Fringe Fever Returns

Fringe Fever Returns

AUCKLAND FRINGE FESTIVAL
21st February - 12th March 2017

Auckland Fringe returns, with the most fringy line-up yet revealed at the Auckland Fringe Early Bird Launch last night at Basement Theatre. From supermarkets to cat cafes to main stage theatres, Fringe is set to paint the town fluro orange from 21st February - 12th March 2017.

Under the new directorship of Lydia Zanetti, Fringe has returned to its roots. In the face of a lack of ongoing financial support, Zanetti looked to Auckland artists for guidance and they came back with a resounding “Yes, let’s do this”. As such Fringe is doing what artists worldwide are so used to doing - pulling their socks up and getting on with it anyway. This is the Fringe that Auckland has been waiting for - the most anarchic and gutsy festival yet.

As well as a plethora of emerging talent, industry leaders have aligned with Fringe including Silo Theatre, Theatre Stampede, Malia Johnston & Eden Mulholland,award-winning Australian and UK acts, and comedians such as Laura Daniel and Hamish Parkinson. With an eclectic and intriguing programme from theatre precinct venues Auckland Live, Q Theatre and home of the Fringe Basement Theatre, as well as a region-wide selection of venues including Brothers Beer, The Vic Devonport, Parnell Baths, LaValla Estate and Pt England Reserve; Fringe is set to be a truly Auckland festival with something for everyone.

Working closely with one of New Zealand’s top design agencies and huge Fringe fans Alt Group, Auckland Fringe has hit the streets with an all-new look. Featuring photocopied faces of Auckland’s top artists and entrepreneurs including Matthew Crawley, Chloe Swarbrick and Nisha Madhan, with a bit of DIY spraypaint attitude, Fringe will be hard to miss at bus stops and venues region-wide. The process was captured in collaboration with top Creative Production Company Monster Valley.

The Fringe fever has infected over 30 venues and 250 artists across Auckland, New Zealand and beyond - and registrations haven’t even closed yet!

Registrations are open until December 11th - for artists, venues & anyone else who wants in! Registrations and ticketing are once again being processed by fabulous local ticketing provider iTicket.

More details on the early bird programme can be found below.
Early Bird programme live at www.aucklandfringe.co.nz.

THEMES: INTERNATIONALS LOOK TO AUCKLAND

International artists are choosing Auckland and other New Zealand Fringe festivals including NZ Fringe and Dunedin Fringe for their summer tour. These include award-winning Emma Hall & Prue Clark’s We May Have To Choose (621 opinions in 45 minutes!); Eliza Sanders’ double-bill dance hits Castles and Pedal; Charmian “like Josie Long’s mum” Hughes’ Soixante Mirth; comic/poet/ex-psychiatric nurse Rob Gee’s Forget Me Not - The Alzheimer’s Whodunnit; and internationally written work such as Silo Theatre’s Revolt. She Said. Revolt Again.

THEMES: ALTERNATE SPACES

Fringe is all over the city and region in 2017. In Catacular dancers will perform with our feline friends at Auckland’s premiere cat cafe - Barista Cats. Previews are also available at your place (if you have a cat, of course). Down by Wynyard bridge watch out for TheFloating Theatre - be inside it on the water, or watch the shadows from the shore. Start at Basement or Q and go on a gift-giving mission to the streets with just your phone for company with Edinburgh Festival Fringe Sustainable Practice Award short-lister Delivery #17. Or go on the personal audio adventure of a lifetime (while grocery shopping) in Binge Culture’s Enter The New World. Take to the pool with Wet Hot Beauties’ Sea Change, the Pt England Reserve in The River Talks, Leigh Sawmill with Jubilation Gospel Choir, The Spreading Tree with Hip Hop musical Prodigal Son The Musical or Garnet Station Tiny Theatre for a number of events including The Epidemical Existence of a Personal Malfunction at the Age of Twenty Something.

THEMES: NOT YOUR CLASSIC 60 MINUTES

Fringe events don’t need to be your typical theatre experience. In fact, they can be whatever they want - as these events show. Basement Theatre has programmed 22 artists across 3 weeks in their Performance Salon. The space will be live from 6 -10pm, and audiences can come in and out as they please. Composure takes over The Actor’s Program’s new space Samoa House on K Road, for a 12 hour durational dance experience. Stay for 5 minutes or 12 hours! At Beop Studios, Grace Maguire let’s you know that Your Smile Is Important To Me in her oral health information event. Sarah-Jane Blake takes carnival amusement games as her inspiration for interactive game Shoot the Freak, and Malia Johnston and Eden Mulholland welcome you into their innovative social performance event Rushes. Get your puppetry on in The Last Man on Earth Is Trapped In A Supermarket or see some international artists going head to head playing jenga and discussing their practice in Town Centre’s Town Meetings.

THEMES: COMEDY RETURNETH

After a predominantly theatre festival in 2015, Fringe is stoked to present a strong comedy selection in 2017 including Snort/ Funny Girls/ Jono & Ben stalwarts Laura Daniel, Eli Matthewson, Hamish Parkinson and Alice Snedden in Pilot Season; Thomas Sainsbury and Jason Smith’s teen-slasher musical Infectious; Brendon Green’s Humourism and Australasia’s number one trump impersonator Alexander Sparrow take on French Revolution-era pornographer Marquis de Sade in De Sade.

THEMES: DANCE & LIVE ART

Is Contemporary Performance and Live Art the most hashtagged art forms of 2017? Just you wait. Dance is also back in full force, as the backbone of Fringe in Auckland. Eliza Sanders’ Castles and Pedal happily fits into both categories. Dance/performance artist and Berlin-based Alexa Wilson makes her much heralded return with PechaKucha style 21 Movements in collaboration with photographer Nicholas Watt. Julia Croft premieres her new work Power Ballad after smashing Edinburgh with hit If There’s Not Dancing at the Revolution, I’m Not Coming; and Elijah Kennar’s Mea Tau six men dance extravaganza returns as a full length dance explosion.

VENUES ALIGNING WITH FRINGE INCLUDE:

Backbeat; The Actors Program studio at Samoa House; The Vic Devonport; PumpHouse Theatre; Aotea Square; Beop Studios; Herald Theatre; Lower NZI, Aotea Centre; TST Studio; Mika Haka Studio; Te Wero Island Containers; LaValla Estate; Corban Estate Arts Centre; The Thirsty Dog; Gypsy Caravan; The Commons; Brothers Beer; Te Henga Studios; Barista Cats; Silo 6; Raye Freedman Arts Centre; TAPAC - The Auckland Performing Arts Centre; The Jefferson; Everybody’s; Ellice Road; Neck of the Woods; Garnet Station Tiny Theatre; Basement Theatre; Q Theatre; Parnell Baths.

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