Insider Tips for the NZ Festival [Interview]
The New Zealand Festival brings hundreds of local, national and international performances to Wellington every 2 years. It’s coming up from 23 Feb — 18 March 2018, and tickets are already on sale! We got in touch with Shelagh Magadza, the Festival’s Artistic Director, to find out more and get her tips on must-see shows.
SQUARE: For those who don’t know much about the New Zealand Festival, could you tell us what it’s about and what to expect?
Shelagh: As the largest, most established arts Festival in New Zealand we aim to bring the best in international and local theatre, dance, music and literature to the capital for three weeks across February and March. Held every two years, the Festival hosts around 300 performances and 1,000 artists. While the phrase “there’s something for everyone” is rather a cliché, there really is so much on offer that it would be hard not to find something to enjoy in the Festival programme.
Along with top class theatre and dance productions, we host free events, family events, fine music, late night gigs, and we also run a literary festival within the main Festival — the Writers & Readers programme — which runs across the long weekend of 8 -11 March and features both local literary heroes and international talent.
To a newcomer all these offerings might sound a little overwhelming, but the easiest way to get a feel for the Festival is to visit the Festival website or grab one of our brochures and start planning your experience.
In 2018 the heart of the action will be at the Festival Club/Speigeltent at Odlin’s Plaza, near Te Papa on the waterfront. The Festival has not had a tent on the waterfront for some years now, so we are excited to be bringing this fun space back for our audiences to enjoy.
SQUARE: What’s the goal of the NZ Festival?
Shelagh: Our primary goal is to provide extraordinary arts experiences for our audiences that they wouldn’t otherwise encounter. We do this by bringing outstanding art to the capital and by producing a programme that reflects our values: artistic excellence, diversity, innovation and community. The Festival is also committed to supporting new New Zealand work, and seeks opportunities for that New Zealand work to be showcased overseas. We are fortunate that we continue to attract some of the world’s best artists to Wellington. Since it started in 1986, the New Zealand Festival has sold around 2 million tickets and drawn a total audience of five million people.
SQUARE: Can you tell about some of the highlights for the upcoming festival?
Shelagh: We think the 2018 Festival will be pretty special, not least because it is kicking off with such a special and poignant event — A Waka Odyssey — which will see a mass assembly of waka hourua (twin-hulled ocean-going waka) from around the Pacific and Aotearoa arrive on Wellington Harbour at dusk on our opening night, 23 February.
Developed through a partnership between A Waka Odyssey Creative Team, New Zealand Festival and Te Āti Awa / Taranaki Whānui Iwi, tens of thousands of people are expected to gather on the waterfront for this exceptional free event. Designed to celebrate our shared voyaging history, A Waka Odyssey is not a one-off but a series of events over five days, beginning with the opening night theatrical spectacle to honour the legacy of famous Pacific explorer, Kupe.
Other highlights include a very strong international theatre programme which will present work from revered contemporary artists like Inua Ellams and Crystal Pite. Inua wrote Barber Shop Chronicles, a look at the intriguing world of men’s Barber Shop banter, while Crystal Pite of Kidd Pivot dance company choreographed Betroffenheit, an extraordinary hybrid of theatre and dance that explores the stages of grief. Other highlights for 2018 Festival include the Star Wars: A New Hope In Concert, the original movie with a live score performed by the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra, the world premiere of Michael Parmenter’s new dance opera OrphEus, and The Select (The Sun Also Rises), which adapts Ernest Hemingway’s famous 1926 novel for the stage.
SQUARE: How has the Festival evolved over the years?
Shelagh: The Wellingtonians who established the New Zealand International Festival of the Arts were innovators, achieving their ambitious goal of bringing the best in live arts experiences from across the world to audiences here in New Zealand. 32 years later, we continue to realise our founders’ vision of bringing the best of the arts to New Zealand, while taking it in new directions that encourage our audiences to move with the times, such as the Future Playground in the 2018 programme, which is a digital wonderland of interactive installations that subvert traditional divisions between active performers and passive audiences.
SQUARE: How do you decide which events to include in the Festival?
Shelagh: It is not especially easy to decide what to include in the Festival but we aim to bring the best available contemporary international work to Wellington, after balancing that with what we believe is going to work for our audiences.
SQUARE: Are there any key themes for the festival this year?
Shelagh: There are some discernible themes in the 2018 programme. Our opening night event suggests the 2018 Festival’s themes of journeying and voyaging, and also exploring ideas of home and place. Themes of home and place resonate in the remainder of the programme through works such as Geoff Sobelle’s Home, which follows the life cycle of a house on stage, Inua Ellams’ Barber Shop Chronicles, and the À Ố Làng Phố circus from Vietnam which explores the tensions between city and rural life; past and present.
SQUARE: What goes into organising the NZ Festival?
Shelagh: A massive effort goes into organising our biennial Festival, with our core staff of about seven growing to more than 100 in the lead up to the Festival. Staff include not only programming and producing staff but requires many skilled technical, finance, logistics, marketing and support staff. We are fortunate to be able to continue to attract talented and dedicated people who are willing to go above and beyond to make the Festival wonderful each time. Putting on the Festival is something of a logistical marvel and we are also very grateful to the many volunteers who give their time to the Festival for free.
SQUARE: What’s one good reason that people should go?
Shelagh: The Festival brings events that would otherwise not happen in our city — grab this chance to see the world through the eyes of these artists.
To find some of the great events happening at the New Zealand Festival search for #NZFestival on SQUARE. For more information and a complete list of Festival events, visit www.festival.co.nz. Tickets are already on sale and selling fast for popular events, so get in quick!
