Lisa Warrington

I'm always very happy to be working on a New Zealand play, especially one as celebratory and truthful as Mum's Choir. It's a simple story with a big heart, made special by the singing which is its driving force. It's not a musical, but music and song carries and lifts it. Singing is the key that makes sense of Molly O'Reilly's life and those of her children: “Mum's life was just one great big song. ... She wasn't a trained singer, but she sang from the heart, and her songs were all for us, our family. 'Singing is an expression of your soul', she used to say.” When I first read the script last year, I was delighted to discover that, amongst the wealth of music that evokes this family, and especially its Mum, were excerpts from my all-time favourite choral work, Fauré's Requiem. Parts of it always put me in mind of the sound that angels' wings beating ought to make. A bit of a fanciful metaphor, but never mind! I look forward at every rehearsal to the moment when the “Agnus Dei” starts up. I'd like to thank all the cast and crew for a job very well done, and especially the Musical Director, Stuart Walker, who has worked so hard with the actors to produce such rich musical sounds. Enjoy the show!

Lisa Warrington Lisa has directed over 120 plays, including 27 at the Fortune Theatre, in a wide variety of genres from Shakespearean comedy, to massive-cast pantomimes at the Regent Theatre, to contemporary solo shows. She is a long-time supporter of New Zealand drama, and has directed many NZ productions, as well as commissioning new work and acting as director or dramaturg with Playmarket on many new play workshops. She directed the opening productions at the Fortune for the last three years - Three Days of Rain, Auntie and Me and Bombshells – and now moves to a mid-year slot with Mum's Choir. Other favourite productions include Cherish, Bruised, Gulls, Arcadia, Wednesday To Come, Much Ado About Nothing, One Flesh and Dancing at Lughnasa. She has been named in the NZ Listener as best director for Daylight Atheist, Cherish and Auntie and Me. Lisa is Senior Lecturer in Theatre Studies at Otago University and is also a founder member of WOW! Productions, for whom she most recently directed Lines of Fire, a specially-commissioned work by Gary Henderson to mark WOW's 10th anniversary, performed at the Dunedin Railway Station during the 2006 Otago Festival of the Arts.

Stuart Walker - Musical Director

Mum's Choir marks Stuart's third production at the Fortune Theatre, having previously been Musical Director for the smash hit musical I Love You, You're Perfect- Now Change and the pantomime Cinderella.
Stuart is an accomplished and versatile pianist across a variety of musical genres and has a broad range of musical tastes from pop and R&B through to classical music and jazz. He has a particular interest in contemporary musical theatre. Stuart has had a busy start to his year, having been musical director for Dunedin Operatic's Jerry's Girls earlier this year and has just returned from Queenstown where he was the musical director for the Ignite production of The Rocky Horror Picture Show (where, as part of playing the keyboards in the rock band, he had his hair streaked blonde and learnt the dance moves to the Time Warp!). Stuart returns to the Fortune later this year for Roger Hall's Aladdin.