The Silk Tent Theatre Company (creative)

The Silk Tent Theatre Company of Wanaka received a 2008 New Zealand Mental Health Media Grant to create a script for a multi media theatre performance exploring a community's responses to mental distress.

 The Silk Tent Theatre Company's founding members are:

• Gilly Pugh, a full time performing arts practitioner.
  Gilly has worked as an actor/writer/ musician for the past 21 years, and has toured NZ several times. She has performed at Arts Festivals throughout NZ, and with her partner, runs a successful theatre school. She has worked in all aspects of theatre.
• Lizzi Yates, a prize-winning visual artist with a long history of involvement in art, art exhibitions and more recently in using art with music and theatre.
  In 2006, Lizzi and Gilly worked together to create a performance ‘Drawing Meaning Out of Pain' which used a combination of image, music and theatre to explore a person's perceptual world. The current project builds on the knowledge gained from this earlier project.
• Lucy OHagan, a General Practitioner with an academic interest in the philosophy and ethics of medicine.
  Lucy enjoys using words to convey complex ideas and emotions, and is interested in the power of narrative to transform the human condition. In recent years she has rediscovered her love of theatre, most recently acting in a collaboratively devised piece for the Wanaka Festival of Colour.

Girl with no Words - listening to the language of cutting is the Silk Tent Theatre Company's response to stories of self-mutilation.

It tells the story of a young woman's experience of self-injury by cutting, and the experience of the people around her; family, health care professionals and the wider community.

Set in any town, in the present time, the work uses a variety of story-telling conventions in performance, music, visual art and film. "We want our audience to think about understanding, support and compassion in the face of mental distress."

Girl with no Words plumbs a difficult subject with energy, intelligence and feeling. An exploration of the human condition, it is provocative, informative and ultimately hopeful.

At the end of each performance there will be a short break and then the Silk Tent Theatre Company invites you to a discussion forum on the issues raised.

2010 Performances

4 May,  Lake Wanaka Centre, Wanaka

6 and 7 May Ilott Theatre, Wellington Town Hall, Wellington

Watch this space for more performances!

Ticket sales

Tickets for the Wanaka performance are available locally rom from Wanaka Fine Wines.

You can buy tickets for the Wellington performances online at www.ticketek.co.nz, call 0800ticket or visit a Ticketek outlet.

Seats for each performance are $25 per person (no concessions).

For more information, or to contact the Silk Tent Theatre Company, please email: info   "at" mediagrants.org.nz