Jennifer Te Atamira Ward-Lealand is a pillar of Aotearoa’s performing arts community. An actor, musician, teacher and mentor, in 2020 Jennifer was voted Kiwibank New Zealander of the Year in honour of her stellar career. Having appeared in countless stage and screen productions, from The Front Lawn and Full Frontal, to Shortland Street and Double Parked, Jennifer is also a passionate advocate for te reo Māori and president of Equity NZ.
We recently moved from our big family home in Auckland to an apartment close to the city.
I live there with my husband Michael [Hurst] and my stepmother Rula. It was the right time to say goodbye to the big house as life is a lot easier this way. I’m also working harder now than when I was in my forties and I was working really hard back then!
We definitely had to let things go before we moved, but I was ready.
We gave things away through Freecycle and I rehomed at least half my wardrobe. I loved asking people if they wanted something and seeing their eyes light up, finding the right person for various things. Now if something new comes into the home, something has to go out. We still have a healthy library, even though we culled it too. We’ll always have lots of books.
I did wonder if I’d feel disconnected from our suburb in an apartment, but we’re very happy.
Being in an apartment also feels normal, maybe because I was an ‘inner-city gal’ growing up, living around Te Aro in Wellington, and that whole area from lower Brooklyn to the city was my stamping ground.
As children, my sister Diana and I loved to sing songs together.
I adored my Chicks album and we’d sing I Love You Timothy with the requisite dance moves. And Mum was a piano teacher who taught pupils at home, as well as being a répétiteur for the NZ Opera Company. I’m so grateful to Mum for giving me music.
When I was seven, Dad took me to rehearsal for a play he was in, Oedipus, at Unity Theatre and from that moment, I wanted to be an actor.
I didn’t know how, but I started working towards that goal by doing pantomimes and musicals, which were a big part of the Wellington community theatre scene in the ’60s and ’70s. In my teens, my life revolved around rehearsals at the weekends, drama classes and school plays.
I had a handful of epiphanies.
The second was when I was 17 and working at Downstage Theatre. It was dinner and a show back in the ’70s, and I was selling programmes, waitressing and ushering when Theatre Corporate brought Metamorphosis to Wellington, about a man who turns into a giant insect. I sat there in my free seat and thought, ‘Holy hell, that’s for me!’ and I still have images from that production flash into my mind today.
From then on, I did everything I could to be nearer to the theatre, and at 18, I joined The Town and Country Players.
We toured schools and country communities in the lower North Island. We’d turn up at all these tiny districts, do our show and afterwards there’d be a pot-luck dinner in the local hall.
I’ve not had to do too many odd jobs outside of performing, but before drama school, I cleaned hotel rooms.
I waitressed and served breakfast at 5.30am and I was a kitchenhand. So I know how to work hard and whenever I’m in a hotel now, I leave a light footprint. Theatre Corporate’s summer school in
Hawke’s Bay was another major turning point, although I’m not sure how I learned about these things with no internet. On the last day – thanks to Raymond Hawthorne who was leading the school suggesting it – I summoned all my courage and asked another tutor, Paul Minifie, about going to Theatre Corporate’s drama school. Paul said they’d think about it. Three weeks later, it fell into place and at the beginning of 1982, I moved to Auckland.
I absolutely loved drama school.
After joining the main Theatre Corporate company, I did play after play, which was a fantastic grounding and I definitely did my 10,000 hours. I also met Michael in 1982. We became partners in ’83 and our first child Jack was born in 1997. Five weeks later, I was back at work doing some television, so Michael and I decided only one of us would work in theatre at night when the boys were young, so we weren’t nannying them out. This meant we had to be choosy about who did what. Looking back, I do wonder how we did it, but like any freelance parents, we juggled and managed. Then Michael got Hercules, which paid better than theatre wages and that gave us a break.
It was always a matter of when, not if, I’d learn te reo Māori, and in 2008, I took a class.
It was one night a week during term time, which is a big commitment when you’re doing theatre, but this was something of value. I was fortunate to already have the sound and feel of the language in my ears and on my tongue, thanks to two Māori teachers at Te Aro Primary School. They took our class to Māori Club at Ngāti Pōneke once a month, where we learned waiata Māori and games. We also sang lots of waiata in assembly, but at Wellington East Girls’ College, I pursued French and German. Many courses later, I’m now on the board of Te Taura Whiri i te Reo Māori, the Māori Language Commission. Māori have done a lot of the heavy lifting to get Pākehā engaged in te reo Māori and if I can be an ally, to stand on the bridge and welcome people across, I will do it.
Today, one of my greatest pleasures is working alongside Jack, our eldest son, who is 29 and has worked in film for over 10 years after starting on a web series called Darryl.
We were also on Spartacus for about seven months and at one stage, Michael was directing, so three-quarters of our immediate family were on set together. Jack and I are currently both on Evil Dead, with Jack in the camera department and me as intimacy coordinator, and sometimes we’ll have lunch or I get a hug. Our younger son Cameron is 26 and he works for Serato, the music software company. Both boys DJ. Music continues to be handed down through our family.
After four decades and working together a lot, Michael and I had never been in a two-hander, with just the two of us on stage, so it’s a great pleasure to play opposite each other in In Other Words, a powerful play about dementia that’s been seen by over 10,500 people throughout the country.
Having trained together, Michael and I have a shorthand and we’re loving this new phase in our lives, of having that freedom from day-to-day parenting to do things like tour the country.
We loved playing in Hastings/Heretaunga to 850 people in Toitoi, which is such a beautiful venue.
To see that theatre fill up was incredible and everywhere we went after the show, people would share their stories, which is such an honour. The play is especially powerful for people who are caregivers of people with dementia. That unseen, unpaid work is so hard and through the play, those people felt they’d been seen. Bloody dementia is everywhere.
It’s a luxury if an actor has an inkling of what they’re doing in six months, so I am used to not knowing what’s around the corner.
Being so used to it, I really don’t worry, as there’s not a lot of point stressing about what might or might not happen. It’s like having faith. I just say to myself, ‘I’m going to work with great people on great creative projects’, and the work always comes. Everything can change on a phone call, so what’s the point of making yourself miserable by worrying?
Helen Clark in Six Outfits is at the ASB Waterfront Theatre from April 7-26. Visit atc.co.nz In Other Words tours Nelson, Taranaki, Whanganui and Kerikeri in May and June. See jenniferwardlealand.com.
