upcoming

This page will be updated regularly to include information about shows that past and present Bacchanals are involved in, as well as whatever upcoming projects we might be involved in together. Things that none of us are involved in but want to recommend simply because we like them might creep in also. Beware!

UPDATING THE WEBSITE FOR THE FIRST TIME IN FIVE YEARS?! WHAT???!!!

That’s right! you can thank the virus. Here we are, for the first time since December 2015, speaking to you live on the internet to say Fear Not, Everyone; The Bacchanals Are Alive and We Have Always Been, watching you quietly but saying nothing from our secret fortresses as the hum of the motorway decreases to Level 4-like silence and we practice our twisted schemes in front of the bathroom mirror while the world sleeps.

What a time it has been. What has happened? Basically, it all boils down to: David went to Auckland for what was meant to be 8 weeks and turned into 4 years in which he has got to make shows on a big, big scale. Then, The Bacchanals’ top secret headquarters at 56a Kainui Road, Hataitai got sold in 2017 and, after nearly 15 years in that amazing old house, we had to make the permanent move and this meant throwing out most of the set, props, costume storage. Also, what is going on in Wellington?? it looks like the whole city has become a giant Newtown op-shop where nothing works properly anymore, whereas up here in the North (yes, Auckland!) things are a lot warmer and people Pay You to make theatre. Kirsty, Jamie, Joe, Trigg, Alice May, Brigid, Uther, Bronwyn, Natasya, Jocelyn are all up here now so that’s at least a quorum even if it doesn’t have Alex or Jean or Salesi or Brianne or Jonny or Julia or Ellie or your other faves. Trust me, there are folk in Auckland who would Get The Vibe and you would love a version of The Bacchanals that had Adrian or Theo or Indigo in it. Would a version of The Bacchanals that made stuff in Auckland work? Or should we be in Wellington? Dasha says a few years back she tried to tell some kids at BATS she was a Bacchanal and they didn’t even know what that was! Does the city we tried to save but never cared about us even remember who we once were or is this website it? Does the world still need us? What are we doing to commemorate our TWENTIETH BIRTHDAY IN TWENTY-TWENTY, you ask??

What can I tell you? I can tell you what I’m thinking: I would love to do a small-space Othello, a lot like our small-space Othello of 20 years ago but without Taika in it (he’s really busy). Or Cymbeline maybe. I’ve been writing this play about moving to Mars as an analogy for moving to Auckland. I did some work on an adaptation of Aristophanes’ Wealth which would be timely now no one has any. I’ve always wanted to do Tartuffe but set in 742 Evergreen Terrace where Orgon’s family are Homer and co, Cleante is Ned Flanders etc. I have this idea about a history of chess and a bio-play of Stuart Smith, the guy who released hundreds of thousands of illegal pest fish into NZ’s waterways. It’s an election year which means everyone is “Will you take us to Mount Splashmore”ing the Once We Built A Tower revival at me, and trust me, We Will Honour the late Dean Parker somehow and somewhere. I saw a play in the Pioneer Women’s Memorial Hall last year and thought “This is where I will do Timon of Athens, at last!” In the past few years I have been secretly drawn towards Tennessee Williams – Tennessee Williams, I tell you! A revival of Jean Betts’ The Collective? People are saying to me “Hate Crimes has never been performed in Auckland!” and “Boy, that production of Mr Burns sucked but I’m sure someone could stage that great script properly in NZ!” I mean, I don’t know if I know how to direct anything that isn’t direct address Shakespeare anymore, but remember Ibsen? Durrenmatt? I love those guys!

None of us really knows what is going to happen. Will theatres even be able to open and function properly as the year continues, or will it all just descend into some Zoomish hell where every character in every play ever has contrived to be in on a conference call? No one knows! But I know this: even as zombies feast on the beach-rotten corpses of those tasered for breaching lockdown in order to surf during level 4, The Bacchanals will rise from the ashes, even if it’s just to sit around campfires recreating golden age Simpsons episodes. Watch the skies for the bat signal! Look for the hidden symbolage in my Instagram pictures for They Will Hold The Clues. We Will Return and it will be glorious!

