August 8, 2019
TAHI New Zealand Festival of Solo Performance
BATS Theatre in Wellington
20 to 24 August 2019
www.tahifestivalnz.com
ABOUT THE FESTIVAL
17 Shows. 5 Days. 1 Community
TAHI – New Zealand Festival of Solo Performance will make its debut from 20 to 24 August 2019 at BATS Theatre in Wellington.
This five-day festival is dedicated to showcasing New Zealand’s finest, most engaging solo performance.
TAHI will gather soloists from around the nation – from established to emerging practitioners – to present work, collaborate, and make connections across the industry. Alongside premiering and showcasing solo performances, the Festival aims to provide opportunities for practitioners to extend the life of their performance work, to upskill, and to network through an integrated programme of performance, workshops, and forums.
TAHI also seeks to foster relationships among tertiary institutions, actor training courses, secondary schools, BATS Theatre, and industry professionals.
DIRECTOR SALLY RICHARDS
Sally Richards has a PhD in Theatre from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, holds a Master of Theatre Arts in Directing from Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School and Victoria University, and a Bachelor of Theatre with Honours from James Cook University of North Queensland. Sally’s most recent directing work includes Thornton Wilder’s Our Town at Victoria University in 2018, and co-directing with Kerryn Palmer the premiere of She Danced on a Friday, a devised solo by Nicola Pauling at the Meteor Theatre, Hamilton and at BATS Theatre, Wellington.
SHOWS
TINY DEATHS | 21st Aug | 6.30pm
By Uther Dean
Twisted loved stories: A series of monologues about love and sex. The woman who kissed a gnome. The girl who is also a bomb. The lady so obsessed with stationery she is prepared to kill for it. Or even worse: love for it. Tiny Deaths is a beautiful and odd collection of love stories, all as dark as dark chocolate. Wickedly funny and sumptuously grotesque, it’s perfect for a first date. Or a last one.
SHOT BRO | 21st Aug | 6.30pm
By Rob Mokaraka
In 2009, Rob Mokaraka, a highly acclaimed actor and playwright, had undiagnosed depression that resulted in him being shot by police in an attempted suicide. Shot Bro is the product of Rob’s nine year journey of healing and self-discovery. Shot Bro is a powerful, raw and authentic one-man show that exposes, shares and discusses the effects of depression. Using comedy, heart and truth, Rob skilfully navigates audiences through his experiences with depression, allowing them to find a breath during the after-show forum. At the core of Shot Bro is Rob’s personal journey, one that can help others and alleviate the stigma attached to mental health.
SYMMETRY | 22nd Aug | 6.30pm
by Hannah Banks & Uther Dean
A development performance of a new work from the team that brought you the NZ Fringe Award winning Everything is Surrounded by Water and Uther Dean Reads 300 Haiku. On a desperate quest to find a way to lift the weight of living, nervy millennial El finds herself faced off with many of the worst things she knows: death, war, politics and herself. An odd, uneasy story about doubt, doppelgängers and dreams.
EL MACHO | 22nd Aug | 8.30pm
By Jamie Dorner
e l m a c h o is a autoethnographic solo performance which investigates catharsis through the concept of masculinity. This work is a scenic dialogue between academic literature, theatre crafting and autobiographical material under one single question: what is a macho?
In this performance academic literature overflows performance and vice versa. Concepts as fatherhood, macho and queer overflow each other triggering a cathartic process. e l m a c h o should be seen as a question, an incision on an old and recurrent wound, an inquisitive autobiographical gaze, and the power of performance as a transformative process.
SHE DANCED ON A FRIDAY | 23rd Aug | 6.30pm
by Nicola Pauling
It’s 1960 New Zealand and a young mother is forced to give up her daughter for adoption. We bear witness to the ripple effects of that one event on the lives of four women decades later. She Danced on a Friday goes behind the headlines of the 1992 murder of Margery Hopegood. It is a true crime story, a love story and an honouring of motherhood. Written and performed by a woman with intimate ties to this legacy, it is a “exquisitely crafted honouring of life.”
