Here. Together. Now.

The New Zealand Improv Festival is proud to present their 2025 programme Here. Together. Now. celebrating the stories of Aotearoa, the connections between us, and the joys and innovations of improvisation, this September 26 through October 4 at BATS Theatre in Wellington.

Featuring an expansive programme of thirty-four workshops and twenty-two shows across the Festival, there’s something for the newest improv watcher to the more well-hewn, with performers and directors coming together from across the motu and around the world to explore performance on BATS’ stages for nine nights only.

Bull Rush, currently featured at Basement Theatre in Auckland every Friday night joins us for their side-splitting, sexy, scintillating improv. Local comedy favourites Ginge & Minge present Redemption, where game players give their comedy ideas a second chance. Māori and Pasifika improv group Kōrero Paki return to the stage for their third outing of mean kōrero and wild comedy; and these three shows are just a selection of the bounty that’s on offer.

“Coming into our third and final year as co-directors of the Festival, we really wanted to dig into what makes improv special as an art form.” Festival Co-Directors Jim Fishwick and Matt Powell say, “In a time where political and corporate forces seek to pull us apart, we want to demonstrate the power of improv to bring people together in the moment, performer and audience alike, to create new things that no individual could have made by themselves.”

With some of the key improv principles of listening, acceptance, and support feeling more important now than ever, our 2025 Improv Fest programme will warm the heart and tickle the funny bone, and we can’t wait to see how things unfold.

The New Zealand Improv Festival runs from 26 September through 4 October 2025. Tickets for the New Zealand Improv Festival are available now. Check out our show programme at BATS’s website, and sign up for our workshop programme too.

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