PAT CHATS: Matt Loveranes on his latest play and taking necessary risk

September 10, 2026

“I knew I had to do it.”

Amalia returns home to Wellington to surprise her family. She’s got a secret to confess. One that could make them all very wealthy and get freedoms and access which immigrants work lifetimes to achieve. But prosperity comes at a price. Once revealed, it instead begets deep shame. Can it all be repaired or will this Filipino family drown in the muck just to be able to preserve themselves?

Link in Bio is Matthew Loveranes’ provocative new play about family, ambition, diaspora and the messy cost of getting ahead. It marks the second reading in our Pōneke 2026 season of Fresh Off The Page (FOTP); Proudly Asian Theatre’s new-play development programme. FOTP supports Asian playwrights in Aotearoa to develop new work through public readings, workshops, dramaturgy and collaboration, giving writers a chance to hear their scripts with actors and audiences while the work is still in development.

Matthew Loveranes (he/him) is an award-winning playwright from Te Whanganui-a-Tara. He holds an MA in Scriptwriting from the International Institute of Modern Letters. His work spans both playful genre fiction (The Showgirl, the first play staged in Aotearoa by a Filipino–New Zealander playwright) and emotionally rich dramas that mine universal truths (MoodPorn, winner of Playmarket’s Asian Ink in 2018, shortlisted for Playwrights’ b4 25 competition).

Ahead of its Fresh Off The Page reading in Pōneke, Matt talks about writing Filipino stories, three-sibling family dynamics, and finding an ending brave enough to surprise him.

Where do you draw inspiration for your project?

I honestly just write when I get the urge, when an idea grabs me. And I couldn’t shake the hold of doing a three siblings play. It’s a dynamic that’s fraught with such drama - Three Sisters, Crimes of the Heart, Hannah and Her Sisters, His Three Daughters, Succession, Saan Ka Man Naroroon, etc.. And even when I started writing that, it became so much more. My plays also use elements of pop culture to help deepen the stakes, so I was excited to see what I could do to mix it up and make it my own.

Image: National Theatre’s Three Sisters, where Inua Ellams adapted the play for the setting of Nigeria in the late 1960s.

Were there particular experiences, ideas, or tensions that inspired this piece?

I think the other driving force of this play is the big secret that destabilises this family. It’s a phenomenon that’s only really being explored in media and literature now. It touches on topics of modern life malaise such as navigating a second life and suffering the cost of living crisis. But mostly I like that it’s provocative. Especially when mapped on to the Filipino family, where even the most progressive people are beholden to some kind of tradition, cultural duty or responsibility. And then the challenge of writing becomes really hard, and you have to go to some vulnerable places. I’m a little scared it might be dismissed by people in the community.

What are you hoping to get out of your development reading?

I want the characters to feel real and make decisions that make sense to them. Right now I have an idea of where I want the play to go, as reflected in the current ending. But I want to make sure the choices they make are organic to them, and they don’t just feel like pawns moving towards a predetermined destination. So I hope the workshop clarifies the path to get there or illuminates a new path moving forward

What made this a story you wanted to tell, and what keeps you coming back to this story, on a personal level?

I think I haven’t REALLY done my version of the Filipino diaspora story. I wasn’t really seeking out to do it, even if elements of it creep up here and there in my writing. But when I had the breakthrough that this would be a more complex play with Pinoy characters at the fore, and my mind started racing at all the thematic and relational possibilities I could put on the page, and on stage, I knew I had to do it. With my family now having lived in Australia for a few years, and me being the only one left in Aotearoa, my desire to tell Filipino stories only grows stronger. It’s a way of keeping them close when they’re not around.

PINAY by Marianne Infante, a sell-out Filipino diaspora play developed under Fresh off the Page

MoodPorn by Matt Loveranes, produced by Red Scare

What’s one thing you’d like to share about your writing process?

I wrote the first draft in a day. And while that might seem impressive, it’s the drafting process that can be gruelling but also it’s where the real treasure can be found. I think even with this workshop, the play still has a long way to go. And I’m excited to mine what I can to make the story truly sparkle. This is my first reading that will be open to the public, so I am nervous to be showing a work in progress. So I just have to own that and be open to what people respond to and allow the play to be what it needs to be.

What’s one question you have about your own script or story at this point? Or a problem you’re trying to solve?

