GU grad keeps theater alive in New Zealand in spite of COVID

Published: February 08, 2022

Imagine hosting a group of your closest friends for an evening of Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, performed by a troupe of professional actors in your own back yard.

Not likely to happen, you say?

Well, plenty of unlikely things have happened in the past two years as the world dealt with the disruptive influence of COVID-19. And few sectors of the economy have been hit harder than the performing arts. Venues have been shuttered, productions halted, and incomes for actors have been gutted.

Greenville University graduate Laura Irish ’05 has taken those COVID-19 lemons and made an immensely popular brew of lemonade that is taking New Zealand by storm. She calls her traveling productions “The Barden Party.”

The name, Laura said, was born during a conversation with her husband after two of her performing income streams dried up because of COVID-19 concerns.

“We had just built a new deck,” she recalled, “and I said to my husband, ‘What if I put on shows in our back garden?’ He thought that was a great idea. Then, a few hours later, I said, ‘What if I put on shows in EVERYONE’S back garden?’ That’s how The Barden Party concept was born.”

Originally, Laura wanted to name the company “The Backyard Bard,” but that name was already taken. Her husband then suggested The Barden Party.

“Shakespeare is called the ‘bard,’” she explained. “Combine that with the idea of a garden party, and you have ‘The Barden Party.’ Then, I chose A Midsummer Night’s Dream and decided to put live music in it. After all, what would be a better party than having a laugh-out-loud comedy, stunning live music, and real-life fairies terrorizing you in your own back yard?”

Calling herself “a huge Shakespeare nerd,” Laura studied at the Stella Adler Studio of Acting in New York City, and has considerable experience performing and teaching Shakespeare during her 14 years in New Zealand. She’s portrayed Viola in Twelfth Night, Lady McBeth in Macbeth, Mercutio and Lady Capulet in Romeo and Juliet, and Puck in A Midsummer Night’s Dream (the role she is playing in The Barden Party’s production).

A native of Rantoul, Illinois, she arrived at Greenville University (then college) in 2000 as a vocal performance major. After discovering her love for acting and her dislike for music theory, she changed her major to theater. Later, she added a second major in English – with a certification to teach English as a second language – and graduated in 2005.

“While at Greenville, I pretty much participated in everything I could,” she recalled, “but mostly I could be found at the Factory Theatre or on the tennis courts as a member of the GU tennis team. I also played three-on-three basketball, volunteered with Habitat for Humanity, made short films, and worked several jobs.”

Following graduation, she and a close theater friend from college (Debbie Long Brooks ’05) traveled to South Korea to teach English. After traveling extensively, they both settled in New Zealand in 2009, living in the Nelson/Tasman area in the north part of the country’s South Island. Both women married New Zealand men. Laura’s husband, Charles Anderson, is a journalist, a digital storyteller, and is one of the actors in The Barden Party. They have a 14-year-old son, Elijah, and a 7-year-old daughter, Ivie.

To advance her career in theater, Laura earned a master in arts management from Aukland University of Technology in 2012.

Over the years, Laura has been involved in several theater groups in New Zealand, but her signature contribution in the age of COVID-19 has been the founding of The Barden Party concept of small-venue performances. The following are Laura’s answers to questions about her innovative response to the pandemic.

Q: Are you strictly a Shakespeare group or do you perform other works?

A: The company is comprised of eight actors, one musical director, a publicity manager, and myself (the director and also one of the performers). We perform mostly Shakespeare, but also do other works by classical playwrights that are in the public domain. A Midsummer Night’s Dream is our first show with this company under this model. Our version of the play includes live music, using new and old popular music that we acquire the rights to. We transform them into folk songs and pepper them throughout the show as little nuggets of surprise.

Q: COVID-19 has negatively impacted performing arts of all types. How has The Barden Party concept allowed you to continue your craft?

A: The Barden Party is like a vintage traveling group of troubadours. We arrive at someone’s back garden (where they are hosting a garden party), dressed in vintage-style bohemian outfits and carrying our acoustic instruments. Each person also carries a vintage suitcase containing their props and costume items. Each person plays at least two characters in the play, and everyone plays music and sings.

