Centre stage
Tauranga Arts Festival will come to life with a dazzling circus, bold beats, sharp wit and homegrown brilliance.
Tauranga Arts Festival will come to life with a dazzling circus, bold beats, sharp wit and homegrown brilliance.
WORDS Monique Balvert-O’Connor
Hayley Sproull is The Baroness.
Internationally acclaimed circus performers, musicians, authors, actors and comedians will be amongst those set to thrill at the 2025 Tauranga Arts Festival. Taking to our stages will be the likes of Cirque Bon Bon, Tami Neilson, Hayley Sproull, Rhys Mathewson, Te Radar, Chelsea Winter and Catherine Chidgey to name but some. It’s an impressive line-up that also includes plenty of local talent keen to delight the crowds at their city’s flagship art festival event, kicking off over Labour Weekend.
Tauranga DJ queen Ayesha Kee.
Ayesha Kee doesn’t plan on raising the roof of the Carrus Crystal Palace, but she’s sure hoping she’ll have that glorious tent rocking.
The Tauranga DJ queen can’t wait to “slay the disco way” during the Tauranga Arts Festival where she’ll help fulfil many a dazzling disco dream. Ayesha will team up with powerhouse vocalist Lisa Tomlins to deliver a Queens of Disco event. Expect the most iconic disco anthems ever to hit the dancefloor. Think Diana Ross, some Pointer Sisters, Bee Gees… feel good music, Ayesha says, that’s likely to seduce many, of varying age groups, onto the dancefloor.
By day Ayesha is a community development manager at Kaiwhakahaere Whakawhanake Hapori. By night, well, that’s alter ego time.
“I have always loved music but never learnt an instrument, so I got into deejaying about 20 years ago. I love it so much as there’s the opportunity
to take people on a musical journey, and you just make people happy,” she beams.
Tauranga’s proud to claim her. While Ayesha’s only been Tauranga based for 10 years, Ngāti Ranginui is her iwi and Ngāi Tamarāwaho her hapu.
She will be one of an array of local talent in the spotlight over festival week.
UNO is proud to be sponsoring what’s expected to be a hugely popular festival event: comedian Hayley Sproull’s show The Baroness. It’s so named as Hayley is The Baroness sky-rocketing towards 40, with a “happily untenanted” womb and a life of love, leisure and lingus. Hayley feels less barren and more Baroness.
As a Baroness, her focus is on making “martinis, not milk. She changes her mind, not nappies. She wants durries, not diapers.” Tauranga Arts Festival attendees can rest assured she’ll be delivering not a child, but copious amounts of chuckle-worthy moments.
Tauranga Arts Festival general manager Sarah Cotter says this year’s event will be full of fun, magic and vibrancy, with world-class performances, thought-provoking conversations and experiences to stir the senses and soul.
Ozi Ozaa.
Local creatives playing a part in delivering all that wonder include the festival team’s very own content creator Fabio Camera, who, like Aeysha, cannot resist the call of music when his day job is over. Aptly, he’s a musician in a band carrying a name meaning work and happiness - Ozi Ozaa. This Afrofunk band will perform on the Tauranga Waterfront in the Carrus Crystal Palace Spiegeltent.
Still on the music front, local talent will also be showcased during two of the festival’s free events - Opus Pocket Orchestra Concert and Undergrand.
The former is focused on little listeners and will feature 30-minute concerts offering young ones a joyful, interactive introduction to orchestral music. Undergrand, meanwhile, has been dubbed “a piano
in the wild”. Imagine stumbling upon a baby grand piano in the most unexpected places, like Mount Main Beach at Sunrise, Tauranga’s waterfront after dusk, and in a city park by day. This roaming, open-air musical experience will include a line-up of up-and-coming Tauranga students and seasoned pianists playing everything from classical to jazz
to improvised soundscapes.
Battle Chorus.
Playing a key, guiding role in two events is award-winning Tauranga born and raised Jason Te Mete (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngai Te Rangi), a freelance actor, singer, dancer, director, pianist, and playwright/writer. His festival babies are Battle Chorus – where two choirs go to war — and also Waiata Mai, a free-to-all sing-along (watch out for some local legends, like a free-to-all sing-along that closes the festival on Sunday November 2.
The final days of the festival, in early November, involve Escape, with its focus on the literary. In amongst the major New Zealand fiction writers is Tauranga’s own Anne Tiernan, author of bestselling novel The Last Days of Joy (partially set in Tauranga), and (recently released) The Good Mistress.
Less joyful, but inarguably good, is the demise of the New Zealand media, and Tauranga’s investigative journalist Jared Savage will speak to this in Media Madness. Jared will join a line-up of journalists in unpacking and debating the media landscape of 2025.
