DIVINE COMPANY: MIRANDA HARCOURT, STUART MCKENZIE AND MICHAEL HURST WANT ANSWERS

Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie, pioneers of verbatim and biographical theatre, return with AFTER GOD — a theatrical journey across continents and conversations, with acclaimed actor Michael Hurst joining them to explore some very big questions about meaning, madness and metaphysics.

Premiering at Wellington’s Circa Theatre from Saturday 17 October to Saturday 14 November, AFTER GOD brings together the stellar cast of Michael Hurst, Kali Kopae, Andrew Paterson, Tara Canton and Roy Clark.

The play follows theatre-maker and unlikely everyman Stuart McKenzie on a funny, serious and unexpected quest to understand belief, spirituality and what keeps us going when the world feels like it is going to hell in a handbasket.

With a hungry mind and burning questions, McKenzie hits the road — travelling from Wellington to Kathmandu, London and New York. Along the way, he encounters a vivid cast of real-life characters: theologians, Tibetan rinpoches, philosophers, cosmologists, taxi drivers, hotel receptionists, a famous singing nun, and his own mother. Each has a radically different way of making sense of existence.

At the heart of the play is McKenzie’s enduring relationship with legendary American death-of-God theologian Mark C. Taylor, played by Michael Hurst. Their dizzying and moving conversations about God, uncertainty and the search for meaning anchor McKenzie’s extraordinary quest. Created entirely from real conversations, the play transforms interviews, ideas and personal stories into exhilarating theatre.

AFTER GOD asks questions that belong to all of us. What happens when certainty disappears? Where do we find hope when the future feels bleak? How do we make meaning in the middle of everyday life? And what might the sacred mean in an increasingly secular world?

For McKenzie, the exploration is personal. The son of an Anglican minister, he intended to enter the ministry himself, but in the midst of a crisis of faith and, travelled in his teens through Southeast Asia seeking answers in all the wrong places. He went on to study Comparative Religion at Victoria University with leading New Zealand theologian Lloyd Geering, before continuing his studies at Cambridge with controversial UK theologian Don Cupitt, founder of the inter-religious Sea of Faith movement.

McKenzie has found himself continually circling back to the question of God. “I’m less interested in answering the question, ‘Do you believe in God?’” says McKenzie. “I’m more interested in the underlying question of how we make meaning in our lives.”

For co-director Miranda Harcourt, who describes herself as a born-and-bred atheist, the appeal of AFTER GOD  lies in the act of curiosity. “This isn’t a play that tells people what to believe,” says Harcourt. “It’s a quest. It’s about exploring why these ideas continue to haunt us.”

Harcourt and McKenzie have been at the forefront of developing verbatim and biographical theatre in New Zealand and internationally for more than three decades. Their ground-breaking works VERBATIM, PORTRAITS, FLOWERS FROM MY MOTHER’S GARDEN and BIOGRAPHY OF MY SKIN established radical new ways of bringing real lives and real voices to the stage.

More recently, their contemporary history plays TRANSMISSION and TRANSMISSION: BETA explored Aotearoa’s experience of Covid-19 and its aftermath. Like those works, AFTER GOD begins with an enormous and sometimes divisive subject, then discovers the intimate and deeply human stories within it.

The result is a theatrical experience that is moving, provocative, surprising and genuinely funny.

Sometimes it is simply very funny listening to theologians argue about God.

As Saint Augustine famously put it: “If you understand it, it is not God.”

But still we try.

Review quotes for TRANSMISSION: BETA
“Confronting, enlightening, comedic, tragic — and essential in every respect…”
— John Smythe, Theatreview

“Primal, beautiful, must-see, have-to-feel theatre…”
— Simon Sweetman, Sounds Good
 

More information at circa.co.nz

AFTER GOD
Circa Theatre, Circa One
Saturday 17 October – Saturday 14 November
Performances: Tuesday–Saturday, 7pm | Sunday, 4pm
Preview: Friday 16 October
Sunday Special: Sunday 18 October
Choose Your Price Night: Tuesday 20 October
Duration: 110 minutes, including interval
Tickets: $25–$60
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Written by: Stuart McKenzie
Directed by: Miranda Harcourt and Stuart McKenzie
Featuring: Michael Hurst, Kali Kopae, Andrew Paterson, Tara Canton and Roy Clark
Lighting Designer: Natasha James
Set Designer: Mark McEntyre
Composer: William Philipson
Sound Designer: Chris Ward