July 13, 2010
Wellington kicked off its theatre seasons way ahead of other cities this year. Bats opened five shows in January and Circa three (a continuing season, then a revival in Circa One and a new production in Circa two). Downstage got cracking on 4 February with a Long Cloud Youth Theatre show, and Bats slipped in a couple more before the official 12 February start of the Fringe.
While the annual Fringe Festival is over, the biennial New Zealand International Arts Festival is drawing to a close and generating reviews – on theatreview.org.nz – of some 82 performing arts productions staged in Wellington. We’re not called ‘the Creative Capital’ for nothing.
Creative excellence and strong production values made the homegrown theatre productions a high point of the recent New Zealand International Arts Festival. In retrospect, however, I am intrigued by the ‘cultural identities’ of the productions.
Of the 14 festival shows I saw, seven were original New Zealand works. Five had premiered and toured elsewhere, and were included under the ‘Restage’ initiative. Given that all the international shows had also ‘been around’, this new policy levels the playing field for local productions. Two were world premieres. Every festival has a key role to play as ‘midwife’/co-producer, and being present at the birth of a brand new show is a special privilege.
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The August/September issue will be on shelves July 19th – available only in print
The theatre column is entitled:
Whither the playwright?
So you’ve written a play – who wants to know?
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