In the 1980s, eight-year-old Briton Sam Trubridge, his brother, and his mum and dad packed up their life and sailed to New Zealand in a boat.
They sought warmer climates than those in Europe. Hawkes Bay – open spaces, sandy beaches, and warmth – seemed a good choice.
Now, Trubridge, all grown up, his taken his childhood taste for journeys in quite a literal sense, to follow that of early New Zealand settler H Guthrie Smith, who wrote the book Tutira: The Story of a NZ Sheep Station.
Sam terms it an “obsessive” account of how the NZ ecology was ruined by clearing of land for farming – it’s now a recognised textbook for scholared ecologists around the world.
“[Ecology in Fifths] doesn’t have Greek heroes in it. Maybe the hero is the tree that disappears.”
The book broke Sam’s heart because it’s a story of a tragedy: a European’s vision of how to tame this country, to plant plants in rows, to regiment the green pastures. It’s a story of deforestation, of clearing the bush to force New Zealand into a country of lush, rolling pasture, but, as Guthrie-Smith found out, this was at the expense of the ecosystem.
“It’s a significant bit of New Zealand literature. There are some strange moments in it when he starts to realise what is occurring.
“Halfway through, he realizes that he’s destroyed it [the sheep station]. That he has done something to the landscape, which is irreversible. He ends this book with sadness. It reads like a New Zealand tragedy.”
Trubridge opens the book to show pictures of the rows of plants, neat and ordered: tamed. He turns several pages to reveal scarred hills that have slipped because trees were cut down.
“You can see how stripped the landscapes were – bleeding soil – caused by deforestation.”
In the background, a quartet of dancers practices its steps of the production Ecology in Fifths, which Trubridge is directing. The dancers are ordered, tamed, regimented. Music developed for the show is haunting.
Trubridge wants to change the world through theatre; through Ecology in Fifths.
His set is a vacant building on Courtenay Place. His props are able to be packed into a pallet. His four dancers dance on real grass. Whenever he’s taken the show anywhere else he always says that they need to provide the grass stage. The set is intimate - and the production low budget.
He’s had firsthand experience of the impact of living unsustainably. It’s basically a family quest to change it. His father David – who made the lights for the set from sustainable bamboo - lectures around the world on ecological issues and practice. His brother, William – who happens to hold the world record for depth of freediving – lives in the Bahamas.
But instead of the common view that the Bahamas is filled with nice beaches, palm trees, and hammocks, the real view is something very different.
“You don’t see beaches,” says William. “You just see plastic. It’s really depressing.”
William spends his time cleaning up the mess. And Sam’s visits with his brother are spent picking up plastic. He hopes, through theatre, to let people experience what he terms the tragic impact of living unsustainably.
“I can show you a video of plastic, but it doesn’t mean the same to you as standing on a beach and seeing the plastic.”
He wants the theatre audience to stand beside him and see the plastic on the beach in the Bahamas as he has – or feel the pain of the trees as they were cut down, so many years ago.
“[Ecology in Fifths] doesn’t have Greek heroes in it. Maybe the hero is the tree that disappears.”
Ecology in Fifths, part of Massey University’s Blow Festival, 15 Courtenay Place, November 10-21.