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IT'S ALMOST DECEMBER 2015 AND OUR FIRST EVER CHRISTMAS SHOW IS ABOUT TO OPEN!!!

“Statistics tell us that over 1,001,001 New Zealanders want our theatres to put on more plays about, by and for robots,” says director David Lawrence, “but will Creative NZ listen??” Of course not! all they care about are objectives and outcomes, like the robots they are destined to be replaced by. So be thankful that your old pals The Bacchanals Are Back!TM and ready to punch common sense in the goolies (screw you Microsoft Word for that red underline!) by giving you what you really want for Christmas: a Christmas show featuring Christmas and robots, performed by a combination of humans and robots! “The robots were meant to be a surprise,” laments Lawrence, “but they’re also the show’s main selling point so arghh!”

A Christmas Karel Čapek is the true story of how terrible consequences ensue when David and Brianne (played by the real life David and Brianne!) decide to overcome their shared misanthropy by building a robot to do all their human interaction and Christmas shopping for them. Will robots take over the world and kill all the humans? Will a human and a robot fall in unnatural love and civil union each other and a dog? Will Santa Claus make a terrifying appearance dressed as the Norse God Odin? You decide! (not really, there’s a script!) “But I like it best when The Bacchanals are being political and righteous,” you groan. “We hear you, but sometimes we just have to be silly and frivolous. Pleeeeeease let us just have this one show!” they groan back.

A Christmas Karel Čapek is by far the cleverest name a Wellington play has had in 2015 because only about three and a half people understand the joke: Karel Čapek was the Czech playwright who, in 1920, appropriated the Czech word ‘robot’ (meaning slave) to describe mechanical men built by humans to do their bidding in his famous play RUR (Rossum’s Universal Robots). We’re explaining this in the media release because otherwise everyone will ask us “WHAT DOES THE TITLE MEAN??” and we could be talking about so many more interesting things than that, like Creationism or the Illuminati (another red underline? you’re not fooling anyone, Bill Gates!). A Christmas Karel Čapek is The Bacchanals’ first ever Christmas show! their third and final show for 2015! their 32nd show as a company! Live music! Comedy! Satire! Cookery!

A Christmas Karel Čapek stars stalwarts Kirsty Bruce, Brianne Kerr, Alex Greig, David Lawrence and Salesi Le’ota with a special guest appearance by Jean Sergent, design by the brilliant Harriet Denby, music composed by Ellie Stewart & Walter Plinge, and some other Bacchanals are involved like Aidan Weekes, Alice May Connolly, Charlotte Simmonds, Dasha Fedchuk, Hilary Penwarden, Michael Ness, Michael Trigg and Neenah Dekkers-Reihana but in ways we cannot possibly reveal to you until you see the show!

When is it on? WEDNESDAY 2 – SATURDAY 19 DECEMBER! (the first Wednesday and Thursday are the cheap previews!)

What time? 7pm, meatbags!

How long is it? 90 minutes, possibly even less!

How do I book? Go to www.bats.co.nz – simple as that!

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IT’S APRIL 2015 AND HERE WE ARE UPDATING THE WEBSITE AT LONG LAST!

First first first, our most belated and enduring thanks to all who saw our 15th birthday production of Richard III at BATS Theatre in January. We had a wonderful summer and a fantastic season – 92%! – and it was great to see so many of you out in force supporting us and enjoying the splendour of The Dome. Hard work making it feel like home given how new and shiny new-new-BATS is but we worked hard to break things and make the space feel like a swankier version of the Long Hall and wow were the bar happy to have us there (it was Crystal and Kiwa’s first time running the bar with The Bacchanals in the building and boy did we impress them!). Richard III was so much fun that Kirsty had to have her appendix out mid-season but we are all so mentally synchronised after so long together that Hilary was able to play Queen Elizabeth for the last four shows with little notice and no rehearsal.

