Kiwi Shorts at Opera Factory
5:00AM
Thursday April 10, 2008
By William Dart
The Pleasure Garden is based on Frances Hodgkins' painting.
PERFORMANCE
What: Kiwi Shorts
Where and when: Opera Factory, 7 Eden St, Newmarket, tonight at 7.30pm, to Sat April 19, with 2pm matinees on both Saturdays; Good Angel Bad Angel, tomorrow at 9.45pm
Opera Factory is on the hunt for a homegrown work, says its director Sally Sloman. In the meantime, the company has come up with Kiwi Shorts, two double bills of "Kiwi Composers, Kiwi Stories and Kiwi Icons" which has opened for a 10-day season in its "Off-Broadway" Newmarket premises.
And what could be more Kiwi than Philip Norman's A Factory Opera, set in Christchurch's now-demolished Edmonds Factory, or the final piece of David Griffiths' Three Franks, based on Frank Sargeson's A Great Day, in which two mates go on a fishing trip that turns nasty on the sea.
Sloman regularly receives potential operas from hopeful composers but any successful applicant would have to pass her four-point test: "Can I stage it? Can I cast it? Can we afford it? Will it sell?"
