The Purple Onion peeps into the world of Wellington’s infamous burlesque parlour as part of the Kia Mau Festival. Established in the mid 1960s, the Purple Onion was Wellington’s premiere strip club which attracted some of New Zealand’s social elite as well as its fair share of dubious characters. Combining text, dance and a live funk […]
Riverside Kings opens in Upper Hutt today and plays in BATS Theatre next week as part of the Kia Mau Festival. The creators Sarita So and Natano Keni, describe it as “a physical weaving of brotherhood, nostalgia and change.” Their new company, I Ken So Productions, aims to create, diverse works of a high quality. They […]
Set against the backdrop of 1850’s Russia. Serfs (aka slaves) still work the land under the estate holder’s control. Reform is coming and the country is restless. Rakitin is visiting his friend Arkady at his country estate. Arkady’s wife Natalya is recovering from her illness. Their son Kolya, and their ward Vera, are spending time […]
New Zealand’s only contemporary indigenous theatre and dance event Kia Mau Festival returns to Wellington from Friday 2 – Saturday 24 June. It’s a unique and innovative opportunity for whānau and communities across the Wellington region to engage with today’s tangata whenua and First Nations artists from across the globe. Led by Wellington’s own Māori and Pasifika theatre […]
BATS is bringing the “audacious theatrical experiment“ White Rabbit Red Rabbit to Wellington for a fundraising season. Written by Iranian playwright Nassim Soleimanpour, the play premiered in 2011 and has since been translated into 20 different languages. There are no rehearsals, no director, a different actor each performance, and a script waiting in a sealed […]
Penny Ashton presents a new musical inspired by the writings of Charles Dickens as part of Comedy Festival 2017. Olive, a beautiful virtuous orphan, teaches the younger orphans at Mrs Sourtart’s squalid orphanage in exchange for a place to live. Her suitor, Edward Goodsort, was reclaimed from the same establishment by his moneyed family and now lives […]
In the age of ‘swiping right’ and ‘reality’ dating shows, the concept of live onstage dating by far provides more entertainment. Bron Batten so brilliantly proved this on her opening night of Onstage Dating. In this show, there’s no opportunity to accept or reject based on appearances and no producers or editors deciding on the […]
At BATS Theatre: Starting this week is an encore season of Onstage Dating by performance artist Bron Batten. Watch as she goes on first dates on stage. (These are actual first dates with a stranger, not with a performing audience plant.) Witness the vulnerability, thrills and heartbreak of the dating experience up close, as Bron […]
From the mind of Wellington based artist Rose Kirkup, the recipient of the 2016 Fringe Festivals’ NZ Pacific Artist Residency award, comes I Am Tasha Fierce. We’re introduced to Kirkup’s alter ego Tasha: your typical Kiwi chick. Her time at polytech, as well as following the teachings of Beyoncé, has helped her get out of […]
I often look at awkward, self-conscious teens and want to tell them that life is going to be OK. Those years of experiencing things for the first time can strike you down with a plethora of feelings from ecstasy to misery. ‘The First Time’ explores all of those feelings as five talented women take to […]