HBAF 2022 - Put My Ear to the Ground

Theatre-maker Puti Lancaster died in 2021 leaving a prolific body of work over an intense six years in Heretaunga, telling stories of this place. Working in parallel with Puti, writers Bridie Freeman-Rock and Jess Soutar Barron wrote about her work, and were invited by her to become active participants in her process of devising.

When she died she left a legacy: a richness of encouragements, tools and invitations to continue the mahi of creating spaces for transformative change: in people, families, narratives, dynamics and communities. Puti also left a hole: unfinished projects, half-started collaborations, conversations broken off midway.

As part of a long goodbye to Puti, Put My Ear to the Ground is an opportunity to engage with some of the themes of her work, and reflect on the intentions and wishes held within each of us towards changed ways of doing, thinking, feeling, being.

Bridie and Jess have worked with other collaborators to offer a sense of Puti’s processes and practice. Put My Ear to the Ground is a sensory, transmedia, spatial offering that provides a quiet shelter for reverie and resolve. Together, over three days and nights, audience become participants co-creating a sharedsense of what it means to leave a place and to come home.