More Tape Across the UK This Spring
The Boy With Tape On His Face, aka New Zealand comedian Sam Wills, 34, is interviewed by the North Devon Journal ahead of his live show, More Tape, which was on at…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Ngakau Toa Takes on Globe History in Te Reo
Actor Rawiri Paratene, 59, features in Mike Jonathan’s Troilus and Cressida: The Road to the Globe, which follows Paratene, director Rachel House and their 18-strong cast during the gruelling three month lead-up to…
Radiating Statuesque Dignity
New Zealand soprano Madeleine Pierard stars in Haydn’s L’Isola Disabitata, the inaugural performance of the Hobart Baroque Festival in Tasmania. “As the long-suffering Constanza, Pierard radiates statuesque dignity, even garbed in…
Characters Screaming to Get Out
Award-winning actor New Zealander Jacob Rajan plays 17 different characters in the play Guru of Chai, which was recently performed Off-Broadway in New York. Rajan is the only actor in the play, which is…
One of the Boys
New Zealander Jesse Peach is the director of a new production of Alan Bennett’s multi-award-winning play The History Boys, which opens at the Sydney Opera House on 8 February. Australian actor John…
Must See On The West End
Everyone should see New Zealander Sam Wills in The Boy with Tape on His Face, writes Telegraph reviewer Dominic Cavendish. “But not everyone should sit near the front or close to the aisles,” Cavendish…
Woman Alone
“A mythic quest involving fellowship and solitude; the startling beauty, by turns lush and austere, of a wild land: if you now have visions of The Hobbit floating in your heads, please banish them,”…
McIndoe’s Genius on Stage
The life of New Zealand-born plastic surgeon Archibald McIndoe was portrayed in The Guinea Pig Club, a play recently on at York Royal Theatre. The play explored the unorthodox techniques of the man. At…
Wonderful Piece of Theatre
New Zealand playwright Catherine Downes’ The Case of Katherine Mansfield, which was on in Glebe as part of the Sydney Fringe Festival, “is a simply wonderful piece of theatre — the kind that makes you…
Award-winning Silence
New Zealand comedian Sam Wills, 34, who’s solo act The Boy with Tape on his Face has been filling the 700-seat Pleasance Grand theatre since the Edinburgh Fringe Festival started, as won…
This Way for a Laugh
Auckland-born Rhys Darby, 38, features in the Guardian’s ‘Portrait of an Artist’ series in which he talks about his best experience performing at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, at which this year Darby staged This…
It’s the Cat’s Whiskers
Auckland’s private Kristin School recently secured the rights to the world renowned musical CATS, spending $85,000 on its annual stage production. Executive principal and show producer Peter Clague said the big-budget show would rival…
Scripted Insanity
Wellington-born actress Kerry Fox, 46, best known for her early films, including Jane Campion’s An Angel at My Table, Danny Boyle’s Shallow Grave and Michael Winterbottom’s Welcome to Sarajevo, is in rehearsals for the…
McKellen Show Just for New Zealand
“For the past decade he has been best known as the X-Men antihero Magneto or The Lord of the Rings wizard Gandalf, but in more than a dozen sold-out performances in New Zealand, where…
From Meek Geek to King of Cool
New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby, 38, is taking his latest live show, the award-winning This Way to Spaceship, to Leeds on 14 July as part of his first UK tour. “Only Rhys can figure…
Arrival Delights Korean Audience
Award-winning play, The Arrival, performed by New Zealand’s Red Leap Theatre and based on Shaun Tan’s graphic novel, “fascinated” a Korean audience at the LG Arts Center in Seoul recently. The Arrival,…
Trojan War Maori Style
The director of New Zealand’s version of Troilus and Cressida Rachel House explains how she put Maori culture at the heart of Shakespeare’s Trojan tragedy. Thirty-seven theatre companies from around the world are presenting…
Acting Against Bullying
Eighteen-year-old founder of Two Face Drama Charlizza Harris from Lower Hutt was one of 33 teenage entrepreneurs honoured at the first annual Dare to Dream awards dinner in New York City on…
Phantom Restored In NZ
New Zealand has done wonders for the health of former Phantom of the Opera and Some Mothers Do ’Ave ’Em star Michael Crawford. Seventy-year-old Crawford said moving to New Zealand had cured him of the chronic…