How it all ends! I love getting to know more of these characters, all their intricacies and contradictions and richness, and so I hope with this workshop that they surprise me! Because it is a little taboo, it’s gonna take a bit of bravery to get to the right ending. So I’m grateful to have all these people, especially my Filipino collaborators, help get me there! Or at least a little bit closer.

Matt is supported in this reading by dramaturg Mīria George and director Maya Handa Naff. Link in Bio features performers Mikee Sto Domingo, Merrill Abapo, Gayle Hammersley, Adrianne Roberts and Ruby Carter.

Tickets on sale now from $10!

Sun, 20 Sep, 7pm - 8:30pm NZST

Hannah Playhouse, Wellington/Põneke

Brought to you by Proudly Asian Theatre with support from Copyright Licensing New Zealand and Wellington City Council. Produced by Jess Karamjeet and Cassandra Tse, with assistance from Ayush Aditya.

Images: Pork and Poll Taxes gears toward a fiery opening

September 3, 2026

Why should the next generation suffer because of crimes made by others before them?

Pork and Poll Taxes has less than 2 weeks in the rehearsal room before we hit the stage!

PAPT is an epic modern tragedy about fate, love and survival following one family as their lives are changed forever by the introduction of the Poll Tax imposed on Chinese immigrants in 1881, raised to an impossible 100 pounds in 1896.

With the intense narrative driving emotions to deep and explosive levels, the production is working hard to bring the energy of Talia Pua’s reworked script to life with Cantonese lessons and dialect coaching, movement sequences and technically demanding AV mapping unfolding.

Check out some BTS rehearsal pics from Alyssa Medel, and book your tickets now!

📍 Herald Theatre, Aotea Centre
📅 16–19 September 2026: Limited season!
🎟️ Tickets are on sale now: click here!

Rats with wings and polarisation: Nadia Freeman speaks to her new work in progress, 'Clay Pigeons'

August 5, 2026

A local community faces an influx of sinister invaders: pigeons!

An anti-pigeon task force forms to deal with the avian scourge. But how should the committee combat these rats with wings?

It's up to the audience to decide in this interactive satirical comedy by new writer in Pōneke, Nadia Freeman.

Nadia Freeman is an Indo-Fijian and Pākehā theatre-maker, musician, poet and producer based in Te Whanganui-a-Tara. Across her work, she brings together poetry, music and storytelling to explore identity, family, belonging and social justice. Whether creating solo performance works, producing electronic music, or championing Asian artists through initiatives like the Eastern Sound Collective, Nadia's practice is deeply rooted in curiosity, connection and community.

Her acclaimed body of work includes Eat These Words, Another Universe and The Girmit, each blending personal narrative with wider cultural and historical themes. Through these works, Nadia has established herself as a distinctive voice in Aotearoa's creative landscape, crafting performances that are thoughtful, inventive and emotionally resonant.

For Fresh Off the Page, Nadia is stepping into new territory with Clay Pigeons—her first ensemble comedy. An interactive satirical play about a neighbourhood committee determined to rid their community of pigeons, the work uses humour to examine media bias, political polarisation and the stories that shape our understanding of the world.

In this interview, Nadia shares what inspired the play, what she's discovering through the collaborative development process, and why she believes storytelling has the power to influence how we see one another.

TICKETS ARE LIVE!
Sun 16 Aug, 7:00pm
Hannah Playhouse, Te Aro
$10 Tickets: click here!

Nadia performing in ‘The Girmit’. Photo: Blake Armstrong

Where do you draw inspiration for your project?

It is never the same. Maybe I write a poem or I am researching something and I realise there is a story to be told. Or I’m feeling there is a need for wider discourse or attention on an important issue and want to explore this. But ultimately it’s always political. All of my work draws attention to issues that impact human rights.

Were there particular experiences, ideas, or tensions that inspired this piece?

I have been having a lot of conversations with people of different walks of life and realizing they were seeing the same story from different perspectives because of how our social media algorithms are shaped. This has led to strong polarization of views and extremely harmful prejudices between groups. It made me think about how the media has always been polarized and made me want to highlight how important it is to protect against bias in the media. The truth told two different ways or even with different words and images can end up being a lie.

Just like theatre. All forms of media e.g. TV, newspapers, facebook. They create stories that shape society's perceptions. So if their stories distort what is true, the ultimate price of that is injustice. Stories are everything.

