Abel Revéret, a young classical Indian dance teacher and multidisciplinary performance artist, invites you to embark on a voyage around the globe to explore myths and legends of various cultures, across Eurasia, Africa and Polynesia. 

From medieval times to the dawn of our globalised era, this voyage will transport us through the ages. Be immersed in myriad languages, colourful attires and dance styles. 

This choreographed storytelling is an enacted appreciation for all cultures of the world and attempts to demonstrate to its audience the goodness inside human nature; we all possess something wonderful bubbling inside ourselves that yearns to be expressed and shared with the world. 

A Mesmerising Voyage invites people of all ages with an open mind, an inquisitive nature and a love for humanity!

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Artist bio

Abel Revéret’s artistic journey began in 2016 at the Opera of Clermont-Ferrand. Since then, he has taken on lead and ensemble roles in theatre productions in both French and English, and has brought Indian classical dance to stages and festivals in Ōtepoti Dunedin, under the Natyaloka and MāyāDharā Schools of Dance. 

Abel earned top awards at the French National Dance Competition in 2017 and 2018, and has received prestigious certifications in 2024 and 2025 from the International Dance Council. Now a dance teacher, Abel continues to weave performance, craft and culture across national and global scales.

Credits

Credit to my dance teachers Smt. Shyamala Surendran, Marie-Martine Fleck, Hemant Devara, Ksenya Stepanova, Smt. Smitha Rajan, Swaroopa Prameela Unni, Dr. Sankalita Ray Das, and to my inspiration, my mother Émilie Revéret.

Nominated for 10 awards at the Nelson and Dunedin Fringe Festivals, Bones is an acclaimed one-man play co-created by Julian Noel and directed by Martine Baanvinger.

Raw, funny and profoundly moving, Julian Noel brings eight unforgettable family members to life in a performance that is both intimate and epic. With little more than a table, three chairs, a suitcase and a handful of everyday objects, an ordinary kitchen becomes a place where memories awaken, secrets surface and generations collide.

At its heart lies a simple but profound truth: At some point, someone in the family has to tell the truth.

Bones transcends culture, touching the universal experiences of love, loss, abandonment, belonging, resilience and forgiveness. It explores the invisible stories passed from one generation to the next, and the courage it takes to break cycles that have shaped families for decades.

Audiences laugh, cry and often find themselves reflecting on their own family long after the final curtain. More than theatre, Bones is an invitation to remember, to reconnect and to discover that healing begins the moment someone is brave enough to tell the truth.

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Bio

Julian Noel is a writer, actor and storyteller who believes that telling the truth is one of the most powerful acts of theatre. For more than forty years he has worked across theatre, television, film and community arts, creating work that is honest, courageous and deeply human. His acclaimed one-man play Bones , co-created with director Martine Baanvinger, was nominated for ten awards across the Nelson and Dunedin Fringe Festivals. Julian's work transcends culture, inviting audiences to laugh, cry and recognise something of themselves in every story he tells. He lives in Queenstown, Aotearoa New Zealand, where he continues to write, perform and develop new work exploring what it means to be fully human.

LETDOWN is an intimate, sharp-edged theatre work exploring the postpartum experience as it is rarely portrayed: raw, funny, frightening, and deeply human.

Drawing on letters written by Marea during late-night breastfeeding sessions, the work weaves together personal reflection, feminist history, and cultural myth to ask what happens when joy and terror arrive in the same body at the same time. Through stand-up–style comedy, surreal storytelling, and moments of creeping psychological horror, LETDOWN explores exhaustion, identity loss, bodily vulnerability, and the unspoken expectations placed on new mothers.

Laughter sits beside dread; tenderness collides with rage.

This is not a gentle birth story. It is a love letter, a warning, and a survival guide – written in milk, sweat, and dark humour – for anyone who has given birth, supported someone who has, or wondered why we do not talk about this part of life out loud.

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With thanks to:

Sofian Hadrian - Set Builder

Katy Lockwood - Photography and Stage Management

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Bios

Marea Colombo - Co-Writer and Performer

Colombo makes up half of Late Boomers, a local company established in Ōtepoti 2021. Originally from a dance background, Colombo came to theatre through the Dunedin-based comedy troupe Discharge in 2014. She has since become an integral part of the community, producing for Arcade Theatre Company and becoming the Artistic Director for Improsaurus. Her work with Late Bloomers has taken her across stages from Adelaide Fringe to NZ International Comedy Festival, where she was shortlisted for the Billy T Award in 2024. Her comedic strength is reflected in the plethora of award-winning one-woman shows she has created and performed.

