Award-winning director and performance designer Sam Trubridge (The Performance Arcade, SLEEP/WAKE, The Restaurant of Many Orders) is bringing a bold new performance to Te Whaea this August.

Taking inspiration from H Guthrie Smith’s (1921) Tutira: The Story of an NZ Sheep Station, Ecology in Fifths enacts this obsessive account of NZ ecology — now a recognised classic in environmental science worldwide. Piece by piece, the NZ myth of a ‘clean green and natural landscape’ is unravelled to reveal the environmental tensions that lie underneath our grassy paddocks and forest canopies.

Spectacular performance design by director Sam Trubridge and stunning choreography by Sean MacDonald combine to present a powerful, poignant lament for the lost ecologies and history of Aotearoa NZ. An immersive soundscape by NZ composer Bevan Smith transports the audience through the evolution of the story: a transformation occurs, as Guthrie Smith's principles are interwoven with Māori myth and legend.

Suburban rituals, pastoral tragedies and earthy reveries unfold, with happenings "that assault both our senses and our conscience" (Deirdre Tarrant, Capital Times). This evocative production exposes "the ineffectual and damaging attempts by the human race to tame the terrestrial ecosystem" (Jenny Stevenson, Theatreview).

MacDonald will be joined in the performance by dancers Hannah Tasker-Poland, Emmanuel Reynaud, Brydie Colquhoun and Luke Hanna.

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