Bats Bats Bats - Fringe Fringe Fringe

Bats Bats Bats - Fringe Fringe Fringe

Hi BATS peeps

Well its week three of Fringe at BATS and you won't want to miss the fabulous goodies we have lined up for you. This week you can check out Match (closing tonight), Perseus Uncovered from London, devised piece Onion (opens tonight), Craig Geenty's one man show Train Ghosts, Swim - a cyberformance, Craig Ireson's smash hit Karaoke Poetry, Uniform by Nichola Gerard and Mmmdance featuring Bob Eisen and Juliette Shelly. See below for more info on these shows.

Fringing it up at 1 Kent Terrace.

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Match

Season: Friday 18 - Monday 21 February

Time: 6.30pm

Tickets: $15 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

A play by Marc Chun, directed by Trish Ah Sam. What do we do with random events, some would call them chance, others fate, and what do they do to the people whose lives are irrevocably changed by them? ŒMatch' an exquisite one-act play looks at just that. The winner of the 2001 Premiere One-Act Play Festival in Los Angeles deals with fate, destiny and inevitability, how they are different and how they are the same. It is also about being responsible to yourself and to at least one other person in the world. It tells the story of five ordinary people whose lives are brought together on a bright blue May afternoon, due to a seemingly obscure disease that effects more people than we realise, with extraordinary results.

Perseus Uncovered

Season: Thursday 17 ­ Wednesday 23 February

Time: 8pm

Tickets: $15 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

London's Purple Fish Productions (patron Dame Maggie Smith) make their New Zealand theatrical debut at the Wellington Fringe Festival after a Œsell out' tour across Canada with an amazingly innovative and creative devised work based on the Greek myth of Perseus and the Medusa. The story itself has been taken directly from Ovid's Metamorphosis and is told in a modern way with the use of mime, puppets, masks, manipulation of objects and plenty of modern music and modern references . Perseus Uncovered is a fast paced, up to the minute comedy and is performed by two highly skilled and experienced actors Luan de Burgh (from London) and Michelle Seton (from Tauranga) both of whom were trained in London and at the École Jacques Lecoq in Paris ­ the world's leading physical theatre school.

Onion

Season: Monday 21 ­ Friday 25 February

Time: 9.30pm

Tickets: $15 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

Bake, grill, crumb, roast, pickle, stir-fry, nuke them, dice, slice, mince them, stick them in your salad ­ the uses of the common Onion are endless; its existence as a part of our culinary culture, vital. So when the Onion crop fails, two reluctant farmers fight to save their onions, their farm and their lives in an epic 50-minute journey taking them from the plains of Canterbury to the hilltops of Wellington and beyond. There will be hitchhiking, there will be sheep, there WILL be onions. Performers Jean Copland (Toi Whakaari graduate, ŒAfter Kafka', ŒShifting') and Amanda Maclean (Dell Arte international School of Physical Theatre graduate, WIT, ŒCinematica') impersonate a cast of thousands, collaborating with director Ronald Nelson to create an adventure comedy that will have audiences crying with joy (damn onions).

Train Ghosts

Season: Tuesday 22 ­ Saturday 26 February

Time: 6.30pm

Tickets: $15 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

The North Island railways are the setting for Train Ghosts, a musical journey following the lives of characters, past and present, that shape the story of the Main Trunk Line. Actor and playwright Craig Geenty has based the story on his experiences working for twelve months on Tranz Scenic's passenger services, where he encountered many bizaare and interesting characters and situations. Incorporated into the piece is a montage of classic New Zealand folksongs, including "Taumaranui on the Main Trunk Line", "The Battle of the Waikato", "Six Months in a Leaky Boat", and "I've Been Everywhere" amongst others. The songs serve as historical reference points, telling stories about the building of the railways, conflict with King Country Maori, the Tangiwai tragedy, and the effects of privitisation. This is a BATSlab production, developed with support from Playmarket.

