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New performing-arts group continues Bray legacy

Flagstaff Team

Bunch of characters… Participants in the Kea Performing Arts holiday programme at the Rose Centre in Belmont last week.

The gap in children’s performing arts classes and holiday programmes left by the closure of the Tim Bray Theatre Company, has been filled, with a former head tutor from the company picking up the mantle.
It was a “real shock” for Rachel Constantine when she heard of Bray’s ill health. When he decided to close the company, her first thought was of the children who wouldn’t have after-school and holiday programme performing-arts classes to go to.
She got to work, creating Kea Performing Arts, which is now running the ‘Take a Bow’ programmes and classes, at the same venues, “giving the kids an opportunity to be able to still come to drama on the North Shore”.

Kea head tutor Rachel Constantine (left) and tutor Dee Landon, who both previously worked for Tim Bray Theatre Company, which has closed.

One of those venues is the Rose Centre in Belmont, where the first holiday programme was held last week and others will be held this year. “I’m so relieved and very grateful that the parents have been so supportive of me setting up this company,” Constantine said. “We’re really lucky in that we’ve got the students that were in Tim Bray youth theatre coming back and we’ve also got new students coming in.”
The participants in the holiday programmes have a week to come up with their own original play which they perform at the end.
The Tim Bray company ran holiday programmes for seven years and the after-school classes for more than 15 years.
Constantine, a Devonport resident, was the head tutor at Tim Bray for 10 years and prior to that taught at other companies and was a stage actor in the United Kingdom.
She said the classes and programmes help the students develop life skills such as collaboration, making friends and confidence.
Weekly drama classes are held in Takapuna and Browns Bay.

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