PRODUCTIONS
Live Theatre
& Music Productions
We develop stage productions that engage, inspire and connect with audiences. We have a passion for touring locally, nationally and internationally.
EAST COLLECTIVE
Music
The East Collective creates experiences tailored to your needs. A collective of musicians, narrators, storytellers and filmmakers we will work with your organisation or individual needs to ensure that the experience engages everyone.
A broad range of artists contribute to East Collective from musicians (who play multiple instruments), poets (songwriters, short and long form poetry), EDM (Electronic Dance Music), Visual artists (both illustration, digital mapping and paint) and filmmakers (to generate content to enhance your experience).
VINCENT
Theatre
Vincent by Leonard Nimoy is an excellent monologue portraying Vincent Van Gogh’s personal views and experience through his brother’s eyes. It is very well pieced together using Vincent and Theo’s letters and specific and transcendental moments in their life experience.
This was performed in 2017 by Creative Director Daniel Betty as part of the Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival to much acclaim. It was anticipated to tour the work through Australasia but the Covid epidemic hit.
This production is a special insight into the struggles of a mentally challenged artist. Dream Big are currently in discussion about revamping this work to tour in late 2026/27.
Links:
CONNECTED
Theatre
In a world where we are more connected than ever, are we really connected? What does it mean to truly engage with someone, switch off from the noise of the world and just be together. This performance is a mixture of dance, poetry, music and physical theatre. It explores the importance of maintaining connections to the real world and the people and places within it.
The show uses polarities to explore how they feel right now, right here in 2022. It was a challenging year in so many ways with post-covid lockdowns, learning to live with the virus, coping with a new normal and exploring how the ongoing sickness has affected them, their community and their country.
This performance was developed for the 2022 Creative Leaders for Toitoi Hawke’s Bay Events Centre.
BENEATH
THE SURFACE
Theatre
It is a performance that explores a number of Shakespearean pieces allowing actors to use physical storytelling techniques. From Midsummer Night’s Dream to Much Ado about Nothing, from Othello to Romeo and Juliet this piece takes all the best bits and allows the ensemble to engage the audience in a dynamic way.
Written for the 2019 ambassadors at the Harcourts Hawke’s Bay Arts Festival this piece is a mixture of scripted and devised work that has come out of a 10 week rehearsal period. It was received incredibly well by audiences during the festival.
TAHI AO
Theatre
One World, right?
Is it really? Why is it that we continue to push not only each other but our world to its limits? Who is in control? Should we want to be in control?
Tahi Ao (One World) is a confronting but humorous morality play and explores these questions deeply. Twelve teenagers have worked collaboratively with Directors Daniel Betty and Peter Cottrell to discuss issues like; Surviving, consumerism, religion, refugees, ownership, narcissism, bullying and much more. These issues are explored with humility and humour and the actors are challenged to work with truth.
The Gods, Mother Earth and Father Sky have been pulled apart by their children. As their love has been challenged, light floods the Earth and life explodes. The Gods struggle with Human Existence and how they are affecting the world we live in. They observe the hardships and inner struggles through 15 characters telling their intimate confessions. This breaking of the fourth wall challenges the audience into questioning “why we do these things to ourselves, and why do the Gods allow it?”
Tahi Ao is a physical theatre piece and allows the chorus to enhance each character using a multitude of theatrical conventions. By using a mixture of poetry, prose, silence, and soundscape the audience are riveted as they are pulled along this emotional roller-coaster.
This work was commissioned by HaBYT (Hawke’s Bay Youth Theatre Company) in 2016.
Links:
Contact us to request to read Tahi Ao
Opening Poem