Theatre `intense team effort' Travel secrets revealed

Drama keeps you young, says Terence Burtenshaw who has performed on Blenheim stages since 1953. The actor portraying three different characters in a musical comedy starting next week talks to Angela Crompton.

Everyone who has travelled away from home will recognise something to laugh about in a musical comedy opening in Blenheim next week.

So says Terence Burtenshaw, who portrays a caricature of Mozart, a travel agent from an obscure country and a beleaguered traveller from another in the Marlborough Repertory Theatre's newest production, Secrets Every Smart Traveller Should Know.

Burtenshaw is probably one of Marlborough theatre's older statesmen but doesn't see any need to disclose his age. "It's just a number," he says.

Smart Traveller director Duncan Whiting describes him as "the ultimate performer".

"He has learned the trade; he knows what it's all about. He knows what works on stage; he knows the tricks," Whiting says.

"And when you see him walk on stage for a performance he has the energy of an 18-year-old."

That's a natural spin-off of doing theatre work, says Burtenshaw.

Active in both the repertory and the Blenheim Musical Theatre, he shares his passion with wife Tricia, who is typically busy helping to look after the musical theatre's wardrobe needs.

"It's a wonderful way to keep active and mixing with like-minded people," Burtenshaw says.

Whether participants are in the cast or part of the team preparing and serving suppers at half time, everyone knows their combined efforts are vital to the success of a show.

"Theatre has to be the most intense team effort."

The camaraderie between theatre people is timeless – but today's health and safety officials would have closed down their early theatre productions.

Light levels were often controlled in intensity by home-made variable resistors – made with old car batteries and acid. Where special effects were required, arcs of electrical currents were generated between pencil-thin rods of carbon.

Until 1979 when Marlborough's first theatre microphones appeared, the audibility of actors's lines depended on performers' ability to project their voices out into the auditorium without aid, he says.

Burtenshaw developed that skill growing up in Invercargill.

The family home was always filled with music, he says, and he and his sister Pat belonged to the local competitions society.

As they grew older, they were invited to do solo and duet performances.

Moving to Marlborough, Burtenshaw had loved the glamour and wonderful acoustics in the old His Majesty's Theatre on High St. Week-long performances of a show typically ended with full houses on the Friday and Saturday nights. South Pacific was one of his favourite musicals and 5000 tickets were sold during its season in the 839-seat theatre. Not bad in a town with a then-population of just 10,000 people.

Amateur theatres in New Zealand have traditionally followed high standards, Burtenshaw says, and he attributes that to the country's isolation from travelling professional shows. To fill the gap, residents created their own entertainment and the Blenheim Operatic Society, now Blenheim Musical Theatre, had been formed by 1918.

"Young, new blood" with new ideas and levels of enthusiasm keeps the theatre alive and relevant for today's audiences.

"History Boys introduced new ideas that would have been seriously criticised a few years ago," he says, and Blood Brothers, was a departure from the traditional musical.

He isn't planning on hanging up his stage costumes for a while yet, loving the satisfaction that comes with helping create a good show.

"It's the same as anything else, whether it's digging in the garden and seeing the seeds you planted have come through, or when you think you've established an entity and you've managed to convince those 300 to 400 people out there to believe in you."

Audiences are the most vital part of a production, he says. "All the work that's gone in is totally dependent on the reception. Without an audience, you haven't got a show."

Secrets Every Smart Traveller Should Know opens at the Boathouse Theatre at 8pm next Wednesday, November 18, and continues at the same time for the next 11 days, except Sunday, November 22, with a 4pm performance.

- The Marlborough Express