Wel­ling­to­ni­ans rejoice for it is almost ARTS FESTIVAL SEASON!

From the begin­ning of Feb­ru­ary through March we’ll be able to enjoy work in devel­op­ment, new and exper­i­ment­al acts, and some of the best stuff from around the world.

First one to start is the Fringe Fest­iv­al.  As they say on the web­site “Our fest­iv­al is open access and includes con­tem­por­ary work in art forms includ­ing (but nev­er lim­ited to) audio, busk­ing, cab­aret, clown­ing, com­edy, cir­cus, dance, film, fash­ion, impro­visa­tion, music, online, phys­ic­al theatre, pod­cast, poetry, pup­petry, spoken word / storytelling, theatre, visu­al & digit­al art.” That means the weird, the won­der­ful, and the down­right bizarre can be ours for the low low price of their tick­ets. Look out for their little yel­low book­lets around town.

Asso­ci­ated with the Fringe is the Putahi Fest­iv­al – where new work devel­ops in stages. Fea­tur­ing some of the city’s most prom­ising and proven indi­gen­ous artists it’s a quick week 9–13 Feb­ru­ary at Stu­dio 77 at the uni­ver­sity. Three works in pro­cess by Wil­li­am Duig­nan and Waylon Edwards, Patrick God­inet, and Miria George, are spot­lit in this year’s fest­iv­al.

Finally there’s major inter­na­tion­al arts fest­iv­al The New Zea­l­and Fest­iv­al. From 26 Feb­ru­ary – 20 March we can see loc­al and inter­na­tion­al tal­ent in a whirl­wind of events. Tick­ets for this fest­iv­al are much more expens­ive than the oth­er two fest­ivals because of its nature, but the excel­lent Tix-for-twenty scheme is back for those of us who spent way too much over the fest­ive sea­son. How­ever if you don’t want to miss out on see­ing the likes of Tan­ztheat­er Wup­per­tal Pina Bausch, Wyn­ton Mar­s­al­is, Knee­high Theatre, plus our own Roy­al New Zea­l­and Bal­let, Gareth Farr, or Trick of the Light Theatre, etc, then I sug­gest you book now. Writers Week is from 8–13 March. A teas­er pro­gramme has been launched with the full pro­gramme released next week on Janu­ary 28.

I’m yet to prop­erly sit down and decide which shows I want to go to (i.e. can afford) so if you have favour­ites list them below!