Rhys Darby – From the Army to Flight of the Conchords
“It was a long march for Rhys Darby to go from the New Zealand army to starring in Flight Of The Conchords, writes Richard Fitzpatrick” in an article in The Irish Examiner. After finishing…
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Rose Matafeo on “Being Called the Voice Of Millennials”
“When Rose Matafeo won the Edinburgh Comedy Award for Best Show at the Edinburgh Festival in August the acclaim was widespread. The director of the awards, Nica Burns, described the London-based New Zealander as…
Blonde Poison in Berlin Stars Dulcie Smart
Germany-based actress New Zealander Dulcie Smart performs in the Berlin production of Blonde Poison, on until 3 October at the city’s Brotfabrik theatre. In the one-woman play, Smart plays Stella, an older woman looking…
Harry Potter Musical Casts Gareth Reeves in Lead
Playing the boy who lived – well, the man who lived, given that Harry Potter and the Cursed Child takes place 19 years after the Battle of Hogwarts – is Gareth Reeves (pictured right),…
Oregon-Based Paul Nicholson’s Life of Purpose
Retired Oregon Shakespeare Festival (OSF) executive director Paul Nicholson is interviewed by Oregon daily newspaper, Mail Tribune as part of the publication’s periodic ‘Community Builder’ series. Nicholson, who moved to the United States in 1980, says…
Comic Thom Monckton Embodies Art of Laughter
“Thom Monckton has demonstrated what an outstanding physical comedian he is during several previous Fringe visits. In The Pianist he used his gangling frame and rubbery face to puncture the pomposities of classical music….
Rose Matafeo Scoops Coveted Fringe Comedy Award
New Zealand comic Rose Matafeo, 26, has won the biggest comedy award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe for her show Horndog, becoming only the fifth female comic to win the Edinburgh Comedy Award since…
Edinburgh Hosts Comic Alice Snedden
“New Zealander Alice Snedden is well established in her native country as a comic, television writer and newspaper columnist, Fringe. It’s a breezy run-through of…
Horndog is Rose Matafeo’s Moment
New Zealand-born comic Rose Matafeo’s show Horndog was a highlight of this year’s Edinburgh Fringe and it is also one of the London Evening Standard’s top picks to see in the UK capital. “Insatiable comedy fans…
Leslie Bowman Part of West End Antidote to Trump
Through the story of 18th-century Founding Father of America, Alexander Hamilton, and the American Wars of Independence, blockbuster stage musical Hamilton is fiercely relevant today, and especially last week, when President Donald Trump brought…
Two NZ Comedians Part of Netflix Global Comedy Event Series
Netflix “is launching an international stand-up comedy event series that will feature 47 comedians from 13 regions”. New Zealand comedians Urzila Carlson and Cal Wilson are part of the line-up. Anita Bennett reports for…
Albert Mateni Brings the Hearts of Men to Life
New Zealand-born Tongan, Albert Mateni, 26, aims to inspire Pacific youth with his play, Hearts of Men set to debut on 5-14 April at the Mangere Arts Centre in Auckland. Affected by the suicide rate…
How Flight of the Conchords Took Off
Few comedians ever play London’s O2 Arena and fewer still manage three nights in a row. Those who do tend to have some things in common: a relatable observational style, limited creative ambition and…
Comedian Deb Filler Does It Her Way in Yiddish
New Zealand comedian Deb Filler recreates 50 years of chart-toppers and pop icons in her solo show I Did it My Way in Yiddish (in English). Toronto-based Filler performed the show at this year’s…
Best of Flight of the Conchords – Favourite Moments
“Is it the accents? Is it the hirsuteness? Is it the manner in which they stumble around an awkward social situation while singing a lovely / silly ditty? Just what is it that makes…
Tape Face Gets Stuck Into Vegas
New Zealand silent comedian Sam Wills, aka Tape Face, is to embark on a three-year residency in Las Vegas. The Harrah’s casino has custom-built a cabaret venue for his mime show at a reported cost…
Julia Croft Strips the Layers Off Sexual Stereotypes
In If There’s Not Dancing At The Revolution, I’m Not Coming, New Zealander Julia Croft performs a striptease and dissects the objectification of the female body in pop culture. Croft took the show to…
Top 2018 Comedy Acts Include Two NZ Favourites
Flight of the Conchords and Rose Matafeo are two “uproarious” comedy acts Guardian readers are recommended to buy tickets for this year, included alongside the world’s biggest standup Chris Rock and fellow American Maria…
In the Office With Trygve and Barnie
“Following the delirious success of Kraken and Nautilus, extraordinary celebration of the…