A lot has happened since then! The Fringe Festival! You may have seen Joe and Carolyn and Mia and Michael Trigg in Thin; you may have caught David or Jonny or Jean or Aidan in Alice May’s show What We Talk About When We Talk About; Jean was in Timon of Athens; Aidan was in Wake Up Tomorrow; Aidan, Joe and Trigg were also in Don’t Ever Forget, and deservedly kicking arse at the Fringe awards was Jonny’s Loose: A Private History of Booze and Iggy Pop which was a terrific, terrific show. Hilary, Brianne and Alice May have just been in Uther’s Tiny Deaths and Hilary and David have also been working on Where There’s A Will, all under the roof of new-new-BATS. Ellie is in the US! Brianne has just left for the UK! Ania has just left for the UK, via the US! Hilary is about to leave for the UK! The Mountain Goats’ new album Beat The Champ is on repeat on all our iPods! But telling you what we’ve all been doing is not the purpose of this update! The purpose of this update is to tell you that we can confirm TWO NEW BACCHANALS PRODUCTIONS for 2015, with at least one more sneaking in somewhere when we work out how and where!

NUMBER ONE: LYSISTRATA PREVIEWS ON WEDNESDAY 20 MAY!

That’s right! We know a cash cow when we see one ready to be milked, and if history has proven anything it’s that Ancient Greek plays actually do us better box office than Shakespeare! But we’re being disingenuous, because we also really like doing them and who earns money doing theatre anyway?! (seriously, Richard III made $10k at the box office but that doesn’t go very far when there are 23 people in the co-op!) So, after The Frogs (2000), The Bacchae (2003) and The Clouds (2013), we are so happy to be bringing you a brand new version of Aristophanes’ Lysistrata – the last professional production of this play in Wellington was at Downstage in 1992 and lest you see a pattern, let me assure you that we aren’t in 2015 just going to rip off all the shows David enjoyed seeing in sixth form drama. Lysistrata is the timeless tale of the women of Athens banding together in the midst of the Peloponnesian War and coming up with the most audacious and perfect plan for ending international conflict forever: no more sex until men end all war!

Lysistrata will play at BATS in the Dome (or the Do-me if you prefer) and will star a slightly-depleted number of Bacchanals: Brianne Kerr! Kirsty Bruce! Ellie Stewart! Alice May Connolly! Jean Sergent! Salesi Le’ota! Alex Greig! Michael Ness! Walter Plinge! Returning to the fold after an extended absence due to having a baby is the mighty Jonny Potts! And making her Bacchanals debut is the fabulous Neenah Dekkers-Reihana, the one member of the Dekkers/Dekkers-Reihana/van Oyen family not to have been in the Richard III company. A brand new text by The Bacchanals themselves, with a song lyric or two by Paul Rothwell, some singing and dancing, and … well, let me put it this way: for a while scholars were in debate as to whether comic phalluses in ancient Greek Comedy were limp or erect; Lysistrata is the play that proves that they must have usually been limp because … well, just come and see the show. It’s a Greek comedy, so be warned!

Lysistrata! BATS Theatre! Previewing on Wednesday 20 and Thursday 21 May at 8pm! Gala opening (i.e. free wine!!) on Friday 22 May at 8pm! Playing from thence until Saturday 6 June, 8pm every night except Sundays and Mondays! 85 minutes in duration (or maybe 90!), 2426 years in the making! Book now by visiting www.bats.co.nz or e-mailing book@bats.co.nz or phoning them on (04) 802-4175!

NUMBER TWO: OUR CHRISTMAS SHOW PREVIEWS ON WEDNESDAY 1 DECEMBER!

What the what?! Christmas is 8 months away but that gives you 8 months to get your heads around the long-awaited premiere of a show that has been in the Bacchanals pipeline for a long, long time and turning it into a Christmas show was the perfect solution to all its script problems. A Christmas Karel Capek is what you get if you cross Aristophanes with Charles Dickens with Isaac Asimov and make them perform a cookery show whose main dish is existential angst. Can’t tell you much more than that! but maybe when we’ve written the Guano blurb we’ll have more to say. The clue is in the title, and perhaps in that picture over there. A Christmas Karel Capek previews on Wednesday 1 and Thursday 2 December (yep, after Richard III we Bacchanals believe more than ever in the necessity of a couple of decent previews before officially opening!) and then runs from Friday 3 December until Saturday 19 December. BATS Theatre, on the Propeller Stage! Start time to be confirmed, but it’ll probably be a 7pm one … You probably can’t book for it yet but we’ll let you know as soon as you can!