Swim

Season: Thursday 24 February (one show only) SOLD OUT

Time: 8.15pm

Tickets: $18 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

The experimental cyberformance "swim - an exercise in remote intimacy" is to be presented for the first time in New Zealand during the 2005 Fringe Festival. Performed live via the internet, "swim" dives into the delights and dilemmas of intimacy without physical proximity. Immersive images, splashy flirtations and deep encounters between fleshy cyberbodies are conjured up by a troupe of globally dispersed cyberformers, Avatar Body Collision. On stage, Helen Varley Jamieson connects through the ether to Vicki Smith (Aotearoa/NZ), Karla Ptacek (London) and Leena Saarinen (Helsinki). The tools of cyber-dating - webcams, email, chat - are creatively redeployed to devise and perform "swim".

Karaoke Poetry

Season: Friday 25 ­ Sunday 27 February

Time: 8pm

Tickets: $14 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

Karaoke Poetry is about a time in the not so distant future when people are tired of idle idols and prefabricated pop stars stumbling and mumbling their way into the charts and rich lists. This is a time when people return to poetry and poets as their pop stars. Karaoke Poetry is what you get when you mix the Spirit of the Fringe 2004 (Craig Ireson from The SK8Board Poets) with the Best Visual Artist from Fringe 2004 (Johanna Sanders, Rear Projection Window). It also features live music from Andrew Savage (Sunship) and a deliciously irreverent cameo from Ciara Mulholland (Sniper, Most Original Production, Chapman Tripp Theatre awards, 2004). "Karaoke Poetry is a wordy, polyphonic romp through the world of the mash up. The works of several diverse artists are reined together to channel a third mind of chaotic brilliance. Where else this summer will you hear the words of Walt Whitman, Hone Tuwhare, Denis Glover and Frankie Vallie mashed up in a poetic, comedic mixer!" says Craig. This is not an open mike night, but a raucous revising of the poetical canon by an award winning crew of genre benders. Karaoke Poetry defies classification and demands attention with its sassy stomp through the history of the word ­ book now as this show is sure to sell out.

Uniform

Season: Saturday 26 Feb ­ Wednesday 2 March (no show Sunday)

Time: 9.30pm

Tickets: $15 full price/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

Stitches and sutures, sewing and surgery. A personal account of artistic yearning and body politics. Written, directed and performed by Nichola Gerard and the Big Strong Girls, Uniform (meaning "one shape") is set in a theatre wardrobe and introduces the costumier, summoning some famous feisty females from her theatre career (Nora Helmer, Elektra, Ophelia and others). A score of both original and sampled music, with dance choreography, add to a layered dialogue of theatre ritual and colourful mayhem. Anarchic and camp, Uniform dissects personal identity through the transgender experience, reflecting on the importance of the theatre as a vital social forum. Devised for Performing Arts Studies at the University of Otago, the work and its writer have been featured in the Listener and on TV2's Queer Nation.

Mmmdance

Season: Sunday 27 Feb ­ Tuesday 1 March

Time: 6.30pm

Tickets: $15 full/$12 concession/$10 Fringe addict

Juliet Shelley (Wellington) & Bob Eisen (New York) perform in Mmmdance. Two experimental dancers living on opposite sides of the globe who have never clapped eyes on each other, join physical forces at BATS for MMMDAnce in a programme of two solos and a duet. "I know I'm alive when I'm dancing". Juliet Shelley " surreal and stylised..." (Dominion Post ) is a Wellington based dancer born in Tanzania who performs improvisations at the drop of a hat and has been doing so for around ten years in NZ. Bob Eisen - "one of the city's more iconoclastic and progressive artists" ( Chicago Tribune ) - is an experimental dance soloist in his '50s. His eclectic career as a dancer, choreographer and improviser spans three decades. He brings to the fringe festival a solo improvisation that runs the gamut from 'dancy ' dance to silliness, awkwardness, gestures, facial expressions and making sounds. His dancing is fluid, gutsy, alarming and deliciously unpretty.

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BATS Theatre
1 Kent Terrace
Wellington, Aotearoa
bats@bats.co.nz
bookings 802 4175
office 802 4176
fax 802 4010
www.bats.co.nz
The Fabulous Fringe 05 at BATS! On now until 12 March
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