Introductions written for the Auteur House 4th Anniversary Performance Night

Introduction & New Millennium Beatniks

Ladies and gentlemen welcome to the Auteur House Fourth Anniversary Performance Night.  It is a matter of some irony that this repository of cinematic excellence stocks none of the films from which we take our lead this evening.  Back in the late 1930s, before she was properly hooked on prescription medication and he had taken Ava Gardner as the first of his eight wives - and let’s face it, who wouldn’t - Judy Garland and Mickey Rooney used to raise money through amateur hour entertainment when the evil property developer wanted to bulldoze their church hall.  Auteur House is in roughly the same situation.  Challenged by location, parking issues, fine weather, the fucking Base and incremental shifts in technology - you downloaders know who you are - we cling on into our fifth year of operations.  The answer?  Well, with all the talent around this place, why don’t we just put on a show?

First up, a couple of grizzled life veterans.  Marinated to perfection, Richard Selinkoff and Martin Fisher give world weary cynicism and curmudgeonly dipsomania an excellent name.  Devout, pious, lovers of animals and small children, ladies and gentlemen, the New Millennium Beatniks.

Pip Smith

It is no exaggeration to say that our next performer transformed Auteur House, at least domestically.   Before Pip it was a cold, lonely, sterile bachelor pad.  After Pip it was a hot bed of thespian activity.  This came as no surprise as so far as frizzy haired, Middle-Eastern born, roller skating former fundamentalist Christians go, Pip is pretty much the best actress in town.  Or used to be.  Ladies and gentlemen, direct from that horrid metropolis to the North, Pip Smith.

Shane

I struggle to describe electronic music.  Most proponents are well meaning dullards who subsist on a cocktail of ecstasy and life style drinks.  Shane Dudfield, aka Doteyes is an exception and an exceptional talent, with professional experience in everything from blueberry picking machines to the first, way more successful incarnation of Mammouth magazine.  Here under exclusive contract to Auteur House, direct from Melbourne, Australia, Dot Eyes.

Megan Davies

It would only be a slight exaggeration to claim that I’ve introduced our next poet more times than I’ve cooked hot dinners.  She, however, is as much culinary genius as literary practitioner and ranks as one of the dump shop’s most accomplished assessors of 21st century refuse.  Auteur House’s first ever volunteer labourer, presented tonight in a happily drug free state, Ms Megan Davies.

Creaghie Beere

Auteur House has a statutory relationship with our next artiste.  Mr Beere regularly paints up out the back and gives us loose change for the privilege.  Here, hopefully in a more animated condition than when practising his self-styled street art, clown school graduate Creaghie Beere!

Rohan Marx

That bald headed guy who lives in the rear is always telling me that I over use the term genius.  That maybe, but the concluding performer in our first half comes close to living up to the tag.  An accomplished front man, for 15 years he challenged the nation with filth and good humour as the lead singer of the legendary Mobile Stud Unit; a self-described “bloody average” salesman, he is amongst a select few Otorohongians to have worked both for Telecom and Russell Brown; a one-time filmmaker and student television mogul, his two decade old short ‘Cousin Rupret Comes to Town’ featured the most credible camera phallus in New Zealand cinema history.  Ladies and gentleman, Mr Rohan Marx.

Intermission

That concludes the first act.  Please eat, drink and be merry, for in fifteen to twenty we’ll do it all again.

Jenny Spark

We spark up the second segment with another former Auteur House occupant, the beautiful and mysterious Jennifer Elizabeth.  During Jenny’s tenancy the House shared in her two great enthusiasms, music and animals.  She came with a piano, on which she only ever played one, solitary tune, and a cat, which delighted in all manner of Swainson-bating tortures.  Fresh from a torture of her own - a dialogue free mediation retreat in which talked in her sleep - Jenny comes to us spiritually cleansed and full of all the answers.  Ladies and Gentlemen, Ms Jennifer Spark.

Jessica Boyd

The only pregnant member of the line-up, Ms Jessica Boyd is the seldom scene power behind the Auteur House throne.  Obscenely talented, a fine artist, thoughtful poet and formidable intellect, she hails from a minuscule satellite of Huntly and once worked in a fish n chip shop.  One day her children will inherit all that you can see around you.  Ladies and gentlemen, Ms Jessica Boyd.

Nick Bourchier

Pythonesque humour is in our next performer’s blood, his mother having actually had professional relations with those naughty Oxbridge boys.  Nick is our Sunday night volunteer, doing the job thoughtfully and laconically.  Seen of late upon the university stage sporting a Groucho Marx moustache and being grandly cuckolded in Chekhov’s “Three Sisters”, he is an artiste of some international learning and experience.  Nick Bourchier.

Dean Ballinger

It is a measure of our last poet’s sense of romance and drama that he became the last known person in Western society to elope.  Te Awamutu’s favourite son - those Finn boys are at most second best - Dean Ballinger exists at present in a kind of intellectual interregnum, having submitted his doctoral dissertation but not yet had it assessed.  He fills his days looking after three smallish children and finding Dipak Chopra books for spiritually challenged customers of Browsers Book store.  Dean Ballinger.

Geoff Doube

At first glance Geoffrey Doube might seem the type of chap who would inherit the earth.  Beneath that meek and mild exterior lurks however the brain of a first class philosopher, a soul of lyrical wit and musical sophistication and the steady hand of a pater familias.  For over a decade the constant and driving force of The Shrugs, long Hamilton’s finest current band, Geoff Doube.

Miss Bettsy Rose Lee

I think it was Private Joker when asked about the apparent contradiction implied in wearing a peace badge whilst sporting military uniform who stated something about the “duality of man…the Jungian thing”.  Our concluding artist happily demonstrates such paradox in her professional life.  A party fairy by day, she taps into a more ancient tradition once the sun goes down.  Hamilton’s foremost exponent of stylish, rhythmical removal of clothing, a story teller of flesh quivering magnificence, Miss Bettsy Rose Lee!

Conclusion

Well, that’s it.  Especial thanks to Megan Davies for the first class catering, to Reuban Austin for supplying vast quantities of amber fluid at next to no notice, and you, the punters for coming in your multitude tonight.  May you stagger out subsequent visits across the coming year and beyond.