Apartment

WRT is proud to be supporting the development of this brand-new New Zealand play.

Bitter-sweet and locally focused, this new and exciting play by Tama Smith, Apartment explores the intersection of the lives of a cluster of characters, living in the close quarters of an apartment block, as their world is pitched into the 2020 Covid-19 lockdown.

Drawing in style from his extensive study of Documentary and Verbatim Theatre, paired with the experience of 20 years producing plays in schools and community contexts, Tama Smith (Director and playwright) wrote the script as the events of the Lockdown unfolded. In correlating a range of real anecdotes, emotions and experiences the play was an attempt to capture the bewilderment of the simultaneous sense of collective free fall and social stasis.

Two years on, and against a backdrop of current division, the hope is now that the production will stand not as a testament to the trauma of those early days of the pandemic, but rather a means to acknowledge the vital realisation, although forced into isolation, community and kindness was what the country chose to hang our collective hope on. When the promise of a vaccine was ‘5 or 6 years off’ and most countries were in the horrific grip of overwhelming hospitalisations and deaths, here in New Zealand, along with a rigorous and robust trust in science, we decided that standing together (2 metres apart) would define our defiance of the biggest ‘unprecedented’ dilemma of recent history.