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Murray Owen: Community journalist and performing arts guru

May 15th, 2011
By David Armstrong

As an out-and-about reporter for The Guardian community newspaper, Murray is one of the best known people in Motueka, but fewer locals know of his activities in his favourite life pursuit - performing arts, and particularly theatre and dance.

While full-time journalism has been his earner on and off over the years, Murray has been involved in the arts for pretty much all of his life. The variety of activities he's been involved with are now largely focused on his current love, Motueka's Imagine Theatre.

Trace with him the activities of his 58 years and you get a succession of enjoyable experiences in theatre, dance, choreography and singing, plus other jobs - fill-in and full-time - seemingly on the side.

Murray spent most of his life in Napier. By the time he was 13 years he was a published writer and dance teacher, and both of these activities were already more important to him than schooling. He says his high school at the time was conformist and lacking in inspiration, and offered little of interest for him. He was very busy elsewhere.

He says he had a special affinity for performing from as far back as he can remember. When he was aged four he was already on stage, and his special interest in dancing led to countless lessons and working through qualifications, so that at the age of 16 he began teaching dancing. His special interests were tap dancing and modern (like today's modern jazz dancing).

This skill took him around the North Island for competitions and performances, both dancing and general stage work including singing and speech. "I was far from being a bored teenager," he says. "I can never understand why some people cannot entertain themselves."

Rugby was another long-standing interest, not so much as a player but more as a recorder and commentator. "Watching rugby is like watching theatre in a lot of ways. I don't think the two are all that far apart. But it seemed like it in those days, when you could count the number of boy dancers in the North Island on one hand."

When he was 13 he wrote an almanac of Hawke's Bay rugby, around the time when Hawke's Bay held the Ranfurly Shield. Murray became a well-known part of the scene as he collected facts and statistics. ("A bit of a trainspotter," Murray says he was.) "The rugby fraternity responded really well to this 13-year old with his idea of doing the book."

When the book was published it became national TV news and then used by School Inspectors around the North Island as an example of what children interested in writing could do.

Some teachers at Intermediate level were supportive of his interest in writing which, until then, had been largely writing little stories and reading books with an analytical eye on the production process. Murray began to think that maybe he could become a journalist, and at age 14 he did some paid work to cover rugby games for Napier's Daily Telegraph.

At 16 he quit school ("I became quite anti") and began an adult lifetime mixing in varying proportions his main interests, which by then also included hiking (that led to his being an avid tramper for many years and a lover of the great the outdoors). Through the variety of jobs, which included writing for several publications, "dancing and theatre and performing remained the passion".

He developed expertise in dance choreography as a necessary adjunct to teaching. "At one stage I was coaching 60 kids, and for competitions most of them had five routines to to perform, so I had to create and know every one of them, buzzing around in my head." He also had to help them develop characters and song-and-dance routines, "usually of a humourous nature".

Meanwhile, Murray was keeping up the writing, mainly performance reviews and opinion pieces for local papers. He did some sports radio broadcasting for four years in the 1980s (commentating and interviewing), and was publicity officer for Hawke's Bay netball for seven years as well as a similar stint for the softball organisation.

In 1983 he spent a bit of time in Motueka and surrounds while travelling and thought he wouldn't mind coming back to spend more time or even live here, but this didn't eventuate for over 20 years.

In the 1990s his involvement in theatre continued to grow and he took on some of his most enjoyable projects because they involved such a wide contrast of roles. One early highlight was choreographing Alice in Wonderland just using dance and no words.

"For example, I acted the role of Gerald, the English drip, in Me and my girl, which involved a lot of singing and dancing, and then when that wound up I went straight into playing the archbishop in the Joan of Arc story, The Lark," he recalls.

"Another I enjoyed was one called Remember the time, the place and the music, a journey through life and music from the 1860s to the 1960s. It gave me a lot of opportunities to strut my stuff - tap dancing to comic to druggie to old-time folksinging - through a variety of characters."

About then he began an entertainment magazine, he writing and a colleague publishing, which lasted four years. "This required more skillful writing and offered more scope than sport." He also did some singing in duets and bands, some of it paid but he enjoyed the unpaid gigs the most.

In 2007 he fulfilled his earlier wish to live in Motueka. A job came up as a reporter for The Guardian, and as he'd been doing no serious writing for a while, he took up the opportunity to return to a place he really liked.

But his interest in performing arts went before him. "The spies were out and before I knew it I was choreographing Alice in Wonderland for Imagine Theatre," he says. That continued into helping and directing with several widely varying shows.

"The stuff I've done for Imagine Theatre I've enjoyed as much as I have with anything else back over the years. They're a great bunch of adults to work with." Then he ended up playing the old man Geppetto in Pinnochio with 35 kids. "Those kids were fantastic."

In 2009 he directed The Cage Birds, "one of my theatrical highlights", with eight high school girls doing a tough adult play that they didn't initially understand. "They came away having learnt a lot, and they did us proud. Imagine Theatre is only a small group, but there is amazing talent there and the theatre is a great nursery."

Those who saw Imagine's concert for Christchurch in March will understand how the audience enjoyed seeing the comedic side of Murray. He did three musical skits all of which were had the house belly-laughing. "They loved seeing an old man making a fool of himself, but I don't mind," he laughs. Indeed Murray's usually quiet manner hides a wicked sense of humour - in both senses of the word (rude and neat).

Back to his reporting role, Murray acknowledges that such a role is an important part of a community like Motueka. "This is a very supportive community," he says. "If someone has an idea and puts it forward and gets off their chuff and does something, the community usually gets behind them." He cites the recent Sandcastles for Christchurch and Charity Cricket Match as examples.

"It's a superb community to live in and I'm lucky to live here. All the physical stuff nearby like the national parks is fantastic as well, but at the end of the day it's the people."

When he's out and about reporting on community events, he loves to learn about and enjoy what other people are doing. "I honestly don't care what I go out and cover - except rugby in torrential rain - there's always some enthusiastic person doing great things. Hopefully you write enthusiastically about it. My job is to record what the community is doing."

Except when it's Murray who's doing it - then it's my job!

 
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