We Beat the Drum – TAPAC
Our team spent the day at TAPAC – The Auckland Performing Arts Centre. This is a not-for-profit central performing arts facility comprising a fully equipped theatre and four fully sprung dance studios, plus the usual front-of-house and backstage support areas.
The complex is used daily for dance and drama teaching and rehearsals, plus it doubles up as the gym / hall for Western Springs College which is just next door – it’s a busy place.
Our main task was cleaning the drum. Ha! You think cleaning a drum, how hard can that be? Well, harder than it sounds as the main core of the complex and the part housing the theatre, is one huge circular corrugated coloursteel construction – which they call the drum!
That’s it in the picture below, the big white thing behind the trees on the left. And we had to clean it! Or at least the bit indoors which is visible to the public. So it was up ladders and out with the sugar-soap, and after 3-4 hours it was gleaming like a new pin. Or like a new drum.
After that the BNZ trio repaired to the pub for some light restoratives (we needed it), and in the afternoon we scrubbed the walls of the theatre’s backstage walkways (remember how you used to climb passage walls when you were a kid, by bracing your feet on one wall and your bum on the other? Well, kids still do it, and it don’t half make a mess of the paintwork) and a spot of painting to freshen up one particularly scruffy entrance area.
By 5.45 we were all done, and the smiles on the faces of the TAPAC people there was confirmation of appreciation of a job well done.
They made it clear that for them the exercise was a huge success, and invited us to enjoy the next performance at TAPAC. Plus if Closed For Good makes it back next year, they’ll be waiting with their ladders and more sugarsoap…but we beat the drum.