That’s it from us for now! But North Island, expect to have Once We Built A Tower trashing your towns just as soon as we can get a trailer and $30k. South Island, we will be back in you before long! (maybe early 2016?) Watch the skies for our signal!

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PEOPLE! WE’RE A MONTH OUT FROM OUR 15TH BIRTHDAY AND OUR 30TH SHOW! RICHARD III IS COMING TO GET YOU!

That’s right! January 2015 is looming and that means Richard III is about to bust out of his car-park grave and bite you in the face! (or touch your heart, you choose!) The Bacchanals are so, so, so excited to be celebrating our 15th birthday and our 30th show with Shakespeare’s brilliant history play about how a criminal can somehow dupe the whole country into voting for him despite the overwhelming evidence that he’s spying on everyone or how many times he gets caught lying! And how happy are we to be launching the new year at new-new-BATS? the answer is very! BATS Theatre has finally returned to its newly-refurbished home base at 1 Kent Terrace. Much as we had a great time doing The Clouds, Gunplay and Once We Built A Tower at the temporary premises on Cuba & Dixon, we are so happy to be returning to the building that was home to Wealth and Hellbeing, Crave, The Bacchae, Romeo and Juliet, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Hate Crimes, I.D., A Renaissance Man, No Taste Forever!, Slouching Toward Bethlehem and Other People's Wars - and for the first time ever, we'll be performing UPSTAIRS in THE DOME (that's right, new-new-BATS has not one but THREE performance spaces!).

Depending on how you want to look at it, Richard III will be either the culmination of the past four years' hard work rebuilding The Bacchanals pretty much from scratch with a whole new ensemble and a more pronounced philosophy, OR it will be the beginning of another new exciting phase for us as we start out in a new building under new circumstances with strange and different plans for the coming years! Which is nice, because that's where Richard III falls in the Shakespeare canon - either the last play Shakespeare wrote before the establishment of the Lord Chamberlain's Men so therefore the culmination of him establishing himself as a brilliant new playwright to pay attention to and establishing Richard Burbage as an actor who could lead a company, OR the play that launched the new company with Burbage and Shakespeare as its leading lights!

What do we need to tell you about the story? Nothing! At the end of decades of war, one deformed man builds an empire with the help of his unfailingly loyal friends and overcomes his terrible posture and hideous appearance to become king of the world! Sounds great, David - what about the story of the play? easy: at the end of decades of war, one deformed man builds an empire with the help of ... oh, I get it! All your old favourites are back: Alex Greig makes his 26th Bacchanals appearance as the Duke of Clarence and Lord Hastings! Salesi Le'ota makes his 13th appearance as the Duke of Buckingham! Clocking up 11 appearances to date are Brianne Kerr as the Duchess of York and Kirsty Bruce as Queen Elizabeth! Making her 10th Bacchanals appearance is Jean Sergent as Catesby! On their 8th shows each are Hilary Penwarden as Tyrrel and the First Murderer and Joe Dekkers-Reihana as Lord Rivers and the Earl of Richmond! He's been there since Othello in year one, but incredibly playing Lord Stanley will only be the 7th time Michael Ness has been onstage with us! Ellie Stewart as Queen Margaret is making her 6th (unless you count the portrait of her in All?s Well That Ends Well) appearance! All sitting on a respectable 5 each are Michael Trigg as Dorset & Brackenbury, Alice May Connolly as Lord Vaughan & the Second Murderer, and Aidan Weekes as King Edward IV, the Mayor of London, the Bishop of Ely, the Ghost of Henry VI and Sir William Brandon! As Lord Grey and the Duke of Norfolk, Uther Dean?s tally is all over the place, having lit Other People's Wars, The Clouds and Once We Built A Tower, appearing in Gunplay but also covering for Jonny in The Clouds some nights! Making her Bacchanals debut is Ania Upstill as Lady Anne! Also making their Bacchanals debuts are Maddie Gillespie and Mia Van Oijers as the young princes, and Aidan Gillespie, Iris Polaschek and Olivia Moxey as the Clarence children. Mia and Iris are the first second-generation Bacchanals - Mia is Joe's niece, and long-time Bacchanals viewers will have seen Iris' father Mark Cleary in 6 of our early shows, including a definitive Malvolio in our 2003 Twelfth Night. And playing the title role of Dick the Shit is none other than Bacchanals artistic director David Lawrence himself! (Don't worry, this won't be the heralding of some new Hurstian director-leading man combination - it's just that David hits an important birthday in 2015 and is therefore allowing himself one obnoxious vanity piece.)

