The makers of the runaway hit comedy H.R. The Musical are back this May for the NZ International Comedy Festival with their solo show I Didn’t Invite You Here to Lecture Me. This verbatim comedy, performed by Mika Austin, takes seven years of lecturers’ throwaway lines, recorded faithfully during playwright Amy Mansfield’s time at the University of Auckland, and reconfigures them into a 55-minute ‘degree’ across topics ranging from music, to law, to linguistics.
“I started performing this play back in 2019, in neighbourhood living rooms”, says actor Mika Austin. Since then, the show has toured nationally and to Melbourne, including performances in actual lecture theatres at the Universities of Auckland and Otago (as well as more obscure locations including a church, a reclaimed warehouse, and above a schnitzel shop). “To think that, from those grassroots beginnings, we’ve gathered such momentum that I’m now able to stretch my legs at some of Aotearoa’s most recognised large theatres is a testament to how much people love this show.”
With the company’s recent success with H.R. The Musical, they’re moving into bigger digs for this season of I Didn’t Invite You Here to Lecture Me: Q Theatre’s mainstage Rangatira in Auckland, Te Auaha’s Tāpere Nui in Wellington, and The Great Hall lecture-theatre-turned-events space at The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora in Christchurch. “While intimate spaces provide unique opportunities for interaction with the students… ahem, audience…, we can’t wait to embrace the ‘Subject101’ vibes that these larger spaces bring”, says Austin.
Referring to the hoarding for 20 years of seven years worth of university lecture notes, the show’s writer, Amy Mansfield, says: “This is a record of funny things real people said, live, in a theatre – albeit a lecture theatre – which I happened to take down on 7000 pages of lined refill back in the day. Despite the retro genesis of the play, the big questions it covers are still on our minds today.”
They’ve brought on industry legend Michael Hurst to direct this season, and Mansfield has updated the script with the Comedy Festival audience in mind.
Perhaps this is not the kind of citation most academics are looking for. Nonetheless, at least a dozen faculty members operating in lecture theatres in the ‘90s and early 2000s may find themselves represented in this piece.
This is a class you don’t want to miss.
Photography by Michelle McLennan
I DIDN’T INVITE YOU HERE TO LECTURE ME
Dates and venues:
6-8 May – Wellington Te Auaha,
21,22, 24 May – Auckland Q Theatre, Rangatira,
29 May – Christchurch The Arts Centre Te Matatiki Toi Ora, Great Hall
