What we do
Here you will find out what we do, why we do it, who we have on the team and where we perform.
© 2021 New Zealand Playhouse
Here you will find out what we do, why we do it, who we have on the team and where we perform.
Playhouse delivers educational, inspirational, extremely entertaining theatre to over 450 schools across New Zealand and Australia. Each year we write the plays, prepare the actors, make the costumes and set and tour our troupe around the country so that you can have fantastic theatre in your own environment. As well as the performances, we also provide a teaching resource so that schools can easily incorporate the play into their lessons.
Our formula is to bring the best actors and creative forces in Australia and New Zealand together to create a play that is funny, educational and inspiring – and many schools have told us our shows are the best theatre experience their students have had. To do this we rely on your support. So if you haven’t had us visit yet – why not drop us a line?
Michael Bell
Owner, Director and head honcho of all things
Greg Cooper
Writer, Director, Artistic Overseer
Catherine Bryant
Tour Bookings Manager, Schedule Set-er-Up-er
Kris Finnerty
Operations Manager
Richard van den Berg
Set, Props and Stock Master
You can find us all across NZ (we do two loops of the country) and also in the Australian states of Victoria and Tasmania. We have historically toured annually from Perth to Brisbane, but it's a lot of driving so we're going to stick around just Victoria and Tasmania for a while!
Founded in Christchurch New Zealand, NZ Playhouse began touring New Zealand in 2009, then expanded into Australia in 2012.
Fantastic! We all enjoyed a very clever, very funny performance which introduced the students to such a wide variety of performance techniques as well as stimulating their own creativity.
- Burnside High School, Christchurch
Once again, an awesome show by wonderfully talented young people. The kids loved it, the teachers loved it. Can’t wait to have you back again next year! Thank you.
- Halcombe Primary School, Feilding