Sarah Ell will also offer learning opportunities. Sarah’s recently published book The Spirit of a Place, is a new history of The Elms | Te Papa Tauranga, recognised as one of New Zealand’s most significant heritage sites. Sarah’s talk promises a rare glimpse into Tauranga’s layered past.
This part of the festival will honour the late, great Tauranga writer Sherryl Jordan who wrote beloved novels for children and young adults, including:
Rocco, The Wednesday Wizard, The Juniper Game, and Winter of Fire.
Escape invites people to “sit back, relax and immerse in a suite of scintillating conversations”, says former Tauranga resident Claire Mabey. She would know - she devised the programme. Claire, who is of strong literary pedigree, has strong ties to the festival, having been part of the organising team on previous occasions. Amongst her accomplishments,
Claire is The Spinoff’s book editor, the founder of Wellington’s Verb Festival, and author of The Raven’s Eye Runaways (and its just-completed sequel).
To end with a Z… back by popular demand is Tauranga Zinefest. This popular independent publishing event that celebrates creativity on
the fringe returns.
Undergrand's piano in the wild.
FREE EVENTS
The festival excitement includes a diverse range of family-friendly and free events offering the chance to be wowed, to sing your heart out, get creative and to have a giggle or two, says its proud and excited general manager.
“This is Tauranga’s festival, and we want to make it as accessible as possible to as many Tauranga people as we can,” Sarah says.
Some of the free events (Undergrand, Zinefest, Opus Pocket Orchestra Concert) are mentioned above. Add to that Waiata Mai, Obelisk Natura and CAR-A-OKE!
For show times and tickets, visit taurangafestival.co.nz
For the love of arts
The new artistic director of Tauranga’s flagship Arts Festival brings passion and experience to the event.
The new artistic director of Tauranga’s flagship Arts Festival
brings passion and experience to the event.
Words Monique Balvert-O’Connor Photos Jeremy Hooper
Gabrielle Vincent thinks she may have shed a tear or two upon hearing she’d got the job of Tauranga Arts Festival artistic director.
“I love programming live performance and really wanted to get into the festival world, so being given this opportunity was just so very exciting,” is how she explains her happy tears.
Renowned as one of the most exciting art producers in the country, Gabrielle has come to the Tauranga Art Festival job after six years leading Auckland’s Basement Theatre where she commissioned and produced some of New Zealand’s boldest and bravest new talents.
The new position she was so thrilled about came her way at the tail end of 2020. But because the COVID-19 pandemic put paid to the planned 2021 Tauranga Art Festival, and caused a pushing out of this year’s Escape festival (from June to October), there’s a sense among Tauranga’s art community that Gabrielle has yet to be properly introduced. The October 12 to 16 Escape – little festival with big ideas – event is about to change that.
“This will be the first festival I actually get to deliver. We did a lot of work and came up with an exciting programme for the 2021 festival – it was heartbreaking having to call that off. Now it’s really wonderful to be able to deliver something.”
While she has years of experience programming, Escape will offer Gabrielle (34) her first opportunity to programme a writers’ festival. And what an exciting journey it has already been, says this woman with great ideas and vision.
There’s much on offer to thrill, and Gabrielle selects News, News, News as an example – a television news show, made by children for adults, recorded in front of a studio audience and broadcast live from Baycourt. Children from Mount Maunganui primary will be involved, guided by Andy Field and Beckie Darlington – Gabrielle’s enticed both over from the United Kingdom. Andy and Beckie came up with the concept, and have worked with children across the world who have performed it.
“It’s going to be a really fun show. It’s incredibly informative and, of course, very funny and sweet and enlightening.”
Gabrielle is delighted the timing of Escape falls within the school holidays, and as a result the line-up includes many family-friend events and children’s work.
“I am passionate about art bringing family together and sharing moments that become memorable experiences,” she says.
Gabrielle’s daughter (she and husband Simon have a three-year-old named Edie) will grow up with a plethora of such memories, for sure. Before long she’ll be tagging along with her mother who loves to soak up theatre, dance and music performances. Perhaps, like her mother, Edie will be a “drama geek” at school, too.
Acting, singing – and a seventh form curriculum full of art subjects – filled schoolgirl Gabrielle’s creative soul with joy. As a school leaver, who felt “incredibly passionate” about theatre and live performance, Auckland Unitec beckoned with its opportunity to major in theatre directing.
During her third year of study, Gabrielle was seconded to Auckland Theatre Company, where opportunities included getting to assistant-direct a show. Then, when a stage manager position came up, Gabrielle – who thoroughly enjoyed being backstage – was the “go to”. Gabrielle spent the next six years as a freelance stage manager, working mainly for Auckland Theatre Company.
A keenness to get into the producing side of the business coincided with a six-month pilot producers’ programme on offer at Auckland’s Basement Theatre – the home of independent theatre.
“I got that, which was exciting. I saw many emerging artists come through and then head off and thrive
doing phenomenal things.
