JIM Moriarty, the Wellington actor remembered for his part in television soap Close to Home in the 70s and 80s – for those too young to remember, Shortland Street is its modern equivalent - is not just writing plays.
He’s set up the Te Rakau Trust 21 years ago. It’s a residential programme that uses drama, togetherness, and stability to educate boys – aged 13 to 17 - to stop them going to jail.
“They’re all boys that, if we don’t intervene like this, they could end up there,” Moriarty says. “We’re trying to change the hard wiring, almost because of the nature of their upbringings, which have been chaotic for them. They’ve been quite feral, so we get them stable and work on their strengths.”
The man who’s been a psychiatric nurse for 37 years - now part time at Wellington Hospital’s Ward 27 - has opened up his house in Island Bay to these lads. Some live under his house. Some stay in a place next door.
“It’s 24/7. They don’t go away. This isn’t a nine to five job. This is the real thing. That’s how we can influence them and the choices they make.”
Their office space in Newtown, at 7am in the morning, is like a school camp: large kitchen, big tubs of margarine and other bulk cold foods stored in fridges with glass doors.
Moriarty makes tea, but can’t find the sugar. It’s been hidden to keep it away from the boys, who tend to like it far too much.
At 8am the boys file in. Some minutes later they’re on the ground doing stomach crunches then racing from one end of the room to touch the ground, and back again. There’s no yelling, no shouts. Everything’s very calm.
The boys are trained in Tikanga Maori – protocols and rituals – Te Reo, traditional and modern Maori dance, or kapa haka. They get one-on-one therapy, do role play and cognitive behavioural therapy. They plant on Wellington’s coast. And, for the first time for some, they’re part of a real family, Te Rakau.
Moriarty’s latest project is a play called The Ragged, which is the first in a series of five that he’s producing. His partner Helen Pearse-Otene wrote the story, which is set on Wellington’s South Coast in 1840. It covers a lot, including the issue of foreign ownership on land, an issue he puts across in his understated, but no less vehement, way.
“Where does that leave us in terms of understanding why it’s significant to retain ownership in New Zealand? Do we all become tenants in our own land?”
It’s a story of colonisation, treaty issues, unity, diversity, and retention of culture. It’s got the same goal of what he’s trying to do with his boys. He’s wants to anchor them and with The Ragged, he wants to anchor New Zealand.
“I like to jam as much as I can into an hour and a half so you come out saying: ‘Wow, what a journey’ and think about it for a month. It’s physical, passionate: lots of music and dancing, but it tells a story that I reckon needs to be told of our collective past.”
Moriarty is a man with an incredibly calm aura about him. He tells it like it is. Does it work? Do they stay out of jail? He sits in his chair, doesn’t move, doesn’t flinch, but doesn’t really answer the question either.
“We do our best. First and foremost we try and expand their thinking. We have to change thinking to change behavior. What I believe is nothing’s lost. We can’t do it any other way.”
The Ragged, St Patrick’s College Theatre, Kilbirnie, to December 10.