Binge Culture Space ProjectVision for the space
A base and testing ground for bold new performance in Wellington Wellington has a vibrant contemporary performing arts scene, but it is not always visible. Plays, dance pieces, and interactive works are pieced together in lounges, cafes, and spaces-for-hire across the city. This unstable arrangement holds artists back from our full potential. A space for Binge Culture would anchor and support artists making world-class theatre and performance in Wellington. Binge Culture has been creating new-form theatre and performance for nine years. In 2017, we were shortlisted for a prestigious Total Theatre Award at Edinburgh Fringe, for ‘Innovation, Experimentation, and Playing with Form’. Our participatory show ‘Whales’, in which the public rescue a stranded pod, has been performed in centres around the country and was awarded ‘Best in Fringe’ at NZ Fringe 2013. NZ Herald has called us ‘one of the country’s most exciting, direct and original theatre companies’. We make work that is humorous, political, and which strives to engage the audience in new ways. There are more than 10 artists working in Binge Culture on a regular basis, and we have collaborated with hundreds of people from across Aotearoa over the years. During this time we have found the most fruitful making periods have occurred when we have had access to consistent and flexible spaces to develop work in. We wish to create a space where new performance can both be developed and workshopped with in-house audiences, without the accompanying constraints of shared space and week-long presentation slots. The model of brick and mortar independent theatre companies has all but disappeared from NZ. This has contributed to, for example, fractured and shortened development periods for new work. Rigorous development of ideas is not possible when concepts must be committed to without first being tested. The impact the space will have on our practice and for other contemporary performance artists: For Binge Culture
For the Wellington community
How this space benefits our creative capital city status:
Binge Culture's networks: Below is a list of some of the incredible artists from NZ and around the world we already have a relationship with. Many of these people have already expressed an interest in utilising this space, on an ongoing or temporary basis.
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