Coney Lights Up The Stage
Ex-New Zealand cricket captain and stage lighting designer Wellington-born Jeremy Coney, 59, lights up a London production of The Leisure Society, starring former British model Agyness Dean. “An air of glamour surrounds this French-Canadian import…
Experimental Eugenia In NY
New Zealand playwright Lorae Parry’s Eugenia will be performed at the State University of New York (SUNY) from 1-11 March. The play is a debut for the region, having been performed only once in the United…
Miramar’s Awakening
“Until Sir Peter Jackson and his producer Jamie Selkirk made films in Miramar in the 1990s, the Wellington suburb was sleepy,” David Burton writes for Monocle. “‘There was tumbleweed, rolling down the street,’ jokes…
Sami And Fraser Play Canada
Auckland-born actress Madeline Sami stars in Toa Fraser’s award-winning No. 2, a play the pair first collaborated on in 1999 and which is currently touring Canada. When No. 2 opened in Calgary’s Epcor Centre’s Engineered Theatre in…
Blogging About Bollywood
New Zealand-based Vanessa Barnes, who comes from an un-named “small provincial town”, loves Indian film, so she writes about it on her blog ‘Shahrukh is Love’, which includes reviews of over 130 Bollywood…
Funny Man Loves It Live
New Zealand-born comedian Rhys Darby, 37, who played manager Murray in the in Flight of the Conchords series, recently performed five shows at Cobb’s Comedy Club in San Francisco. Darby says live comedy remains his passion…
Inspired By Ancestral Loss
New Zealand actor Charles Chan writes about his role as Wang in the play The Bone Feeder — which was on at Auckland’s TAPAC in November — for a story in The Malaysian Star. The Bone…
Study In The Elusiveness Of Home
Best known for her many novels, including The Room of Lost Things, New Zealand-raised writer Stella Duffy has most recently been spending her time scribbling lists on the walls of London’s Ovalhouse Theatre devising a…
Expert Slams Shakespeare Film
Otago University expert on the works of English playwright William Shakespeare Professor Evelyn Tribble has criticised the film Anonymous — which questions the bard’s authorship of his attributed plays — calling it Hollywood “libel.” Tribble said…
Snapping Up Stereotypes
Auckland comedian Andre King, who recently took to the stage in Bangkok and Phuket as part of an international comedy festival in Thailand, spoke to the Bangkok Post about his act, New Zealand humour…
Eyeballing for Laughs
New Zealand award-winning comedian Sam Wills, 32, has drawn comparisons with Harpo Marx and Mr Bean, “though he is grungier and livelier than both” according to the Guardian’s Brian Logan who interviews Wills about…
Inviting Gods Into the Theatre
“With a stunning combination of ceremony, ritual, dance and theatre, ,” will have its US premiere this week at the downtown Los Angeles’ Million Dollar Theater. Samoan…
Great Voice of Stories
New Zealand scriptwriter Graeme Tetley, whose body of work included films Vigil, Ruby & Rata, Bread and Roses and the Aramoana depiction Out of the Blue, has died in Wellington, aged 69. A script…
Taking Priscilla to Broadway
New Zealand-born Simon Phillips is the director of the new Broadway version of Priscilla Queen of the Desert which opens in New York on March 2. Phillips said that his North American producers —…
Tempest on Broadway
Auckland-based choreographer Lemi Ponifasio will perform Tempest: Without A Body on Broadway at the historical Million Dollar Theater on April 2-3. Performed by Ponifasio’s company MAU, the production is making its US premiere in…
Wellington storms Berlin
Wellington-raised actress and English teacher Amy Nye, 31, appears as ‘Louise’ in playwright Duncan Sarkies’ 1992 Love Puke at Berlin’s English Theatre through July 1. Also from Wellington, Fingal Pollock, 28, directs “eight characters…
Guru in Singapore
New Zealand’s Indian Ink theatre company has been collaborating with the Singapore Repertory Theatre presenting Wellington actor Jacob Rajan’s The Guru of Chai, which was on at Singapore’s DBS Arts Centre. Not only did…
She can’t be serious
Auckland-born comedian and actress Stephanie Paul recently performed at Edinburgh’s The Stand Midweek Comedy Cabaret. Edinburgh Evening News reviewer Neil McEwan wrote that, Paul had “far slicker comedy stylings” than her predecessor of the…
