Six Degrees Festival 2025
11 Emerging Theatre Practitioners, 5 Dynamic, New Shows
Established In 2018, the Six Degrees Festival is a staple of the Victoria University MFA (Creative Practice) at Te Whare Ngangahau–Theatre and Performance Studies.
Fun, quirky, serious, or thought-provoking, the shows produced under the festival have served as launching pads for the careers of many successful arts practitioners.
Following on from an epic 2024 (where audiences were treated to 2 festivals in one year) that included gems such as; Isaac Hooper's Blip, Romina Meneses’ We The Outsiders, Sharon Wang's immersive production Encounter and Pan Clarke & Alanah Munn's epic gothic horror- Verdict, the 6 Degrees Festival 2025 once again promises to delight audiences with another smorgasbord of emerging talent, straight out of Victoria University's MFA in Creative Practice.
There are four main bill shows, and a one-off rehearsed play reading. These include: A dystopian feminist eco thriller, a Christmas show that's not what you expect, A devised physical theatre show that explores themes of identity and belonging, a rehearsed reading of a brand New Māori Theatre play and a full length Musical set in Masterton and involving a fued between two rival Hardware stores.
Explore the 2025 Six Degrees Programme in detail Below:
A Hardware Love Affair
25-29 NOV
Set in fictional small-town New Zealand, the story follows Maddie Phillips, a fiercely loyal Mitre 10 employee who goes undercover at rival hardware store, Bunnings Warehouse.
In this Mastertopyian world, once you turn 18 you must choose one hardware store to work at for the rest of your life. After all, “it’s the way it’s always been, you’re either orange or you’re green.”
homebodies
26-29 NOV
‘Homebodies’ is a devised physical theatre work that explores themes of home, belonging and otherness.
It is a piece collectively created by a team of performers, designers and artists using inspiration from personal autobiographies, exploring a methodology of devising performance and design alongside one another.
STRAYS
3-6 DEC
'Strays' is a feminist eco-thriller play set in a dystopian world, where human life is scarce and nature has reclaimed the Earth.
We follow Lorna Gold, a historian who illegally left the city in search of answers to the past in the overgrown territory, 'The Reclaimed'.
Viv, a ‘Watcher’ dedicated to keeping order in the city, is tasked with finding Lorna and bringing her back to the city for judgement.
YOULTIDE
3-6 DEC
Come to dinner! It’s Christmas Eve, and the story starts again.
Youltide transforms the Dome at BATS into a living room on Christmas Eve, where memory tangles with love and the stories we tell to survive. It’s funny until it isn’t. Warm until it’s not. Maybe that’s the point.
