The
brief was to interpret the Wellington Harbour Board's Board Room using
infra-red audio communication. In a separate location to dramatise two
creation legends of the Maori people through SpectraVision.
Wearing
cordless infra-red headphones, visitors hear a potted history of the Wellington
Harbour Board's meetings from 1893 to 1989 when the Board was disbanded. The
audio interpretation was written and produced as a radio-play and deals with
dramatic highlights over the 96-year period.
The story is
told by the large cast of characters in the play, including successive newspaper
reporters at the press table. There is no narrator - but music and the sound
effects from clip-clop to vroom-vroom help to depict timeframes.
On
the upper floor of the museum, SpectraVision tells two Maori legends: the creation
of Wellington Harbour and the finding of fire by the mischievous demi-God, Maui.
In this production
we used a well-known Maori narrator on stage with actors miming the story
as she tells it. In the pen-ultimate scene the entire SpectraVision stage
appears to burst into flames.