Images: Pork and Poll Taxes gears toward a fiery opening

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'

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. 

Photo by Dani Hao-Aicken

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

A revengeful reading of a play in development

Photos: Abigail Dell'Avo

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

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

Sananda Chatterjee

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

Image: Prayas Theatre

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?

Image: Prayas Theatre

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!

BOOK NOW!

Kitty Party / Mt. Roskill Murder Club
by Sananda Chatterjee

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

Don’t miss the rest of the series in May and June!
BOOK NOW!

PAT CHATS: Seeing Double: Louise Jiang on her first 'sit-down' play

Careful what you wish for: Robots and burnout

Louise Jiang is most known for her high energy solo, her prolific and growing screen presence, and her love of physical theatre. Seeing Double is her first pen-to-paper play, a story of the world’s youngest self-made billionaire who secretly clones herself to avoid burning out at work.

Louise Jiang

A graduate from Toi Whakaari on the Bill Guest Scholarship, Louise Jiang (Chinese) is an actor and maker across stage and screen. With a vested interest in devised theatre, her recent theatre work includes ‘Wrest’ with Red Leap Theatre as well as Scenes from a Yellow Peril by Nathan Joe and Ciggy Butts in The Sand (Tupua Tigafua). On screen, Louise features in Sweet Tooth (Netflix), Camp Be Better and Warren's Vortex (TVNZ). 

Outside of performing, Louise is expanding her craft this year as an emerging writer and director. After debuting her devised solo show 'actor//android' at Tahi Festival and then Basement Theatre in 2023, 'Seeing Double' will be the first play Louise has written sitting down, with the support of Proudly Asian Theatre as a part of Fresh Off The Page.

Where do you draw inspiration for your project? / Were there particular experiences, ideas, or tensions that inspired this piece?

Maybe as a perfectionist trying to practise a more sustainable middle ground, I naturally thought, “What would be the extreme of success?” Not too long ago, the youngest self-made female billionaire Lucy Guo, made headlines. She surpassed Taylor Swift and was a young Chinese American woman working in AI. I was really inspired by her because it was a kind of representation I wasn’t expecting to see. The play is not about her, but her success made me dream about our demographic of women and what goes on in the private moments during our success. 

Lucy Guo, the youngest, self-made female billionaire at 30 (as of April 2025)

’m really interested in alternate lives and what happens when we take things to the extreme, especially when we come up against our natural limits. If I were a Venn diagram, I’m a freelance artist and also a child of immigrants. In that overlap, I’ve noticed a lot of hustle among my peers and in my community. The same quest for excellence exists, but you’re navigating it in an industry that’s quite boundless and not always within your control.

I think the questions we have in this bracket are similar; How do you make a life? How do you reconcile ambition with living sustainably inside capitalism? All whilst taking into account the honour and filial piety of your culture?

I mashed those things together and set it in a world that’s new to me: the corporate world and the tech world. The startup scene especially high-stakes, businesses and leaders set to disrupt the industry. It felt like a great environment to set a play in.

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

I think the Fresh Off The Page development reading is a really exciting place to test my playwriting voice with an audience. Coming from an acting background, I’m often tuned into the voice and rhythm of the writer whose work I’m supporting. This time, being in the writer’s seat, I’m learning more about my own voice and how I like stories to unfold.

As an artist in Aotearoa, it’s also a really cool chance to connect with people and artists I may not have worked with before. It’s happening through writing rather than being seen on stage, and that’s refreshing, it offers up a new mode of connection.

I’ve been experiencing through the programme, the joys of being a student and learning how to build worlds through another lens of writing. I feel grateful to be adding to my kete of tools, and it grows my appreciation for more aspects of the creative process. Going wow, these are all the bits that make the whole before an actor even steps into the rehearsal room. I know I will come away with experience investigating from both sides of the story process and be able to contribute more in theatre making spaces.

Louise in Camp Be Better (TVNZ) as ‘Niah’

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

There are two areas of exploration and questioning for me.

One is getting the plot, climax, and ending to feel surprising and dramatic while still being satisfying.

The other is figuring out how to write scenes that actors can really play inside. I naturally think about that because I’ve been on the other side. I would like to produce dialogue that is layered and subtextual. Dialogue that feels muscular.

I’m learning what I like about through reading a lot of scripts and stories such as 'A Number', 'The Ugly One', 'Marjorie Prime'... But unfortunately, the poetic gift hasn't landed overnight. I’m figuring out how to find my way into the music of writing stylistically.

Poster for actor // android (2023) by Jode Wade Lee

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

That focus can be a muscle. Before this programme, I never believed I could sit down and write for longer than 20 minutes without getting testy, fidgety or bored. But through just keeping at it, with practices like morning pages and the consistency of writing, I’ve learned how writing is all cumulative. To lean into the messiness and pull out the thread of what I'm trying to say.

Those consistent bits every day, or at least on the days you planned for, have helped me build trust and faith in myself. They’ve helped me return to my practice each time with more confidence.

So that's to say, anyone can do it! Kicking down the idea of what being a 'writer' looks like. That was holding me back.

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

What are the stages of burnout that we’re subconsciously aware of? What are the structures that contribute to the normalisation of burnout in our respective industries? And what does it take for each unique person to pursue ambition while living sustainably and leading a fulfilled life?

That’s very much aligned with how I’m observing and testing the way I construct my own life, both artistically and in terms of my overall wellbeing. While being realistic, I’m also having a bit of fun with the idea by putting myself in the shoes of someone in the corporate world, which I to see as a more extreme challenge of work life balance, compared to freelancing - where you get to design more or less your own schedule. 

actor // android. Photo: Julie Zhu

Something I’ve learned from reading academic texts, plays, and literature is that we’re all gifted with different modes of articulating ourselves. Dancers have great intuition and expressiveness through their bodies and movement. Writers do it through their words.

I’m at the very beginning of learning how to articulate myself through writing. I'm lucky to have had a way in through emotion and through movement. Right now, writing is about sharing my perspective on the world, and using the tools I have to start a conversation with the audience.

SEE YOU AT THE READING!

Seeing Double by Louise Jiang

Sat 20 June, 7:30pm

TICKETS ARE LIVE!

BOOK HERE

Louise is supported by dramaturg Nathan Joe (Scenes from a Yellow Peril) and director Batanai Mashingaidze (Dakota of the White Flats), with an incredible cast including Celine Dam (Basmati Bitch), Chye-Ling Huang (Homebound 3.0), Lucy Dawber, Kirana Gaeta and Dennis Zhang.

BOOK OUR TWO OTHER SHOWS IN THE TAMAKI SERIES HERE!