Of pagan gods, backyard cricket and invented traditions

“It is,” says Kelvin Aris, “a ser­i­ous busi­ness, being funny.” Which is to say, the more ser­i­ously you frame some­thing, the more oppor­tun­it­ies there are to be silly.

Kelvin and co-con­spir­at­or Steph­en Tem­pler are on a mis­sion to make Wel­ling­ton more play­ful. Just one of their many pro­jects is a pro­posed back­yard crick­et tour­na­ment, designed to run in par­al­lel with the Crick­et World Cup held here in March next year. It would draw on all of cricket’s arcane rituals — the rules, the intense dis­cus­sion of pitch and cli­mate, the com­ment­at­ors. “In a ridicu­lous way,” Kelvin says, “we want to have as much atten­tion focused on that as the World Cup. This has the poten­tial for so much humour… We want to really inject humour and fun into these things. But we’d frame it in a ser­i­ous way. It height­ens the silliness.”

Steph­en, an artist, and Kelvin, a com­munity centre co-ordin­at­or, have a track record of organ­ised tom­fool­ery that includes the Aro Open, a table ten­nis com­pet­i­tion of semi-iron­ic intens­ity. Then there’s the Box of Curi­ous Delights, a peep show on wheels that prom­ises erot­ic delight but in fact con­sists of a hideous old pup­pet gyr­at­ing her hips — “a won­der­ful little vaudeville joke,” Steph­en says.

They also run the Flash­dance com­pet­i­tion every year at the New­town Fest­iv­al. It’s nev­er easy, get­ting people up and dan­cing like idi­ots in front of a crowd, but they always man­age it. So what’s the secret? “I don’t know,” Steph­en says, thought­fully. “Just gentle coax­ing. Gentle, force­ful coaxing.”

To make Wel­ling­ton more vibrant, more fun, Steph­en and Kelvin have to get us to loosen up. “We want to bring people out of their com­fort zones and enjoy them­selves and be a bit flam­boy­ant,” Kelvin says. “The sil­li­er they are, the bet­ter.” They are also in love with folk­lore and tra­di­tion, its abil­ity to add rich­ness and lay­er­ing to our lives, to build a sense of shared com­munity. As part of the crick­et tour­na­ment, they want to intro­duce Wick­et Man, “the pagan god of back­yard crick­et”, a kind of myth­ic­al fig­ure made from crick­et pads and based sub­stan­tially on Lance Cairns. One can see how this could work, draw­ing on nos­tal­gia for the 1980s and a shared (if largely male) sport­ing memory.

But can one cre­ate tra­di­tions so delib­er­ately? “It doesn’t take a long time for a tra­di­tion to get star­ted,” Steph­en says. “We want people to take own­er­ship of it… and oth­er fig­ures will come. When they are ready. But there has to be a little bit of a seed there as well, to cap­ture people’s ima­gin­a­tion.” Cre­at­ing these myth­ic­al fig­ures is also an ima­gin­at­ive act, “a way of delving a bit deep­er into that magic­al realm… kids know it, but adults tend to for­get it. We don’t tell tales enough.”

Kelvin and Steph­en, who live togeth­er in the Aro Valley’s Epuni Street, plan to set up the Aro Fun Lab as an exper­i­ment­al centre for their play­able city mis­sion. They have all man­ner of plans, includ­ing an Epuni Street raft­ing race. It sounds rather won­der­ful. But a ques­tion lurks behind all these fine ideas: is this just a form of organ­ised fun?

“That’s the knife edge,” Steph­en says. “Organ­ised fun is the lamest thing in the world — ‘Come on every­one, let’s have fun togeth­er with ZMFM.’ No one’s going to go to that. And if they do turn up, no one’s going to have fun.” What sets the dynam­ic duo apart, he says, is that they haven’t got things organ­ised prop­erly. “We’re all about shab­bi­ness. And it always bloody works out. I’ve stopped wor­ry­ing about things not work­ing out and us look­ing foolish.”