BILL MASSEY’S TOURISTS | 23rd Aug | 8.30pm
by Jan Bolwell
Jan Bolwell has toured this play the length and breadth of New Zealand over the past four years. She has left audiences laughing and weeping as she depicts herself as an adolescent trying to get her reluctant grandfather to talk about his WW1 experiences. What follows is a gripping, painful and sometimes hilarious tale of a young Kiwi soldier from the Otago Mounted Rifles (one of Bill Massey’s tourists) and his survival from the tragedy of Passchendaele. It is a story that also features song and dance and images of Kiwis at war.
THE MOTORWAY | 24th Aug | 6.30pm
by Moira Fortin
The Motorway is a 45 minutes play based on the story The Southern Thruway by Argentinian writer Julio Cortázar. The narrative engages metaphorically with the condition of being stuck in a traffic jam for an extensive length of time. In this setting, the characters unfold and develop various relationships of cooperation thus, reflecting small societal groupings and their whereabouts.
Through that the play explores universal themes of hope and despair, love and death, transient communities and interpersonal relations. For that reason, although, the story was originally created within a different cultural setting, it resonates with an Aotearoa/ New Zealand context as it addresses topical and current issues, challenges today’s fast pace life and celebrates human connection that cuts across cultures. Thus, it demonstrates shared humanity. This play is interdisciplinary in nature; an amalgamation of storytelling techniques, physical theatre, stylized choreography, and a bilingual text. By using English and Spanish languages and a Latin American text, The Motorway opens the performance to a wider audience with different cultural backgrounds, that reflects not only the local diverse community of Dunedin but the wider national community of Aotearoa/New Zealand.
RUN RABBIT: UNPLUGGED | 24th Aug | 8.30 pm
by Victoria Abbott
On the surface it’s a tale about one woman’s medieval ancestor… follow the rabbit deeper into the heart of the fray.
Spanning across a casual 681 years and ripping into whatever and whomever she has at hand, Victoria Abbott is tearing herself to pieces and putting it all back together in an hour. You’re in safe hands, but bets are off for those at the gate. Join Victoria Abbott in this special unplugged version of her award winning solo in ‘a blistering evening of fight or flight.’
SHOWCASES, PANELS, & WORKSHOPS
THREE STUDENT SHOWCASES
6pm 22nd, 23rd and 24th Aug
TAHI: New Zealand Presents three Student Showcases celebrating new emerging artists in Wellington. Including students from Toi Whakaari, Victoria University of Wellington and Te Auaha. There will be at least three performances each night with one student from Te Ahua, Toi Whakaari, and Victoria University of Wellington.
Showcases will be followed by a short discussion with a focus on feedback for the students.
12 Ticket Per Showcase
30 Pass for a ticket to all three showcases
WORKSHOPS & PANELS
Workshop 1 | 21st August | 10am –
Acting for Solo Performance with Hannah Banks.
Workshop 2 | 22nd August | 12.30pm –
Directing for Solo Performance with Sally Richards.
Workshop 3 | 23rd August | 10am –
Catching the Beast with Victoria Abbott.
Workshop 4 | 23rd August | 12.30pm –
Autobiographical memories as material for performance with Jamie Dörner.
Workshop 5 | 24th August | 10am –
Movement and choreography with Moira Fortin.
Panel 1 | 23rd August | 3:30pm
Devising & Directing for Solo Performance –
Victoria Abbott, Kerryn Palmer, Moira Fortin and Sally Richards.
Panel 2 | 24th August | 3.30pm
Voices: Autobiography & Navigating Borders in Solo Performance –
Jamie Dörner, L’hilbou Hornung, Rose Kirkup & Jacob Dombroski
BATS THEATRE
BATS Theatre is a not-for-profit pick ‘n’ mix of live performance awesomeness. They’ve been brightening up the Wellington night with theatrical good times since 1989 and are key sponsors of TAHI Festival.
All performances, forums, panels and workshops will be held at BATS theatre.
BATS Theatre: 1 Kent Terrace, Mount Victoria 6011
MORE INFO & BOOKINGS
Book tickets online via the TAHI or BATS website. Find more info about shows, showcases, times, dates, performers and the festival at the TAHI website.
www.bats.co.nz/whats-on
SUPPORTERS
TAHI Festival would like to thank our proud supporters, Wellington Creative Communities, Toi Whakaari, BATS, Te Auaha and Victoria University.
www.tahifestivalnz.com
producer@tahifestival.com
@tahifestivalnz
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