Roll up for fringe benefits

Tessa Mitchell and Dave Fane, creators of I Wanna Be Na Nah Na Nah Nah.

Many Fringe Festival shows will take you out of the theatre, notes Dionne Christian

Something old, something new, something borrowed, something blue: it's the old rhyme about what brides should wear at their weddings for good luck, but it could apply to this year's Auckland Fringe.

The festival includes 57 shows - from dance to spoken-word performances - at venues as diverse as the rooftop of Aotea Centre, a playground, a church, parks, a vault and even a bus. Local talents, including Dave Fane, Sal Valentine and the Babyshakes, Goretti Chadwick, Stephen Bain, Chris Parker, Sam Brooks, Tom Sainsbury, Victor Rodger, Eli Matthewson, Mika, Binge Culture and Creative New Zealand 2014 Arts Pasifika Emerging Artist Grace Taylor, are among hundreds of performers complemented by international acts.

Fringe artistic director Michael Keating says funding changes have led to partnering new venues and working more closely with other summer festivals, Auckland Pride and the Lantern Festival. It also dovetails with long-established fringe festivals in Wellington and Dunedin, which have formed a consolidated touring network for local and international artists.

For starters, we can expect to see theatre somewhere other than in a theatre. I Wanna Be Na Nah Na Nah Nah, written by Tessa Mitchell, Stephen Bain and Dave Fane, starts with a free bus trip from The Basement to Ponsonby. Once there, participants receive wireless headphones and are led through backyards, alleyways and along Ponsonby Rd on a real-time journey which features true stories, interviews and encounters with various performers.

Set in 1983, Bain says it's less a show about "the good old days" and more a contemplation on what we've lived through to arrive at where we are today. "Ponsonby is a vehicle to view the rapid change New Zealand went through to find a new identity."

Theatre of Love producer James Wenley and visual theatre maker Ben Anderson have created Risk and Win, which starts on the roof of Aotea Centre before heading down to inner city streets. Audience members play investigators trying to solve the mystery of why Cara, a marketing executive at the fictional Risk & Win Gaming Corp, is missing. A sizeable reward has been offered by Arthur D Skillington, CEO of Risk & Win Gaming Corp, and Cara's father-in-law to be, to anyone who tracks her down and there are real prizes.

Risk and Win starts on the roof of the Aotea Centre.

Wenley and Anderson liken their production, in which audiences are actively involved, to television's The Amazing Race, an adventure movie, and video games. Tokens are handed out for different challenges and each night prizes will be awarded to the three competitors who collect the most. Winners will be invited to compete in a special grand final with a new mission.

"I love interactive theatre, where audiences can take a more active stake in the story," says Wenley. "Any definition of theatre gets down to how you tell stories and this is a good story, with a script and actors, told in a different way and bringing in game logic. The competitive aspect is really unique, but it's also important that we tell an engaging story, so even if you don't win a prize you'll still go away hyped."

Aotea Square is also the site of Square Soapbox, a place where Fringe artists can show passersby their offerings and share their thoughts on the Fringe. Wellington's Binge Culture Collective brings Whales to the square for a one-off performance on Wednesday, February 11. The premise revolves around a pod of 30 whales which become stranded in central Auckland in desperate need of help to refloat.

The Fringe is all about different perspectives. Anderson's other show, Puzzle, is a story about belonging but he wanted to avoid cliches so it's about a puzzle piece that feels it doesn't belong in its jigsaw and the puzzle-maker trying to help. Puzzle uses traditional Japanese bunraku puppets.

Newcomers Navi Collaborative have a performance installation at The Basement called The Dummy. Without a traditional story structure, it uses multimedia and actor Morgan Bradley's responses to explore whether our focus on positivity does us more harm than good.

"It's about whether positivity, particularly on social media, is used as a pacifier which denies us the opportunity to express our true feelings as we try to bury them beneath a facade," says producer Dawn Glover.

"It's not about being negative; it's about being honest."

Playwright Renee Liang has teamed up with Petit Workshop to reinvigorate a traditional Chinese fable, originally titled The Tale of The Fragrant Farting Man. Now called The Two Farting Sisters, the all-female cast uses 3D puppetry, shadow puppetry and live action to tell a story about a feisty heroine. Liang says the show should appeal to ages 7-plus, while director Ella Becroft says it speaks directly to New Zealand's multicultural society, highlighting the clash of past and present cultures.

It runs alongside Liang's other show, Under the Same Moon, which she describes as a poignant comedy about daughters and their wayward mothers. Inspired by a line from a Tang dynasty poem, Liang says it explores the dynamics of migrant families who are often separated for years.

"When we come together, the identities we've built up about ourselves are challenged but we have to learn how to live together and function as a whole."

She has been inspired by stories of her two lively grandmothers to write the central character of the matriarch, Por Por Grace. Solo performer Hweiling Ow portrays three generations of women (and some of their men) in the Chan family.

The Two Farting Sisters and Under the Same Moon are also part of the Lantern Festival. Similarly, the Auckland Pride Festival has theatre included in the Fringe programme. The Legacy Project returns for a second year, with six new stories about modern New Zealand lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender experiences.

The Fringe also acts as a testing ground for artists wanting to try out new works. Victor Rodger's Black Faggot was the hit of the 2013 Auckland Fringe, sold out at the Melbourne Fringe, the Brisbane World Theatre Festival, NZ Festival and two return seasons in Auckland before going to last year's New Zealand in Edinburgh season of the Edinburgh Festival.

Now it's being developed into a feature film.

Rodger returns with his latest play, Girl on a Corner, about Shalimar Seiuli, a Samoan fa'afafine prostitute who worked on Santa Monica Boulevard in the mid-90s.