Marian McCurdy

Distraction Camp (2009)

Marian McCurdy is an experienced producer, manager, performer and educator based in Ōtautahi Christchurch. Since 2002 she has worked as a performer for Free Theatre Christchurch and since 2014 has produced and toured much of this work. Her first Free Theatre experience was as an audience member to Krapp's Last Tape (1999) featuring Alan Brunton from Red Mole, an experimental theatre company that influenced the founding of Free Theatre in 1979. She is passionate about preserving and making more visible Free Theatre's long history, continuing work on its archive with that in mind. Most recently she produced and performed the premiere of the first English translation and production of Caren Jeẞ's The Cat Eleonore. She currently manages the Free Theatre company and runs its Education Programme and Te Puna Toi Research Centre which hosts wānanga and workshops from its base at the Climate Action Campus in Avonside. Marian has a passion for a theatre that addresses urgent social issues, completed a PhD in Theatre & Film Studies from University of Canterbury in 2014 and her book Acting and its Refusal: The Devil Makes Believe was published in 2017. 

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It shows a very original way of looking at examples of the antitheatrical prejudice as practised by creative artists in various contexts. The study is enhanced by the author’s direct experience of such projects as participant.

A broad range of theories smoothly linked together, unfolding the phenomenon of the refusal to act; an enormous range of examples and detailed case studies that demonstrate different aspects of this phenomenon in terms of historical moment, cultural context and philosophical underpinning.
Márta Minier, Peer Review