Pacific Arts and Culture'. Being the fresh-off-the-boat NZ theatre-maker that I am, I helped out with front of house and running the bar for a few of the events, as the company has a truly Kiwi 'can do' attitude, and welcomes volunteer assistants with open arms. The company's existence, and their mounting of this festival, poses the question is there room for New Zealand theatre in London?By James Hadley in London

Shaky Isles is the only New Zealand theatre company in London. Recently they held their first arts festival - impressive, considering they've only been running for around a year! The Shaky Isles Festival of Aotearoa, ran from mid July to early August, and aimed to be a 'feast of New Zealand and Pacific Arts and Culture'. Being the fresh-off-the-boat NZ theatre-maker that I am, I helped out with front of house and running the bar for a few of the events, as the company has a truly Kiwi 'can do' attitude, and welcomes volunteer assistants with open arms. The company's existence, and their mounting of this festival, poses the question is there room for New Zealand theatre in London?Shaky Isles is run by Toi Whakaari - NZ Drama School graduate Emma Deakin and her fellow ex-pat NZer producer Sandi. The Festival of Aotearoa is their most ambitious event so far, having last year presented readings of several NZ works and productions of NZ plays 'Kikia Te Poa' by Matthew Saville and 'Eugenia' by Lorae Parry. The company's home so far has been the appropriately titled Pacific Playhouse (www.pacificplayhouse.com), which is a black box space seating 40-60 people, located in Southwark (on the south bank of the Thames in central London).

The Festival included a diverse mix of events, including a powhiri at its opening, where an art exhibition of NZ art was revealed - most of it a display of photography of the moko on New Zealanders living in London, accompanied by personal statements on what their tattoos mean to them. As the Pacific Playhouse is down an alleyway which opens onto a small courtyard, this space allowed for a marketday where several craft stalls were well patronised by passers-by. The resourceful Sandi also ran a raffle throughout the Festival, where a hamper of NZ jewellery and Kiwi nibbles like burger rings and perky nanas tempted homesick expats.

I worked on the box office for two performances of the new theatre work being presented in the Festival: 'Precious Things', a newly devised work by director Stella Duffy and her cast (almost all NZ actors based in London). Emma invited Stella (who has a background in performing alongside her career as a novelist) to develop a new work with her about our growing sense of responsibility to the environment. What was devised with the cast of seven was a light-hearted, playful piece, with the performers improvising around set provocations and physical games focussed on what is precious to each of them as individuals. Understandably for a work in progress, the piece was a bit unfocussed as a whole, but there was so much pleasure in the individual game playing that audiences didn't seem to mind. A section similar to playback theatre allowed us to revel in distinctively kiwi memories, and games contrasting individuals' awareness of being a New Zealander in London generated much laughter through audience identification.

In fact there was quite a community theatre feel to the event (and that's intended as a compliment), because its best elements were due to the joy of the mostly expat New Zealand audience to be engaging with such a kiwi energy and perspective. New Zealand place names and cultural fragments of kiwiana were mentioned with presumed familiarity, and at times you could feel the emotion welling up in the room as the collective energy identified with an individual's distinctively NZ story. National pride seems a bit like a rubber band - stretched taut in a room full of people on the other side of the planet from 'home'.

Clearly the primary audience for Shaky Isles currently is among the network of New Zealanders living in London. This was very evident at both performances of 'Precious Things' and at the NZ comedy evening I also attended. Established NZ comedians working in the UK who featured included Al Pitcher and James Nokise. There was also a performance of a satiric one act play, 'Shacker', directed by Lorae Parry, and some comedy improvisations. The humour didn't always rely on a New Zealand perspective, but you could quickly tell from the different places where people laughed who was a kiwi and who had been dragged along by a kiwi.

A few days after the Festival had ended, I had a meeting with Andrew Malmo of Strata Creative. He's an Auckland-based theatre producer currently visiting London and the Edinburgh Fringe Festival to investigate the possibilities for touring NZ works to the UK. It was exciting to hear about some of his plans, as I think independent producers like him are exactly what the NZ industry most needs right now to further build opportunities and infrastructure. The fact that he's getting the support and some of the resources needed to take projects further afield is really encouraging news. He had met with Emma and Sandi of Shaky Isles and seemed optimistic about the ability of the company to grow their audience and strengthen their brand. The company could be a fantastic London-based promoter of visiting NZ productions/performers if they choose to include that within their future growth.

Initially, as seems clear from the success of Shaky Isles' Festival of Aotearoa, support is going to come almost exclusively from London-based New Zealanders. But as they bring their UK friends and colleagues along to see shows presented, there's definitely room for a wider audience to grow. The cultural perspective of the pakeha New Zealander isn't exotic and 'other' enough to arouse much curiosity from the basis of 'difference' alone, but presenting theatre communicating Maori and Pacific Island culture and perspectives could well be a way of finding a wider British audience. Within a somewhat ghettoised society when it comes to ethnicities, many London theatre-goers are getting increasingly multicultural in their tastes as a valuable way of understanding the people around them in today's Britain. This appetite for multiculturalism could well hold the key to eventually broadening Shaky Isles' presence in London. And the company is to be congratulated on the extent to which Maori and Pacific Island culture features within the works they have chosen to present so far.

It sounds like Emma and Sandi have rightly chosen to focus initially on the foundations that can be built within the expat NZ community here. And here's hoping that expat New Zealanders in business here in London will offer some financial support to the company! If quality entertainment that is distinctly NZ can be consistently delivered, I'm sure their audience base has the potential to grow exponentially through local kiwis alone. For there are plenty here in London! And the networks are working - a NZ friend of mine here said that an English work colleague forwarded her an email about the Shaky Isles Festival thinking she might be interested. That growth of an audience could make all the difference in producers like Andrew deciding that it's viable to bring New Zealand theatre works to the UK in the future. For such possible future footholds as much as the current ones they're carving, Shaky Isles is surely to be congratulated.

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Feel free to get in touch with any questions (or if you're planning a London visit and want some theatre recommendations) to jamesstuarthadley@gmail.com

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18/08/08