Collaborations with Louise Petherbridge
The return to Dunedin of actress Louise Petherbridge, who had worked professionally for 20 years in England, proved a renaissance for Shona. Together they created innovative theatrical works for Dunedin Dance Theatre that combined words, music and dance.
“An important turning point in my life came with the return of actor Louise Petherbridge to her homeland [New Zealand] after an acting career in the United Kingdom. Our meeting was an auspicious one. I felt ready for an injection of fresh ideas and a new direction. Louise revealed a fertile mind, and a wealth of theatrical expertise, which soon led us to create some unusual theatre pieces together. From instant rapport sprang a deep and lasting friendship.”
Leap of Faith, pg. 217
ORLANDO (1978)
Court of Queen Elizabeth I 
Queen Elizabeth I honours Orlando 
Orlando flirts with Court Ladies 
Orlando flirts with Court Ladies (2) 
Orlando falls for Russian Princess on Skates 
Orlando made Turkish Ambassador and reaches 18th Century 
Orlando adventure with Turkish Gypsy (Terry) 
Orlando adventure with Turkish Gypsy (2) 
Admiration for the Ambassador (Terry) 
Orlando wakes from trance as a woman 
Orlando, Russian Princess and Turkish Gypsy in posed studio shot. 
The Orlando Poster
“The first of these collaborations, Orlando (1978), was a contemporary masque tracing the story of Virginia Woolf’s novel of that name. Louise was largely influenced by the individual talents of the artists involved – the lyrical and humorous musical compositions of Professor John Drummond, the beautiful singing of Honor McKellar, and the dancing and acting of members of my Dunedin Dance Theatre. Jan Bolwell, Terry MacTavish, Joss Brusse and Kate Calvert in the principle roles, danced their way through three centuries of dramatic action covering Elizabethan, Jacobean and Victorian eras, including, along the way, Orlando’s dramatic change of sex [which caused a sensation in Dunedin at the time!]. The subtly worked narration by Louise and Walter Bloomfield managed to link the various scenes, while detailing the shifting times and mores.”
Leap of Faith, pg. 217
Death of a Bullfighter (1980)
“NZTV’s Kalideiscope arts programme televised Death of a Bullfighter choosing the nearest venue to Spain they could find – Larnach Castle on the Otago Peninsula. The 15-minute work took the entire day to film. My dancers performed on the rough surface of the stable courtyard without a murmur and I was proud of them. It was a cloudless sunny day, and the tuis, excited by the music, added their song.” – Leap of Faith, pg. 224
“I had carried an idea for a dance based on the bullfight for a long time, but it was when Louise insisted that Garcia Lorca’s poem would give the right dramatic effect in conjunction with the dance that the ballet was finally born. Creating this dance, I tried to recall my impressions of the bull ring in South America. Of all the longer ballets I have choreographed, Death of a Bullfighter is the best example of the Bodenwieser style. Using dancers with expressive poses and groupings in graceful tableaux. We used the impassioned music of Manuel de Falla, while Louise spoke the evocative words.”
Leap of Faith, pg. 224
WHILE GRANDMOTHER PLAYED BRIDGE (1981)
While Grandmother Played Bridge (Based on the memories of Austrian Nicholas Zisserman) explored the Nazi takeover of Vienna in the light of the 1981 Springbok Tour Protests in New Zealand.
“Louise had an uncanny eye for the provocative, the unusual, the outrageous, for the spirit of humanity and the theatrically malleable. Working with her gave me still further opportunity to explore choreography which probed personal eccentricities and behaviours outside the norm. To be part of “Total Theatre” as she devised it was a new and inspiring experience… Moli Zisserman and her son Nicholas were the starting point for our next work, While Grandmother Played Bridge.”
Leap of Faith, pg. 217
Mozart Harlequin (1983)
“March 4 1783… Vienna… a masquerade ball… entertainment – a new commedia dell’arte work written by the playwright Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. That prancing Harlequin, full of mischief, none other than the renowned composer himself. This was the first performance of The Mozart Harlequin. Two hundred years later – the second performance, this time in Dunedin’s Playhouse Theatre.
All that [Professor John] Drummond could find of the work was the music written for the first violin together with a few stage cues… He therefore wrote out the missing three string parts plus an introduction and finale, all in the style of Mozart.”
NZ Listener, April 9 1983
“[Under the direction of Louise Petherbridge, with choreography by Shona MacTavish,] the staging will be in traditional commedia dell’arte style, using specially made, authentic, Italian commedia costumes… by Charmian Smith.” – Otago Daily Times
Coup De Folie – Sylvia Ashton-Warner (1991)
“Coup De Folie (The Fantasy of Sylvia Ashton Warner) was devised and directed by Louise for Writer’s Week in Dunedin. Ashton Warner has always been a world-acclaimed though controversial New Zealand teacher and writer… Louise was less concerned with time and sequence, than with the spirit and contradictions that made Sylvia a creative artist and innovative teacher, particularly of Maori children. Edward Carr’s specially commissioned music for flute, piano and percussion and my choreography completed this slightly shocking, sad and funny production… Coup De Folie was a performance to remember.”
Leap of Faith, pg. 228