In the King’s Birthday Honours in June, Ōtepoti Dunedin’s Lisa Warrington was appointed an Officer of the New Zealand Order of Merit for services to theatre and education.
Lisa Warrington Photo: Lara McGregor
A teacher, academic, director, producer, actor and author, the honour recognises Warrington’s longstanding advocacy for Aotearoa New Zealand drama.
The award will have been particularly cheered on in Ōtepoti, where Warrington has played a vital role for theatre locally but also in training.
As fellow theatre academic Professor David O’Donnell writes, “Lisa inspired generations of students, many of whom made successful careers in theatre and on screen. Simultaneously she became one of New Zealand’s most prolific theatre directors.”
Indeed, Warrington has directed more than 130 productions, and is a three times winner of a New Zealand Listener Best Director award. She established the Theatre Aotearoa database, led the introduction of a directing programme to the University of Otago's Theatre Studies programme and was co-founder of Dunedin’s Wow! Productions
All this plus - her Wikipedia entry quirkily notes - she was responsible for the front door of the Allen Hall Theatre at Otago University being painted red.
The note is a wry nod to how important Allen Hall and Warrington’s leadership have been in providing an incubator for professional theatre learning.
A historic 1914 bluestone building, Allen Hall Theatre has been running since 1977, and an ongoing lunchtime theatre series reinvigorated by Warrington has seen over 1000 productions.
Allen Hall building University of Otago Photo: supplied
After an early teaching career at the University of Tasmania, Warrington was appointed a lecturer at the University of Otago in 1981, then one of only four drama lecturers in the country. She retired from teaching in 2018 after 37 years. It was a time when directors like Warrington played an invaluable role in ushering new New Zealand drama onto our mainstages.
Warrington began the Theatre Aotearoa database in 2004, and it now contains details of more than 20,000 New Zealand theatre productions. Warrington’s goal has been to cover all theatre productions in New Zealand from 1840 onwards.
That last date has some resonance with Ōtepoti Dunedin. Thanks to the goldrush, for several years in the mid 19th century the city was the country’s largest and most prosperous, with an accompanying lively theatre scene.
The Fortune Theatre has been based in a former church on the corner of Moray Place and Stuart St in central Dunedin for 40 years. Photo: Google Maps
Yet producing theatre this far south can be challenging.
In 2018, after 44 years the sole year-round professional theatre company in Dunedin, the Fortune Theatre closed its doors. Warrington had directed many productions there. Recently there was news that a key independent theatre company Prospect Park has ended, citing how “increasingly challenging and unsustainable the professional performing arts landscape has become.”
Yet, as the March Dunedin Fringe festival and several productions since have made clear, innovative theatre, often in unusual locations, has been a hallmark of Ōtepoti theatremaking.
Having proper purpose built modern space for them has been another matter. Plans for a Performing Arts Centre in Ōtepoti Dunedin, following a feasibility study completed several years ago with support from Creative New Zealand and Dunedin City Council remain unconfirmed. An initial proposal with costings has been made recently for a new centre by Stage South, an organisation representing professional theatre practitioners in the city.