Tape Face to Perform at Norfolk’s Attucks Theatre
America’s Got Talent sensation Tape Face will be performing at the Attucks Theatre in Norfolk, UK on 20 February 2018. Sam Wills is a 39-year-old New Zealander who lives in Lincolnshire but as his…
Flight of the Conchords Announce UK Tour Dates
Flight of the Conchords’ Jemaine Clement and Bret McKenzie are back, and will tour the UK and Ireland in March 2018 for the first time in more than seven years. The ‘Flight of the…
Chantelle Gerrard Dresses to Kill at Pop-Up Globe
If there were a holy grail for costume designers today, it would have to be working on Game of Thrones, according to Kerrie O’Brien writing for the Sydney Morning Herald. New Zealander Chantelle Gerrard,…
Danielle Cormack to Headline for Queensland Theatre
They killed her off in Australian prison drama Wentworth in 2016, but Auckland-born Danielle Cormack will live again on stage for Queensland Theatre next year. Cormack, 46, played Bea Smith in the television series…
Bird-Brain Comic Rhys Darby All in a Flap
New Zealander Rhys Darby believes he was a bird in a former life and it’s this premise that forms the basis for his new live show, Mystic Time Bird, which is on at Perth’s…
Comedian Trygve Wakenshaw Puts His Baby to Work
This year, Edinburgh Festival Fringe’s “best-loved mime act” New Zealander Trygve Wakenshaw has teamed up with his one-year-old son on stage in Trygve vs a Baby. “The publicity asks: who’s more entertaining? And the answer,…
Rose Matafeo’s New Show Effervescently Entertaining
New Zealand comedian Rose Matafeo, 25, “keeps things upbeat as she lightly interrogates Hollywood cliché and the role models on offer to young women” in her new show Sassy Best Friend, on now at…
Amber Sainsbury Teams With Danny Boyle
New Zealand-born Amber Sainsbury is founder and CEO of UK-based creative arts charity Dramatic Need, for which Oscar-winning film director Danny Boyle has served as a trustee since 2007. The charity’s South African flagship,…
Miles Gregory’s Globe to Pop up in Melbourne
The Pop-Up Globe theatre, brainchild of New Zealand-born Miles Gregory, is opening in Melbourne in September, and will host four plays: Much Ado About Nothing, Othello, As You Like It and Henry V. The
Witty Promiscuity With Penny Ashton and Jane Austin
“The one-woman musical-of-sorts, , which New Zealander Penny Ashton says was co-written by her and Jane Austen (as we approach the 200th anniversary of Austen’s death), the often hilarious Promise and Promiscuity…
Jason Henderson First NZer to Make US Cabaret
Dunedin-based singer Jason Henderson is the first New Zealander to be accepted to attend the St Louis Cabaret Conference from 17-23 July, after which he plans to relocate to New York City, the home…
Hayden Tee Leaves West End for Sydney Stint
New Zealand-born musical theatre performer Hayden Tee has been playing the role of Javert in Les Misérables since 2014, first as part of the Australian cast, then on an international tour, and finally on…
Playwright Eleanor Bishop’s Jane Doe Touring US
Jane Doe, previously titled We Are Steubenville, is a play created, written and directed by Eleanor Bishop, a New Zealand-born director who studied fine arts at the Carnegie Mellon University School of Drama in…
James Sutherland Shaking Up Japanese Theatre
Founded in 2012 by New Zealand-born James Sutherland, you won’t be alone if you’ve never heard of the Tokyo-based International Centre for Theatre Arts, because few have seen any plays it has staged and…
Brad McCormick Takes His Kids Show on the Road
New Zealand-born writer and performer Brad McCormick is taking his production of Sammy and the Snow Leopard, under the auspices of the ground-breaking children’s theatre company Travelling Light, to the North-East of the UK…
Tape Face Hits Vegas
New Zealand performance artist Sam Wills, aka Tape Face, has begun a highly anticipated residency at The Flamingo in Las Vegas. He doesn’t call himself a mime, but he swears that’s only “because I know…
Trygve Wakenshaw Back for Mime Fun in Perth
After a year away from Perth’s Fringe World Festival, New Zealand comedian Trygve Wakenshaw returned to Western Australia, performing the highly-anticipated third work in his “underwater trilogy”, Nautilus. Wakenshaw also performs his collaboration with…
Tim Finn Brings Musical Ladies In Black Home
A musical written by New Zealander Tim Finn is heading to Sydney for the very first time as part of the Sydney Festival, which takes over the city from 7-29 January. Finn wrote…
It’s Cal Wilson’s Line
When it comes to improvised comedy, Cal Wilson, 46, is no rookie, Vanessa Williams writes for the West Australian. Having built a solid stand-up career over the past 19 years, the Christchurch-born, Melbourne-based comedian…