Theatrical Isolation
Paul Stephanus, director of the play Quarantine, plans to ferry his audience at dusk to a disused convalescence chamber on Matiu/Somes Island in Wellington harbour during next month’s Fringe Festival. Once the audience disembarks…
In-tents Experience
The Auckland Theatre Company performance of Cabaret is praised by Los Angeles Times blogger Christopher Smith, who writes that company director and actor Michael Hurst is “fortunate to have a compelling Sally Bowles in…
Christmas in the UK
Comedian Jarred Christmas is in the UK touring his show, Jarred Christmas Stands Up. Christmas reveals he cannot get enough of the UK’s comedy scene. “The crowds over here are so savvy when it…
Intimacy in Cincinnati
Geraldine-born playwright Gary Henderson’s Skin Tight opens Cincinnati’s Know Theatre’s season. An hour-long memory play, Skin Tight is part theatrical and melancholy tone poem and part showcase of stage combat. Skin Tight, an intimate…
One big break
One of the most influential performing artists agents in the United States will represent Wellington actor Jacob Rajan and his Indian Ink Theatre Company. Agent David Lieberman, a legend in performing arts and festival…
Hands Like Wings
Lemi Ponifasio’s 29 work Birds with Skymirrors, which was performed by his company MAU at this year’s Edinburgh Festival in Scotland, is awarded four stars by Guardian reviewer Alice Bain. “With Skymirrors, fills…
Loveable Dame
Dunedin-born actress Dame Pat Evison, who was best known for her Australian roles as Jessie Windom in Prisoner and Violet Carnegie in The Flying Doctors, has died aged 85. She also played Mrs Telford…
Fox treads the boards
Wellington actress Kerry Fox stars in the Andrew Bovell play Speaking in Tongues on at Duke of York’s Theatre in London. Fox plays Jane, who witnesses a possible crime and struggles with her decision…
New directions
Auckland-based playwright Stanley Makuwe, who is originally from Zimbabwe, recently returned to his homeland where his latest production The New Road premiered. The New Road tells the story of Sammy, a Zimbabwean who has…
Career beginnings
Tauranga-raised actor and Rocky Horror Show creator Richard O’Brien, 67, has told the Guardian that his career began riding horses in movies, having learnt to ride growing up in New Zealand. “In 1965, I…
On the fringe
Rhys Darby heads to Edinburgh for his sixth Fringe Festival and a new stand-up show which includes some “very different little unique New Zealand characters” including the “man’s man” Park Ranger, amateur whale-watcher Ron…
Roots of laughter
New Zealand comedian Rhys Darby, 35, is returning to the UK and standup comedy performing a number of London gigs at the Bloomsbury Theatre and a stint at the upcoming Edinburgh Festival August 6…
Couplets at the Globe
Hokianga-born actor Rawiri Paratene, well-known for his role as Koro Apirana in Niki Caro’s Whale Rider, is Friar Lawrence in a London Shakespeare’s Globe presentation of Romeo and Juliet, the first New Zealander…
Science made funny
Auckland’s Indian Ink Theatre Company – with co-founder Jacob Rajan in the starring role – performed The Candlestickmaker to Australian audiences at Brisbane’s Cremorne Theatre. Rajan, who wrote the play with the other half…
A thirty year legacy
New Zealand drama teacher Ken Rea – who trained at Auckland’s Gil Cornwall academy and worked at Downstage and the Mercury Theatre – was honoured at London’s Guildhall School of Music and Drama for…
With Unstudied Grace
New Zealand actor Jonno Roberts has the role of Stanley Kowalski in a Seattle production of A Streetcar Named Desire. It may seem a strange quirk, that someone from New Zealand has been given…
Wilson pitches the unpitchable
Christchurch comedian Cal Wilson is part of this year’s Melbourne International Comedy Festival, performing on March 29 in Axed! The show is billed as “stories of the unpitchable, unprintable and unwatchable” and the…
Kezia comes alive
Katherine Mansfield’s Prelude and Carnation are amongst four of the writer’s short stories adapted for theatre and performed by Toronto’s Theatre Smith-Gilmour, celebrated for their stage adaptations of Chekhov. The Mansfield…
Dale’s no loony
New Zealand actor and Ugly Betty star Alan Dale treads the West End boards in his debut appearance as King Arthur in the comedy Spamalot at London’s Palace Theatre. Dale was born in Dunedin…
