Extracts from a letter of thanks from Tim Walker, Director, The Dowse, November 2004

Dear Warwick

Now that the glitter has settled, I am writing to thank you so much for the wonderful job you did in organisaing such a great tribute event for Galvan James Kepler Macnamara.

Ee have had so much warm and positive feedback; people were truly grateful that there was such an opportunity to be together to remember him. Huge credit is due to you for assembling a cast and orchestrating such a moving, fun, and memorable production. I am still not sure how you pulled it all off in such a short time.

The effortless way you melded into the Dowse team and worked with the staff, friends and volunteers, made for a really positive experience for the wider team. I know all who were involved will remember the event as a special part of their association with The Dowse.

So thank you for a fabulous time, a wonderful occasion, and for your humour and generosity of spirit throughout.

Warmest regards
Tim

Extracts from "Warwick in Wonderland" by Denis Welch (from Listener November 22 1997)

To see The Snark done in someone's living-room is to experience a throwback to pre-television days when families "entertained themselves". The usual gap between performer and audience is swept away. You re-enter the cosy, enclosed world of childhood puppet theatre, to be diverted, in the domestic dark, by someone so close you can virtually touch them; yet there is an ancient magic about the occasion, too. This is Warwick in Wonderland, if not through the looking-glass.

"Ideally, the people come, they get transmuted, it's alchemy. They might not know it, but they're changed into gold. The very souls of their bodies are changed by the being there, the experience. The performers, too, should go on a journey and transmute and change.

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Extracts from "Broadhead's wonderful world" by Peter Calder (from Thursday Morning NZ Herald August 27 1992)

The "play" was Starry Nights Under the Big Top and it was just one of more than 50 productions to spring from the fertile imagination of the man many regard as the most innovative director to have worked in New Zealand.

For all that, Broadhead's philosophy of theatre is more like the dictatorship than anarchy. He welcomes ideas and input from cast members but there is no doubt that he is ultimately in charge.

Alumni of Broadhead Productions attest to his "happy blend of enjoyment and discipline."

"Warwick Broadhead," he said, "is twixt between heaven and earth."

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Extracts from "High on a heady dose of theatrical magic." by Renee (from Listener & TV Times June 24, 1991)

But the audience, high on a heady dose of theatrical magic, clapped madly. And, indeed, when you think of the difficulty of getting 200 people just to walk on stage, let alone dance, jog, skip, hop, sing, play instruments, then end up exactly where they're supposed to be - and to do something similar with the audience - a standing ovation for Warwick Broadhead was not extravagant.

Maybe we should give him the keys to the country - we could all do with a dose of magic.

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Extracts from "Planet Waves" by David Eggleton (from Listener & TV Times Feb 5, 1990)

Broadhead's is a theatre of collaboration, improvisation and intuition - visceral and visual, concerned not so much with characterisation or intellectual analysis but with emotional responses and emotional truth. One of the most innovative and consistently interesting theater directors in New Zealand, Broadhead has shown extraordinary integrity, sticking to what he knows but at the same time running risk with it, and taking casts and audiences along with him.

Other-worldly and dream-like, maintaining an emotional level which increased the intensity, employing a compelling agenda of music, and paying painstaking attention to detail so that the smallest details counted, The Long Night, The Passing Night was, within its own terms of reference, as brilliant as theatre ever is.

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