The Comedy Begins...

Dear BATSters

Tonight! Sorry I’m Out But I Can Be Booked starring James Ashcroft opens the ODDFELLOWS NZ International Comedy Festival at BATS!

The Remedy Syndrome also continues until Saturday - “Highly entertaining, sleekly directed and performed two-hander exploring the issues surrounding vaccination...strongly recommended.” - Dominion Post.

Next week at BATS - the ODDFELLOWS NZ International Comedy Festival including Michele A’Court’s Heritage 101, Jo Randerson’s Skazzle Dazzle, Sam Wills’ Dance Monkey Dance and Taika’s Incrediblerer Show. Check out the rest of our fab comedy season at www.bats.co.nz.

To book for any performance at BATS simply email book@bats.co.nz with your name, number of tickets and date you wish to attend. We will reply to confirm your booking and you can pay when you come to the show.

Love BATS x

Sorry I’m Out But I Can Be Booked
Season: Tuesday 26 April – Sat 7 May (no show Sun/Mon)
Time: 9pm 26-30 April, 9.30pm 3-7 May
Tickets: $15 full/$12 concession and groups 8+

“I have seen so many movies that I no longer know if my childhood memories were actual experience or VHS.”

Ever wanted to know what your partner has previously rented? Ever wondered what’s behind the Adult room door? Take a closer look at life behind the counter at your local video store. Sorry I'm Out But I Can Be Booked follows a disgruntled video store employee's trials and tribulations in the world of customer service, from candid confessions in the Adult room, to finding love in the aisles between Comedy and Drama. This fictitious account of behind-the-counter culture is inspired by a true story.

“After 11 years of service in several different locations, I have witnessed some of the most obscene, absurd and hilarious contradictions of the term ‘the customer is always right’. Whether it’s amorous activities caught on surveillance camera or the case of the plastic-fork armed robber, the truth at your local video store is infinitely stranger than the fiction it rents.” James Ashcroft

James Ashcroft is a graduate of Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School. He was the first New Zealander to be accepted as an intern with the prestigious Wooster Group Theatre Company in New York whose members include Willem Dafoe and Steve Buscemi. Sorry I’m Out is devised in collaboration with director/devisers Andrew Foster (A Clockwork Orange, Silo Theatre, AKO5 Festival), and Leo Gene Peters (Shifting, SEEyD Theatre; MTA graduate Toi Whakaari 2004). Scored by Chapman Tripp Award winning composer Steve Gallagher (TV3’s The Strip), this production promises to be an original and highly innovative piece of new New Zealand theatre.

The Remedy Syndrome
Season: Tuesday 19 – Saturday 30 April (no show Sun/Mon)
Time: 7pm
Tickets: $16 full/$12 concession
‘The absence of disease is the least sexy thing to sell in the universe.’

Created by Tim Spite, Danielle Mason, Pedro Ilgenfritz and Leo Gene Peters, “the remedy syndrome” is the new devised work from the critically acclaimed SEEyD Theatre Company.

“…and if your hairdresser messes up your hair you go to another hairdresser you don’t become a hair dresser…and I think the mistake they often make in immunisation is that instead of ‘I don’t trust that person I’ll go and talk to some one else’ you try and become the expert… and you just can’t really, genuinely, easily become the expert. So how do you make informed consent? I think informed consent’s nonsense to be honest.”

The story centres on Rebecca and Joe as they face the issue of vaccinating their child. Overwhelmed by all the information, they negotiate their own blueprint for parenting while their differences force them to question their compatibility. This work grew from interviews with both scientific professionals and others from the community.

“Now why did Helen Clarke announce that 200 million would be spent on vaccination the day after they got into parliament? I believe she was paying someone back; she was doing someone a favour. She’d just got into power she didn’t need to buy votes. She didn’t have to impress anyone. It’s all so political.”
“Take the Iraq war for example. They went to war for two reasons, with the exception of getting cheap oil. Two reasons: Weapons and vaccines. There is a lot of money to be made out of both when you go to war.”

The SEEyD Theatre Company began with the creation of three stand-alone plays: “SEEyD” in the Wellington Fringe Festival 2000 followed by “inSalt” in 2001 and “SAnD” in 2002. All three works have won Most Original Production in the Chapman Tripp Theatre Awards for their respective years and “inSalt” also won Best Design. “the remedy syndrome” continues the companies desire to make politically involved work that interweaves design and narrative and most importantly humour.

“All you’re doing with a vaccine you’re…if you like you’re taking the immune system to the gym. You’re giving it a little work out. You know we live in a very clean world now; the immune system doesn’t get the kind of work out it used to. So we’re like weak and pasty faced, in a sense, in the face of microbes. We might get to adulthood now without encountering a lot of microbes we used to encounter as very small infants. So we’re actually not that well adapted to this very clean world we live in. So, in a sense vaccines are partly a compensation for that.”

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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

Remedy Syndrome – 19 – 30 April
Sorry I’m Out But I Can Be Booked – 26 April – 7 May
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