Red Mole was an avant garde theatre company in New Zealand. It was founded by Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell in 1974.
Contents
Biography
Red Mole was first formed in 1974 by Alan Brunton and Sally Rodwell. Other members of the company included Deborah Hunt, Ian Prior, Jan Preston, Jean McAllister and Martin Edmond. Red Mole is one of the best known alternative theatre companies in New Zealand and they later travelled internationally and from 1978 to 1988 they were based in the United States of America and Europe. They were known for their rough, political and experimental style, and their productions often combined a low life New Zealand style humour and sentiment with high-art European Modernism. Authorship within Red Mole is complex as both Brunton and Rodwell wrote for the company either individually or together, and many of the works were also devised by the entire company. With the death of Alan Brunton in 2002 and Sally Rodwell in 2006 the work of Red Mole effectively ended
Red Mole created a manifesto with five principles:
- to preserve romance.
- to escape programmed behaviour by remaining erratic.
- to preserve the unclear and inexplicit idioms of everyday speech.
- to abhor the domination of any person over any other.
- to expend energy.