This third annual season of New Original Dance, showcases the choreographies of four nascent dance makers on a cast of five dancers.

Tim Bray appreciates the past of Auckland's theatre industry and how it has become home.

On April 23, Auckland will be the first city in the world to mark 400 years since the death of playwright William Shakespeare.

Roger Hall's collaboration with British singer songwriter Peter Skellern throws up an entertaining confection celebrating the joys and hazards of grandparenting.

It's a risky ambition to tackle the meaning of love - how we find it, how it changes us and how it feels to have loved and to have lost.

At 70, Henare is taking on his biggest role ever as the Sultan in the popular blockbuster Aladdin, which opens in Sydney in August.

Last year, it staged 111 shows - 62 in its regular programme, 23 in the Fringe, 26 in the NZ Comedy Festival and more than 100 "other" events.

A couple of years ago, playwright Roger Hall well and truly put the "grand" into grandparenting.

No subject is off-limits in Dawn French's stage show Thirty Million Minutes, which tackles even the most harrowing of topics with charm and good humour.

In Antony & Cleopatra the clash of civilisations is set against the intimacy of a tender love story.

Is it a giant diamond, perhaps an icicle, maybe a lighthouse, lantern or even a huge ice block?

One of NZ's most influential dance choreographers was booted out of an Auckland Arts Festival show this week for booing and calling it boring.

The curtains lift, revealing a dancer seated solemnly to one side. All is quiet barring the sound of audience members settling into their seats.

This excellent one-man show is not chatty or casual. Tight, dramatic spotlights focus sharply on the orator in the dark.

Around 30 Aucklanders jumped on and off the White Night Art Bus from Q Theatre on Saturday night and went west.

I've been having dreams of Queenstown/Wanaka lately. I'd like a bit of adventure, so a week of fast rivers and jumping off things and flying high

La Cucina dell’Arte beckons us to peep through a keyhole into the world’s worst restaurant and open the doors to a topsy-turvy, pizza-flipped joint where servants become masters, candles and crockery take on lives of their own and spoons play a tarantella on wine bottles.

Overall, I enjoyed the production but, on reflection, would probably only give the performance six out of 10, writes Peter Bromhead.

Among the razzle-dazzle of the big shows, the Auckland Arts Festival always throws up some hidden gems like Waves.

In this fantastical Kiwi detective story, Carl Bland's musings on truth and loss are framed as "three men in search of a playwright," writes Janet.

Funny, sexy and feminist all at the same time, Australian cabaret star Meow Meow (Melissa Madden Gray) delivers wonderful frivolity.

The makers of this show have given themselves a challenge: they've attempted to adapt what is primarily adult literature for 4-8-year-olds.

The National Theatre of Scotland offers both history lessons and captivating drama in its trilogy of plays about the country's early kings being staged at the Auckland Arts Festival.

New Zealand's brightest acting and dancing talents have been pirouetting and singing their way around the stage in Auckland today.

This play's compassion and understanding is endless, and that's what makes it a necessary piece of theatre.

Oscar Isaac is set to star as Hamlet.

A post-postmodern diva is about to take over the Auckland Arts Festival's Spiegeltent with her take on a Hans Christian Andersen folk tale.

Two Shortland Street starts will don wigs, make-up and bespangled evening wear to join Dragon's Diva Den as special guest female impersonators.