Generally, each garden can only hold between 25 to 100 people. Those audiences are comprised of the host’s family, friends, and neighbors, and usually they know each other. Our shows are usually outdoors, which makes it safer, as far as COVID-19 is concerned.

Because we’re in people’s back yards, we don’t have to worry about venue costs, marketing costs (hosts invite their own family and friends), and there are no rights to pay in performing Shakespeare. Larger venues are unable to operate with the current COVID-19 levels, but we can carry on in private homes. We’re a vaccinated event (everyone must be vaccinated) and our maximum audience size is 100, as required by the New Zealand government.

We do have interesting issues that pop up as a result of holding our performances at locations that are not usually event friendly. But we feel very lucky to be able to perform and bring this show to so many people.

Laura Irish performing as part of "The Barden Party"

Q: Is this a full-time thing for you and the other cast members?

A: It is full-time for me as the director, with all the organizational things I do. For the other performers, we had a very intensive rehearsal period before we started performing on November 5, 2021. In the past three months, we have performed 26 shows, averaging about three shows per week, and we have 20 more booked between now and the end of April. After that, we’ll take a break, and then – if COVID-19 travel restrictions allow – we hope to reconvene to tour the United States in June and July.

Q: What are the unique challenges you’ve faced as you’ve presented shows, literally, in the garden or backyard of people’s homes? Are you able to do performances in other venues, too?

A: Performing in backyards of private homes is sometimes tricky because each situation is different. Our contract with the host asks that they provide us with a room to keep our things safe, a place for us to relax during our intermission, water and snacks, and access to a toilet.

We also ask them to let their neighbors know that there will be noise and music coming from their garden the evening of the performance. Or, better yet, just invite those neighbors so they’re part of the event. We try to be finished by 9:30 pm.

We have also performed a few public shows in venues that allow us to keep the same model that we do in homes. They fill out the same booking form, they do the marketing, we arrive on the day of the event and perform the show, and they pay us afterward.

Q: Explain how the finances work.

A: When we started, there was no model for how to charge for this type of thing. Even now, each time is slightly different. It was my goal to pay each actor at least $120 per performance, but also keep the show affordable and attractive to the hosts and guests. I’ve found that I should have been charging a lot more from the beginning to cover other costs. Some hosts pay the entire bill themselves; some get each person to pay $20 or $30; and some tell their guests to pay whatever they can and then the host pays the difference at the end.

Q: What is it about A Midsummer Night’s Dream that makes it work for this type of show?

A: A Midsummer Night’s Dream is fun, whimsical, and laugh-out-loud funny. The comedy stands the test of time if done well, and the added bonus of the music and how we’ve slotted it into the show brings a lot more laughs. This show is perfect to add music into because it’s already 45% in rhyme, so it is inherently musical already. And with characters like Puck, Oberon, and the Mechanicals, chaos and silliness are very welcome in the current climate. We will soon start working on the next show, which will be another Shakespearean comedy.

Q: Why do you think people have responded so positively to the performances?

A: It’s pure joy! It’s silly, fun, raucous, and heartfelt. And people need laughs and love now. The cast members genuinely enjoy each other’s company and love the show they’re performing. That resonates with the audience. Each show has nuggets of mischief, improv, and spontaneity – as well as the beautiful language of Shakespeare and the stunning voices of the cast. One audience member described it as “life affirming,” and at a recent show, a woman who had seen it three times told me that after each show it takes her two to three hours to wind down because it’s like being on a high. This cast just radiates positivity, fun, professionalism, and care for each other, the community, and their audience. Each show is a special moment of art, a “you-had-to-be-there” experience.

Q: You’ve said you’d like to bring The Barden Party experience to the United States. Any specific plans for that yet?

A: Nothing firm yet. We’re still waiting on COVID-related travel restrictions to lighten up. If all goes well, however, we hope to be presenting some Barden Party shows in the Greenville area in July of this year.

The Barden Party cast of A Midsummer Night’s Dream