Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin
The Boy Who Caused 9/11, written by NZ-Japanese playwright Ken Mizusawa and directed by Cassandra Tse. Performed by the Year 2 Stage & Screen Te Auaha students with crew support from the Year 1s, is about an 11-year old boy from a small town who believes he has uncovered the secrets of the universe. It’s a cute and lovely show, despite its suggestive title, and watching young and upcoming performing arts students in their element is just as heart-warming.
The Tapere Iti stage is simply dressed as I walk in: a black, covered table centre upstage with a camera on a tripod set up in front of the table and pointing at its top. Either side of the stage are large strips of white fabric hanging from ceiling to floor. The show itself is well written and belongs in a sub-genre with pieces like Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night Time that I like to call “POV: Young Neurodivergent”. There are a lot of reasons I find these kinds of shows appealing, one in particular being as an educator operating with young people through my own relatively neurotypical lens. It’s a way of better understanding one of the many types of people passing through my classroom and makes it easier to understand and empathise with strangers. Never heavy-handed, the story is a beautiful coming-of-age story which follows Kevin and this strange, seemingly random, world of ours.
Split into three parts to better portray Kevins internal experience, the three are: Kevin 1 (Sam Murphy), Kevin 2 (Britney Herhily) and Kevin 3 (Liam Olsen) and the three operate as a great trio, bouncing off each other’s energies and bringing individual feelings to their part of Kevin. The relationship they must have built as students together comes as a great strength in this role because a split-role, in the script or otherwise, can come apart without the cohesion these three demonstrate.
The rest of the cast: Sophie Badrick, Brock Oliver, Bella Anderson and Louie Nixon cover each other character in the script and contribute to the chorus. Each member of the cast is given time in the spotlight but most enjoyably for me is their time in the ensemble. During the performance, images are projected against the two white pillars on the stage and sometimes what is projected is a live-feed of the camera aimed at the table-top. During these moments, the ensemble builds a Lego set and we can watch a world being created, and sometimes deconstructed, in real time. Other times the ensemble comes together to create a patch of flowers, or a whale, and it’s moments of dedication to each other that make the performers really shine.
There are many design elements of the show that tie into the themes in such a satisfying way. The two pieces of fabric I mentioned before are reminiscent of both the twin towers to which the title alludes to, but also work as a way of framing the stage in a 3:4 ratio similar to the ratio of the camera and also to that of a television. Television being another sort of created universe which you can learn and understand about mathematically. Kevin wears an iconic block red shirt and every other character wears a combination of red, blue or yellow. The trio of colours that you’re looking at on the screen of your device to read this comes from the trio of colour RGB (Red, Green, Blue) but before that there was the first colour trio palette of RYB (Red, Yellow, Blue) which leans into Kevin’s perception of the truth behind the universe by perceiving each character in the most base of solid colours, from which all other colours can be derived.
The Boy Who Caused 9/11 is an awesome play by an inspirational cast of young performers. They rock the stage together and I would highly recommend watching this while it’s on until this Saturday, the 26th of September in Te Auaha’s Tapere Iti space. More info here.
Split into three parts to better portray Kevins internal experience, the three are: Kevin 1 (Sam Murphy), Kevin 2 (Britney Herhily) and Kevin 3 (Liam Olsen) and the three operate as a great trio, bouncing off each other’s energies and bringing individual feelings to their part of Kevin. The relationship they must have built as students together comes as a great strength in this role because a split-role, in the script or otherwise, can come apart without the cohesion these three demonstrate.
The rest of the cast: Sophie Badrick, Brock Oliver, Bella Anderson and Louie Nixon cover each other character in the script and contribute to the chorus. Each member of the cast is given time in the spotlight but most enjoyably for me is their time in the ensemble. During the performance, images are projected against the two white pillars on the stage and sometimes what is projected is a live-feed of the camera aimed at the table-top. During these moments, the ensemble builds a Lego set and we can watch a world being created, and sometimes deconstructed, in real time. Other times the ensemble comes together to create a patch of flowers, or a whale, and it’s moments of dedication to each other that make the performers really shine.
There are many design elements of the show that tie into the themes in such a satisfying way. The two pieces of fabric I mentioned before are reminiscent of both the twin towers to which the title alludes to, but also work as a way of framing the stage in a 3:4 ratio similar to the ratio of the camera and also to that of a television. Television being another sort of created universe which you can learn and understand about mathematically. Kevin wears an iconic block red shirt and every other character wears a combination of red, blue or yellow. The trio of colours that you’re looking at on the screen of your device to read this comes from the trio of colour RGB (Red, Green, Blue) but before that there was the first colour trio palette of RYB (Red, Yellow, Blue) which leans into Kevin’s perception of the truth behind the universe by perceiving each character in the most base of solid colours, from which all other colours can be derived.
The Boy Who Caused 9/11 is an awesome play by an inspirational cast of young performers. They rock the stage together and I would highly recommend watching this while it’s on until this Saturday, the 26th of September in Te Auaha’s Tapere Iti space. More info here.