What's Happening

The Lyttelton Arts Festival is now in its fourth year, and every year the festival celebrates the creativity of the Port. This year, the festival has a new team in place – Dayle Hunt, Fleur de Thier, Tessa Waters, Dave Ladderman and Arran Eley. The new team, based largely out of the Lyttelton Arts Factory, is committed to showcasing the best of what Lyttelton has to offer, and is wanting to entice more people through the tunnel to catch some spectacular shows. We spoke to Fleur de Thier about what the festival has on offer this month. 

So, you’re largely a new team for the festival this year?

There are five of us. There’s me, and I’ve curated the movement programme, Dayle Hunt is the overall Festival Director, Tess Waters is our Marketing person and a member of Feminist Clown Posse, Dave Ladderman has curated the theatre, and Arran Eley has curated the music side of things. Then Jesse de Thier Hunt is doing all the design and lighting. So, there’s a really good team.

Most of the shows are at the Lyttelton Arts Factory?

There are two music events that are happening at The Loons but almost everything else is at LAF. In the future, we would like more venues; if there’s more funding behind us, we’d like to extend our offering.

Lots of performance events this year – and almost all locals?

There are 17 events and pretty much all of them are made by people who live in Port or who have a very strong connection to the place. That’s the whole ethos of the festival really – to celebrate local creativity. But in saying that we also want to entice people through the tunnel to Lyttelton for the festival which we’ve designed to be very much two weeks of heartwarming events. There’s so much talent in Lyttelton, it’s amazing.

You would have known that being a long-time Lyttelton resident yourself?

I sort of did, but what was really interesting, when the new team took over the Lyttelton Arts Factory in January, was how many people came in and introduced themselves and said they wanted to help and be part of the festival and I was amazed at how many artists live in Lyttelton. Joe Bennett says, ‘if you throw a stone up in the air in Lyttelton, it’s going to land on an artist,’ and he’s right.

What’s the demographic for the festival – is there any one type of audience you’re catering for?

I feel like there’s some quite mature offerings in the programme. Rebound, my dance company, is made of up dancers in our fifties and sixties and seventies. I would say the majority of our audiences are older – and that might have something to do with that demographic maybe having a little more disposable income? In saying that, we have tried to keep everything reasonably priced so that people can come to a few shows, instead of just say one. We know it’s tough financially for people out there, but it’s a balancing act – we don’t want it to be unaffordable for people, but we don’t want to undersell the artists because we don’t have quite enough funding to commission works so artists are having to rely on box office – So, we really want audiences to come and support our creatives!

Tell us about the movement programme which you’ve curated?

There are two shows that involve dance and then there are two workshops. One of them is by Morag Brownlie – we’re really lucky in Christchurch because heaps of dancers who have trained and worked elsewhere have decided to come back to Christchurch  – and Morag is one of them. She’s just new back and she has a great background in dance medicine. She’s running a workshop with a performance element. That’s going to be amazing. We also have a workshop for musical theatre. Opening the festival is Chooks and Hooves – which is Rebound Dance Company, there are thirteen of us in that, and it always gets great audience support. This show is silly and fun, we’re dressage horses basically!

Lots of different events for a wide range of audience goers then?

We had the Festival launch a few weeks back and there were little snippets of performances at that – and Ben Wood played and it was hauntingly beautiful. Folk Stories, was mesmerising. Really interesting stuff.

How many events will you be seeing?

What I’m not performing in, I’ll be going to every one! I’ll either be performing, front of house, hosting, or sneaking into the sold out shows to watch from the tech box!

Are local audience’s really supportive?

The audiences are amazing. It’s tricky because I’ve been doing my stuff for so long, that I have a really established audience without whom I couldn’t do my work. But now that we’re running the theatre and seeing different audiences for different shows, it’s interesting to see who comes out for what. But we would like people from out of Lyttelton to come over and see the shows.

What makes Lyttelton so unique do you think?

I think it’s the separation in a way. Having to go through a tunnel to get here. I love coming home and coming through the tunnel, because it’s like a portal for me. But I do know that it’s still a barrier for some people and we’d like to change that. But in terms of Lyttelton itself, there’s just such a community feel, it has a very long list of creatives who have come out of Lyttelton. The geography of the place is inspiring, perhaps that helps with creativity. It feels cocooning and expansive at the same time.

What are you looking forward most to seeing?

I’m going to see everything! We really want people to enjoy as many shows as they can – which again is why we’ve kept the shows affordable. Most of the tickets are around $20 and honestly, you get such an amazing experience for that!

Lyttelton Arts Festival runs from the 3rd of July until the 19th. Click here for all the booking details.