Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana
The Nambassa Winter Show with Mahana was all about a bunch of aspiring young hippie entertainers who moved into a youth camp in West Auckland, out of which this community of 60 people produced and directed two musical theatrical productions and toured the North Island of New Zealand in a convoy of Mobile homes, buses and vans, performing at major centres and theatres throughout September and October 1978.
This visual creation was made up of actors, dancers and mime artists performing to a background of rock music, extravagant lighting with weird special effects, fire, bizarre costumes and giant masks.
To make this event a reality, the Nambassa core group, who were based in the country villages of Waihi and Waikino at the foot of the ecologically sensitive Coromandel Peninsula, temporarily moved to the city and hired the St John youth camp west of Auckland, from where this production was implemented.
a spiritual family, a community on wheels.The musical production of The Mahana rock opera was a colourful and perceptive view of early New Zealand life and began with the coming of the Māori in canoes from the South West Pacific, their meeting on the high seas and subsequent voyaging to Aotearoa.
It portrayed the arrival of the white man, his politics, his religion, early colonisation and the often negative transformation of the country dear to Māoridom.
After the Winter show Mahana performed at the Nambassa 1979 three-day festival in Waihi in front of 40,000 fans and again at the 1981 five-day celebration up Waitawheta valley.
This was the beginning of the Road-show Fayre era, and within their large magic circle enclosure, continuous entertainment and theatre was available for children and adults, organised and spontaneous.
[2] By telling the story of New Zealand through a musical blending of the two cultures it was hoped that the Rock Opera would provide a vehicle to express their collective feeling of Ko Tahi Tatou, "We are one together."
The Return of the Ancients (1978) was a musical theatrical opera which presented a story told in the year 2975 by an old man from another dimension who recounted to the audience a strange and forgotten tale.
Utilising best of 1970s visual technology using pulsating light beams, theatre, dance, mime, photo projections, fire, costume and rock music, the production portrays the age-old cosmic battles between the past and the future.
The audience witnessed the seeming peace and tranquility at some point in evolution with live music from the legendary Rick Steele,[3] Norma Leaf and Ted Chapman.
The Return of the Ancients was written and produced by Peter Terry, Directed by Chris Cooper, Matthew Robinson and Grant Bridger.
The return of the Ancients Danze co: Dancers: Donna Farhi, Stephanie Burns, Caryn Dudson, Matthew Robertson, John Tresize, Bev Wynyard, Brian Tracey, Ellen Currie, Terry Blade and Greg Norman.
Ogias or Ogre: Shak MacCready, Fred Alder, Ted Chapman, Peter Terry, Ellen Currie and Brett Fitzpatrick.
Winter Show Production team Lighting: Jay McCoy, Andrew McNicoll, Jeff O'Donnell and Brett Fitzpatrick (Radar).
Housetruckers are individuals, families and groups who convert old trucks and school buses into mobile-homes and live in them, preferring an unattached and transient gypsy lifestyle to more conventional housing.