“I then realised I actually liked programming more than producing and I managed to get a programme director
job there for about five years.”
It’s been a career full of wonderful opportunities and adding the part-time Tauranga Arts Festival director job to the curriculum vitae is another highlight. Preparation for the next festival, in 2023, with its range of art forms are well underway. But first, Escape, with its writers, speakers, live theatre and more.
“Programming a writer’s festival has been a really exciting journey. It occurred to me that what’s different about this compared to other live performances is that none of the conversations are rehearsed. They are conjured up by people, places, ideas and we are seeing something magical unfold at the time. Conversations are unique and cannot be replicated,” she says.
When UNO chats to Gabrielle she’s not long off preparing to head to Tauranga (Auckland is home base) for a month, in readiness for, and for, Escape. She can’t wait!
Great escape
Running from October 12 to 16, Tauranga’s Escape Festival brings some of the best writers and thinkers to the Bay for a little celebration of big ideas.
Running from October 12 to 16, Tauranga’s Escape Festival brings some of the best writers and thinkers to the Bay for a little celebration of big ideas.
Impressive writing, journalism and thinking is what makes up this series of invigorating talks and panel discussions. Here are some of the authors featured and highlights to look forward to at Escape 2022.
Gangland
In Gangland, Tauranga’s own award-winning investigative reporter Jared Savage shines a light into New Zealand's rising underworld of organised crime. His stories go behind the headlines and reveal an invisible world that’s frighteningly close to home - in which millions of dollars are made, life is cheap and allegiances can change with the pull of a trigger. Gangland also reveals the wider social issues facing Aotearoa, including gangs and our illicit drug market. Over the past 20 years, dealers have graduated from motorcycle gangs to Asian crime syndicates and now the Mexican cartels - the most dangerous drug lords in the world.
One in Four
One in Four is an intimate kōrero between recently retired fertility counsellor and author of Maybe Baby Sue Saunders; actor and author Michelle Langstone, who writes about her IVF journey in her outstanding novel Times Like These; and journalist, actor (Shortland Street) and writer Elisabeth Easther.
Barrister Kathryn Lellman, who has sponsored this special event, says, “One area of speciality for me in my family law practice is surrogacy and adoption, and I am endlessly fascinated by the ways through which we can now make babies and constitute families and how that is reflected legally. I am acutely aware of the challenges fertility issues bring to families. It is going to be a fascinating, heartfelt session.”
The Mirror Book
Shortlisted for the 2022 Ockham Book Awards, Charlotte Grimshaw’s explosive and thought-provoking memoir The Mirror Book is a vivid account of growing up in one of New Zealand’s most well-known literary families: That of poet, novelist and memoirist CK Stead. Grimshaw says, “When I became a writer I took a different surname from my father’s to distinguish myself from him. But later on in life I discovered I was still very enmeshed in our family fictions, and my memoir The Mirror Book is an account of challenging those fictions, forming my own opinions and finally achieving my own sense of a truly independent self. I received ferocious reactions before the book was published, and when I showed the manuscript to some members of my family. I wanted to publish the book even though I knew it would be difficult.” In conversation with Michelle Langstone, Grimshaw deep-dives into this truth, the fallout, and the messy reality of family life.
Too Much Money
Today, someone in the wealthiest one percent of adults in Aotearoa – a club of 40,000 people – has a net worth 68 times that of the average New Zealander. Max Rashbrooke’s Too Much Money is the story of how wealth inequality is changing Aotearoa. This talk addresses a conversation most New Zealanders prefer to avoid: class. Chief Philanthropic Officer at the Michael and Suzanne Borrin Foundation, Tupe Solomon-Tanoa’i speaks with Rashbrooke and final Chair of Auckland District Health Board and company director Pat Snedden about the evidence of - and the possible solutions to - our inequality issues, and asks us to consider whether we really can reduce wealth disparities to a point where most people are doing well.
NUKU: Story Sovereignty
In 2021 the much-celebrated book, NUKU: Stories of 100 Indigenous Women was released, platforming Indigenous wāhine and giving them ownership over their narrative in an unfiltered, uninterrupted way. Through telling their stories, the women in NUKU seek to influence the world around them. In this powerful panel session, NUKU founder, creator and publisher Qiane Matata-Sipu (Te Waiohua, Waikato, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Pikiao and Cook Islands) discusses story sovereignty with two formidable Tauranga wāhine – Pāpāmoa-based marine ecologist, Professor Kura Paul-Burke (Ngāti Awa, Ngāti Whakahemo), filmmaker and producer Chelsea Winstanley (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāi te Rangi), alongside racial equity educator, Kat Poi (Tainui, Te Arawa, Tonga) from Courageous Conversations South Pacific. These women will generously share their stories – the good and ugly – and wrestle with how story sovereignty could be improved today in Aotearoa.