Fringe picks
The festival directors’ recommendations for Listener readers
LYDIA ZANETTI, AUCKLAND FRINGE DESPERATE LATE NIGHT ENERGY
I saw [electropop artist] Boycrush during the Limbs Dance Company retrospective at the Tempo Dance Festival a couple of years ago, and after that he kept posting videos of dance works. Watching someone fall in love with an art form is a beautiful thing, and I’m stoked that he’s collaborating with the Dance Plant Collective on his first live gig-and-dance extravaganza, based on his latest album, Desperate
Late Night Energy. I love that Fringes aren’t tied to just one art form, allowing people to stretch themselves into something new. (Auckland)
THE RIDE
Nothing says Fringe like something happening in a strange place. In The
Ride, you choose a topic, the artist finds an expert, and you get to go on a drive with them to find out everything you’d like to know about the topic. You may want to chat about roses or politics or making the best baklava. I love that this takes us all around the city. (Auckland)
PUSSY RIOT
The Russian art collective has been one of the most important voices of protest in the past decade. It’s a raucous gig, and a call to arms. (Auckland and Wellington)
HANNAH CLARKE, NZ FRINGE THE DOUBTFUL SOUNDS GO UNDERGROUND
Funky Wellington choir The Doubtful Sounds will perform in the World War II-era Wrights Hill Fortress, which is just so fringe. Performing classical and popular tunes, they will make the most of the fortress’ acoustics. Te Arokura, the children’s choir from Wellington’s Te Aro School, will perform there, too. (Wellington)
ONLY BONES 1.0
Thom Monckton is a Helsinki-based New Zealand circus arts performer who does what he calls “micro-physical theatre’’. I saw him perform this show at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2016. He has a lamp above him and he performs in this one-metre sphere below it. He just uses his bendy, wiggling hands and moves his face. It’s like nothing I’ve seen before. (Auckland and Wellington)
FRINGE WIVES CLUB
I’ve been trying to get these Australian performers (Tessa Waters, Victoria Falconer and Rowena Hutson) to the NZ Fringe for ages. They’re going to the Perth and Adelaide festivals first, but we’ve got them this year, too. Their show is feminist and funny with original music and epic dance moves. (Wellington)
GARETH McMILLAN, DUNEDIN FRINGE TOY FACTORY FIRE
Simon O’Connor is a Dunedin-based performer, and Toy Factory Fire is a performance installation based on the Kader factory fire in Thailand in 1993. You’ll listen to a loop of recorded interviews with those affected, overlaid by the narrative of a Bangkok-based businessman. It looks at global commercialisation and how things are made in quite appalling conditions.
FISSION
An interdisciplinary performance that started life as a research project for Hilary Halba, an associate professor in theatre studies at the University of Otago. It brings together Māori science, choreography and dance, using elements of space, time, energy and light that are common to both theatre and physics. The story is about a present-day performance artist and her metaphysical connection to early 20thcentury physicist Lise Meitner.
LAVVIE’S AND TROUBLE D
British actor Ruth Carraway appeared in TV shows Grange Hill, The Bill and Prime
Suspect. Since moving to Milton, near Dunedin, she has been working with inmates at Milton prison in the hopes that acting will help equip them for life on the outside. Her forum-theatre show
Trouble D will be performed in the jail by Milton prisoners. Based on the life of a recently released prisoner, viewers will be able to rewind scenes and have them played differently. She will also be performing her play Lavvie’s, which is set in the women’s toilets of an Essex nightclub.