Peter Falkenberg: Founder and Artistic Director

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1984: The Future is Now (1984)





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Peter Falkenberg is the founder and Artistic Director of Free Theatre Christchurch and Director for Te Puna Toi Performance Research Centre. He was educated at the universities of Munich and St Andrews and trained as a director at Munich Kammerspiele. He moved to New Zealand in 1975 where he founded Free Theatre and later the Drama Programme and Theatre & Film Studies Department at the University of Canterbury [See The University Connection]. In 1984 Peter observed:
There are two commonplaces about Christchurch's theatre audiences: they are very keen and they are very conservative.... The Christchurch Club of the privileged holds tightly together and clobbers anybody who threatens its exclusiveness. Nothing must ever change. Theatre and the arts are just another monopoly that has to be protected.
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Peter Falkenberg, EVENT Magazine, March, 1984
Peter proposed a theatre that: "would intentionally look for the ephemeral, the indeterminate and the risky in classical and new texts as well as in devised performances". This kind of theatre, he says, would work with the actors' social and psychological existence:
the desires and problems of the performers, uncouth, rough and sometimes seemingly lacking in style, would be made the object of training and rehearsal, and be mixed with the text or content of the performance.   Out of this crucible, a performance could take form which would offer audiences a less easy, but more satisfying, reflection of themselves 

Peter Falkenberg, 'Theatre of Unease' in Performing Aotearoa, 2007.
Of devised performance, Peter wrote:
Following his first production of Woyzeck for Free Theatre in 1980 (named at the time Workshop Theatre), and just before he began rehearsals for Schnitzler's Round Dance, Peter worked as dramaturg on Tony Taylor's Downstage Wellington production of Big and Little [Gross and Klein] by Botho Strauss.  Free Theatre possess some archival material related to the production including a copy of Bruce Mason's Statement in defence of the production following the reception of its hostile reviews where he describes it as "one of the most impressive, certainly the most sublimely courageous, ever staged in the country."
The production was, I felt at the time, even more meaningful than the one I had seen at the Kammerspiele in Munich and gave me an incentive to make theatre in this country. On the other hand the excellent lead actress that met me during a Court production in Christchurch later did not seem to find any more challenging work in new Zealand that would have made her stay and shared stories about the season of Big and Little, where on one night the 3 audience members present applauded a rat that ran across the stage upstaging the actors.

- Peter Falkenberg, 2016
To read other writings by Peter Falkenberg see Manifestos and Writings.
The Free Theatre under Peter's creative leadership has developed and consolidated into an internationally recognized group of theatre practitioners and researchers who are consistently at the forefront of the discipline's development. The rigorous testing out of ideas, of stretching the borders of the genre, a strong commitment to engaging the audience's mind and senses make the Free Theatre an important player in the international landscape of independent theatre companies.
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Professor Dr Thea Brejzek, University of Technology Sydney
...we try and reverse the usual idea of building buildings and then hoping people will inhabit them; we start with the rituals that bring people together and that represent the community searching for a sense of self, and then build around these gatherings.

​Making Possible
Peter Falkenberg quoted in an article by Clare Chapman, Architecture Now, January, 2014
That Free Theatre has managed to exist for so long, and continues to be cutting-edge in its spirit of experimentation, is a credit to the work of Peter Falkenberg, the originator of the company, and to the loyal teams of actors he has inspired.
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New Zealand Filmmaker Shirley Horrocks
Peter Falkenberg has established a wide reputation in New Zealand for an uncompromising dramatic vision and an acute awareness of the fragility of our national identity. He comes from a theatrical tradition that is not afraid to use the stage for philosophical inquiry. This grounding of the performance project in the interstices of fracture, ambiguity and uncertainty has been one of the defining gestures of his work... I was impressed by Falkenberg's daring when he brought a production of Heiner Mueller's MedeaMaterial to Wellington some time ago. I had recently returned from a decade of theatrical work in New York and in Europe. This production indicated that there was a dialogue between the high cultural centres and New Zealand. I left the performance with both exultation and relief. It seemed that in this country there could be work done that was serious, experimental and dangerous. This year I had the opportunity to see Falkenberg's new work Crusoe at the New Zealand Theatre Festival in Hamilton. I was impressed by the vastness of the undertaking, the willingness to go to those limits where the new and the unexpected can be found... I was left exhausted, physically jangled and in a state of nervous apprehension by this production. While Crusoe achieved the traditional demand of catharsis, the after-shocks of going through the experience and emerging reconnected with those around me was one of my most satisfying nights at the theatre.
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Alan Brunton, Red Mole
'Saturday Morning with Kim Hill' (Radio NZ) interview, Peter Falkenberg - 40 years of the Christchurch Free Theatre, 2019.
Saturday Morning, 10:35 am on 20 July 2019 ​

'Upbeat' (Radio NZ) interview on Distraction Camp in Wellington, 2010.
Interview with Peter Falkenberg and Emma Johnston
Upbeat, 1:00 pm on 30 August 2010

'Arts on Sunday" (Radio NZ) interview re Distraction Camp, 2009.
Arts on Sunday, 1:50 pm on 22 November 2009
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'Arts on Sunday' (RadioNZ), re 25th Anniversary.
 Arts on Sunday, 2:25 pm on 18 May 2008 ​
Interview with Peter Falkenberg and George Parker

Peter Falkenberg interviews Mervyn Thompson about his work in 1991, just before Mervyn's death. Side A. Side B.
Falkenberg. Taonga.
Audience Member, The Black Rider