Beyond the Strait – A Queer Trans-Tasman Artist Exchange
Across Te Moana-nui-a-Kiwa, two organisations have been quietly building something: a home for experimental performance that doesn't stop at a coastline.
Beyond the Strait is an ongoing exchange between Basement Theatre, Tāmaki Makaurau, and Performance Space, Gadigal Country, centred around a kaupapa that backs queer, adventurous, genre-bending artists with the things they're rarely given enough of – space, time, and resource to make new work – on the other side of the ditch.
Each year, an artist crosses the Tasman for a residency on the other side. They're hosted, resourced, and held, to develop work however it wants to take shape.
This is a relationship that's been growing for a few years now. In 2024, Performance Space supported Aotearoa artist Raven Afoa-Purcell to take part in its Asia-Pacific Performance Lab at Bundanon, developing new work with collaborator Sam Somerfield. In 2025, the exchange travelled the other way, with Performance Space supporting Kori Miles to come to Tāmaki Makaurau for a week-long residency developing their work WHO CARES!?, which premiered at Liveworks 2025.
Thanks to support from Creative Australia, in 2026, the exchange runs both ways:
→ Aotearoa artists Ella Rerekura (Te Āti Haunui-a-Pāpārangi, Ngāti Rangi, Ngāti Tuwharetoa) and Hayley Walters-Tekahika (Ngāti Kahungunu, Ngāti Maniapoto, Ngāpuhi, Ngāti Whātua) travel to Sydney for Performance Space's Queer Development Program at Pact Centre for Emerging Artists this July.
→ Australian artist Kerith Manderson-Galvin comes to Tāmaki Makaurau, with a residency at Basement culminating in a presentation at TEST FEST – our festival of the unfinished, the untested, and the untameable – this October.
This is what it looks like when two undergrounds talk to each other. More soon. Watch this space.
About Performance Space
PSpace is a culture-defining arts organisation based on Gadigal Land in Redfern and dedicated to the development and presentation of radical and genre-defying art and performance. For more than 40 years, PSpace has supported experimental and interdisciplinary practices across various art forms, including queer practices, independent dance, devised performance, new media and experimental sound.
About Basement Theatre
Basement Theatre is a place where urgent and adventurous live performance, made by independent artists, is incubated and supported. We do this by proudly showcasing artists' work across two performance spaces – the Studio upstairs and the Theatre downstairs. We deliver a suite of artist development programmes that enable makers to cultivate ideas and strengthen their practices across a range of different forms and disciplines.We believe that the theatre is a colonial construct with deep-rooted barriers across cultural, economic, physical, political, religious and gender-based contexts. We seek to remove these barriers from our space so that all people can enjoy it with dignity.