Richard III plays in the Dome at BATS Theatre, 1 Kent Terrace, from Tuesday 13 January to Saturday 31 January at 7pm every night except Sundays & Mondays (and Wednesday 28 January). $12 preview performances on 13 & 14 January, and then the full-price, full-season from the 15th! Visit book@bats.co.nz to book tickets ? do it now! ? or phone (04) 8024175! Hurry ? we promise you a winter of discontent made glorious summer !

NOVEMBER 2014: AN IMPORTANT UPDATE ABOUT BLUE STOCKINGS!

02/11/2014: Thanks so much to everyone who's come to see our production of Jessica Swale's fantastic play Blue Stockings at The Long Hall so far - we're having a fabulous season despite the crazy northwesterly wind wreaking havoc. Just wanted to let you know that for THE PERFORMANCE ON SATURDAY 8 NOVEMBER we have CHANGED THE START-TIME so as not to compete with Wellington City Council's planned fireworks display. So Saturday's show will start at SIX P.M. and not 7pm as previously advertised, and then you can all hang with us and watch the fireworks from Point Jerningham! If you've already booked for the show that night we'll be sending you an e-mail to tell you this same news. If you intend to try for a door sale that night, take into account that we're starting an hour earlier. If you're not intending to see the show but were planning to come up to Point Jerningham to watch the fireworks (or let off your own) and just happened to stumble across this website, please be conscious that there'll be a show on in the hall until about 8.45pm and keep the noise down! Hoping to see you all this week for the last six performances of Blue Stockings!

BREAKING NEWS ? ANNOUNCING THE 29TH AND 30TH BACCHANALS SHOWS!!! YES, PEOPLE ? TWO NEW THRILLING SHOWS WITH THE FIRST ONE OPENING VERY VERY SOON!

First off, a huge thank you to everyone who saw or supported the South Island tour of Once We Built A Tower ? what a glorious fortnight we had, what special shows they were and what lovely generous audiences we had. I don?t think any Bacchanal will ever forget the reception we had from the hospitable-beyond-belief people in Kurow, birthplace of Social Security in New Zealand and central to the events of our play. Don?t worry if you missed out ? we won?t be finished with Once We Built A Tower until everyone in the country has seen it. Expect more performances of Once We Built A Tower in 2015 (and maybe a couple before the end of 2014 since we have a slight car-written-off-related deficit to deal to!), and South Island ? be assured You Will See Us Again. Lock up your dogs!

BUT MORE IMMEDIATELY: We are absolutely beside ourselves with joy to be able to finally, finally tell you these cold hard facts, Bacchanals fans: The Bacchanals Will ReturnTM to a stage near you (if you live in Roseneath, very near you! watch the police raid Nicky Hager?s house during the interval if you like) on TUESDAY 28 OCTOBER at 7pm with the New Zealand premiere (!!) of Jessica Swale?s BLUE STOCKINGS. David saw this fabulous play during its season at Shakespeare?s Globe last year and we all agreed that it would be the perfect follow-up to Once We Built A Tower in this post-election gloom.

“A woman who expends her energy exercising the brain does so at the expense of her vital organs,” said Dr Henry Maudsley, world-renowned psychiatrist and advisor to the royal family in 1874.77, women in the rest of the British Empire were still fighting for the right to education despite matching their male peers grade for grade. Blue Stockings tells the tale of four women studying science at Girton College, Cambridge in 1896, the year that headmistress Elizabeth Welsh convinced the University senate that women should be allowed to graduate with degrees.

