Shameless Plug is a series where we turn things over to creatives. In exchange for plugging their project, they have to spill their guilty pleasure, biggest inspiration, personal motto and a few other secrets. Today, theatre and filmmaker Stella Reid admits to loving the macabre and nature.
Stella Reid is a theatre maker and filmmaker from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. She is currently “obsessed” with merging the screen and stage, whether that be by setting films in theatres, having film characters stage scenes, or live performances rubbing up on audiovisual material. One example is her short film Stage Challenge, about the national dance competition for schools, that won the UNESCO Wellington Creative City of Film Emerging Talent Award at the NZ International Film Festival last year. Her work defies genres, wrongfoots audience expectations, and interrogates pop culture, feminism, surrealism, grief, and societal collapse.
Here is Stella Reid’s Shameless Plug.
My guilty pleasure is the macabre. I do revel in darkness. Some people balk when I tell them I called my dog JonBenét. I remember a woman tapping me on the shoulder during a long haul flight and telling me she couldn’t believe I could sleep to that psycho music (it was only Mars Volta). When I’m down, I like to watch something disturbing. I know, I know, I do feel guilty about this, but I often find hopefulness and frivolity fake. Perhaps I use the darkness to prevent me from facing pain directly. But I can’t help what I gravitate to. Light stuff isn’t it, a chat with me!
The one Aotearoa arts event I never miss is Kia Mau Festival. This indigenous arts festival routinely programmes the most innovative work, bringing in international acts I don’t see programmed elsewhere, and commissioning fascinating homegrown writing. Last year I particularly enjoyed DARK!DARK!DARK! and A Short History of Asian New Zealand Theatre.
The most fun I’ve ever had on a project was directing the Christmas show at BATS in 2017, which we called Christmas Detention Centre. I had committed to a lighthearted fun show when pitching the idea, and therefore was determined to approach any part of the process with a fun attitude. One of our actors wanted a night off to go see Yusuf Islam; one actor had to be called in from Whanganui at the last minute (that was the great Hannah Kelly, and I brought her back to Wellington, you can all thank me when you next see me!) Oliver Devlin wrote an original song about the Tangiwai disaster that my family still sings to this day.
My hottest career hack is you need to make a bad piece of work. Once you’ve made a real clanger, it relieves all the pressure on the whole operation. You’re like well, look, that sucked, but nothing really bad happened. No one died?? I think the fizzers I’ve made in my career have made me a bolder artist (and a better collaborator).
The place I feel most creative is sitting in the audience during a bad play. After I think about what kind of late dinner I’m going to fix myself, and how I deserve a treat at halftime, I enter a kind of meditative flow state where I consider what I would do differently to the bad play, why the bad play isn’t working, and what the bad play is trying to achieve. It is such a rigorous and inspiring exercise, I often come out and need to voice memo my ideas on the walk home because I can’t type them fast enough.
An artwork everyone should experience at least once in their life is the film Beau Travail. It has had an immense influence on me. (If Clare Denis was fascinated by the unique ways men hurt each other; I am compelled by the unique ways women choose to inflict that same hurt). In the film, soldier Galoup is in Djibouti leading the training of the French Foreign Legion. It isn’t a glorification, and it doesn’t put any of these men on heroic pedestals – army training is a masculine prison from which these men cannot escape. Galoup’s own feelings towards another soldier become so overwhelming they are a threat to his dominance – he’d rather kill himself than yield to his homoerotic desire. And when he makes this choice (and makes his bed – military style), he allows himself one last dream, a thought to meditate on, which is the closing scene. Sitting in the Embassy alone, getting to watch this scene on the big screen in the middle of the day… I won’t forget it. Everyone should have that experience once. I think I had brought in a sandwich that I abandoned halfway through, forgetting about it entirely.
The best place in my city is the travel from the town belt to the coast. I love to spend a weekend running the city, and even though I spend so much of my time trying to pretend I’m a bonafide city girl, nature is a powerful source for me to refuel. I love the outdoors okay?! I know it’s trite.
My favourite album right now is Alligator Bites Never Heal, by Doechii. Got to see her live in Melbourne in December, even though I could only head over for the weekend. Worth it.
My shameless plug is… I’m in a show! Werewolf! See it from 25 February – 1 March in Wellington, 5 – 8 March in Auckland, 11 & 12 March in Whangārei and 13 March in Kerikeri! Don’t forget to book your tickets, at https://www.bingeculture.co.nz/projects/werewolf
