TAHI SHOWS 2019

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.

Tiny Deaths is a polylogue Written by Uther Dean (Nominated for Best New New Zealand Play for 'Everything is Surrounded by Water' at the 2014 Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards)being revamped for TAHI this year.

'Tiny Deaths' is a beautiful and odd evening of love stories, all as dark as dark chocolate.

Performers - Hannah Banks, Stevie Hancox-Monk, Brianne Kerr, Rebekah Adams, Maggie White, Katie Hill, Emma Katene and Freya Daly Sadgrove

Playwright - Uther Dean

Shot Bro: Confessions of a Depressed Bullet is inspired by true events. 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.

Suitable for ages 10yrs old and up.

Performer - Rob Mokaraka

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.

Performer - Hannah Banks

Playwright- Uther Dean

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.

Performer - Jaime Dörner

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."

“An exquisitely crafted honouring of life”

— Theatreview

Performer - Nicola Paula

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.

“A terrific script. A great performance. A tale well told. Knocked me for six!” ”

— Raymond Hawthorne, Auckland veteran theatre director.

Performer - Jan Bolwell

The Motorway is a 45 minute 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.

“She uses all the wide range of conventions of physical theatre, choreographed movement and vocal range that are at her command as a versatile and polished performer”

— Elspeth Tilley, Arts on Wednesday, Massey University

Performer - Moira Fortin

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.'

“Everything is handled with the clarity of a master at the top of her game. Embedded in the DNA of the show is a bubbling violence and ferocity. One that Victoria doesn’t shy away from. In the blink an eye, the show transforms... This is a blistering evening of fight or flight" - Nathan Joe, Theatre Scenes "Until the last vital minutes, you're never sure where, exactly, all this is heading. And then Abbott brings it all together... and, when she does, drawing all the disparate threads of Run Rabbit together, it hits you like a brick falling from a wall.”

Dionne Christian, The Herald

Performer - Victoria Abbott