The curtain is up on The Actors' Program, a new, independent, and privately run acting course offering aspiring actors a foot in the door of their chosen profession, with tuition from some of New Zealand’s leading performers and teachers…

President Jennifer Ward-Lealand expressed her gratitude on behalf of New Zealand performers for the Government’s leadership over the past two days toward negotiating a positive outcome with the studio executives and producers.
“We are pleased the Government was able to resolve the economic concerns of Warner Brothers and New Line. The film business is an internationally competitive one and it’s important New Zealand offers incentives that allow us to continue to build our world-renowned film industry.

NZ Actors’ Equity president Jennifer Ward-Lealand says everybody wants the same thing: to have The Hobbit made here in New Zealand.
“Finger pointing and blame is unhelpful to that aim,” she says.
“It’s time to put emotion and anger aside and to find a constructive way forward”.

New Zealand’s aspiring actors are being offered a foot in the door of their chosen profession by some of the nation’s leading performers and teachers.
The Actors’ Program offers an opportunity to learn from the inside out how the industry works and what is expected of actors from a dedicated and highly experienced group of theatre and screen practitioners who will present a vigorous, practice-based, year-long course to hone skills specifically for stage and screen.

NZ Equity has called on the makers of the feature film The Hobbit to resolve the industrial issues surrounding the film through private good faith discussions.
“We have chosen, in a deliberate decision, to avoid the media fray on this. Negative comments don’t serve the primary objective of seeing the production made in New Zealand,” said Actors’ Equity New Zealand President Jennifer Ward-Lealand.

Claims by Sir Peter Jackson that NZ Actors’ Equity is threatening the viability of The Hobbit in New Zealand are entirely within his hands to address, says President Jennifer Ward-Lealand.
“The Union is simply seeking an opportunity to sit down calmly with the producers to find a suitable solution,” she says.

Sir Peter’s latest public comments are yet further evidence of the urgent need for a calm meeting between the production company and NZ Equity to resolve the matters at hand.
I feel very disappointed that Sir Peter has chosen to use a private, confidential correspondence between us in the public arena.

NZ Actors Equity says it has no interest in jeopardising the production of The Hobbit in NZ or to see the production move offshore.
President Jennifer Ward-Lealand says that Equity has enormous admiration and respect for Sir Peter’s work, but she is most concerned by many of the comments he made in the statement issued last night.