Award-Winning Company Delight Wellington with Two Hit Shows
PlayShop Performance Company will be a Wellington company not to miss at the New Zealand Improvisation Festival 2015. After scooping up the Best Improv award at the 2015 New Zealand Fringe Festival with 10 Things I Hate About Us, audience will be invited sit back and soak up the ‘stuff’ to see the award-winning company’s latest creation in SED Speeches: Theories of Stuff on Wednesday 7 October at 8.30pm, and their Friday night show, PlayShop LIVE at 9pm on Friday 9 October at BATS Theatre.
SED Speeches: Theories of Stuff is an improvised show based around the popular TED Talks. Ask fors from the audience will influence improvisors to make up a public lecture in a style similar to a TED talk sure to inspire through the power of words, wit and laughter.
PlayShop LIVE is PlayShop’s flagship show, late-night improvised comedy without limits: fast, physical, and unpredictable. A team of skilled actors and a musician create spontaneous theatre with nothing but each other, the audience, and their fiendish imaginations. Audience can grab a drink, jump into the abyss and enjoy a night that feels like a party with the quickest, loveliest, naughtiest actors you’ll meet. For one night only PlayShop will welcome festival guests from around the country and the world.
PlayShop is a Wellington-based performance company that aims to make spontaneous, thrilling theatre. They create opportunities for people to experience the joy of playful interaction, through theatre, storytelling, education, and improvisation. PlayShop are risk-takers, open to the potential of every moment, so that actor and audience share meaningful stories that arise from the present, and stay in memory for time to come.
Artistic Director, Lori Leigh has a PhD in Shakespeare from Victoria University of Wellington and a MFA in in Theatre from Sarah Lawrence College (New York). Originally from the United States, Lori has been studying, performing, teaching, and directing improv for over a decade. In the USA, she studied at iO Chicago Theater (Charna Halpern) and performed in the St. Louis Comedy Festival, the Memphis Comedy Festival, New York Comedy Festival, Louisville Improvapalooza; and her troupe, One Hand Clapping (Nashville, TN), was an official Actors Theatre of Louisville Humana Festival Comedy Selection. Since moving to New Zealand, Lori has been a member of PlayShop Performance Company and has appeared in PlayShop LIVE, Riddiford Street, Game of Things, and she directed the acclaimed This Fair Verona, an improvised adaptation of Romeo and Juliet and 10 Things I Hate About Us (winner "Best Improv" at the NZ Fringe Festival Awards, nominee "Best Theatre"). Lori currently lectures at Victoria University of Wellington in Shakespeare and is Artistic Director for PlayShop.
PlayShop Live and SED Speeches: Theories of Stuff are part of the New Zealand Improvisation Festival 2015 at BATS Theatre. For booking enquiries, visit the BATS Theatre website bats.co.nz
For media enquiries please contact Festival Publicist Pippa Drakefor
pippa.drakeford@gmail.com // 0224762036