This year’s commentary is split into two parts. CLICK HERE for 2023 – A Theatrical Year in Review [Part 1 – The Issues]. Theatre Scenes’ recent annual Year in Reviews have focussed on big sector issues, broadening our focus beyond the theatre performed on our stages. But it is always a relief to turn the attention back to the shows, […]
[Dreaming of Electric Sheep] We start with a bang. There is no slow dimming of the lights, no hushed waiting in the dark. Straightaway we are launched into catastrophic news reports, chronicling the next 100 years. China and India rise to global dominance amid political turmoil and ongoing climate crisis, creating an authoritarian (though not so unfamiliar) vision of Aotearoa […]
a mixtape for maladies is a poignant yet entertaining new work by Ahi Karunaharan depicting a family’s experience of unrest in Sri Lanka. Presented as a ‘performed reading’ in the Auckland Arts Festival, the event begins with each of the performers introducing themselves and giving a brief description of their background. It is highlighted that in a perfect world, a […]
It may be one of the strongest images in our collective pop culture consciousness: Frankenstein’s monster rising from the operating table – the product of a young man playing god now set to wreak havoc on the world. The ‘creation scene’ in Emily Perkins’s The Made happens not at the beginning but roughly the halfway point. Scientist Alice (Alison Bruce)’s […]
Dawn Raids by Oscar Kightley was first staged by theatre collective Pacific Underground in 1997, 20 years after the national outrage. The play’s snapshot of the illegal raids on Pacific people under the guise of cracking down on overstayers would have hit home for everyone who experienced it — everyone whose families and friends had faced not only the violation […]
[Weathering the Storm] On the 20th April, 2021, the Prime Minister, the Deputy PM and Aotearoa’s leading epidemiologist converged at BATS Theatre to watch an uncanny mirror image of our country’s 2020 Covid-19 lockdown. The play was Transmission, created by Stuart McKenzie and Miranda Harcourt, which used verbatim extracts of interviews primarily with Jacinda Ardern, Grant Robertson and Professor Michael […]
[More than a Youth Show] In 2019 I wrote a review which included a meme that intimated that the ATC youth shows excite me more as an audience member than much of what appears in the main programme. Now in 2021 ATC, with the support of Proudly Asian Theatre (PAT), offers Yang/Young/杨 as part of the Here and Now season […]
[Use Science Wisely] The scene is 17th century Italy. Legendary astronomer Galileo Galilei is unsatisfied with what he has achieved in his life so far, and fixated on one subject in particular: the movement of the earth around the sun. Yet as Galileo tries fervently to share his discoveries with the world, it’s clear that there’s a big, black hole […]
[A Celebration] Written by Michelle Law and first produced by La Boite Theatre Company in Brisbane (2017), Single Asian Female has been adapted and transposed to Aotearoa for its Auckland premiere. Directed by Cassandra Tse, the play is a funny and heart-warming domestic drama that centres on the lives of three single Asian women: mother Pearl (Kat Tsz Hung) and […]
[The Last New Zealand War] There’s something about watching local history onstage — history so recent that some members of the audience sitting beside you were participants in the events portrayed. Written and directed by Katie Wolfe, The Haka Party Incident is a resonant piece of documentary theatre revisiting what its advertising calls “the last New Zealand war.” This describes the […]
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