Life was a cabaret

Before becoming a distinguished documentary maker, ANNIE GOLDSON ran away to New York with Red Mole. Now, she's made a film about the avant-garde theatre troupe, tracing its genre-defying history

As I write, I anticipate being in three places, dashing between a picture grade, a sound mix and graphic design on the way to finishing Red Mole: A Romance. The feature documentary is screening at Whānau Mārama: New Zealand International Film Festival. Thank goodness it is, as I'm not sure what I would do with it otherwise.

It is not a film that fits easily into our media-sphere. I doubted our broadcasters and funding agencies, as much as I love them, would be keen to support a long documentary on a pre-internet avant-garde theatrical sensation that few people remember. So I pretty much went it alone (more on that later).

Red Mole: A Romance captures the life and times of the theatre troupe experimental that emerged in the early 1970s from the University of Auckland, then a hotspot in countercultural activity. The idea of a theatre troupe was forged a few years later, seemingly during an opium-laced OE trip through Asia. Red Mole's founders were inspired by the street performances and puppet shows they saw.

Later that decade, Red Mole would have a tremendous influence on the "leftist cognoscenti" of their era, of which, I guess, I was one. Being on the younger side, I would not have identified myself as such. But full disclosure: I still recall first seeing Red Mole as a teenager from the North Shore and was I enamoured. In 1981, I was living in Wellington, a city that liked Red Mole and where they hit their peak. They sold out show after show of Capital Strut, a satirical cabaret staged at Carmen's Balcony nightclub, and successfully performed their first big written show, the apocalyptic Ghost Rite, at the Opera House. A blend of poetry, performance, mask, music, dance, political satire, comedy and more, Red Mole defied genre. They were unlike anything I had seen.