Tom Webster - A Home of His Own Making

Massive Theatre Company turns 35 this year, and its latest production asked a simple question with a complicated answer: where does your heart live, and who does it call home? For College alumnus Tom Webster (2019), one of five performers at the centre of HOME MADE, the answer has been years in the making.

Tom trained at Unitec's School of Creative Industries from 2020 to 2022, a period he has described as one of upheaval that forced his cohort to become resourceful and self-sufficient. It was there he became close with a classmate, and together they founded Humble Cowboy Productions after graduating. The independent company's early work included OI FRED!, a solo show Tom wrote and performed himself, and E Ipo, My Love, a story about a Māori and Pākehā couple navigating modern Aotearoa, which he produced for a season at Basement Theatre earlier this year.

In 2023, Tom joined Massive Theatre Company, the Auckland ensemble that has spent more than three decades developing original New Zealand theatre and playing an important role in the careers of performers including Beulah Koale, Kura Forrester and Madeleine Sami. Since then he has worked as an actor and Teaching Artist, and completed the company's Directors Lab. It is, he says, the place that has shaped him most as a performer, sharpening his sense of what works on stage and, conversely, what does not.

That development led to HOME MADE, which Tom calls his favourite project yet. Directed by long-time Massive member Denyce Su'a, the production was built around belonging and identity, brought to life by five performers each answering the question of home in their own way. For Tom, the pull has been the ensemble around him. Coming from completely different walks of life, they are, in his words, exactly the kind of people you want at your back on stage.

Tom traces that sense of home further back, to his time at Saint Kentigern. As a learner with ADHD and dysgraphia, he credits the College's Enhanced Learning support, from using a computer for writing to strategies that made learning easier, with getting him to where he is today. Without it, he says, he would not be able to dream as freely as he does now, on stage, every day.

Tom returned to the College in Term 2 to run a Q&A session for aspiring drama students, trading advice with the next group of performers just beginning the journey he is already walking. His message to them is the same one he carries into his own work. “The world is bigger than you think, mistakes are part of finding your way, and it pays to be nice to your teachers. They remember you.”

HOME MADE played at Te Pou Theatre in Henderson from 22 to 25 July, and at ONEONESIX in Whangārei from 29 to 31 July. 

Massive Theatre Company offers free workshops for aspiring performers through the year: massivecompany.co.nz/workshops/foundations