Kenneth Rea Teacher to Outstanding Actors
The mentor to some of Britain’s top performers believes the best acting comes from a childhood sense of playfulness – and is fraught with danger, David Jays reports for The Guardian. Defining the core…
News of New Zealanders via Global Media
Gillian Lynne and Peter Land Foundation Encourages Students in Performing Arts
Launched last year, the Gillian Lynne and Peter Land Foundation continues the work of choreographer Gillian Lynne, whose widower, Taihape-born actor Peter Land tells Nick Smurthwaite, a journalist for The Stage, how the fund…
Rhys Darby Stands up on Stage in Washington
“New Zealand comic Rhys Darby is perhaps best known to American audiences from the two recent Jumanji films and his show-stealing role on Flight of the Conchords as the eponymous band’s well-meaning but hapless manager Murray Hewitt,” Jibran Khan…
Bret McKenzie Speaks on the Oddness of Fame
The Flight of the Conchords star Bret McKenzie, 43, who is guest curating this year’s New Zealand Festival, speaks to The Guardian’s Charlotte Graham-McLay about his career thus far and the cost of compromise. Although…
New Zealand Theatre Showcase Presented By NYC’s SoHo Playhouse for 2020
A season of New Zealand theatre is set to hit New York stages next year. Showing at SoHo Playhouse, Wild Dogs Under My Skirt, Modern Māori Quartet: Two Worlds and The Contours of…
Teen Harry Sills Performs on West End Stage
New Zealand-born teenager Harry Sills is starring at the Royal Opera House in Benjamin Britten’s, Death in Venice on London’s West End through 6 December. The 14-year-old, who can act and dance, said: “The opportunity…
Upper Hutt Performer Jason Henderson NY-Bound
Upper Hutt singer Jason Henderson, 30, is heading to New York City to spend two years studying acting at the Neighbourhood Playhouse School of Theatre, where he will follow in the footsteps of Robert…
Rose Matafeo’s Comedic Rise to the BBC
New Zealand stand-up Rose Matafeo, 27, talks on-stage confidence, teen crushes and writing her own BBC sitcom with Alice Jones, a journalist for UK newspaper, i. It is almost a year since Matafeo won the…
Cabaret Performer Sophie Koh at Centre Stage
Profoundly inclusive and spectacularly eclectic, cabaret is what ‘theatre could have been if it hadn’t started building walls’. “Growing up, I never saw anyone who looked like me in the arts industry,” New Zealand-born…
Rose Matafeo To Star In BBC Three Sitcom
Rose Matafeo is to star in BBC Three sitcom Star Struck, which follows a twentysomething woman living in London as she tries to work out life and love. Jay Richardson reports for
Rose Matafeo to Star in Taika Waititi Exec Produced ‘Baby, Done’
New Zealand comedian Rose Matafeo will star alongside Harry Potter star Matthew Lewis in feature comedy Baby, Done, which is exec produced by Taika Waititi. The film is directed by Curtis Vowell (Fantail). Nancy…
Love and Being Female in Comedy with Rose Matafeo
Rising star Auckland-born Rose Matafeo recently won the prestigious Best Comedy Show Award at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe, one of comedy’s biggest prizes, for her show Horndog. Matafeo, 26, talked to online news site…
Mrs Krishnan Puts on a Party in Vancouver
Mrs Krishnan’s Party is a semi-improvised comic celebration of the southern Indian harvest festival of Onam, brought to Canada’s shores by New Zealand’s Indian Ink Theatre Company. It is reviewed by the Vancouver Sun. “The…
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…
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…