Winner – Outstanding Performer 2023 Dunedin Fringe

Winner – NZ Fringe Tour Ready Award 2022

Winner – Most Promising Emerging Company 2023 NZ Fringe

Nominee – Best in Fringe 2024 Dunedin Fringe

Nominee – Best in Theatre 2024 Dunedin Fringe

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Bronwyn Wallace - Co-Writer and Dramaturg

Wallace, the other half of Late Bloomers, has been producing theatre since the age of seventeen, before completing her Honours degree in Theatre and Gender Studies. She has extensive experience directing and producing theatre including being the Artistic Director for Counterpoint Productions, Production Manager for Improsaurus and co-creating Late Bloomers. Her passion lies in dramaturgy and direction, helping shape one-person shows into award-winning pieces (Babyface 2025, Baroness 2024, Flow 2023, Gaslight Me 2022). Wallace completed her Masters overseas and is currently working in Theatre and Events in Edinburgh.

Tabitha Littlejohn - Technical Design and Director

Tabitha is a theatre maker from Ōtepoti. Her work crosses many areas of theatre including technical design and operation, improvisation, writing, and teaching. As a technician, Tabitha is dynamic and precise with a great appreciation for the technician/ performer relationship and interplay. Her experience includes technical operation for Prima Facie (Birds of a Feather) and Wahine Mātātoa (Theatreworks), and design and operation for The Cherry Orchard (Sahara BreeZe) and Every Brilliant Thing (Birds of a Feather). Tabitha currently works as a Venue Manager for Te Whare o Rukutia and is studying a Master of Creative Performance Practice at Toi Whakaari.

Nobody tells you that getting older can feel like a slow-motion disappearing act. One day you're impossible to ignore. The next, even automatic doors don't see you.

In her new solo comedy show, award-winning performer Nicola Brown explores what happens when ageing, changing bodies and modern technology collide. As the world becomes faster and increasingly run by algorithms, human connection can start to feel awkward, unpredictable, and sometimes hard work. Meanwhile, your phone is always available, perpetually listening, and seems endlessly interested in you.

Drawing on sharp stand-up, personal storytelling, queer experience, and the occasional existential wobble, Invisible to the Naked AI explores visibility, belonging, and the offbeat ways we learn to adapt when the spotlight seems to move on. It's about refusing to be overlooked, underestimated, and quietly encouraged to fade into the background.

This isn't a story about disappearing. It's about what happens when you decide to keep shining.

Funny, heartfelt and powered by joy, rage and hot flushes, Invisible to the Naked AI dances towards a joyful celebration of taking up space and being gloriously and imperfectly human.

Wear comfortable shoes. No one's looking, anyway.

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Content notes

- Audience participation (optional)

- Contains some coarse language

- Contains comedic discussion of sex/anatomy, references to chronic illness/pain, and adult humor.

- Recommended for mature audiences.

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With thanks to:

Elysian Foods (sponsor)

Creative NZ (creative communities grant)

Georgie Sivier (creative consultant)

Angelina Cockerill (choreographer)

The Tuesday night crew at Black & White Dance Studio

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Bio

Nicola Brown is a Dunedin-based comedian, writer, speaker, executive coach and clinical psychologist. She lives with her wife, son, an opinionated miniature schnauzer, and a cat who specialises in rodent relocation. Irreverent and deadpan, with "a whimsical sense of depressive irony", she weaves together comedy, storytelling and PowerPoint slide decks to make taboo subjects – such as LGBTQI+ experience, women's health, midlife invisibility – hilarious, relatable and accessible. 

Her award-winning debut show, Space Invaders, toured Aotearoa and Adelaide Fringe, earning praise as "Queer comedy heaven" from Heartline Reviews. 

Life as the colonised and coloniser.

In He Māori?, Īhaka Martyn will lead the audience on a journey from total confusion to partial understanding – weaving together elements of stand-up comedy, waiata, and theatrical performance to explore the doubt, celebration, and complicated nature of identity.

Fresh off four years of touring Aotearoa New Zealand, through schools and theatres alike, this flightless Kiwi is bringing the story back to where it began - Ōtākou. 

He aha? He Māori? Is he? Maybe – it depends.

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Bio

Īhaka Huia James Martyn (Ngāti Tūwharetoa, Te Arawa, Ngāti Raukawa; Ireland, Scotland, England, Wales) is a playwright, actor, and until recently the Script Coordinator at He Rōpū Tautoko Tito Whakaari o Aotearoa, Playmarket. I tipu ake ia ki Tāmaki-makau-rau, e noho ana ia ki Pōneke ināianei. He studied Music and Theatre at Otago University and a Masters in Scriptwriting at the IIML at Te Herenga Waka. His most recent artistic credits are writing the debut season of The Aotearoans in Kia Mau Festival 2025, playing 'Billy' in Ella Yiannoutsos' No No No in 2024/25, and multiple seasons of his autobiographical solo piece, He Māori? from 2022-2026. Īhaka has been making stuff and breaking legs in theatres around the motu since he was a kid, and is always delving for what tugs at the puku. 

