Theatre students bring Influenza infirmary to life at memorial opening
Victoria University of Wellington Theatre students performed an extract from the play Black November 1918 at the unveiling of a memorial plaque for the victims of the 1918 influenza pandemic. On 6 November, the memorial was unveiled at Pukeahu National War Memorial Park by Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Theatre students Caleb Hill, Zoe Christall, and Emma Rattenbury, and Tawa Intermediate pupil Lochie Parker performed the five-minute interactive scene ‘casting’ the audience as if they were infirmary volunteers for the pandemic. The immersive performance had the performers instructing the audience on what they needed to do to help in the infirmary and ‘experience’ treatment in the gas chamber.
At the closure of the scene, a soundtrack of the death notice of influenza victims were set to music. “It is quite an emotional piece and gives the sense of the scope of the disaster,” says play creator and director PhD candidate Kerryn Palmer.
The commemoration was a special thing for Palmer to be a part of. Her great-grandparents were victims of the pandemic, dying in Petone within two days of each other and leaving behind their nine children.
Palmer and her mother, who never met her grandparents, attended the unveiling. “It was emotional to reflect on the sheer number of New Zealanders that died in such a short space of time. But it also felt fitting to finally have such a huge event nationally recognised as for a long time it wasn't and many people don't know about it,” explains Palmer.
This family history promoted her to create two plays based around New Zealand's worst natural disaster—Black November 1918, devised and performed by THEA 301 Students in 2018 and Pandemic in 2013 (with Rachel Callinan).