We don’t really want to tell you much more about it other than to say, come and see it because it will be as great as waking up to discover September was a bad dream and Jacinda is our prime minister! Blue Stockings stars your old pals Hilary Penwarden as Tess Moffat, Ellie Stewart as Celia Willbond, Alice May Connolly as Maeve Sullivan, Brianne Kerr as Carolyn Addison, Aidan Weekes as Ralph Mayhew, Michael Trigg as Lloyd, Salesi Le’ota as Holmes, Jean Sergent as Elizabeth Welsh, Kirsty Bruce as Eleanor Blake, Walter Plinge as Mr Banks, Michael Ness as Dr Maudsley, and the swaggeringly handsome Joe Dekkers-Reihana as Will Bennett, and the show is directed by David Lawrence. There will be bicycles! science! astronomy! philosophy! politics! French folk-dancing! heartbreak!

Let us give you all that information once again in a palatable form:

What is it? it’s the NZ premiere of Blue Stockings by Jessica Swale

Where is it? The Long Hall, Point Jerningham – behind Roseneath School and St Barnabus’.

When is it on? 11 shows only! Tuesday 28 October – Saturday 8 November, 7pm every night except for Sunday.

How do I book for it? Send us an email to tickets@thebacchanals.net telling us night you’d like to come and how many tickets you’d like and we’ll book you in. The Long Hall has a very limited capacity so booking in advance is preferable. All tickets are $15! Also, we don’t have Eftpos or credit card facilities and there aren’t any nearby money machines, so PLEASE make sure you BRING CASH with you. (We wouldn’t normally put it in angry capitals but some of you never made good on those All’s Well IOUs!)

Who took that gorgeous photo of Ellie? That’d be the fabulous Douglas Chubb!

Lastly, didn’t you say something about the 29th AND 30th shows?!? You betcha. The second biggest event of January 2015 after Belle & Sebastian playing at Laneway will undoubtedly be The Bacchanals’ 15th birthday production of Shakespeare’s Richard III. Do we really need to say any more than that? Richard III! It’s going to be amazing!!

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BREAKING NEWS - ONCE WE BUILT A TOWER

IS TOURING: YES YES YES, THE BACCHANALS ARE COMING TO THE SOUTH ISLAND IN AUGUST, FRIENDS!!!

IMPORTANT TOUR UPDATES for those of you checking out this website frequently:

1. We are doing a SPECIAL FUNDRAISING PERFORMANCE of Once We Built A Tower at the Long Hall on MONDAY 18 AUGUST at 7pm! (what? Monday night? why? because Alex is in a show at Circa and it's his only night off and he's kinda important so we work to his timetable, not he to ours!) That's right, 7pm and you can book by flicking a message to tickets@thebacchanals.net and we'll hit you right back to confirm!

2. Monday 18 August is also the deadline for folk to contribute to our Boosted campaign - we're trying to crowdsource a bit of extra dosh so that Aidan doesn't have to sleep in the van (and so we can afford a van! or do you have a van you wanna give us? go on, give us a van, it'll be great!). This is the link: http://www.boosted.org.nz/projects/taking-dean-parker%27s-once-we-built-a-tower-to-the-south-island Spread the word and tell your rich friends to give some of their money to us so we can give you a play for nothing!

AND HERE'S THE PROPER OFFICIAL STUFF ABOUT THE TOUR!!

Lock your whiskey cabinet and grab your guns, because your friends and ours The Bacchanals are bringing an all-new, all-improved, all-singing-all-milking production of Dean Parker’s Once We Built A Tower to the South Island! We are SO EXCITED to be giving this play another outing, and SO EXCITED to be coming to some places that feature prominently in the story of how the 1935 Labour Government used the medical insurance scheme at the Waitaki Dam as their basis for creating a Welfare State that was once the envy of the world. Brought to you with the wonderful support of Emerging Artists Trust Wellington, Interislander and Coffee Supreme (and hopefully several more sponsors who can't be confirmed at the time of this website update!), Once We Built A Tower will play a different town every night for a fortnight beginning Monday 25 August. Here at Bacchanals HQ in Wellington we are stocking up on tinned beans and polypropylene, learning new songs and new lines, and you had better watch out, South Island, because this show is going to punch your heart in the face and then bear-hug you with love. And it will be the hug of a bear stuck in a cage for years able to see the South Island from its prison and crying, “If I could only get sponsored ferry travel or afford a plane ticket to cross the Cook Strait, I’d be with you right now! Watch how I eat your children! Just watch!!”

