The REAL Steve Gray

therealstevegray.com

I moved to Christchurch in the Summer of 1990 for 4 months to play Orsino in a collective production of ‘Twelth Night’. Cue music from ‘Summer of ’42′…..

I was 24 and it was an interesting experience as it was my first time living in a large city outside of the North island. It was indeed, another country. We were using the Mike Alfredz technique/a> to work the show, which was hard and I stunk. I had little understanding of meter in verse and that is kinda important for Shakespeare. So I stunk. But Christchurch didn’t. Sure, I noticed how incredibly white it was, but the people were amazing. We were living on hereford Street in a house that was adjacent to the Arts Center and was 20 feet from the Dux de Lux. The house was ripped down 20 minutes after we left and replaced with flats but, by god we used it well as a base to tear the city apart. The Press Club was in full swing then with the city having two dailies, and as we decided to be paid at the end of every performance we would head there every night and spend til we ran out of dosh. The inhabitants were old school and hard as a whores. They taught me well for when I ended up working at the Shakespeare in Auckland which was the regular watering hole for all the Granny herald journos. Kerryn Walsh nee Brannigan and Matt Chamberlain were the main ‘Let us show you what a great city we have’ peeps. Matt took us to Taylors mistake constantly whenever we could get out of town.

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