I was also intrigued by the newsletters my friend in Edinburgh was getting about a committee who were focussed on trying to prevent Seagulls coming into their wealthy neighborhood. I had stored that little nugget away for a play ‘one day’ and the two concepts of a ridiculous community committee election impacted by the polarization of the media surrounding their candidates came together.

What are you hoping to get out of your development reading?

This is the first time I am writing a comedy and a theatre piece with multiple characters. I am learning about what it is to understand the perspective, feelings and quirks of multiple people and how they respond to each other. I’m grateful to Jerome who is so quick at coming up with funny ideas and developing eccentric characters.

Fresh Off The Page has also helped make the writing process more of a team project than a solo one. This makes it all much for fun and improves the quality of the writing. By workshopping with Actors, a Director and Dramaturg you are working out at the same time as you are writing what works and what doesn’t.

Nadia performing in the Eastern Sound Collective. Photo: The-Dominion-Post

What’s one thing you’d like to share about your writing process?

I’m learning, you just got to get writing. The first draft might feel flat. But you have to trust yourself and that with the help of the team you will breathe life into the world you are making.

What’s one question you have about your own script or story at this point? Or a problem you’re trying to solve?

I just want it to be really funny. The theme behind the story is serious. But I want it to be a fun time for everyone as well. It is a balance of making the scenes meaningful, giving each character a purpose but also ensuring that there are plenty of laughs between.

Nadia is supported in this reading by dramaturg Lynda Chanwai-Earle, director Sameena Zehra and comedy consultant Jerome Chandrahasen. Clay Pigeons features performers Oliver Pol, Phoebe Caldeiro, Elliott Lam, Ralph Johnson, Ocean Manutulila and Jerome Chandrahasen.

TICKETS ARE LIVE!
Sun 16 Aug, 7:00pm
Hannah Playhouse, Te Aro
$10 Tickets: click here!

I Love You, Thank You, Sorry: First read of Chye-Ling Huang's latest play

May 28, 2026

A revengeful reading of a play in development

Chye-Ling Huang’s explosive new play has been cooking within PAT for a few years. From Red Leap workshops during the height of Covid to figure out the physical tone, to a ReFresh Development under PAT’s wing; the full, meaty draft had its first out-loud reading at the Waihorotiu room at the Aotea Centre last Sunday.

Chye-Ling says, “The play is a workshop inside the head of a survivor of sexual assault. The cast consist of a chorus of 5, playing characters based loosely on parts work; different parts of this character's psyche and viewpoints.“

“I love the fun and goofiness that the workshops on this previously explored. When it came down to it, I needed to actually get into the darkness of the subject to say anything meaningful, which has been the hardest part of the process.“

Facilitated by Nathan Joe, (dramaturg), the workshop was a first-read for tone, story and sense-making.

“Nuance is painful to accept, but we need it more than ever to combat the grossly escalating binaries being forced upon us. The conversation needs to be had, and it is my passionate belief that I can bring something new to it for both victims, allies and even perpetrators. “

WORKSHOP CREDITS:

Actors: Katie Burson, Daniel Nodder, Louise Jiang, Esaú Allemora, Natasha Daniel

Dramaturg: Nathan Joe

Producer: Marianne Infante

Photography: Abigail Dell'Avo

Thanks to Auckland Live for hosting us!

PAT CHATS: Rummy and Rumours with added Revenge: Sananda Chatterjee's homage to the bond of women

May 27, 2026

A murder mystery with juicy roles for Indian Aunties? Sandy’s got you.

Sananda Chatterjee’s first play Kitty Party / Mt Roskill Murder Club aims to entertain and represent. It’s her take on a classic Agatha Christie-esque murder mystery, but delivered with a cast of eccentric Aunties; layered characters inspired by the beloved Kitty Parties of North India and her childhood in Delhi. It’s also her very first play.

“A quiet Mt Roskill street is rocked by a suspicious death,
turning a regular weekly gathering of women into a night of
spiralling paranoia and spilled tea.”

Born in Kolkata and raised between Delhi and Tāmaki Makaurau, Sananda brings a deeply layered creative practice shaped by theatre, identity, movement, and community. A multi-disciplinary artist and producer, her work spans large ensemble pieces with Prayas Theatre to intimate & independent projects exploring gender, relationships, and belonging.