This is the low-down, friends:

On MONDAY 25 AUGUST we will be in ASHBURTON at the Sinclair Centre, 74 Park Street!

On TUESDAY 26 AUGUST we will be in TIMARU (Brianne’s home town!) at the Caroline Bay Community Lounge!

On WEDNESDAY 27 AUGUST The Bacchanals will finally realise a lifelong ambition: we will be in TWIZEL (!!) at the Twizel Events Centre, 61 McKenzie Drive!

On THURSDAY 28 AUGUST we will be in TEKAPO at the Tekapo Community Hall, Aorangi Crescent!

On FRIDAY 29 AUGUST we will be in OMARAMA at the Omarama Community Centre!

On SATURDAY 30 AUGUST we will be in KUROW at the Kurow Memorial Hall – this will be a night to remember, people!

On Sunday 31 August we’ll be trying to find illegal downloads of Peter Capaldi’s first two episodes as the Doctor!

On MONDAY 1 SEPTEMBER we will be in OAMARU at the Oamaru Scottish Hall (Malcolm Murray, you are going to get the biggest hug in the world)!

On TUESDAY 2 SEPTEMBER we will be in DUNEDIN at the Otago Pioneer Women’s Memorial Association Hall, Moray Place!

On WEDNESDAY 3 SEPTEMBER we will be in GORE at the James Cumming Wing Lecture Theatre, corner of Ardwick Street and Civic Ave!

On THURSDAY 4 SEPTEMBER we will be in BALCLUTHA at the Balclutha Theatrical Society Hall, 4 George Street!

On FRIDAY 5 SEPTEMBER we will be in ROXBURGH at Miller’s Flat Hall, 1674 Teviot Road!

On SATURDAY 6 SEPTEMBER we will be in the Clyde/Alexandra area, at the Clyde Memorial Hall, corner of Fraser and Newcastle Streets!

All performances begin at 7pm! We are very, very committed to this idea that theatre should be accessible to ALL and that you shouldn’t miss out on live performance just because you don’t live in a major city. To that end, WE ARE NOT CHARGING ADMISSION. (You can & probably should give us koha or a donation because god knows how we’re going to make up the balance of the $25,000 this tour is costing us. And tell your rich friends that if they want to give money to a worthy cause, they should throw some pictures of the Queen our way!) We want you to come on down, see a free play, have a cup of tea (or maybe a wine/beer/cider/absinthe) with us after and let us sing you songs and tell you tales of NZ local history! This is the mightiest army of Bacchanals ever to take a show on the road (even though we’re leaving some formidable warriors at home): Alex Greig plays Gervan McMillan, Kirsty Bruce plays Ethel McMillan, Brianne Kerr plays Frances Nordmeyer, Michael Trigg plays Arnold Nordmeyer, Michael Joseph Ness plays Michael Joseph Savage, Jean Sergent plays the Medical Association, Joe Dekkers-Reihana plays Peter Fraser, Aidan Weekes plays Walter Nash, Hilary Penwarden plays the piano, Ellie Stewart plays the fiddle and David Lawrence plays the banjo, guitar, mandolin and clarinet.

Tell all your friends! Tell your rich friends to give us money! Tell your friends with spare rooms/spare beds in the South Island that they should let us stay with them! (we’re all house-trained; we’ll do your dishes and weed your gardens!) Wanna loan us a van? trailer? petrol? Do it! Or send us an e-mail or something. The Once We Built A Tower tour is going to be great!!

We are SO LOOKING FORWARD to seeing you all very soon!

In other news FOUR (or maybe five!) Bacchanals projects for the end of 2014/start of 2015. Most of you probably know by this stage that in JANUARY 2015 we will be at the Long Hall celebrating our FIFTEENTH BIRTHDAY with our THIRTIETH SHOW and that it is going to be the most surprising production of Richard III you'll ever be surprised by! But there are plenty of other surprises in store, so don't let your guard down lest we jump out at you in the dark and ninja you to death with them!