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Photo credit: Fender Maeva

Pause. Breathing, looking, closing. Time passes in pieces. Forwards from behind. Forwards but never back. Do you remember? Do I remember? The Ouroboros continues to eat its tail… 1983. March. The second. Is it a dream or a memory? Or a conversation with the Other, where Other is Self. The voice heard in my head is my own, but not me. Not fully. The certainty of uncertainty. Always touching but never falling. Again? Again.

The lastest installment of Richard Huber’s new series of plays is making its debut at TAHI Ōtepoti. Directed-designed by Jordan Wichman and performed by Moira Fortin Cornejo, Not Yet Named: Nicola #5 2/3/83 is a reflection on love, loss, life and what we make of it. 

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Bios

Jordan Wichman

Jordan Wichman is an emerging designer and director from Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland. Based in Ōtepoti Dunedin since 2017, she has completed a Bachelor of Performing Arts and Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in Theatre Studies at the University of Otago. While known best for her lighting and set designs, Wichman has directed several notable works in the Lunchtime Theatre Programme, and won Emerging Artist in the 2020/2021 Dunedin Theatre Awards for her direction of Caryl Churchill’s Heart’s Desire in 2020. This is Wichman’s professional directorial debut.

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Moira Fortin Cornejo 

Moira is an actress and Lecturer in the Programme of Languages and Cultures at the University of Otago, New Zealand. As a performer and interdisciplinary researcher, she has contributed to the understanding of Rapa Nui (Easter Island) culture and performance for over fifteen years. Her current research explores translation as a cultural and creative practice, examining how ideas, performances, and knowledge are transformed as they move across languages, media, and cultural contexts. This includes research on the adaptation of Henrik Ibsen's A Doll's House into an illustrated book, as well as a multilingual visual publication inspired by the work of the Chilean feminist collective LASTESIS, which investigates how academic research can be translated into accessible visual formats for broader public audiences. Moira has also worked as both researcher and translator on productions such as The Motorway (2017–2019) and its Spanish-language adaptation La Panamericana (2019), examining how linguistic translation reshapes theatrical production and performance. Her performance in The Motorway was recognised with a nomination for Best Performer at the 2018 Dunedin Fringe Festival.

Credits

Writer: Richard Huber

Director: Jordan Wichman

Production Designer: Jordan Wichman 

Performer: Moira Fortin Cornejo

Stage Manager: Sahara Pohatu-Trow

A collaboration between a poet, choreographer, dancer, and a composer, this show mines the depths of grief, faith, and growth. Rooted in place (Ōtepoti Dunedin) and in distance (between Ōtepoti and the home of a distant lover), this performance is about how sometimes the cost of profound connection is breaking open the heart like a summer fruit – in the dead of winter. The exploration is presented in the body, which is where these connections are born and reside: through dance, sound/music, and poetry. 

Audiences can expect a profoundly emotional exploration of investment in the connections between people – lovers, family, friends. The show will begin outside of the theatre, a performative promenade in which the audience integrates and finds their seats in a collective river of movement.

The performance will be followed by a kōrero with the performer/poet and composer.

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Poetry: Kim Cope Tait

Music composition: Maddy Parkins-Craig

Choreography: Sofia Kalogeropoulou

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Bios 

Maddy Parkins-Craig

Dr Maddy Parkins-Craig is a Senior Lecturer of Music at the University of Otago. She holds a DMA in Studio Production, as well as a MusB(Hons), both from the University of Otago. Maddy works as composer, songwriter, music producer and multi-instrumentalist, and has performed with a diverse range of ensembles around Aotearoa. Her composition New Mountain was recorded by the NZSO in 2024, and her debut piece for string quartet, TwentyNineteen, received the Music Award at the 2023 Dunedin Fringe Festival.

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Sofia Kalogeropoulou

Sofia Kalogeropoulou is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the School of Performing Arts, University of Otago. She has a long-standing international career as a dance educator, dancer and choreographer. Sofia enjoys collaborating with artists from diverse fields to create interdisciplinary contemporary dance, physical theatre and immersive installation art works. Selected works include Anderson’s Localisation (Dunedin Arts Festival, 2025), TwentyNineteen (Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2023), Cartographies of a future (Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2023), The Air we Breathe, the Air we Fear (Arts+Science, 2022), The Motorway and La Panamericana (TAHI Festival; Dunedin Fringe Festival, 2019).

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Kim Cope Tait

Kim Cope Tait holds an MFA in Writing at Vermont College of Fine Arts (2000). She has a chapbook of poetry called Element (2005, Leaping Dog Press) and her full-length collection of poems, Shadow Tongue, was published with Finishing Line Press in 2018. Having lived in California, Hawaii, Switzerland, Vermont, and Colorado, Kim now lives in Ōtepoti Dunedin and has just submitted her PhD thesis in English Literature.  Her creative work has appeared in Landfall, Bad Apple, SWAMP Magazine, Two Thirds North, Axon, The Spinoff (The Friday Poem), Poetry Aotearoa Year Book 2026, Calyx, Counterfutures, and the Cimarron Review.

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