Graduating actors set to explode on stage

For Immediate release:

Fri, 5 November, 2010

Graduating actors set to explode on stage in Pentecost

Unitec's popular annual graduation season continues next Wednesday, 10 November with Pentecost opening at Unitec Theatre in Mt Albert. Audiences can look forward to emotionally charged performances from the third-year acting students, who will take the stage for the last time before venturing out into New Zealand's busy film, television and theatre industries.

After blowing away audiences back in May in Shakespeare's Much Ado About Nothing, the talented ensemble bring to life David Edgar's thrilling work set in post-cold war Eastern Europe in the early 1990s. Filled with social, political and religious tension, Pentecost promises to be an "explosive experience", says director John Davies.

Davies says the play will challenge the intellect with its powerful themes. It will also test the mettle of his young actors who have been studing the craft of acting at Unitec's Department of Performing and Screen Arts for the past three years.
But he has utmost confidence in his student cast, who have thrived under pressure all year with internal and external acting commitments. He believes the challenge of Pentecost is made for young actors such as Chris Neels, who featured in Austen Found - The Undiscovered Musicals of Jane Austen, at Auckland's Herald Theatre last month, and Cathy Rood, who scored a role in Rent at The Civic earlier in the year.

Adding to the red-hot atmosphere is the realistic set design by graduate diploma student, Rebecca Isemonger, which "has a few surprises in store for the audience," she says.

Play synopsis:

What if the innovation of naturalism and humanism in art began not in Padua in 1305 with the famous Lamentation by Giotto, but in a derelict chapel in Bulgaria by an unknown itinerant painter, thanking the poor village for hospitality?
What if Gabriella Pecs, in the year 1993 can prove that her impoverished nation is in fact the seat of an innovation that changed art forever?

She demands the attention of a visiting British art academic, and in turn the machinery of state. The excitement rises, could this be the most significant find since the excavation of Pompeii?

As the assembled politicians and art inquisitors debate a violent intrusion of dysfunctional Europe forces a reconsideration of not only art, but the true nature of humanism, and we are asked: What should we sacrifice, history or humanity?

John Davies directs Unitec's graduating third year acting students in David Edgar's thrilling drama set in post-Cold War Europe in the early 1990s.

WHAT'S ON?

Pentecost

10-20 November, 7pm
Unitec Theatre, Building 6, Entry 1, Carrington Rd, Mt Albert, Auckland
Directed by John Davies

Performed by Unitec's graduating third year acting students
BOOK TICKETS: www.iticket.co.nz or (09) 361 1000

ENDS/

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