Make or Break (The Magic Within)

2003 DOCUMENTARY

Make or Break (The Magic Within) went inside a youth correctional institution to follow rough teenagers going through the rigours of an 8-week drama therapy programme run by Jim Moriarty. Through this process, the kids were forced to face their past in an effort to understand how to change their future.
It's a big ask, to try and makeover twenty at-risk angry young kids from the Northern Residential Centre, in South Auckland, New Zealand and in the words of head facilitator, Jim Moriarty, try to "clear out the toxic shame within".
In this 90-minute documentary The Magic Within, actor/head facilitator Jim Moriarty takes a group of troubled teenagers (13-17 years) and steers them through a ten-week course of provocative 'theatre therapy'. Shot in intimate fly on the wall style, the camera follows the children's progress as they are offered ways of coping with anger, loss and pain and are shown an alternative to a criminal existence.
For many of them the course is a last chance at turning their lives around but not everyone is ready for the programme. As one girl, two and a half months away from leaving Weymouth declares part way through the course: "I'm only doing this programme so I can get out of this stinking place". The Magic Within shows her radical change in attitude, how after leaving the course she is desperate to get back in. Not only do some of the kids walk, storm or are kicked off the course, a few of the facilitators fall by the way side too. This is no easy option.
The facilitation team (Te Rakau) brought together by Moriarty is a mix of counsellors and young people who have been through his earlier courses. The whole group has to buy into a work ethic and a culture of commitment toward each other and the final production. On the way to opening night, the kids embark on a deeply psychological journey where they learn how they survived their "first hurts" and how to survive the ones to come.
One troubled teenage boy relates to the group and later to the audience how he came home and found his father dead and how his mother left home and died within the same year. "I still don't know why or how," he tells, daring to look back and remember.
Through telling their stories, the children are encouraged to make a cause and effect connection between the things that happened in their troubled childhood and what is happening to them now. This is Jim Moriarty's third programme working with children under Child Youth and Family care. The recently Queen's Birthday honored actor has spent many years working with women in prisons, directing productions of their stories.
Described by Moriarty as "intense mentoring", the course takes the children on "a rough journey to the flower (magic) inside themselves". By using an intensive combination of group therapy, dance, Kapa Haka, song and storytelling, the children get to share their stories in an atmosphere of trust. Their individual stories are woven into one big story for the final production that is staged in front of the public. Natasha Hay wrote in the Listener Dec 30 2000 that Purotu – The Magic Within "was the most inspirational production this year… This was drama at its most vital and visceral… To experience such compelling theatre and see the courage and talent – a side of these damaged kids rarely portrayed behind the headlines was gut wrenching stuff. Moriarty has performed a small miracle."

Producer: Michele Fantl
Director: Stewart Main

Winner, Media Peace Awards 2004.
Aired on TV3 in 2003.

Watch a clip here.
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