Scene Painting
BATS Theatre, The Stage, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington
04/10/2025 - 04/10/2025
Production Details
Directed by the Festival's two Artistic Co-Directors, Jim Fishwick and Matt Powell
NZ Improv Fest
It’s the final show of the 2025 New Zealand Improv Festival, and we’re bringing together some of our favourite performers for a once-in-a-lifetime show.
Improvisers will often paint a scene, using narration to conjure images in the mind of the audience. But what if they could actually paint the scene?
Thanks to the generous support of Resene Paints, we’ll be doing just that: actually painting our scenes onto the stage and walls at BATS. Come send off the Festival with a messy, beautiful explosion of colour!
BATS Theatre, The stage
4 October 2025
8.30pm
https://nz.patronbase.com/_BATS/Productions/IFSP/Performances
TBC
Improv , Theatre ,
90 mins
Stage and walls plastered with symbols of theatrical fun at its best
Review by Margaret Austin 05th Oct 2025
It’s the last night of the NZ Improvisation Festival 2025. We’re at BATS Stage, and the show’s called Scene Painting. A young woman in front of me delights in the appropriateness of the pun.
The Host is Jim Fishwick, the improvisers are Maria Williams, Emilia Higgs, Katherine Weaver, Hudson Emery, Riley Harter and Matt Powell, and the two musicians are Matt Hutton and Vadim Fong. An inviting heap of paint tins waits mid-stage, obligingly provided by Resene. I note that our cast are all clad in plastic paint proof overalls, probably just as well! And they’re all wielding paint brushes. The black walls and floor of BATS are in for a shock.
Jim welcomes us to their home – a three-storey open plan place formerly inhabited by Goths, they suggest – and says they could do with some redecorating help. Improvisers would be cheaper than professionals, though.
Every house needs a billiard room. All our players go to work. We get a billiard table etched centre stage plus accessories such as a welcome mat and a dartboard. Oh, and don’t forget the sandwiches. Next up is a crime scene complete with dead body and two cigar-smoking detectives. For cigars, read paint brushes. The corpse needs to be moved for examination. Fortunately, this corpse can move itself, and the trajectory of a death-dealing wound is traceable: X marks the spot.
From here on, the action becomes faster and even more paint-splattered. Faces on walls get bodies added and brought to life; soap opera ‘Rubber Duckie’ gets a drubbing and so does Tinder; especially entertaining are floor markings for the actors that chop and change at random, and a rendering of “Out damned spot” from Macbeth. By this time, improvisers’ hands and even faces bear witness to their work.
Up till now, the only paint used has been white. But for the concluding action enter red, green, blue, yellow, pink and purple. Purple gets the green light and when the audience is asked for the first thing that comes to mind about that colour, I for some reason, call out, “Grapes.” Grapes it is and we’re in a vineyard with a lonely guy who gets rescued by a parachuting girlfriend.
A duet about Pinot Gris is a highlight. So is a map of New Zealand drawn in hilarious haste and accompanied musically by our national anthem.
Our improvisers take a bow backgrounded by BATS’ walls and stage area plastered with symbols of theatrical fun at its best.
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