[Keep on Pulling the Laughs] Dressed in lurid summer clothes, nine Lust Island revellers drink and dance to chart hits as audience members fill the Basement main stage. The performance kicks off as Heartthrobs Comedy producer/director and MC Brynley Stent steps up and explains the format of the hour long improvised show, which is based on the controversial reality TV […]
[Seduction, Sex, and Shame: Sexuality Beyond the Skin] A packed house waits in the Basement main stage space for the first performance of Gemishka Chetty and Aiwa Pooamorn’s Have You Ever Been With An Asian Womxn? which promises to ‘unleash a bold commentary on the hypersexualisation of pan-Asian womxn in pop culture.’ Audio plays on loop over the chatter as […]
[Tainted Love] A small audience of about thirty people arrive into a large theatre. Most members seem to arrive from next door, where No Homo comedy played to a full house,and from the second row the empty stage feels too far away from the action. I hope our combined enthusiasm can create atmosphere for the drag stars as they perform. […]
[A Night Without Fear] I’m in the TAPAC foyer, waiting for my male friend to arrive. The atmosphere around me is light as eclectic and alternative beauties mingle – one woman wears little more that a fishnet body-stocking and a big smile; towards the bar, the crowds part intuitively for numerous wheelchair users as they join friends. Instantly, I know […]
Wonder No More Created by Auckland-based cirque-theatre company the Dust Palace, The Wonderwombs is a tantalising performance of aerial acrobatics, challenging our perceptions of womanhood. Curiosity begins as soon as we take out seats. Hanging from the ceiling of Q theatre are various innocuous pastel pink objects – a rubber glove, a child’s fortune-teller game – and items move towards […]
More Than Surviving: Two Artists, Thriving How We Survive offers an expected array of feminist discourse – from abortion rights and the gender pay gap, to body image and how to crush the patriarchy – but personal anecdotes in the form of poems are delivered with such intoxicating and brave energy that audience members are left with new insight, hungry […]
New voices, deserving to be herd Described as a ‘superhero story inside a famous 20th century novella,’ Animal directors Harriett Maire and Arlo Green serve up a two-and-a-half-hour dinner where meat is firmly off the menu, but a plethora of hearty goodness takes its place. Animal Farm, written by George Orwell and published in 1945, is an allegory depicting events […]
[Dancing like she’s danced this dance before] Advertised as a ‘bangers-fuelled, hour long rave – making a song and dance about recovery,’ MANIAC On The Dancefloor is in fact a raw and impactful account of writer Natasha Lay’s lived experience of bipolar and emphasises the simple truth that one does not ‘recover’ from mental illness but forges an ongoing battle […]
[Peeling back the layers of Aotearoa’s racial divide] Why do you bind our potential so close to our wrists that we slit them? In Woman of Citrus, we join Grace Bennett, a young black female raised in Aotearoa, as she grapples with racial prejudice and intolerance from the Kiwi community surrounding her. Written and performed by Toi Whakaari graduate Grace Bentley […]
[Moving into Light] Developed with support from Creative New Zealand and the well-respected Battersea Arts Centre, London, Working on My Night Moves is the latest offering from Julia Croft and Nisha Madhan, which promises to be ‘a journey into outer space and an attempt to diffuse power and hierarchy.’ Presented by Basement Theatre as part of the new Basement Visions […]
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