Centrepoint Theatre announces 2016 season

Centrepoint Theatre announces 2016 season

Centrepoint Theatre’s 2016 season brings together a feast of entertainment from far and wide, aimed at inspiring, challenging and entertaining the Manawatu. Artistic Director, Jeff Kingsford-Brown says,

“The capacity of live theatre to thrill us should never be underestimated. I couldn’t be more excited by what we are bringing to the main stage in 2016. Our programme is big, bold and beautiful, with a wonderful mix of the fresh and innovative alongside the tried and true; plays that celebrate our unique Kiwi culture, as well as a selection of some of the best plays from around the world.”

2016 kicks off with a strictly limited season of improv comedy from New Zealand’s longest-running improvisation troupe, The Improvisors. The Wellington company’s hilarious take on quality costume drama, Downton Ad-Lib, will have Manawatu audiences rolling in the aisles come February.

Next up, Stag Weekend by Dan Bain and Brendon Bennetts takes an iconic Kiwi rite of passage - the stag party - and sets it on a hunting trip in the Tararuas. Four overconfident and under-qualified city boys fumble towards discovering what it means to be a Kiwi bloke in 2016.

On Amnesty International Day, we launch our new initiative ‘Plays with a Purpose’, a season of works intended to shine a light on contemporary issues. Centrepoint, in association with Aurora Nova Productions, presents the wild, utterly original White Rabbit Red Rabbit by Nassim Soleimanpour. The play tests the possibilities of what theatre is capable of, requiring no rehearsal, no director, a different actor every night, and a script waiting in a sealed envelope on stage.

Closing the season is a rehearsed reading of Lampedusa, the critically-acclaimed play by award-winning British playwright Anders Lustgarten - on for two nights only. This exquisite drama draws parallels between a fisherman, whose job it is to pull drowned refugees out of the sea, and a Chinese-British woman who collects payday loans for a living. Additional works in ‘Plays with a Purpose’ to be announced.

Te Rehia Theatre Company, who brought us the surprise hit of 2014 - Hoki Mai Tama Mā - joins us for the winter school holidays with Ruia Te Kākano, a magical bilingual theatre adventure for children. Don’t miss this fun-filled opportunity for children to learn and use Te Reo Māori in their everyday lives.

The international phenomenon The Events by David Greig is our Open Stage production this year, featuring a different community choir on stage every night. This extraordinary work by one of the UK’s major playwrights sees a priest and choir director wrestle with her demons in the face of an unspeakable act. Unmissable.

Joining the ranks of refreshingly honest women like Caitlin Moran, Amy Schumer and Girls creator Lena Dunham, comes Fleabag - goddess of filth and superhero of the wank generation. In this bitingly funny monologue by Phoebe Waller-Bridge (Broadchurch), find out what it’s like to be young, female, and f***ed, in every sense of the word.

We have something for the whole family in the October holidays when masters of physical theatre and dance, White Face Crew, tumble onto the Centrepoint stage with their smash hit Double Derelicts. Share the joey and tomfoolery of three colourful characters in this superbly choreographed show, involving couch leaping, shoe stealing, and good old fashioned clowning around.

Come summer time, we round off the year with what we do best - cracking Kiwi comedy. Down-on-his-luck family man, Ron Hewlett, must decide if saving it all is worth baring it all when his local radio station offers a million bucks for a buck-naked sprint at the Super Rugby final, in The Streaker by Gregory Cooper.

Tickets and season passes on sale now. For more information and bookings, call 06 354 5740 or visit centrepoint.co.nz.

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