Culture yourself a little Bit With These Upcoming Events
Kia Mau
Festival 2025
30 May – 14 June, Wellington
Aotearoa’s biennial contemporary Tāngata Whenua, Tāngata Moana and Indigenous arts festival Kia Mau returns to Te Upoko o te Ika a Māui from 30 May – 14 June 2025, marking its 10th anniversary and the 8th iteration of the festival. Setting the stage for two weeks of live performance, storytelling and artistic excellence, the festival announces its first two shows with the return of the hugely popular ‘Avaiki Nui, and Atamira Dance Company’s acclaimed Ka Mua Ka Muri.
Best Foods Comedy Gala
2 May, Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Auckland
3 May, The Opera House, Wellington
Make sure to mark your calendars and get ready for a night of comedy as the New Zealand Comedy Trust proudly presents the Best Foods Comedy Gala for 2025, hosted by multi-talented comedy sensation, Hayley Sproull. This night serves as the curtain-raiser for the 2025 NZ International Comedy Festival with Best Foods Mayo, for over three weeks of laughter, and an incredible selection of what’s hot in comedy.
Following a sold-out Best Foods Comedy Gala in 2024, audiences will get the chance to catch a night packed with hilarity, showcasing a top selection of international and local comedians performing at the 2025 festival.
Suitcase Show
28 Feb – 5 April – Various Locations
Award-winning Pōneke based theatre company, Trick of the Light, is packing their bags to bring another masterful production to nine centres across the country, from 28 February – 5 April. Suitcase Show is an eclectic box set of short stories, each one told out of a suitcase. Dark, spiky and comic, this is storytelling at its finest from a team of Aotearoa’s greatest creative minds.
As with their acclaimed play The Bookbinder, the staging for Suitcase Show is inventive – from lo-fi shadowplay to wireless projection, from dancing disembodied hands to narratives that crackle from a 70s stereo suitcase. Tiny in scale, but expansive in story, this small but mighty production touches on climate change, love and death, travel, and secrets that we carry with us. An overthrown autocrat finds themselves on the run from their own shadow, an astronaut turns their telescope back on Earth and back in time.