Come celebrate the Voices of Aotearoa.

TAHI Festival 2021 Tickets Are On Sale Now.

TAHI Festival is a five-day celebration of solo performance dedicated to showcasing the finest and most engaging solo theatre from all around Aotearoa, 19-23 October at BATS Theatre.

TAHI is a place to tell stories with voices from indigenous, pākehā and migrant perspectives, stories from rangatahi and LGBTQIIA+ artists, and delightful events for tamariki with talented artists coming from all over Aotearoa and beyond.

2021 marks the third annual event and it promises to be the biggest yet with 15 events and six Workshops over the five days. Festival Director, Sally Richards is keen to present more diverse voices as part of the 2021 Festival;

“In 2021 we are building our repertoire for younger audiences with Beth Kayes' The Great Teddy Bear Escape and Patrick Adderley's Tennis and we are excited to present Māori artists, including Cian Parker's Sorry for Your Loss and Kahurangi Bronsson-George's Iti Kahurangi. This year we are proud to bring two New Zealand Sign Language interpreted shows - Jen McArthur’s Echolalia and Cian Parker's Sorry For Your Loss. The TAHI programme is full of exceptional shows.”

Adding to the voices this year, TAHI has supported two Work in Development seasons to encourage growth in the Solo performance arts with world premiere seasons of Ted Talks Crimes by Jeremy Hunt & Ricky Dey - a crime story you won't soon forget and Orlando by Jessie Alsop & Jade Erikson - a solo about parenting, life, death and waking up a father.

"It is so rare for artists in Aotearoa to get opportunities to share work in development, and yet it's incredibly vital to the wellbeing of both the makers and the work itself,” says Jessie Alsop, co-writer and performer of Orlando. “TAHI is giving me an incredibly important chance to share my new work in its infancy, which will help to shape and refine the work and give audiences a chance to come along the making journey with me."

“As someone who has been involved with TAHI in some way or another since its inception, it’s really exciting to be able to bring one of my shows to the Work in Development season,” adds Jeremy Hunt, co-writer and performer of Ted Talks Crimes. “It feels as though TAHI has really nurtured me from the HATCH programme all the way to becoming an independent artist and creating some of my own work. It’s such a great opportunity to get stuck in and experiment with the work that I'm interested in, that really excites me.”

The TAHI Festival recognises the current status of our COVID 19 restrictions and is in a strong position to take the Festival online should restrictions stay in place. If fact many of the solos are written about or in reaction to Covid themes like Alayne Dick’s Deep and Meaningful;

“Deep and Meaningful is a show about feeling like we are living right before the end of the world,” says Alayne. “I wrote it in 2019, when this felt like a slightly less complicated theme and in this remounted season I’m aiming to address those feelings with a lot more nuance.”

“In such global upheaval we are entirely privileged in Aotearoa to have the capacity to bring artists and audiences together, to connect with our communities,” says Sally. “TAHI Festival demonstrates the resilience of our arts ecosystem, that begins and ends with people and that values what the Arts does for us all.”

Nau Mai, Haere Mai - come celebrate the voices of Aotearoa at TAHI Festival, 19-23 October. 
 

Tickets are on sale now for the TAHI season with the programme available here: https://www.tahifestivalnz.com/

TAHI Festival hero video: https://vimeo.com/manage/videos/594029671

TAHI FESTIVAL, 19-23 October 2021
BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Tce, Wellington

www.tahifestivalnz.com

@tahifestivalnz | #TAHI2021

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