Sophie Roberts is a theatre director and actor of New Zealand. She is the artistic director of Silo Theatre in Auckland, New Zealand.
Roberts graduated from Toi Whakaari the national New Zealand drama school in 2007. After graduating until 2014 Roberts worked on many plays as a director or actor. [1] Roberts was in a creative partnership with Willem Wassenaar as founder and co-artistic director Wellington-based theatre company Almost a Bird Theatre Collective. [1]
Roberts was appointed artistic director of Auckland's Silo Theatre in 2014 and her career focused on that theatre company. [1] The first play she directed in 2014 at Silo Theatre was Sunday Roast by Thomas Sainsbury. [2]
One of the plays Roberts programmed at Silo Theatre at Q Theatre to centre female experiences on the main stage was the feminist play The Writer by Ella Hickson. [3] [4] Roberts directed HIR by Taylor Mac in 2018. [5] Roberts at Silo Theatre commissioned the debut theatre show of Chris Parker, No More Dancing in the Good Room. [6] In 2021 Roberts handed over the reigns of Silo Theatre to Ahi Karunaharan for health reasons. [7]
Roberts announced for 2023 that Silo Theatre would not stage any shows to focus on development of three plays and in a response to the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on the theatre company and the industry in Auckland and New Zealand. [8] Roberts said of the 2024 season at Silo: "We want to bring you experiences that are little celebrations of the moment we’re briefly on this earth, and how we might take care of it, each other, and ourselves while we’re here." [9]
Toi Whakaari: NZ Drama School is New Zealand's national drama school. It was established in 1970 and is located in Wellington, New Zealand in the Te Whaea: National Dance & Drama Centre. Toi Whakaari offers training in acting, costume construction, set and props construction, performing arts management and design for stage and screen. Toi Whakaari has a roll of approximately 130 students annually, who study for up to three years.
Jennifer Cecily Ward-Lealand is a New Zealand theatre and film actor, director, teacher and intimacy coordinator. She has worked for 40 years, appearing in over 120 theatre performances: Greek, Shakespeare, drama, comedy, devised, and musical theatre. Her screen credits include the 1993 movie Desperate Remedies as well as appearances in The Footstep Man, the soap Shortland Street and Australian comedy series Full Frontal.
Paolo Rotondo is a New Zealand director, writer and actor of stage and screen.
Donna Tusiata Avia is a New Zealand poet and children's author. She has been recognised for her work through receiving a 2020 Queen's Birthday Honour and in 2021 her collection The Savage Coloniser won the Mary and Peter Biggs Award for Poetry at the Ockham New Zealand Book Awards. The Savage Coloniser and her previous work Wild Dogs Under My Skirt have been turned into live stage plays presented in a number of locations.
Briar Grace-Smith is a screenwriter, director, actor, and short story writer from New Zealand. She has worked as an actor and writer with the Maori theatre cooperative Te Ohu Whakaari and Maori theatre company He Ara Hou. Early plays Don't Call Me Bro and Flat Out Brown, were first performed at the Taki Rua Theatre in Wellington in 1996. Waitapu, a play written by Grace-Smith, was devised by He Ara Hou and performed by the group on the Native Earth Performing Arts tour in Canada in 1996.
Rachel Jessica Te Ao Maarama House is a New Zealand actress and director. She has received numerous accolades including an Arts Laureate, NZ Order of Merit, 'Mana Wahine' from WIFT NZ and Te Waipuna a Rangi for her contributions as an actor and director.
Joanna Ruth Randerson is a New Zealand writer, director and performer. She is the founder and artistic director of Barbarian Productions, a Wellington-based theatre production company.
Kate JasonSmith is a New Zealand actor, film producer, playwright, filmmaker, photographer, and businesswoman. Based in Wellington, she has studied and worked elsewhere, including Australia, Ireland, and the United Kingdom. A feminist, as a theatre and film practitioner, she has been most recognised throughout her career for her role in establishing and producing Hens' Teeth, a platform for dozens of Kiwi female actors, musicians, and comedians that became a staple of the New Zealand theatre and comedy scene between 1988 and 1996. Her short film, Xmas for Lou (1992), won the Best Drama – Television award in the New Zealand Film and Television Awards of 1994. From 2018 on, the one-woman show I'll Tell You This for Nothing: My Mother the War Hero has received national and international praise for both the play, which she wrote, and her performance. JasonSmith is a member of the New Zealand Society of Authors/Te Puni Kaituhi O Aotearoa.
Ahilan Karunaharan is writer, director, actor and producer of Sri Lankan descent from New Zealand. He is a recipient of the New Zealand Arts Laureate Award.
Shona Margaret McCullagh is a New Zealand choreographer, dancer, filmmaker and artistic director. McCullagh was the founding director of the New Zealand Dance Company and was appointed artistic director of the Auckland Festival in 2019.
Massive Theatre Company, also called Massive or Massive Company, is a professional theatre company in Auckland, Aotearoa New Zealand.
Performing arts in New Zealand include amateur and professional presentations of theatre, circus, dance and music where it accompanies live performance. Aotearoa New Zealand has an active contemporary performing arts culture; many people participate in performing arts activities and most people live near an arts centre or theatre building.
Lisa Jadwiga Valentina Warrington is a New Zealand theatre studies academic, director, actor and author. She has directed more than 130 productions, and established the Theatre Aotearoa database. In 2014 she was awarded a Lifetime Achievement Award in the Dunedin Theatre Awards, and was three times winner of a New Zealand Listener Best Director award, including one for Tom Scott's The Daylight Atheist.
Mitch Tawhi Thomas is a New Zealand playwright, actor and drama teacher.
Silo Theatre is a theatre production company based in Auckland, New Zealand established in 1997 directed by Sophie Roberts.
Jason Te Kare is a New Zealand director, playwright and actor.
David John O'Donnell is a New Zealand theatre director, actor, and academic based in Wellington, New Zealand. He has taught at Victoria University of Wellington since 1999, and is as of 2021 a full professor.
Amanaki Lelei Prescott-Faletau is an actor, writer, dancer, choreographer, producer and director of Tongan descent, living in New Zealand. As a playwright, she became the first fakaleitī to have her work published in New Zealand with Inky Pinky Ponky. This play was awarded Best Teenage Script (2015) by New Zealand Playmarket. As an actor, she was awarded best performance at the 2015 Auckland Fringe Festival for Victor Rodger's Girl on the Corner. Her acting credits include The Breaker Upperers (2018), SIS (2020), The Panthers (2021), The Pact (2021) and Sui Generis (2022), in which she is also a writer for the TV series. Faletau competed as a dancer in the World Hip Hop Dance Championships in 2011 and has been a judge at the National Hip Hop Championships in New Zealand over several years.
Thomas Sainsbury is a New Zealand actor, writer, filmmaker, comedian, TV presenter and podcaster. Sainsbury began his acting and writing career in theatre. He became well known in New Zealand from 2017 for his short form comedy videos released on Instagram and Facebook. As a television comedy writer he has contributed to 7 Days, Jono and Ben and Wellington Paranormal. With Madeline Sami he co-wrote Super City, which won the SWANZ Scriptwriters Best Comedy Script Award in 2011.
Eleanor Bishop is a New Zealand stage director, producer and playwright. Her play Yes Yes Yes co-written with Karin McCracken for young people about relationships and consent has been seen throughout New Zealand, in Montreal, Wales and Catalonia.