Everything is Surrounded by Water returns

Media Release
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

My Accomplice presents
Everything is Surrounded by Water
by Hannah Banks & Uther Dean

The Beautiful, Intimate First Person Fable That Took The Nz Fringe by Storm is Back

Originally performed in living rooms around Wellington as part of this year's New Zealand Fringe Festival – where it won Best Solo and was nominated for Best Theatre – Everything is Surrounded by Water is the latest show from award-winning, audience-favourite theatre company My Accomplice.

What was expected to be a leisurely run of a dozen or so performances for friends and family in the Fringe ballooned, solely through word of mouth, to forty-three performances over two and a half weeks to over two hundred people all over the city, friends and strangers alike.

Told entirely in the first person, Water tells the story of a series of mysterious happenings in a man's life over the last few months of 2013, all of which seem to connect back to both the odd cephalopods, Cuttlefish, and the day when, at the age of seven, he sold his soul to his best-friend. For a chip. It's a touching, weird, funny, kinda sad story.

Last year, My Accomplice was nominated for a jaw-dropping seven Chapman Tripp theatre awards and later this year they'll be opening BATS' newly renovated 1 Kent Terrace home with the STAB commission Watch. But, believing that there is no such thing as being too busy they are taking Water out of living rooms and into theatres.

Water is the brain-child of My Accomplice co-creative directors Uther Dean – the busiest man in Wellington theatre and creator of the successful audio drama podcast The Witching Hours – and Hannah Banks – one of the top ten performers of last year according to The Lumiere Reader. They wrote it together with Banks directing Dean as the solo performer.

“We wanted to make a show about our own dealings with mental illness,” said Dean, “but without making it preachy or maudlin. We realised pretty quickly that meant it needed be both true and magical.

“And what is more magic and more true than real life?”

Taking it from audiences in the low single digits in homes and cafes, to prepping it for actual theatres has been a challenge. And it's not just a case of speaking a bit louder.

“We're working a lot on how we can fit it into bigger spaces while retaining the same close, intimate aura it had in people's homes,” said Banks.

“We want it to still feel like it's just for you, because it is.”

More information can be found at everythingissurroundedbywater.com, myaccomplice.co.nz and bats.co.nz.

[ENDS]
Everything is Surrounded by Water plays
9pm, 30 September – 4 October 2014
BATS theatre – Out of Site, Cnr. Cuba and Dixon Street, Wellington
$20/$15. Book at bats.co.nz.

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