Promotional poster for Routine magic, magic routineRoutine magic – Will Aloysi­us aban­don ritu­al­ist­ic powers acquired dur­ing his 10 year social isol­a­tion?

Magic routine – Can You­Tube Influ­en­cer Ant Hill find suf­fi­cient inner har­mony to open a life-chan­ging envel­ope?

This pair of plays, util­ising the same set and act­ors, tell two timely and com­pel­ling stor­ies. Routine Magic, short­l­is­ted for the Adam NZ Play Award in 2019, takes you on a  thought-pro­vok­ing jour­ney through what hap­pens when Aloysi­us, who has developed extraordin­ary powers refuses to allow court-ordered psy­cho­lo­gist Sarah inside his house. Magic Routine is a more humor­ous but still pro­found look at what hap­pens when Celes­ti­al Spir­it #108 vis­its You­Tube sen­sa­tion Ant Hill on the occa­sion of his 21st birth­day bear­ing a magic­al envel­ope from his absent fath­er.

The plays are per­formed by highly-acclaimed act­ors, Barn­aby Olson and Rebecca Park­er. Barn­aby is a loc­al Wel­ling­ton cre­at­ive who wrote and per­formed in the fant­ast­ic new work A Traveller’s Guide to Turk­ish Dogs, toured nation­ally with pro­duc­tions such as Anzac Eve, and An Awfully Big Adven­ture, and starred on screen in BURBS, Miss­ing Sunday, and Tra­gi­com­ic.  Rebecca Park­er has appeared in vari­ous pro­duc­tions in the Wel­ling­ton Fringe Fest­iv­al, the Court Theatre in Christ­ch­urch, BATS, and Circa Theatre, as well as shows for Stage­craft, Kid­stuff, Kapit­all Kids, Show­biz, Back­yard Theatre and Fresh Dada.

Routine Magic-Magic Routine are writ­ten and dir­ec­ted by Dr Frances Stein­berg. Des­pite Frances’ love of theatre extend­ing across six dec­ades, from her first director’s job organ­ising the neigh­bours into a back­yard per­form­ance of Peter Pan when she was 6 years old, through serving as cho­reo­graph­er and per­former for the Mar­tial Arts Theat­er Com­pany in Amer­ica in the 1980s, she spent the major­ity of her pro­fes­sion­al life as a psy­cho­lo­gist, mar­tial artist, acu­punc­tur­ist, inter­act­ive learn­ing design­er, inter­na­tion­al presenter, and author of more than 12 pro­fes­sion­al books, 3 nov­els, 7 online guides, and an illus­trated story­book.