Tape Face Captivates in Milton Keynes
Fresh from a stint on America’s Got Talent, New Zealand comedian Sam Wills, aka Tape Face, recently preformed in Milton Keynes, delivering “a captivating set of skits that the audience on stage and…
Lisa Harrow’s Coriolanus Role Lauded
A New York Times reviewer describes Auckland-born actor Lisa Harrow’s performance as “superb” in her role as Volumnia in Red Bull Theatre’s “gripping new production” of Shakespeare’s Coriolanus, on now at New…
Simon Phillips Has the Knack for Musical Theatre
In a wide-ranging career spanning several continents, which to date has seen him employed as artistic director by two Australian state theatre companies and awarded for his direction of theatre and opera, New Zealand-born…
Mel Dodge Gets Her Brontë on in Canberra
New Zealand playwright and actor Mel Dodge depicts the personal passions of Jane Eyre author Charlotte Brontë in Miss Brontë, on at Canberra’s Queanbeyan Performing Arts Centre. Despite living most of her life in an…
Thomas Monckton’s Energetic Edinburgh Double Bill
Thomas Monckton demonstrated what an outstanding physical clown he is via his previous solo show, The Pianist. Only Bones, his newest work on as part of the 2016 Edinburgh Festival Fringe, is more distilled…
Rochelle Bright Brings Daffodils to Edinburgh
New Zealand-born playwright Rochelle Bright is swiftly earning a name for herself through the success of her breakout stageshow Daffodils, which has just opened at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe as part of the prestigious…
Card Ninja Performs in UK at Bedfringe
New Zealander Javier Jarquin is the Card Ninja, a PG-rated, one-man show with up-beat humour, impressive stunts and smooth audience interaction. Jarquin will demonstrate his “remarkable skills” in the UK at the Bedford Fringe…
Tucson Teen Discovers Love of Writing
Nineteen-year-old New Zealand-born Samara Attridge, who has always been more of a “centre-stage type, acting and tackling musical theatre,” tells the Arizona Daily Star that she never pictured herself as a writer. Born in Palmerston…
Justine Campbell Performs They Saw a Thylacine
New Zealand-born actor Justine Campbell (pictured left) and Australian Sarah Hamilton recently performed their award-winning play about survival and extinction, They Saw a Thylacine as part of The Joan’s 2016 Brave New Work season…
All Trygve Wakenshaw Wants Is to Be Mr Bean
Mime superstar, New Zealand-born Trygve Wakenshaw, who has been garnering rave reviews for his recent solo show, Nautilus talks with the Guardian about his theatre background, his future and what he really wants –…
Thomas Monckton’s The Pianist a Brilliant Hour
New Zealander Thomas Monckton is one of a new generation of mimes, a “luminary”, beginning to “carry the torch in a tradition that brought us Charlie Chaplin and Mr Bean,” according to the Sydney…
Mime’s New Star Is Trygve Wakenshaw
“Rubber-limbed” New Zealander Trygve Wakenshaw is “one of the most talented acts of the new mime movement,” Tristram Fane Saunders writes for the Telegraph. Trained at École Philippe Gaulier (“essentially RADA for…
Barnie Duncan’s …him a Living Thriving Piece of Art
“New Zealander Barnie Duncan has created an unusual yet intriguing piece of art that is somewhat unpleasant in a refreshing way, and yet able to draw in the audience with subtlety … in a…
All the World Is a Stage for Rawiri Paratene
If the Globe Theatre’s Globe to Globe project has a natural figurehead, it is Rawiri Paratene, whose Troilus and Cressida in Maori opened the tour in April 2014, Intelligent Life journalist Jasper Rees writes….
Hayden Tee Menaces as Javert in Les Mis
New Zealand-born, NIDA-trained actor Hayden Tee has received critical acclaim for his portrayal of Javert in the world’s longest running musical, Les Misérables, which has made its long-awaited return to Brisbane. “Audiences’ reactions …
Comedy Show Nominee Trygve Wakenshaw Shines
The “angular New Zealander” Trygve Wakenshaw, who was nominated for best show at this year’s Foster’s Edinburgh Comedy awards, “has the audience in raptures with his wonky physical comedy – and a brilliantly inventive…
Trygve Wakenshaw Hits the Physical Comedy Jackpot
New Zealand comedian Trygve Wakenshaw’s “near-silent comedy produces loud laughs and a warm atmosphere” at this year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, the List writes in a review of Wakenshaw’s solo show Nautilus. “By the time Wakenshaw…
Heidi O’Loughlin’s Edinburgh Debut a Delight
For her first solo Edinburgh Fringe hour, comedian Heidi O’Loughlin tries out a variety of topics. The New Zealander’s Tahitian heritage is up first in a spot of family history, as she recounts the…
