Art Murmurs - 2024 Highlights!

Art Murmurs Team

It’s Theatre Awards season and every rehearsal room in the city is popping off with people discussing their favourite shows from the year past. Luckily for us here at Art Murmurs, we have a platform that extends beyond Toi Pōneke - this list! Here are the shows from 2024 that our team really connected with. Welcome to our soapbox.

   

Midnight Confessions - BATS Theatre

Katie Hill

Midnight Confessions was a raw, joyful celebration of girlhood—the conviction! I found myself leaning in, nodding along, laughing out loud. What really blew me away was how tight the anthology felt. Not in that overly rehearsed, everything’s perfect way (though, honestly no one skipped a beat), but in the way the actors clearly knew their material, because they loved it—and loved each other. You could hear every word land, because it meant something. If not to me, then to them or to the person whose story it was. The references hit just the right balance—not too niche, but enough to make you feel like you were in some kind of secret club (one you’d get a badge for in the lobby).
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Austin Harrison reviewed the first season of Midnight Confessions here.

Other shoutouts – Show do, Cafe (Hannah Playhouse), blackpill (BATS Theatre), Blip (BATS Theatre), Jez and Jaze (BATS Theatre). 
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Gravity and Grace - Circa Theatre/Aotearoa Festival

Jack McGee

Chris Kraus’s novel Aliens & Anorexia is a sprawling, non-linear, mish-mash of writing about art, failure, and sadness. It combines personal essay and artistic criticism with a novelisation of Kraus’s own feature film Gravity & Grace (loosely inspired by a book of the same name by philosopher Simone Veil). In adapting Anorexia into Gravity & Grace (the play), EBKM somehow managed to create a work that feels exactly like reading Kraus’s prose, while also being distinctly theatrical and moving. It’s a hyper-stimulating experience, absolutely stuffed to the brim with information and ideas.

I was unfamiliar with Kraus until seeing Gravity & Grace (the play) and have now been fully radicalised. The ending of the play is radically kind and optimistic. It is one of the most profound moments I’ve ever seen in a show. In Aliens & Anorexia (the book) this moment doesn't take place at the end, instead being buried in a tangent you could easily barrel right past. The most excited I’ve been about art this year wasn’t in a theatre, it was in my lounge. It was when I unwittingly stumbled into this section of the novel and realised just how shrewd an adaptation EBKM had put together. I’m thrilled to see that the Wellington Theatre Award judges agree with me. I have a lot more to say on this but we’ll get to that in the new year. For now, I still have more Kraus to read…

Lads on the Island - Circa Theatre

Jack McGee

No one in Aotearoa writes as many plays as Sam Brooks. I’m not complaining. Because he’s so prolific, there’s a tendency amongst theatre people to write off many of his plays as less significant, or minor Brooks. Firstly, isn’t it remarkable that we have any playwrights in Aotearoa with enough of an oeuvre that we can discard some works as minor? What a blessing! Secondly, I think this description has been unfairly attributed to Lads on the Island.

While its high-concept Shakespearean roots keep it from ever feeling quite as crackling and lived-in as my absolute favourites such as Wine Lips, Lads is as layered and emotionally rich as anything Brooks has written. Nī Dekkers-Reihana’s direction brings out the spectacle of the work, and stand out performer Reon Bell keeps the heart and feeling of the show ever present. At the very least, Lorde’s Ribs will never be used as effectively on stage again.

Corey Spence reviewed the show for us here.

Other Shout Outs - NO NO NO (BATS Theatre), Joanna Joy: Standing Still (Comedy Fest), Poprox: Farce Onion (Comedy Fest), Poprox (Circa Theatre), Dogs in the Hole (Newtown Community Centre), Jez & Jace (BATS).
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Trees, Bees, and Me! - Circa Theatre

Brie Keatley

My children’s theatre loving heart was truly and utterly filled by Trees, Bees, and Me! Every performance was truthful and dedicated, every costume was a feast for the eyes and every inch of the set immersed us into the play. It’s a tough world out there for children’s theatre companies so thank goodness we have someone as good as Horse with No Name!

You can read more about my love for this gorgeous wee play here.

Show Do, Cafe - Hannah Playhouse

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

I really loved how much this show, out of any other I saw this year, took it’s SWEET TIME with such a clear intention. Huge moment when they just served the audience coffee for like 5 to 10 minutes. Got the point across for me, not sure how others felt (aside from all the other people raving about it) but I thought that as a company they were a very joyful, united front. The music was SO GOOD and I have been jamming tunes like the ones in the show since I saw it. 
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You can read more thoughts on the show here
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PURE GRIME - ​The Gryphon

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

This show is an absolute hidden gem. The only decent bouffon I have seen in this country for a while now. Very thematically charged, the show as a whole had a very environmental anti-capitalist morality which I agree with but I was really there for the horrific disgusting clown that Em has created. Huge ups to this one and if it comes back you have to check it out. I honestly think it should be done in bars instead of theatres because it suits the vibe better and as someone who makes theatre I know for a fact that if your act can be in a bar then it’s a better idea to do it there than in a much more expensive theatre.

​You can read more thoughts on the show here.
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WEDLOCK - Old Saint Pauls

Sean Burnett Dugdale-Martin

Felt like literal history was being made for a lot of people. A crazy night, I have never been to a show with protestors outside before (there were 4 of them but they were videoing us as we left yikes) which I guess I can tick off the bucket list. A hugely impressive one night only affair and heaps of people were dressed up idk it just felt amazing.

​You can read more thoughts on the show here.

Purple is the Gayest Colour - BATS Theatre

This comedy show is what I’ve always wanted from stand up. It's goofy, sweet, and just so unapologetically gay. Not a second is wasted in this incredibly well crafted hour. Alayne Dick spends the entire show having the time of her life and we just get to relax into her storytelling. 

​It’s a show that has left an impression on me not only because I felt so seen as a closested queer in the 2000s and early 2010s but also because it’s left a new standard for what live comedy can be. The roaring laughter in that room still echoes. I look forward to seeing more of Dick’s work in the future. 

​Other shoutouts - NO NO NO (BATS Theatre), Show do Cafe (Hannah Playhouse), blackpill (BATS Theatre), Boys & Girls at the Silent School Disco (BATS Theatre), Midnight Confessions (BATS Theatre)