Performance with a purpose: how theatre can change the world 

James Wenley says performing arts help people explore complex questions about themselves, and are essential to the wellbeing of society.

One of the most powerful things about performing arts is its ability to bring people together, says Dr James Wenley, who’s a senior lecturer in Te Whare Ngangahau—Theatre and Performance Studies at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington.

“These days we’re all seeing a growing disconnect in society, and so theatre helps us reconnect with each other, reconnect with ourselves, and gives us space out of our usual days to engage with something on a deeper level. I think it's really important for our own personal growth to be continually exploring, reflecting and engaging.”

James says the arts, and the performing arts in particular, have the power to raise awareness, stir debate and stimulate crucial conversations.

“Theatre has been vital across cultures and throughout history for creating community, for highlighting societal issues and encouraging people to give those issues some attention and thought,” he explains. “There’s sometimes a bit of angst among theatre makers who feel, ‘oh, we only have the ability to reach just our immediate audience’. But I think if you can change one person's idea, then you have changed the world.”

He quotes William Shakespeare's play Hamlet, which has a famous line about the purpose of theatre: “...to hold, as ‘twere, the mirror up to nature”.

One of the key functions of the performing arts is to reflect ourselves back to us—theatre reflects what’s happening in society. But it also offers aspiration, that this is what we could also be, that there are other possibilities that exist.

“Being able to dream and imagine different possibilities, different realities, and enabling empathy and perspective-shifting is really important to help us understand more about how different people might experience the world. It also helps us to remember things we already know—sometimes that's really important too.”

‘Pracademia’—from the classroom to curtain call

James teaches acting and performance for stage and screen, and outside of his work for Te Herenga Waka, he is putting what he preaches into practice.

“I call myself a ‘pracademic’ in that, alongside teaching, I’m also keeping my critical skills tuned up via my theatre review and commentary website, and making my own performance work quite consistently as well. This job is the beautiful interweaving of all those aspects,” he says. “You have to be so vulnerable and so truthful in putting yourself on stage. But I feel it's very important for me to perform, if that's what I'm also asking of my own students.”

James says the immediacy of theatre means it’s an extremely powerful tool for engaging people. “There is something so special when a show is really working—as a performer, you’re thinking and feeling things, but you’ve got this relationship with the audience members too, and they are holding their breath and on the edge of their seats. It’s an incredible thing.”

A theatre project James is currently working on explores experiences of asexuality and aromanticism in performance. “I identify myself within those identities and have brought people together in a series of workshops to talk about this perspective and what these experiences are like. We’re also going to create a show that can communicate those things,” he explains.

“It's been quite special and moving to have a place to share and connect. And it’s going to be really cool to bring this into a theatre space, both for people who might then feel represented, and for people who don't really know much about this at all. This is a good, accessible way to demonstrate that asexuality and aromanticism are part of the variety of human experience.”

James has also created a trilogy of shows around a persona called Dr Drama. “Dr Drama is a version of myself. The aim of it was to bring my teaching practice into the theatre space. It’s quite meta and self-aware and has been a really great way of talking about bigger issues.”

More than entertainment—why the arts are a powerhouse of social good

James’s research is focused on understanding and articulating the value of performing arts for the general public and the theatre’s ability to spark social transformation. “We need far more research so that we can prove what we know inherently, that this can be extremely valuable and important for people. Unfortunately, this doesn’t line up with current policy settings or support that is available.”

James was commissioned, along with theatre writer and reviewer Rosabel Tan, to research the state of the arts media in Aotearoa. Their report, New Mirrors – Strengthening arts and culture media for Aotearoa New Zealand, was released in November 2023.

“We looked at the relationship between our media, particularly journalism, and our arts sector. There’s been a lot of change in recent years in Aotearoa’s media industry, which has resulted in the diminishing representation of arts in our media as well as fewer opportunities for reviewing and critique, or interviews with artists. We spoke to over 50 people working across arts and media to understand what was happening.”

They concluded that there was a national deficit in arts and cultural coverage.

“This is something we should all be worried about because when you lose those opportunities, not only is the arts sector at risk, but our wider culture and identity is too.”

The arts are such a good way to explore really complex questions about who we are and where we’re going as a country.

James says it’s unfortunate that there seems to be a lingering perception that the arts are simply a ‘nice to have’. “The fact is, they’re essential—when you’re investing in arts, you’re also investing in health and wellbeing. They play an important part in people's lives in many, many different capacities.”

Archiving Aotearoa’s theatre history

James is also working on an ambitious project to document every theatre production in New Zealand’s history.

“Dr Sarah Thomasson and I are preserving a database of records of New Zealand productions that have been on throughout the country's history—it may be an impossible goal, but we want to record every single production that's ever been put on in New Zealand or by New Zealanders.”

Theatre Aotearoa was started 20 years ago by now-retired Professor Lisa Warrington from the University of Otago, and James and Sarah are taking the project into the future.

“We’ve got a major collaboration with partners in Australia to bring Lisa's data set together with AusStage, Australia’s live performance database, and use their platform to create a new version of Theatre Aotearoa. We think it’s vitally important to preserve this existing data set, which comprises tens of thousands of records.”

James says while the initial appeal in taking on the project was about preserving history, it has unlocked new ways to research theatre and tell much bigger stories.

“It has got us thinking about what we can do with data tools to look at overarching trends. So we've done a series called Performing Data in Australasia—it has brought together scholars from Australia and New Zealand to upskill in terms of data analysis and visualisation. Sarah and I are also currently writing a new book on performing data with two other collaborators in Australia and Taiwan, Mara Davis Johnson and Jonathan Bollen, which is really exciting.”

Find out more about research at Te Kura Kōmanawa The School of Arts and Media.