Photos: Nicola Wilhelmsen, Martin de Ruyter, Rob Macgregor, Ted Eason.
Lara Macgregor, 56, is an actor, director and photographer based in Dunedin. With a CV that includes roles in hit Netflix series One Of Us Is Lying, The Brokenwood Mysteries and Shortland Street, Lara has also been associate director at The Court Theatre in Christchurch and Artistic Director of Dunedin’s Fortune Theatre. She is currently directing Bruce Mason’s End of the Golden Weather, the opening production at the brand-new Court Theatre in Christchurch.
My parents met while working in the art department at an advertising agency in Wellington.
When I was seven, the agency opened a branch in Palmerston North, so we moved there. At first, it felt like a cultural wasteland, but I started doing drama classes and made some amazing friends. From the age of 12, a doggedness kicked in and acting was all I wanted to do. Throughout my teens, I’d lie in bed and dream of stardom – wishing myself away to drama school. I’ve never really strayed from that path.
The first time I auditioned for drama school, I was still at high school, even though you were meant to have at least a year of life experience.
But at 17, I prepared my two monologues – including something from Dr Seuss, so it’s no wonder I didn’t get in! – and I was devastated to be rejected. I cried for three days and my poor dad had to console me. I applied two more times and still didn’t get in, so I etched my own path.
My parents are both talented artists.
My mother Vivienne Lingard has just written her third novel – but even though they nourished my creativity and encouraged me to do the thing I loved, Dad would’ve preferred I do something more secure. I did briefly consider joining the police and Dad jumped on that. However, after the first informative interview in the recruitment office, I promptly talked myself out of it.
I was in my twenties, backpacking in Indonesia with a surfer boyfriend. When my money ran out, he didn’t ask me to stay, so I headed to America.
I didn’t know a soul there, but I found a nannying job in Philadelphia. It was midwinter when I was picked up at the airport in a panel van with no windows. The driver told me to sit in the back. It could’ve gone so wrong, but it was okay. I had to share a room in the family’s basement with another Kiwi who was nannying nearby. They had four dogs – a Great Dane, a Newfoundland and two smaller dogs that stayed in their tiny kitchen 24/7.
I took acting classes at Walnut St Theatre to keep myself sane.
One of my classmates, Agnes, invited me to New York to see an off-Broadway show with her nephew, who lived there. We had such a great weekend. A few weeks later, four months after moving to America, I moved in with her nephew. That was where my New York adventures started.
I’d been given the address of an acting teacher called Alec Rueben.
He lived on the Upper West Side and taught acting classes in his basement. I found his place, pressed the buzzer and said, “Hi Alec, your granddaughter in Auckland gave me your address.” And he said, “Oh, my God, have you Kiwis never heard of play dates? You’re supposed to call and make an appointment!” His classes were like rebirthing. We’d lie on yoga mats in the dark, ridding our bodies of tension and all our demons so we could work from a totally free space. This regression took around two hours each session, but it felt indulgent. I wondered how I’d make a career out of acting if it took two hours to get into the zone for every performance or audition. When it started to mess with my head – did I have that many demons to exorcise? – I found another teacher.
My new teacher, Anthony Abeson, mainly taught people who had representation.
For the mid-year showcase, everyone invited their agents and managers. After the show, a woman asked if she could represent me. Then, I got the first audition she sent me to. It was a play with Florida Stage, which allowed me to join Equity and apply for a Green Card, which isn’t usually easy.
There were definitely ups and downs.
There were times when I was really homesick. However, whenever I hear myself say something is hard, I think of Anthony Abeson. If he heard us say something was hard, he’d say, “You think this is hard? World War II was hard,” and because he was Jewish, that really put things in perspective.
After seven years in New York, my boyfriend and I decided to move to Los Angeles, and the movers came on September 11.
I was sitting on the stoop, keeping an eye on the truck that was double parked out front while the movers carried loads from the ninth floor. Then the Turkish florist next door brought out these giant gilded bird cages and hung them in the trees. He was feeding the birds and the pigeons were going berserk. I’m observing all this and thinking, “Only in New York.” Then he came back out and said a plane had just hit the World Trade Center. This is happening just 60 blocks from where we’re sitting. The florist just shook his head and said, “Please don’t let this be my people.”
Driving out the next day, we could see Ground Zero.
We saw where the buildings had been, and there was this dirty bath ring of dust and smoke in the air. It was so emotional, this mixture of survivor guilt and relief to be leaving. We passed the Pentagon, which was chaotic. We camped by a lake in Virginia with this bizarre sense of absolute peace having left such devastating mayhem. For three weeks, we drove across America and experienced the full gamut of the country.
I was in LA for three years, but after 9/11, work dried up.
I also felt worried I wouldn’t be able to get home when I needed to. And because the directing bug had kicked in, I returned via Sydney and completed the amazing directing course at NIDA, Australia’s National Institute of Dramatic Art.
Back in Aotearoa after 12 years away, I needed to re-establish myself.
I pitched a show to Wellington’s Circa Theatre. For publicity, RNZ interviewed me and I said I wanted to run my own theatre company. The CEO of The Court Theatre in Christchurch, Philip Aldridge, had been listening. He got in touch about their artistic director internship and suggested I apply. I got it and after 25 weeks, he offered me a full-time position as associate director of The Forge, The Court’s smaller theatre.
Moving to Dunedin to run The Fortune just after the September quakes was another survivor-guilt moment.
With two thousand aftershocks between September and the big one in February, we were all in such an unstable environment. I still feel upset thinking about it. To see The Court ruined was bad enough, but people dying… people we knew. Right down to the loss of all the precious things, from the costumes stored in the roof which birds eventually nested in, to all the history that was lost. But here we are, 13 years later, and to be directing the first show in the beautiful new purpose-built theatre is such an honour.
I met my partner Phil [actor Phil Vaughan] in the first show I directed at The Court and we’ve been together for 17 years.
We have a beautiful home in Careys Bay just outside of Dunedin, although we’re often ships in the night. When one of us gets home after being away, we have what we call a “duck- landing” period. You know, when a duck comes into land on a pond and they put their feet out, and they’re a bit wobbly and there’s a splash? We’re both like that after we’ve been away and it takes a while to feel settled, then one of us will take off again. But we have an understanding and Phil gets how important my career is to me, and he completely respects and supports it.
I consciously make the most of every opportunity because I know things will slow down one day.
There’s that old cliché, you don’t know what’s around the corner, or how long the body will keep up with the demands of theatre, because performing and directing are both really tough, which is why I intend to go full steam ahead for as long as I’m able.
The End of the Golden Weather runs May 3-June 7 in Christchurch, see courttheatre.org.nz.
Mr & Mrs Macbeth of Moonshine Valley Rd, starring Lara and Mark Hadlow, runs June 28-July 29 at Centrepoint Theatre in Palmerston North. Visit centrepoint.co.nz.
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