Tēnei te mihi nui ki ngā mana whenua o te rohe nei. Nau mai haere mai, ki whare tapere ō Basement!
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 also 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.
“Basement has changed the way theatre is made in this country” - NZ Herald, 2019
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. We acknowledge that as an historically pākehā, cis and able-body led organisation, we can only achieve this by being critical of our privileges.
We are passionate about looking for ways to bring sustenance to our artists, but also to our staff, so that everyone can leave our space with their kete full of resources and their well-being nurtured. We provide a space for our communities to connect - giving opportunities for them to wildly be together and take part in a dynamic social exchange. We also carry out artist development programmes throughout the year that centre a ‘learning through doing’ approach, and have a cheap-as-chips rehearsal space, Maker's Space, which is available to our artists for hire.
Tickets are cheap, as are the drinks at the bar, so grab your whānau, your friends, or a date, and come witness history in the making.