Sananda is also sought-after producer, mentor, researcher and Cultural Insights specialist (currently at The Big Idea). She cares deeply about how stories land, who they speak to, and how they shift us.

Now in the driver’s seat, Sandy chats to PAT about what keeps her coming back to this one.

BOOK NOW!

Kitty Party / Mt. Roskill Murder Club
by Sananda Chatterjee

Sat 13 June, 7:30pm
The Factory Theatre, Onehunga

Where do you draw inspiration for this play?

I started thinking about this project as a way to make space for older South Asian women actors who I knew were out there, turning up to Prayas auditions, but for whom the scripts just weren’t being written. We had to dig so hard to find good stories where women weren’t just sexy lampshades.

So that was really the genesis — seeing all these talented women from the community continue to show up, only to be turned away because there were no roles for them, or be forced into bitsy parts, or have three separate characters smashed together to make one juicy role for a good actor. I thought I’d have a crack at it, and wrote up a one-pager maybe four or five years ago.

Were there particular experiences, ideas, or tensions that inspired this piece?

The Kitty Party! It’s a social gathering for women, usually organised by stay-at-home women, and often includes a regular savings component. It’s typically a monthly event, and I knew it as something common in North India, especially in Delhi, where I grew up.

When I read more about it, I learned it may date back to post-Partition India, when many families were struggling financially. Each woman would contribute a set amount, and the pooled money for that month — the kitty — would go to one member of the group. It also became a safe space for women to relax, experience joy, and enjoy an afternoon together. The exchange of information at these gatherings is incredible. It’s a true community. And that felt like such an interesting structure to base a murder mystery on. Of course the content has evolved over the years, as the world has and my feelings have changed and resolved etc so it isn’t the same story I started with – but the essence of it remains the same – the bonds of women.

From “Kitty Parties Were Never About the Gossip; They’re About the Women” by Rajvi Desai for The Swaddle. (Image via DBS)

What made this a story you wanted to tell, and what keeps you coming back to this story, on a personal level?

I love friendship between women (and all who consider themselves in this category) — there’s this classic combination of affection, care, and brutal honesty that gets dished out as needed. I know my gaggle of geese will, with great pleasure, remind me of all my terrible past romantic choices while also absolutely helping me bury a body (IN THEORY). There is also something incredible about the idea of ‘aunties’ and the way information travels through them. When I was growing up in Delhi, all the kids were so wary of the neighbourhood aunties who would casually stand at their windows watching what everyone got up to. They had a network to rival any spy agency. I got into trouble TOO MANY times as a young person because of that network. But as I’ve grown older, and their prisons have become clearer to me, I’ve found I have so much empathy for them. I want to know more about them. I want them to be at the centre of the narratives. I bet they could fill many books with the stories they have to tell.

What are you hoping to get out of your development reading?
A good draft, really. Something that will hopefully have a life beyond this reading. I want to see how much I need to stay within the genre, and how much I can stretch it.

What’s one thing you’d like to share about your writing process?
The process is chaos, and the method is very pressure-driven. I don’t know why I thought I would suddenly be any different from how I wrote my papers at university. Back before you could submit essays electronically, you had to take them to your tutor or lecturer’s office and put them in a box or hand them over in person. I still have a very real memory of running from Kate Edgar Commons to the old Film building to make the cut-off with one minute to spare. Ya, so. NOTHING’s changed. But I do genuinely need the noise of time to be silenced — it really is a barrier. The kind of pressure that makes it impossible to focus on anything else is what I need. BUT I have learned this about myself: if I know the world well, the story will be much easier to pen – so I guess I kept dreaming about the world and really detailed it in my head, even as I procrastinate from putting the final touches on it!

What’s one question you have about your own script or story at this point? Or a problem you’re trying to solve?
I think, as a murder mystery fangirl who is always guessing the killer from the get-go, what I’m most interested in finding out is whether the vehicle of the genre holds for the story. Have I given myself too big a problem to solve? For my first feature-length work? HAVE I??

We can’t wait to find out!

Sananda is supported by dramaturg/director Sameena Zehra (Tea with Terrorists) along with a gorgeous cast including Pamela Sidhu (Spartacus: House of Ashur), Sudeepta Vyas (The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel), Arti Kansara (Much Ado About Nothing), Ayesha Heble (Shortland Street) and Karishma Grebneff (Basmati Bitch).

TICKETS ARE NOW LIVE!