Latest news with #BruceMason
BBC News
03-08-2025
- General
- BBC News
Purr-fect ending for kitten rescued from car engine in Nottingham
They do say an engine imagine the surprise of firefighters when they lifted a car bonnet - and it was an eight-week-old kitten who was doing all the crew had been called out by members of the public to help the cat in Mansfield Road, Nottingham, on 28 his rescue, he was named "Bruce Leigh" after the two firemen who saved him. The call-out was attended by Watch Manager Leigh Curtis and firefighter Bruce Mason from Arnold Fire Station, who were both Curtis said it was "a bit of a strange place" for a cat to become stuck."My worry was that he'd got into the engine, maybe at the home address, and that way he could then be trapped by the mechanisms and travelled some distance."But then one of the ladies said he hadn't, so as soon as I knew it wasn't physically trapped, I was able to get both my hands around it, and it was clinging on for dear life." After discovering "Bruce Leigh" was unchipped, he was allowed to go home with a member of the public who was able to find him a new permanent has now moved in with his new owners in the village of Tutbury, Ms Curtis said it was "a lovely feeling" to see the cat have a happy ending."One of the things about rescuing any animal or human from an incident is that we don't often get to know what's happened afterwards."I'm glad we got it out and got it to safety because I think otherwise it running across a busy road could've potentially caused an accident."
NZ Herald
24-05-2025
- Entertainment
- NZ Herald
The Start of The Golden Weather: Andrew Dickens remembers a special theatre performance
Takapuna Beach on Auckland's North Shore, rumoured to be the setting of The End of the Golden Weather. Canterbury's Court Theatre has just opened its spiffing new building with a production of Bruce Mason's The End of the Golden Weather. It's an iconic New Zealand performance piece. Witten as a novella, The End of the Golden Weather is set at a mythical Kiwi beach in Auckland during the Depression of the 1930s. It's the story of a boy growing up and coming of age and witnessing his community and family cope with hard times in an idyllic place. It's also the story of a loner called Firpo, who dreams of success by running in the Olympic Games – a delusion, but for a moment he becomes a hero in the boy's eyes. Mason wrote the piece in the 1950s and then toured the country performing it solo. The first time he did that was in 1959. He went on to perform it more than a 1000 times in community halls the length and breadth of the country. It was made into a film in 1991 by Ian Mune. The recently deceased Raymond Hawthorne fashioned it into a piece for a theatre company in the '80s. But that was not the first time a company performed it. That honour belongs to a school production by Auckland Grammar and Epsom Girls Grammar in 1980. I know because I was in it. I was Firpo. I was 17. Freda Mitchinson from EGGS was the architect, with help from John Heyes at Grammar. Their ambition was spurred on by the success of the previous year's production of Death of a Salesman, which featured knock-out performances from kids who went on to make names for themselves. Simon Prast was Willie Loman, Rima Te Wiata the scarlet lady (aka The Woman) and Finlay MacDonald, later Listener editor, played Happy. We had a narrator, a boy called Tim, but that's all I remember. He was very good. He was our Bruce Mason. The boy at the heart of it was played by Andrew Laxon, a fourth former at the time. He's now a senior member of staff at the Herald. His character was an allegory of New Zealand coming of age. He was sweet and confused at the growing comprehension of adult life that was coming at him like a train. Miss Effie Brent was played by Liz Mullane, who became the New Zealand casting director for The Lord of the Rings. And me. The scripts were the books that we were all issued with. Our lines underscored with pencils, and our annotations in the margins. A lot of the stage direction was verbal, and we just had to remember it. The real genius of the production was the design in the Centennial Theatre. Much of the tale is recalled as memory. Later productions handle the shift from the present to past with lighting colour changes – golden yellowy lighting for memories. In 1980 we masked half the stage with a wall of muslin. When the lights were in front of it, it was a wall. When the lights were brought up behind it, the scenes became visible through a gauzy haze. No one has tried that since. It was magic. Our production was dark. We included the 1932 Auckland riots, something the film omitted. Firpo was deeply challenged mentally. The picture here is my only photographic evidence of the role, taken from the audience with a Kodak Instamatic. Alone in a spotlight screaming the 'Made Man' monologue at the heart of the character; I was shocked by my own intensity and the flying spittle. I had never wailed like that in real life, I was subsumed. A young Andrew Dickens as Firpo in Auckland Grammar's The End of the Golden Weather. Photo / supplied Bruce Mason himself came to see the final dress rehearsal, only two years from his death and ravaged by a stroke. He died before the Raymond Hawthorne production, so this was the only time Mason saw his creation as a play with a full company. I remember him watching silently with his half-collapsed face. He said nothing because he could not say anything, but we were told he enjoyed it. I am immensely proud of the production, its ambition and how it formed me. It was then I realised I had a performance gene, which later came out in my radio career. A girl called Helen Wild played the psychologist who committed Firpo to an asylum. She became my girlfriend and later the mother of my children. We're still together 45 years on, and we still joke that she committed me, once upon a time. I don't know whether schools take production risks the way the two grammars did back in the day. We would do a Gilbert and Sullivan for mass participation and general snogging but then put a serious drama on later in the year. It was the serious drama that forged and inspired the actors like Simon Prast and Rima Te Wiata to embark upon their journeys in drama. It's a reminder that kids don't need to be cosseted. Kids grow when challenged. Pressure makes diamonds. We can all become a Made Man.
