"Ideas in Residence is a one-of-a-kind residency. I often think about it as the little residency that could. Starting out four years ago with 3 residents, it has grown to be able to offer stipends to 6 artists to work with dramaturgs and collaborators, encompassing all styles of performance.
Ideas in Residence invites artists to work on the very seed of an idea with a dedicated collaborator, dramaturg or mentor over five months. It's all about the idea that has been nagging at you in the middle of the night, popping up at inappropriate moments during your family dinner, or chasing you down a deserted alleyway.
Performance-ready, workshop-ready, or just getting it on to the page - Ideas in Residence supports artists to find the right tools for developing their idea, whatever that means for them. It's long and it's gentle, it's open and flexible, and it's more about the process than the product.
Here's to this year, a fierce and fabulous crop of incredible artists and collaborators!" – Nisha Madhan, Basement's Programmer
Katrina Elizabeth
Extanz
Dramaturg: Barnie Duncan
Katrina Elizabeth is an endurance-based dance artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau. She moved to Aotearoa in 2020 from Berlin, Germany. She holds a Master in Choreography from Hochschulübergreifendes Zentrum Tanz Berlin (HZT) and has worked with choreographers and companies in Europe, the USA, and New Zealand. She has presented works in The Performance Arcade Wellington, Tempo Dance Festival, and Experimental Dance Week Aotearoa 2020-21. With high-intensity, endurance-based work, Katrina tries to reflect the resilience of the human spirit and the tenacity required in making an authentic performance. Her most recent solo, Soliloquy in Sweat, won the “Best in Fringe” award at NZ Fringe, as well as “Best Performance-Dance” and the “Basement Disruptors Award” at Auckland Fringe.
For Ideas in Residence 2021, Katrina will be working on Extanz with dramaturg Barnie Duncan. Katrina will be researching the theme of power - with a particular focus on the power dynamics that operate in dance spaces. Her lived experience as a professional contemporary dancer, as well as interviews with others in the community will inform her new dance-theatre work.
Amit Noy
In a Big Big Room Full of Everybody’s Hope
Dramaturg: Jo Randerson
Amit Noy (tauiwi, he/they) writes, dances, and makes performances in Aotearoa. Their ancestors came from Israel/Palestine, but their whakapapa and own life traces through Argentina, Mexico, and Hawai’i.
In the artmaking sense, they are an embryo. This year, they made a show called Love is Everything with their family. Love is Everything was developed while in residence at the Toi Pōneke Arts Centre, and performed at the 2021 New Zealand Fringe Festival.
They love dancing with others. Amit dances for Michael Keegan-Dolan/Teaċ Daṁsa and the New Zealand Dance Company. Their writing, on the politics of choreographic abstraction and bearing witness to FAFSWAG's Legacy Vogue Ball (among other topics), has been commissioned and shared by the Pantograph Punch, Tempo Dance Festival, DANZ, and Theatreview.
In Hebrew, 'Amit' means good friend.
For Ideas in Residence 2021 Amit will be working on A Big Big Room Full of Everybody’s Hope, an intergenerational three-part performance that knots together Amit’s thought-chasms:
What does it mean to be Jewish, and living on unceded land?
How can we distrustfully reckon with the hetero-colonial ways of making art we have inherited?
How can we love problems, rather than refuse them?
Keagan Fransch
Dimensions in Black
Dramaturg: Victor Roger
Keagan Carr Fransch was born in Zimbabwe and moved to Aotearoa in 2004 with her family. After graduating from Toi Whakaari: New Zealand Drama School in 2013, she performed around Aotearoa until 2017 when she moved to London to study her Masters in Acting at the Royal Central School of Speech and Drama (RCSSD). Whilst in the UK she had the opportunity to join the Royal Court Theatre Script Panel as a dramaturg, work with Paines Plough as a script submissions reader, review theatre for the Vaults Festival 2020, tutor students in short courses at RCSSD, and also start an audition coaching business for Black and minority aspiring actors. She is currently based in Tāmaki Makaurau.
For Ideas in Residence 2021, Keagan will be working on Dimensions in Black, an Afrofuturist triptych play in three parts: TIME, SPACE and STARS.
Keagan says of her idea: “As children of the African diaspora we are constantly trying to find our place in our current world, whilst trying to hold a connection to the world we’ve either left behind or have never known. We are in a perpetual state of imagining what we could be, and what is the way forward, whilst constantly looking back towards the space we came from, all whilst also inhabiting a space we're told we don't quite fit into.”
Photo credit: AJ Photography
Serena Mani
3314 & Counting
Dramaturg: Moe Laga
Serena Mani is a recent grad of Unitec with a Bachelor of Performing and Screen Arts. Through Ideas in Residence, Serena is developing her solo show 3314 & Counting which began as a solo in her third year of Unitec with Julia Croft. Serena is working with Moe Laga as her dramaturge/mentor in this project and is excited to see where this show will go. Serena is looking forward to challenging her potential as an Artist and working towards spreading awareness on issues that don't often get heard.
Serena’s project 3314 & Counting is a compilation of moving paintings created from multimedia elements including costume, makeup, projection and video.
In her own words: “The show is a mix of a collection of poetry derived from my own personal experiences as a Black Trans Woman and other Trans POC activists who have influenced me and my work, and also mixed with mixed-media including cinematography and visual storytelling on stage.”
Arlo Gibson
Trouble
Arlo is an multi disciplinary artist based in Tāmaki Makaurau who has been working in film, television, and theatre for the last nine years. He graduated from The Actors Program in 2013.
Arlo has produced and created a number of experimental works that blend theatrical conventions with live art, including Skyloving, Womb with a View, and Non Flower Elements. In 2020 Arlo premiered his first solo and durational theatre work titled Just One More which was awarded the Spirit of the Fringe at the Auckland Fringe Festival. In 2021 Arlo premiered Standard Acts alongside Karin McCracken, Meg Rolandi, and Julia Croft. Standard Acts took home the Melbourne Touring award at Wellington Fringe, and Best Live Art and Best Design at the Auckland Fringe Festival.
Other theatrical credits include: The Events, Mating in Captivity, Grand Opening, Cult Show: The Revitalization of the Women’s Archive, Mammoth, Second Unit: What We Do In The Shadows, Dynamotion’s Top Town and Red Leap’s adaptation of Owls Do Cry by Janet Frame.
For Ideas in Residence 2021, Trouble explores Arlo’s ideas around trouble as a form of political action, interrogating questions around the failure of political discourse and the futures of political discourse. During his residency, Arlo intends to collaborate with academics, politicians and a variety of critical thinkers.
Dione Joseph
When We Marched
Dione Joseph is the founder of Black Creatives Aotearoa and co-founder of JK Productions: He Korero Ngā Tahi. Her involvement as a practitioner spans a range of culturally specific projects, academic research and teaching, arts journalism and speaking and facilitation engagements at home and overseas. She has also held various residencies and scholarly fellowships in the UK, China, Mexico, Canada and the USA, including teaching and guest scholar positions at universities in New Zealand and overseas. Her work can be found in a range of print and online publications as well as radio. Dione has extensive experience in community and cultural development, creative entrepreneurship and an emphasis on serving youth, women and diverse communities of Aotearoa.
When We Marched is a multidisciplinary production about the response of the black community and its allies in Aotearoa to the death of George Floyd. This will be written by Dione Joseph and will utilise the BLM Archive developed by BCA which includes oral interviews, footage, poetry, images and other ephemera.
